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 loath, to help about the dinner. Old Lady Pratt having accomplished her devotions in a very thorough and satisfactory manner, had now put on her Sunday cap of white mull and her gold spectacles, and felt herself at liberty to consider worldly things.

"William," she said with much interest, "ain't cotton goin' up pretty fast?"

"Yes, there's been a big rise this month, and it's likely to go on if things don't quiet down at the South."

"Anson was tellin' me you'd got a large stock onhand. You'd oughter make a sight o' money."

"I don't expect to make more than usual."

"Why! I don't see how you can help it if you try."

"I sha'n't have to try so very hard. I shall sell my stock at a fair profit and no more."

"You don't mean tosay that you'll sell below the market-price!"

"If the market-price isn't a fair one I don't propose to be governed by it."

Old Lady Pratt was quick but never hasty. She got up and pulled the shade down in one of the south windows, and then she put on a little knit shawl, a contradictory mode of procedure which showed that her mind was not on whatshe was doing. After that she resumed her straight-backed chair and gave utterance to her views.

Pears to me you're wrong, William," she said. T ain't as though you sold straight to


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 the people. They ain't going to git the good of your generosity. You'll only be a putting money into the pockets of the rich manufacturers. That's plain enough to see."

"If the manufacturers choose to pocket what doesn't belong to them, that isn't my . It's hard times, and it's going to be harder, and I don't mean to get rich on other people's misfortunes."

This time Old Lady Pratt sat still and thought. Her silence was particularly impressive, as she had not even her week-day knitting to bridge it over. At last she said, reflectively: "I'm afraid you 'reall wrong, William. 'T ain't the way folks do business—though I ain't sure that your father wouldn't have acted just so. And I declare for 't," with a sudden impulsiveness very unusual in her. "Ef I was you, I believe I'd ruther be wrong than right!"

And then to her son's unbounded surprise the self-contained old lady came over and gave him a hearty kiss—a thing which had not happened, except on state occasions, since he was a small boy.

William himself had no misgivings. He was accustomed to thinking things out for himself, and he had very little regard for "consequences," that bugbear of many a thinker. It used to seem to him as though certain of the practical men of his acquaintance were always trying to hit the bull's-eye by aiming somewhere else. They fired

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 away and reloaded, and fired away again, and collected their bag of game entirely regardless of the target, which, nevertheless, most of them had set up for themselves at the beginning of the match. He was quite ready to acknowledge that he missed his aim as often as not, but it was not for the sake of side issues. And as to this matter of the cotton, he did not care to go into the pros and cons of it. There was but one thing to be considered, and that was an innate repugnance to making money out of other people's misfortunes. He not only would not do it if it was wrong; he would have hated to do it if it had been ever so right.

On the question of the right of secession William Pratt had thought long and deeply, though perhaps a little confusedly. He lived in a very loyal community. The Union was something which most of his neighbors could not reason about. It was something sacred and unassailable as the moral law. If he tried to argue with them they looked at him askance, quite as though he had undertaken to defend kidnapping or burglary. It is possible that the opinion which he had arrived at was partly the result of a natural antagonism. William Pratt was so constituted that if he had been told every day of his life that a quadruped had necessarily four legs, it is more than likely that he would have come firmly to believe in the existence of a five-legged beast of that description.


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 will repel the accusation: perhaps not without surprise.

I thought it right to record these circumstances; but I turn gladly and with sincere gratitude to the converse. In the close of last year I was advised to present the Tragedy once more to the Theatre. Accordingly having altered the names, I ventured to address a letter to Mr. Whitbread, requesting information as to whom I was to present my Tragedy. My Letter was instantly and most kindly answered, and I have now nothing to tell but a Tale of Thanks. I should scarce know where to begin, if the goodness of the Manager, Mr., had not called for my first acknowledgements. Not merely as an acting Play, but as a dramatic Poem, the has been importantly and manifoldly benefited by his suggestions. I can with severest truth say, that every hint he gave me was the ground of some improvement. In the next place it is my duty to mention Mr., the Stage Manager. Had the "" been his own Play—nay, that is saying too little—had I been his brother, or his dearest friend, he could not have felt or exerted himself more zealously.

As the Piece is now acting, it may be thought presumptuous in me to speak of the Actors: yet how can I abstain, feel-


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 He hated to be talked at, and was capable of loving his opinions as he loved his children, merely because they were his own. As the dreary anxious winter wore away, he did himself more than one ill turn by his rough handling of other people's prejudices.

One Friday evening in early April William went with his wife to prayer-meeting. He was a church member, but to Edna's chagrin he had never been able to overcome a certain reticence sufficiently to take an active part in such a meeting. It was an understood thing that he was not to be called upon, and being thus exempt he used regularly to attend on Friday evenings. It was one of the many things he did purely from a sense of duty.

The prayer-meetings of late had been particularly fervent. The community was in a state of unnatural excitement. The sense of an impending crisis brooded heavily upon all hearts, and in the strong tension of public feeling an appeal to divine aid was the natural impulse of every religious man. William had noticed with growing dissatisfaction the tendency of these meetings. The minister himself, who was a strong antislavery man, gave the tone to the proceedings. It seemed to William that a prayer-meeting should not be turned into an expression of partisan feeling. On this occasion he listened with ill-suppressed indignation to the prayers which followed each other in quick succession. Nearly


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 every one of them was an appeal for aid for the Northern cause. As he listened he was reminded of the somewhat personal tone Jane's devotions had once taken when he and she were children: "Please God, make Mother box Willie's ears."

When, at last, one of the most eloquent of the brethren openly called for the vengeance of the Lord to be visited upon the offending South, William felt that his turn had come. To the amazement of his wife, he rose deliberately to his feet, and gave the premonitory cough customary on such occasions. The vestry-room was but feebly lighted by kerosene lamps, one of which was smoking badly. In the dim, uncertain light he could just see the furtive glances which were turned towards him as the people in the sparsely filled seats covered their faces with their hands. When all heads were bowed, he began his prayer in a voice a little harsh from contending emotions: "God Almighty, we pray Thy mercy on our land. We pray to be delivered from war. We pray to be delivered from disunion. We pray, also, to be delivered from the commission of injustice. We pray. Thee, O God, to deliver the North from the calamities which we dread. And we pray. Thee to deliver our sister, the South, from the vengeance which we threaten. Change Thou the hearts of the North and of the South. Deliver us from ourselves, that the terrors of war and of disunion may be averted. Forgive our partisanship. Forgive our evil passions. Lead


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 us in the ways of equity and peace. Hear, O God, our prayer, not for our sakes, but for the sake of justice and humanity. Amen."

As the bowed heads were lifted at the close of this very unconventional prayer, none were turned toward the speaker. A constraint had fallen upon the meeting. Fortunately the time was up, and it was not necessary to prolong the session. The minister had risen to announce the closing hymn, when there was a sudden sound of cracking glass, and the broken chimney of the smoking lamp fell down on the heads and knees of the people below. There was a commotion in that corner until the flaring light was extinguished, and then the minister gave out the closing hymn: "Lord, dismiss us with Thy blessing." The inharmonious voices of the congregation rose and fell in lagging cadence upon the well-known tune, and then "the peace of God, which passeth understanding," was invoked upon the heads of the belligerent meeting, and William Pratt found himself at liberty to go out into the pure night air, beneath those clear burning lights of heaven, that neither smoke nor flare.

Edna followed him dejectedly. Why had she ever wished him to "take part"? She might have known he could not do it like other people. They walked on in silence for some distance, till at last she felt that forbearance was a weakness. Edna not infrequently found it her duty to remon-


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 strate with her husband, though her reproofs were always couched in the most considerate language.

"I am almost sorry you made that prayer, dear," she began, gently. She usually called him "dear" when she was not pleased with him.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because I'm afraid it gave offence."

"To whom?"

"Why, to all the people."

"It was addressed to the Almighty," he said curtly, and after that he said no more about it.

But as he met his fellow-Christians in the week that followed he noticed a marked coolness in their demeanor toward himself, and he rejoiced more and more that he had taken a stand.

Early in the following week his brother Ben looked in on him at his office—jovial, sweettempered Ben, who hated a row.

"How are you, Bill?" said he. "Got time for a smoke?" Ben was the only person who ever thought of calling him Bill.

They were soon established with their cigars, their feet on the office stove, Ben's chair tilted back at a genial angle. He presently came to, the point.

"Look here, Bill. What put it into your head to stir up the meeting with a long pole last Friday evening? Anson is in a great state of mind. He says all the old Tabbies in town are by the ears about it."


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 "I don't know what you mean by a long pole," said William, gruffly; "I asked the Lord to bless the North and the South and to keep them from laying hands on each other."

"Not much use in that," Ben declared. "There's bound to be a war."

"Think so? I'm afraid you're right."

For a time they puffed on in silence. Then William asked:

"What shall you do about it if there is one?"

"Do about it?"

"Yes, do about it. Shall you fight?"

"I? Fight? Good gracious no! I'm no fighting man. I couldn't stick a bayonet intoa sheep to save my soul."

"There's a good deal that's disagreeable about war," William answered dryly. "I, for one, would rather let the South go about their business."

"We can't do that," said Ben, with conviction. "We've got the right on our side, and we're bound to maintain it."

"It all seems perfectly clear to you, apparently."

"Yes. I can't see that the thing's got two sides. But," brightening, "do you know, Bill, it's very lucky that you don't look at it as the rest of us do, for if you did, it would be just like you to go to the war yourself. You'd be the very fellow to go down there and get shot."

"It will certainly be just like a good many poor fellows to doit. Fellows," William added


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 gloomily, "that have more to lose than some of us."

"Nobody could have much more to lose than you and I, Bill, with our wives and children."

William did not respond immediately, but then he was not a particularly responsive man. At last he said: "There's one thing you and I wouldn't have to leave behind to keep our wives and children company."

"What's that?"

"Beggary."

Again there was a long pause.

"Well, Bill," said Ben, at last, as he finished his cigar and turned to depart, "I think you've got hold of this thing by the wrong end, but your heart's all right, I'll be bound!"

"Rubbish!" William growled. "Hearts don't count. It's heads we want and they're mighty scarce just now."

But all this was only the prelude. Men talked, and argued, and discussed the war, and knew very little of what they were talking about. War is a grim word, but, after all, what is a word, even the grimmest?

The terrible awakening which swept over the land when the thunder of the first gun boomed across the waters in Charleston Harbor was almost as astounding, almost as appalling, as though the name of war had not been spoken till that day. It was on Saturday, the 13th of April, that the echoes of that gun reached the North.


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 William Pratt, driving into town across the long bridge, saw hundreds of flags floating over the city. Their brave colors fluttering on the breeze seemed to speak of cheerful things, and for a moment the weight of anxiety and foreboding was lifted from his heart. But on the outskirts of the city he was undeceived. Newsboys were bawling the bad tidings at the top of their voices, men were standing in knots talking vociferously, and gesticulating in a manner unusual in an American crowd.

Pratt reined in his horse and bought a paper. He glanced at it, mechanically guiding his horse through the crowded streets. The headings were enough.

He let the paper slip to his feet, and took a firm hold of the reins, to steady himself, not the horse.

The air seemed full of flying flags. Their bright colors fluttered through his thoughts in a strange, bewildering way. All the world was talking and gesticulating. He did not want to talk, he did not want to hear what was said. He knew enough. Too much. It was the worst. Nothing could mitigate that. He turned his


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 horse's head away from the centre of the town, out toward the open country.

For three days William Pratt bore himself like a man indifferent to the great events that mastered every heart. He lived apparently unmoved by the tremendous emotions that surged about him. His face was set and hard. His eye was dull. His neighbors, when they saw him pass, murmured to one another the fatal word, "Secesh," fancying that they had the key to that stony indifference. And all the while his mind was in a tumult.

It was an inner vision rather than a thought that occupied him. The singular, irresistible power of a symbol had laid hold upon him. It was not the country he thought of, not the cause. It was the flag, the Stars and Stripes, that he had loved unconsciously for forty years, that riveted his mind. He saw them floating over Fort Sumter, brave and proud as they had floated over the city when he drove across the bridge on that Saturday morning. He saw them lowered at the bidding of a hostile gun.

For on Sunday news came of the surrender of the fort. The announcement was made from the pulpit. Strong men were shaken with sobs. Women's faces blanched. A little child in the pew in front of him pulled at his father's hand which hid his father's face, saying: "Don't ee cry, Papa." All day long that childish voice haunted William in meaningless reiteration. Yet he sat with tearless eyes and firm-set lips, seem-


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 ingly shut out alike from the terror and the exaltation of the hour.

When the service was ended, and he stepped out into the sunshine, his wife and children stayed behind while he walked home alone.

On Tuesday William Pratt did a startlingly inconsistent thing. He deliberately enrolled his name among the defenders of that cause about which he had been so stubbornly sceptical.

When he came home from the recruiting office in the afternoon, he found his brother Ben sitting with his wife. It was just at dusk and the gas had not yet been lighted. William came in with a muttered greeting and took his seat in a large arm-chair where he leaned back heavily.

"Well, Ben," said he, "I'm glad to find you here. I suppose you'll be surprised to know that I've enlisted."

"Enlisted!"

"Enlisted!"

Edna's voice was sharp and high, Ben's low with consternation. There was a dead silence before Ben spoke again with a somewhat unsteady accent.

"Why, Bill," he said, "I don't understand. I thought you didn't believe in the cause."

"You always sided with the South!" Edna urged, with feeble remonstrance.

"That was before they fired on the flag," her husband answered, in a tone of voice that she had never heard before.


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 Ben could not argue, but he plead, and Edna wept and lamented, and William sat there feeling as solitary in his newly awakened loyalty as he had found himself in the days of his heresy, till presently a slight figure in a bright plaid frock stole to his side, and a soft little hand was slipped within his own. It washis daughter Mary, who had sat by unobserved, and came to offer her mite of sympathy. He clasped the little hand tightly, and Mary sat on the arm of his chair all through the long discussion which followed.

At last Ben left them, and Edna went to dry her tears in her own room, and when they were alone together Mary said, in a very solemn voice: "Father, I wish I were a man so that I could go and fight for my country."

It had grown quite dark now. He put his arm about his little daughter and drew her down upon his knee, and then he said rather huskily: "Praise God that youare not a man, Mary. You might have to die for your country."

"I think that would be better than living," she answered, with the simple, straightforward conviction of a child.

There was a strange, new ache in William Pratt's heart, as he pressed the hot little cheek against his own. The flag no longer filled the whole horizon of his thoughts.

Happily for him, there was too much business to be got through in the short interval before he should join his regiment in camp, to leave much


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 time for reflection or discussion. 'T'he final winding up of his affairs had to be in a great measure entrusted to his brother Ben, and it was at this time that Ben first learned that William had not taken advantage of the rise in cotton for his own enrichment. Ben was an honest man, but this was beyond him.

"Quixotic," he growled. "Perfectly quixotic! Bill," he cried in desperation, "you need a guardian."

"Do I?" said William.

They were standing over the safe in his office, and as William looked down upon his brother a faint gleam of amusement came into his grave eyes. He was taller by half a head than Ben, and though the difference in their age was not great, he looked much the elder. With his stern, rugged countenance and strong frame, he presented a marked contrast to his blue-eyed, good-humored junior, whose short figure was getting stout but would never be powerful.

"Do I?" he asked again.

"Yes, Bill! you do! First you throw away your luck and then you do your best to throw away your life. I'm blessed if I can see what right you have to cut into us all in this way, especially for a cause you never stood up for before."

"Queer that I can't make you understand," said William, with a contraction of the brows, as though he were trying to think out some elabo-


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 rate explanation of a very simple problem. "I suppose you can imagine the case of mother, for instance, getting into a difference of opinion with a neighbor, and your admitting that he was as much in the right as she. But if he were to lift his hand against her, I reckon you wouldn't think twice before you knocked him down."

The trouble in Ben's face deepened. The allusion to his mother only made things worse. The old lady had "plenty of grit," but her eyes were so much brighter than usual when he called to see her that morning that he had felt anxious. She was an old woman and ought not to be called upon for the exercise of heroism.

William himself was too preoccupied to be very much alive to other people's feelings. Among all the confused experiences of that time of preparation and departure there was only one moment that stood out clearly in his mind, that dwelt with him in the weeks that followed, when he lay awake under the stars in the home camp, and later when he came into close quarters with the realities of war.

The apologetic embarrassment of his discomfited accusers made very little impression upon him, while even as to his wife herself, he seemed to have forgotten just what she did and said at the last. He could recall hardly anything about his parting with his brothers and sisters. He remembered the grip of the dry and wrinkled hand of age, when he kissed his mother, and that her


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34 blindness, enrich my poverty, clothe my nakedness. Grant that I may receive the Bread of angels, the King of kings, the Lord of lords, with as much reverence and humility, contrition and devotion, purity and faith, with such uprightness of purpose and intention, as may be profitable to the salvation of my soul.

Grant me, I beseech Thee, to receive not only the Sacrament of the Lord’s body and blood, but also the grace and virtue of the Sacrament.

O most merciful God, grant me so to receive the body of Thy only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, which He took from Mary ever virgin, that I may merit to be incorporated into His mystical body, and numbered amongst His members. O most loving Father, grant that Thy beloved Son, Whom, now hidden beneath the sacramental veil, I propose to receive, I may at length contemplate forever, face to face: Who with Thee liveth and reigneth in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.

GRACIOUS Lord Jesus Christ, I, a sinner, nothing presuming on my own deserts, but trusting in Thy mercy and goodness, with fear and trembling approach to the table of Thy most sweet feast. For my heart and body are stained with many sins; my thoughts and lips not diligently guarded. Wherefore, O gracious God, O awful Majesty, in my extremity I turn to Thee, the fount of mercy; to Thee I hasten to be healed,

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 brave old lips trembled slightly as they touched his. But whether she had said the word good-bye or had failed to say it he did not know.

In his breast pocket was a neat little penwiper, the covering worked in red, white, and blue worsteds in the shape ofa flag, and in yellow silk were done "all the stars for all the States," little Mary had said when she gave it to him. "And you must use it, Father, when you write to us, and when you bring it home again it will have come true, and all the States will be in the Union, just as they used to be."

He had taken the child's face between his two large hands, and looked down with infinite wistfulness into the clear young eyes.

"Mary," he had said, "I wish you and I had known each other a little better."

"Never mind, Father," the girlish treble sounded sweet and true as a bell. "When we meet again we shall be great friends."

Then he had kissed her forehead and held her very close, and she had stroked the front of his coat, the Union coat that he was to do his fighting in, until her mother came and claimed her right to weep upon his shoulder.

He thought of his clear-eyed, high-hearted little daughter, as he sat among the men of his company on the eve of the first great disaster of Bull Run and again as he went into action the next day.

The bullet that pierced his heart passed first through the little worsted flag, but it left the field


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 of stars unbroken. And the little flag was buried with him in Southern soil, a mute and hidden witness to the better time to come.

When that good time had come, when the humble testimony of those tiny golden stars had been fulfilled, the little Mary had grown to be a tall young woman, rather mature and thoughtful for her years. Many girlish fancies had passed away, many hard realities had come to take their place. But no ungentle years could rob her of her best heritage, her father's memory, nor did she ever lose faith in her parting words to him: "When we meet again we shall be great friends."


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ND how's Anson gittin' along?" asked Miss Grig, the proprietor of the thread and-needle store next door, as she payed for the new glass in her spectacles. "I've hear'n tell's how he was makin' quite a success of his doctorin'."

Mr. Bennett's face dropped its business expression and took on a genial look of complacence.

"Oh, Anson! He's doin' a great business. He's cuttin' out the allopaths right an' left. Reglars, they call themselves, and my wife says that's all right, for most on 'em's reglar old Betties! Why, Anson's got the best part of the practice in that country for miles round!"

"Well! It doos beat all, I must say, that a young man brought up to the spectacle trade should suddenly perk up and know so much 'bout folks' insides. I s'pose now, homepathic means home-made or somethin' of the kind."

"Like's not," replied the proud father. "I always said the doctors round here might learn a thing or two of Mis' Bennett. She comes of an


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 oncommon smart family, the Pratts of Dunbridge, and she was about the smartest of the lot. It's been a real eddication to Anson to be the son of such a woman."

Then the worthy man grew more expansive, and leaning over the counter with a confidential air he added: "Do you know, Miss Grig—(I don't want to brag, but this is betwixt you and me)—that boy's used up one hoss a'ready!"

A look of horror came into the excitable countenance of Miss Grig. She gazed into Mr. Bennett's face through her neatly repaired glasses and gasped:

"What! For pills!"

While Mr. Bennett was explaining to his old friend, that the "hoss" had been used up by too much travel on the long country roads, young Bennett was driving the first victim's successor, at an easy pace along the East Burnham turnpike.

It was one of those soft days in early May, when the apple-blossoms are in their glory, and the balmy air quickens the heart with gladness. Anson Bennett's heart was beating to the tune of hope and joy. He felt to his finger-tips, the delicious spring awakening, and pleasant thoughts sprang up in his mind, as naturally as early buttercups from the sod.

Now this young man, with his well-favored, not unintelligent face, and an air of candor and goodwill which went far to win the se, people's


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 confidence, was nothing more nor less than an impostor. Yet impostor that he was, he was first of all his own dupe. Homœopathy had but lately come into vogue, and the apparent simplicity of its principles had made it, or an unworthy travesty of it, instantly popular. Especially among New England housewives, who like to feel themselves equal to every emergency, the little wooden cases of bottles filled with palatable remedies for every ill, were welcome possessions.

"Why," Anson's mother had said, "it's just like the way Luther gave the Bible to the people! Think how long the priests had kept the religious doctorin' all to themselves."

The good woman had an ill-defined notion that doctrine and doctorin' had more similarity than that of mere sound. "I tell you, it's jest the same with the doctors. It's nothing but self-glorification that's always made'em so secret about their learnin'. The Lord sets 'em a better example than that. The Lord promises to help folks that help themselves. But you'd think, to hear the allopaths talk, that a woman was committing some awful crime, when she gave a little nux vomica to a child that's got the snuffles, instead of running up a doctor's bill and being made to torture the poor little thing with nasty-tasting drugs."

Jane Bennett was, as her simple-minded husband took pride in remembering, a Pratt of Dunbridge, and she had inherited something of


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 the "faculty," which has always distinguished that highly respectable family.

Marrying at a very early age—in opposition, let it be whispered in confidence, to her mother's wishes—and removing to the small manufacturing town where her husband pursued his calling, Jane Pratt had taken a step downward in the social scale. The ignorante which is the prerogative of sweet seventeen, had not been modified by contact with her betters, or even with her equals, and her self-confidence—sometimes called pigheadedness—had received no check. Hence she never suspected the undeniable fact that she was as ignorant of the true science of homœopathy as she was of the higher mathematics. And in spite of ignorance and pigheadedness, Jane Bennett was very successful with her nux vomica and belladonna and what not, and she had little difficulty in persuading her son of the soundness of her views. Anson had received much practical benefit from his mother's treatment of the small ills which had assailed him from time to time; her methods seemed to him rational, her arguments just. When she finally gave him a little manual of "symptoms," and told him it would teach him homœopathy, there appeared, to his mind, to be a great light thrown upon a hitherto dark and tortuous province of human experience. He was very young, very ignorant and very ambitious, and he was but too ready to believe that those little sugar-coated pills were the last and most


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 comprehensive outcome of medical science, and that he, with the aid of his manual, and a fair stock of natural "gumption," was as well fitted as another to administer them judiciously. Eight months' practice on whooping-cough and measles, in a healthy country neighborhood, had only confirmed him in his self-confidence, and he had almost come to feel as though it were his own diagnosis (a word, by the way, which he valued highly) which fixed the nature of the disease to be treated.

He was now on his way to a patient—a mechanic living on the outskirts of the neighboring town of East Burnham—whose case he had pronounced to be a severe catarrhal cold, and had for some days past been treating accordingly. His heart swelled within him as he thought of his past success and future prospects, and all his meditations were tinged with the spring sunshine.

"What a heavenly-minded day this is," he said to himself; "and how pleasant it is to be driving along through this pretty country! To think that I might have spent all my days behind Father's counter, waiting on fussy old ladies, if I hadn't turned doctor!"

His thoughts made a pause, while a picture rose before his mental vision.

"I wonder if Alice wouldn't like to be sitting side o' me, and driving along among the apple-blossoms!"


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 The young man glanced wistfully at the empty seat beside him, and then at the blossoming trees on either hand.

"She'd go well with the apple blossoms. There's so much pink and white about her, and she's so sweet."

Then he fell into a wordless reverie, while his horse ambled lazily on. Thedreamy stretches of pasture land, the soft spring air, and the fragrant apple-blossoms were all blended in his happy mood; but the keynote of this delicate harmony was the pretty girlish face he looked upon with the "inward eye,"—pink and white and very sweet, but with a grace his fancy added, the grace of shy responsiveness. For the sweet face had not yet softened for him; the clear eyes had not yet met his with answering affection. It was only that on such a day as this everything seemed possible to his young ambition.

"She's proud, and she has a good right to be," he admitted to himself. T isn't only that her father's so well off and has been in the legislature. She'd be just the same if her folks were nobodies. A girl like her," he told himself to-day for the hundredth time, "couldn't be expected to marry a man of no account. It stands to reason she'd look high. But a doctor with such a practice as mine, is a different matter."

An attractive smile lit up his face. "I know I could make her happy. There isn't anything I wouldn't do for her. She should have as nice


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 a house as any lady hereabouts, and lots of flowers in her garden. I s'pose she likes flowers. Seems as though a girl like her must feel sort of at home among them. I guess I'll send her a bunch next time I go home." He looked again at the apple-trees, whose blossoming branches hung over' the stone wall on either side of the road.

"I'd like to send her a lot of apple-blossoms now," he thought, "but I s'pose that wouldn't be much of a compliment; they're so plenty. They do look just like her though."

A stray petal floated through the still air and dropped upon his knee. He picked it up and regarded it thoughtfully.

"Pity so many of them come to nothing," he mused. "I wonder why things should be wasted so."

He often thought of the fragile waif, in after years, when he remembered that day of blossoming of all sweet things in his own thoughts.

Dr. Bennett stopped his horse before a barelooking house, dropped the weight on the ground with a professional air, and taking his medicine case from the buggy, walked up the path. It was with difficulty that he pulled himself together, and got himself back to real life. On the threshold he paused a moment and looked lingeringly upon the pleasant landscape, as though some subtle premonition had told him that he was turning his back for ever upon a


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 sweet spring world. Then he lifted the latch and entered into the chill shadow of sordid cares.

A woman met him in the little dark entryway. She was a young, timid-looking creature, and little children were clinging to her skirts. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes unnaturally bright. Anson thought he had never before noticed how pretty she was, and, stooping to pat the cheek of one of the children, he said, cheerily:

"Well, Mrs. Ellery, I hope your husband is doing well to-day."

"O Doctor!" she answered, in a voice that sounded strained and weak, "I was just going to send after you. He's been that bad all day, that I was afraid to wait till you'd come."

A queer shock went through Anson, as he drew himself up and looked again into her face; but he recovered himself instantly, and saying, "I'm sorry you've been anxious, but I guess we shall have him all right again pretty soon," he passed into the sick-room with her. The children remained huddled together in the dark entry.

The sick-room was on the north side of the house, and seemed chilly and comfortless. The patient lay with closed eyes on the bed. A strange, bluish pallor overspread his face, and he was breathing hard and painfully. Dr. Bennett took in his the hand that lay upon the calico counterpane. It was cold and clammy, and again that strange shock went through him.


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 At his touch the patient opened his eyes feebly, and looked up at him. But he closed them again, muttering something which the doctor failed to catch.

"I guess he's asking for Dr. Morse," said the wife, whose cheeks were pale again. "He's been asking for him all day, and I didn't know what I'd ought to do about it."

Dr. Morse, as Anson knew, was the family physician whom he had superseded. For a moment the young doctor's face looked hard and almost cruel. He had seated himself in the chair placed for him at the bedside, and was apparently absorbed in counting his patient's pulse. It was but a faint fluttering of life beneath his finger, and he felt a sinking at the heart as he tried to put his mind upon the count. He had never lost but one patient, as he often reflected with pride, and that was an aged man. Suppose James Ellery should die. Was it his fault? People must die, in spite of the doctors. It was only that this was almost his first fatal case, that it should take such hold of him. Yet, all the same, it was a sickening feeling to have a life which you were trying to hold slip from your grasp in this way.

His touch upon the wrist must have tightened, for the patient moved uneasily, and tried to draw his handaway. Dr. Bennett looked at his watch. Nearly five minutes had passed, and yet he had not counted the feeble pulse. He released the


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 hand suddenly and turned to the woman standing beside him.

"Do you want Dr. Morse?" he asked.

"If you wouldn't mind," she said, hesitatingly. "I think it would comfort James. He's been fretting about it all day."

"I will go for him."

"Oh, no? Don't leave him," she begged, with a frightened look towards the sick man. "I'll send Willie Anderson next door," and she hurried from the room.

"I suppose that's always the way," thought Anson, ratherly bitterly, yet trying to reassure himself by the reflection. "They lay every thing to the doctor, and I suppose now they're sorry they ever left that old fogy, with his nasty drugs and his bloodlettings, and all his antiquated notions. But he looked from time to time uneasily at his patient.patient." [sic]

It was a miserable situation, and every moment increased Anson's perplexity and distress. He got up and paced the room—for Mrs. Ellery did not return—and tried to cast off the terrible weight of anxiety. Then he paused and looked again at the sufferer. It was no wonder that his heart was lead within him. He was standing face to face with death—not death as he had seen it, coming to release a pilgrim bowed down with years and infirmity, but death, summoning the soul of a man in the prime and vigor of life. He seemed to see the grim spectre defying him, and


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 he, who should have been armed to the teeth, stood weaponless, helpless as a child. A shuffling sound at the door startled him, and then he heard a childish voice whimpering—"Muvver! Muvver! Let me in!"

He went and opened the door and said sternly: "Your mother isn't here. Go away," and the little figure turned and fled from the strange man, in whose set face the child had not recognized the doctor.

And still the mother did not return. She must have gone herself for Dr. Morse. Anson paced the room in growing anguish of spirit. It seemed like a horrible nightmare, and he flung his head back violently to wake himself. Yet he knew, with an insistent, grinding knowledge, that it was a nightmare from which there would be no awakening.

In after years when he looked back upon that day, one consolation remained to him in his shame and self-abasement. He had not carried on the pitiful farce a moment after it was revealed to him in its true light. Though his mind was not prompt to accept the bitter truth of his incompetency, a deeper consciousness of it was so borne in upon him, that he offered no remedy—gave no advice. From the moment when his finger touched the vanishing pulse, he ceased to act his miserable part. His feeble pleas for himself, his fretful accusations of others, were but surface disturbances.


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 As he sat beside his patient in the gathering twilight, listening to his labored breathing and feeble moanings, he looked upon the dying man with a passion of envy stronger, even, than his remorse. To die! To die! To escape from a life, maimed, ruined, as his own must be, if this were indeed no nightmare, but an inexorable fate.

There was a sudden sound of steps in the passage-way, and the door opened softly. A light streamed in from the lamp which Mrs. Ellery held in her hand, and at first Anson saw only her frightened face. But there, in the shadow, was the short, sturdy figure of Dr. Morse, the despised rival of the successful young practitioner. While Mrs. Ellery explained, in a hurried whisper, that she had not found Willie Anderson, and had herself been searching through the town for Dr. Morse, the latter stepped to the bedside, and made a hasty examination of the patient. He shook his head and Anson fancied that he heard the words—"Too late."

A baby's wail from the kitchen broke rudely upon the solemn hush, a door was opened, and the sound of fretful voices approached. Dr. Bennett stood an instant irresolute. Then he said, in a dry, hard voice: "I will go and quiet the children."

"Oh, if you would!" said Mrs. Ellery, gratefully; and Anson left the room, accepting it as his dismissal.


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 He went into the kitchen and humbly did his best to pacify the peevish, hungry little people who were quarrelling in the dark. He lit a lamp and got them some gingerbread from a high shelf in the cupboard, and presently they were standing around his chair, five little eager listeners, while he told them the story of Jack the Giant Killer. Curiously enough, he became so absorbed in the old tale, that he succeeded in detaching his mind, for the moment, from all that was real and painful, and, finding an unspeakable relief in this momentary oblivion, he continued his storytelling, relating, with a feverish earnestness and rapidity, the adventures of one after another of the nursery heroes.

An hour or more had passed thus, when suddenly a heavy step just outside the door smote upon his consciousness like a blow, and he stood up to meet his accuser.

Dr. Morse opened the door, and said, in a voice that sounded very much like a command: "I should be glad to have a talk with you, Dr. Bennett. Suppose we step out-of-doors.'out-of-doors." [sic]

Bennett pushed the children rather roughly aside, and followed his summons. The stars were out, and the evening air was sweet with the fragrance of apple-blossoms. As he stepped off the low, flat door stone, Anson felt a sudden giddiness, and faltered in his gait. But the voice of Dr. Morse steadied him.

"Your patient is dead," he said, harshly.


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 "There's a neighbor woman in there with Mrs. Ellery."

They walked down the little path and back again.

"I thought I should like to know what your treatment of pneumonia is."

"Pneumonia!" exclaimed Anson, involuntarily.

"Yes, pneumonia. I assume that you concealed the nature of the disease out of consideration for Mrs. Ellery. You did not, of course, blunder in the diagnosis of so plain a case."

Anson made no reply.

"How long has your patient been ill?"

There was a sarcastic emphasis on the words "your patient" as often as the doctor spoke them.

"I was first called last Monday."

"H'm! Did he seem pretty sick then?"

"No. He only seemed to have a violent cold. He was feverish and coughed a good deal, and he complained of a pain in his side. But that went off after three days."

"How was his pulse?"

"Rapid, but pretty strong."

"And his respiration?"

"He seemed to breathe easily."

The elder man's lip curled scornfully. They were still pacing up and down the path to the front door.

"Let us step outside the gate," said Anson, "where we sha'n't have to turn so often."


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 As they opened the gate, Anson's horse turned his head toward his master and whinnied softly. It was singularly comforting. The horse, at least, believed in him, and looked to him for release.

"I suppose you know that the respiration must be closely watched. It's a pity you can't speak more positively about it."

A feeling of irritation came over Anson. He resented being catechised, and resentment was a relief.

"I don't know what you could do about it now," he said, "if I chose to tell you."

"Oh! then you kept yourself informed. That is well. What stimulant did you give him?"

Here Anson seemed to feel the ground under his feet once more, and he said with decision: "Our school does not believe in stimulants."

"And nourishment?" asked the doctor.

"He was too feverish to be given much nourishment."

"Too feverish for nourishment, and his pulse sinking to nothing! Good heavens, man, you don't know what you are talking about!"

Again there was a feeble flutter of self-assertion in Anson's harassed mind, and he answered, with a last attempt at dignity:

"You must remember, Dr. Morse, that you and I belong to different schools of medicine."

Here the doctor's patience gave out, and his wrath broke loose—


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 "Different schools," he cried. "Different schools! You're talking arrant bosh! Your sort don't belong to any school under heaven. The Lord knows there's no love lost betwixt me and the homœopaths. They're a wrong-headed lot, and I should like to see the whole wretched fallacy uprooted and cast to the winds. But there are scientific men among them, who are neither knaves nor fools, and I won't have any body of scientific men insulted. Such men as you are the curse of any school—it is such men as you who have brought it into disrepute—it is such men as you"

"For God's sake, stop!"

The doctor turned, suddenly ashamed of his torrent of words, and looked at Anson, who had stopped in his walk, and stood clutching a thin rail fence, which creaked and wavered in his grasp. In the dim starlight his face looked drawn and deathly white.

"Do you feel ill?" asked the doctor.

"Yes, mortally ill," said Anson, with a harsh laugh. "If you had a pistol about you, I think I could cure my own case quicker than you could."

"Here, take my arm—I'm afraid I was a brute."

"We're all brutes together," said Anson. "I don't want your arm. It isn't my body that you've butchered," and he walked toward his buggy and began fumbling with the hitching


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 rein. The doctor watched him uneasily, but did not venture to help him: When he had unfastened the rein, Anson lifted the weight a few inches, but dropped it again, and left it lying on the ground. As he got into the buggy he reeled slightly, and the doctor took a step forward. But he recovered himself without help, and when he was seated, he gathered up the reins and drove rapidly away. Dr. Morse stood looking after the black buggy top, as it disappeared in the darkness, and listening to the sound of the receding wheels.

"Who could have supposed that a quack had a conscience," he muttered, as he turned on his heel and walked back to the desolate little house.

Anson Bennett had gone down into a blackness of darkness infinitely more terrible than anything the good doctor conceived of.

One pleasant evening four days later, Dr. Morse sat in his office enjoying an hour of hard-earned leisure. The office was a plain, uninviting room, with oil-cloth on the floor, shabby old furniture, and an unsightly hole under the mantlepiece, where a stove-pipe did duty in winter time. But the doctor loved the place, and was never so comfortable as when sitting, as now, in his revolving-chair, surrounded by his well-worn books and dusty bottles, smoking the second half of a cigar. He smoked very slowly, waiting, after each whiff, to watch the blue incense curl and wind in a vanishing spiral.


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 To-night he was taking his pleasure more slowly and thoughtfully, if possible, than was his wont. In fact, he once let his cigar go out entirely, a thing which he prided himself upon just avoiding, in his skilful prolongation of the indulgence. He was ruminating upon Mrs. Ellery and her perplexities, which occupied his mind as often as it was free from immediate demands. Between whiles he permitted himself an occasional fling of scorn at that "miserable young quack." When the cigar had been long enough extinguished for the smoke to have yielded to the perfume of the blossoms which floated in at the open window, the delicate odor recalled so vividly the circumstances of his talk with Bennett, that he felt a return of that compunction and soft-heartedness which he had come to regret, and he hastily struck a match and relighted his cigar.

Presently there was a step on the gravel walk, and, looking up, the doctor saw the object of his indignation approach his door. As the young man entered, Dr. Morse rose with conflicting feelings. He did not immediately offer his hand, and when he did so Bennett had seen his hesitation and withheld his own.

"You needn't mind about shaking hands," he said, with a touch of dignity which seemed scarcely compatible with the situation as the doctor looked at it. "I haven't come to you on my own account, and I won't trouble you for long."


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 The two men sat down and were silent for a moment. The cigar had again gone out, and the scent of the blossoms filled the room. The voices of the doctor's wife and daughters came in at the open window, and made upon Bennett an indescribable impression of home and comfort. This was what he had looked forward to. Honor and love and a happy home. And the short-lived blossoms whose sweetness had mingled with his dream, had not yet passed away! But the doctor was waiting for him to speak.

"Dr. Morse," he began, "you will not be surprised to hear that I have given up doctoring, and you will, of course, understand that the only wish which I can have, or at least which I have any right to have, is to make what reparation I can to the family of my unhappy patient."

The doctor was not only surprised, but fairly taken aback by this speech. He repeated the young man's word mechanically.

"Reparation. Yes, of course, of course. Quite natural."

But his mind was undergoing another awkward change of attitude toward quacks.

"You would have heard from me before this," Bennett continued, "but I thought it best not to trouble you until the matter was settled. I have been home and talked things over with my poor father. It comes hard on him, but he looks at it as I do, and he will take me back into business."


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 "What's your business?" asked the doctor.

"We are opticians."

"H'm! Do you like the trade?"

"I don't know what that has to do with the question. We're in it, and it gives us a fair living. What I have come to ask about is Mrs. Ellery. I shall, of course, consider myself responsible for the support of the family, and I want you to act for me in the matter. I have inquired about her husband's earnings, and I think I can spare very nearly that income from the beginning. Your part would be to invent some reason for her receiving it without betraying me. I'm afraid she wouldn't take the money if she knew all. Do you think you could arrange this?"

"Easily enough," said the doctor. He examined his small fraction of a cigar with much apparent interest, and then he added: "I suppose Mrs. Ellery has a mind, but I have never known her to use it. She would believe that the ravens were feeding her if I told her so."

Anson was about to make some reply when the doctor asked, abruptly: "How long do you propose to keep it up?"

"How long? Always, I suppose."

"And when you are married and have a family of your own to provide for?"

"I, married? I shall never marry."

"Oh! You can't be so sure of that at your age."


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 "I tell you I shall never marry."

"Have you never wished to?"

Anson sprang impatiently from his seat and strode to the window.

"I wish you'd quit your probing, Dr. Morse. I didn't come to talk about myself."

Dr. Morse rose, more deliberately, and followed him to the window, where the light was still clear. Bennett's face was under better control than his voice, but there was a change in it which the doctor recognized as permanent. A great wave of respect and compassion went through him.

"Young man," he said, in an altered voice, "I should feel it an honor if you would shake hands with me."

Flushing like a boy, Anson turned and looked into the homely face. The two men clasped one another's hands.

The next day Anson sat once more in his father's shop, plying with skilled fingers the handiwork to which he had been trained. Preoccupied as he was with bitter reflections, he was yet not wholly without consolation. His father's welcome was something. Mr. Bennett, garrulous in time of triumph, had few words on this occasion. When they entered the shop together on that first morning, he only said: "It seems real good to have you back, Anson. I've missed you considerable," but Anson felt the grip of the kind hand all day long, and often, in the days to come,


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 he seemed to feel again that friendly pressure. In the practice, too, of his trade was unlooked-for solace. The sense of mastery was peculiarly soothing to his wounded self-esteem, and it was then that he realized for the first time the satisfaction of being an expert. Had it not been for the frequent calls to the counter he might almost have lost himself in his occupation.

For the first few days after his return it was surprising how fast the Bennett custom increased. One after another of the neighbors came in with spectacles in need of repair, until Anson suspected them of ransacking their garrets in search of discarded glasses, merely for the sake of having a talk over the counter.

Among the first to appear was Miss Grig, with a pair of "specs" belonging to her mother, which seemed "kind o' loose in the jints." Would Anson "jest see 'f he couldn't tighten 'em up a bit?"

Anson had begun to feel the grim humor of the thing, and he made a pretence of tinkering the glasses a little before returning them.

"Thank 'ee," said Miss Grig, as she took them. "How much will that be?"

"Nothing at all, Miss Grig. It isn't worth mentioning."

"Very much obligated, I am sure," said the old lady, evidently relieved. She had rather begrudged the price of her curiosity.

"We're all so glad to see you back, Anson,"


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 she went on, with a comical accession of interest. "It seems so nat'ral to see you standin' there behind the counter. Only it 'pears to me you ain't lookin' quite so hearty as you was. Maybe you found doctorin' didn't agree with you. 'T was too confinin', 'praps."

Miss Grig looked at him with her head a little on one side, like a bright-eyed, inquisitive cock-sparrow.

"No, it wasn't exactly that," Anson replied, with an assumption of indifference. "The fact is, Miss Grig, I had come to the conclusion that I didn't know enough for doctoring."

"Now do tell. And we all heard you was so successful and hed sech a great practice. Why, your Pa told me"

"Yes, yes! I know! Father was all right about that. I had plenty of patients. But I found it was a bigger subject than I thought for, and I was afraid I might be making mistakes and doing mischief if anything unusual turned up."

"An' I s'pose that idee was wearin' on you. Well, I don't know's I wonder. The allopaths, now, do have a sight o' larnin'. My second cousin on my mother's side is bringin' up her son for a doctor, and there don't seem to be no end to the trouble and expense. But I s'posed 't was different with the homepaths. Them little pills seem so easy given and so easy took. An' if they don't do no good, I don't see's they can


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 do much harm any way. You didn't happen to ketch yourself givin' the wrong kind now, did you?"

At this juncture another customer came in and the small inquisition ceased, only to recommence in another form. Happily not many of his examiners were as searching in their methods as Miss Grig, and Anson rarely found himself cornered. By and by, too, the little flurry of curiosity subsided, and it was not long before the neighbors had almost forgotten how "Dr. Bennett" came by his title. To this, however, they clung with a tenacity which it was useless to combat. How he hated it! He used at first to feel as though his friends were jeering at him when they called him "doctor," and even in after years the long-accustomed title would sometimes bring a hot flush to his face.

Several years went by before arate Alice Ives was married, and then it was that Anson allowed himself the one extravagance of his life. He went to the city and bought a water-color, for which he paid more than he would have been willing to admit. The picture was not much appreciated in the community, but Alice liked it. A branch of apple-blossoms against a pale blue sky. So exquisitely were they painted that even the cavillers owned that you could almost smell them, but "after all," they added, "it was nothing but a picture of apple-blossoms, just like what anybody could see every spring, and you


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 would think it would be no great matter to paint a thing like that."

Alice was so touched and pleased with the charming gift that she came over herself that same day after tea to thank Anson. It was June, and she found him working in his garden. She stepped lightly down the garden walk, clad in a flowered muslin, with a broad leghorn hat pushed back from her face. Anson did not see her coming. He was on his knees, weeding the border. Alice stood for a moment, watching him, and a wistful look came into her dark-blue eyes. Somehow he looked so poor in his old clothes and so lonesome, so different from the Anson of a few years ago. There he knelt, pulling up the ugly weeds, and tossing them into a basket that stood beside him. She wished, vaguely, that he had been planting something. The sight of him gave her a heartache that she longed to ease. If she could only give him some little thing, just something bright and sweet from her own abundance. She reached out her hand and plucked a spray of laburnum that grew beside the path. Yet no. It would be foolish to give him a flower out of his own garden, and she hastily tucked it into her bodice. Anson heard the sudden movement, and, turning, saw her standing there in the slanting sunlight. He got up and brushed the earth from his hands with his pocket-handkerchief, which he threw far away from him as Alice came toward him with outstretched hands.


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 "O Anson," she cried, and in her voice there was a something that neither of them understood, a stray note of feeling which it was perhaps as well they should not understand. "O Anson! it is the loveliest of all my presents. How came you to think of giving me such a beautiful thing?"

"It came very natural," he answered, with an odd smile, as he took her hand in both his and looked down into the fair young face. "You always make me think of apple-blossoms, Alice."


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HERE is a certain class of men who look like landmarks. No matter how slight may be their social importance, no matter how humble a part they may play in the active life of their town, they become identified with it. They are not necessarily men of marked appearance. It is only that a sight of one of them turning the key in his shop-door of an evening, or lingering about the church-porch after service, conveys a feeling of satisfaction. One's sense of the fitness of things is gratified, and one would rather see the bent figure and time-worn features than not.

Dr. Bennett belonged to this class of men. No more unobtrusive figure than his existed in the little manufacturing town of Westville. No citizen of the town went his ways more quietly than he. Yet his tall, stooping figure, his thin gray hair, his neat, threadbare coat, were clearly indigenous to the soil. His little shop, where he dealt in


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 spectacles, magnifying-glasses, and kindred aids to vision, was as much a part of the landscape as the factory chimneys a few blocks away, or the ancient meeting-house round the corner. It had always been there, and as far as most people took the trouble to remember, it had always been presided over by Dr. Bennett.

His title was another thing about him which seemed an essential part of his personality, requiring no explanation. The fact that an optician is not usually called "doctor," rarely occurred to any one. There was no more curiosity about Dr. Bennett and his title than there was about the house he lived in, and the inappropriate cupola which perched on the gable-roof like a heavy barnyard fowl on a dove-cote. Thecupola had emanated from the brain of Mrs. Henry Bennett, Dr. Bennett's mother, and if the truth were known, Anson Bennett's unearned title was also the outcome of that active-minded woman's ambition. It was she who had pushed her son into the practice of what she was pleased to call homoeopathy, it was she who had watched with swelling pride and self-satisfaction his brilliant career, it was she who had never become reconciled to its abrupt close at the end of one winter's trial.

Something had happened, twenty-five years ago, to check the brilliant career of this only son, and he, who had formerly been so pliable in his mother's hands, had returned from the field of


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 his country practice, a changed man. Something had happened to dash his youthful spirits, to kill his ambition, yet at the same time to harden and fix his character in new lines. It was not an unhappy love affair. None knew better than Jane Bennett that there was but one girl whom Anson had ever given a thought to, and she believed that that girl, the pretty Alice Ives, might have been his for the asking, long before she ever thought of marrying George Titcomb and going to live in Boston. No, if his love affair had ended disastrously, Anson had no one to thank for it but himself. Yet as he had deserted his new career in the full tide of success, Mrs. Bennett naturally found it impossible to credit his unvarnished statement that he had "made a botch of doctoring," and for that reason had come back to his old home and to his father's counter.

"You needn't talk to me," she had said over and over again to her meek good-humored spouse. "You needn't talk to me about Anson's not being a good doctor. 'T ain't likely he'd ha' made such a success of it if he hadn't had the faculty. Why! Deacon Osgood says that his cousin on his mother's side, who lives jest out o' East Burnham, says they never was a doctor in those parts that everybody set such store by as Anson. That old fogy Dr. Morse hadn't any show at all, long's Anson stayed there. There's something more at the bottom of it, you may depend upon it. I declare to goodness! when I see Anson moping


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 round and sticking it out in that close-mouthed way, I've half a mind to give him a good shaking!"

"I wish you would!" Henry Bennett would answer, with suppressed amusement, "I should jest like to see you!"

The idea of her husband's making a joke at her expense would not have found easy entrance into Jane Bennett's mind. She never dreamed that, as he made this harmless remark, he was conjuring up a picture of the scene. She was a small woman, to be sure, and her son, in those early days, was a tall, muscular man. But so strong was her sense of maternal authority that no exercise of it seemed incongruous. Had she suspected that her mild-visaged husband, whom she had always domineered over, and consequently looked down upon, knew the whole story of his son's misadventure, her indignation would have known no bounds. It was well for the peace of all concerned that no such suspicion ever crossed her mind.

Meanwhile a quarter of a century had passed over Jane Bennett, and the disappointment of her life. Kind deprecatory Henry Bennett, had long since received his last conjugal snub, had long since had his last sly chuckle at his wife's expense, and very quietly, as was his nature, he had slipped out of the matrimonial bonds, by the only loophole of escape open to such as he.

At the end of that quarter of a century, Jane


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 Bennett's figure was as alert and as wiry as ever; her hair was as black, her glance as sharp. Time's chisel had not been keen enough to do much execution on that resolute countenance. All the deeper had been its marks upon her son's face. At the age of fifty, Anson Bennett looked older, duller, wearier than his mother.

This especially when his face was in repose, as was usually the case, and never more so than when undergoing a remonstrance from his mother.

They were sitting together at dinner one Sunday noon in November. Mrs. Bennett behind her cold joint, looking precisely as Anson remembered her from his earliest childhood. Not that the fashion of her dress or of her surroundings had remained unchanged. Mrs. Bennett prided herself not a little upon her modishness. A plain white china service had, in accordance with the fashion of the day, superseded the old blue stoneware, which, with its Dutch canal views and inconsequent minarets, had been the delight of Anson's childhood; an elaborate plated-silver caster adorned the middle of the table; while on the wall opposite him a many-hued chromo had taken the place of the two cheap companion prints once dear to his heart. Yet amid all these changes his mother's face seemed to him quite unaltered, and the voice in which she did her fault-finding was the same voice at whose sound he had trembled before he learned to recognize any higher authority than that of its owner.


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 "I must say, Anson," said the sharp voice, "I must say that I was mortified to see you going to church this morning in your old winter overcoat. When I've been at you for a month o' Sundays about getting a new one. Why on earth do you keep putting it off?

"I don't want a new overcoat," said Anson, quietly.

"You don't want a new overcoat? Well, you'd ought to be ashamed of yourself if you don't. That's all I can say. They wasn't a man in the middle aisle that looked as shabby as you did. If I was you I'd try and scare up a little self-respect jest for the sake of appearances."

"The overcoat's as warm as it ever was," said Anson, slowly and stubbornly. "And what I want an overcoat for is warmth. When I begin to feel cold in it I'll get another."

"Yes! and till it lets the wind through, you'll go about looking like what folks call you—an old miser!"

Jane Bennett shot a sidewise glance at her son, to note the effect of the word. To her chagrin it had apparently no effect whatever. Dr. Bennett ate his dinner with unimpaired relish, and looked ready for a change of subject. The son sat at the side of the table, and not opposite his mother, as would have seemed natural. It was characteristic of Anson, though few credited him with the finer sensibilities, that he never had been able to


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 overcome his reluctance to taking his father's seat at table. He had at first feared to hurt his mother's feelings by so doing, and when at last it dawned upon him that his father's widow was not sensitive in such matters, a new compunction and loyalty took possession of him, and from that time forward he guarded the old man's memory with jealous tenderness.

To-day, as his mother chid him, for she did not let the subject rest there, his mind wandered, as it often did, to the kind old man whose plain sense of duty had sustained him when duty was not easy. In a flash of memory he beheld the changes which had passed over his father's face when he had come to him in the crisis of his life. The incredulity, and then the pain, with which the elder man had listened as his son told him how, in his ignorance and presumption, he had undoubtedly caused the death of a patient; the relief with which his listener learned that he should give up the practice of medicine, though in so doing he was giving up a distinction which had been the pride of Henry Bennett's heart. Best of all, the glow of approval in the homely old face, the quick tears in the kind eyes, when Anson declared his intention of undertaking the support of this same James Ellery's family.

But while all this passed in Anson Bennett's mind his face wore the look his mother best knew—a look of quiet obstinacy—a look which exasperated her. And it came to pass, as it often did


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 in their one-sided discussions, that Jane Bennett's wish to carry her point was overborne by a desire to punish her son. As she gave him a second "help" of boiled potatoes, she asked, with apparent irrelevancy:

"Did you see Alice Ives that was? She was sitting in her Pa's pew, dressed up real stylish and becomin'. I thought when I saw her looking at you across the aisle that she must be glad enough that she'd had the sense to marry a man that was free with his money."

"No, I didn't see Alice," said Anson, calmly. He did not flush nor wince, nor did his voice betray any emotion. Yet a change went over his countenance, something like the change which goes over a dull landscape when the long afternoon light begins to brood.

"I'm glad Alice is so well off," he added, presently. "They say she's got two little girls as pretty as she used to be."

"She's jest as pretty as ever she was," said his mother, sharply. "I do hope to goodness," she added, "that you wont go to see her in that old overcoat. She's going away to-morrow."

"I don't know's I shall go to see her at all," he answered. "At any rate, I'm going over to East Burnham this afternoon to see Dr. Morse."

Poor Jane Bennett had got the worst of it, as she often did nowadays. Dr. Morse was her bugbear. Without ever having seen that excellent man, she had conceived an aversion to him which


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 was perhaps not without foundation. In the first place, he was an "allopath," and although her son had kept his allegiance to homœopathy, maintaining that he had "made a botch of doctoring" only because he was totally ignorant of the whole subject of medicine, although she could not accuse Dr. Morse of having converted her son to his own views, yet she knew by intuition that he had in some way been instrumental in the downfall of her ambition. Furthermore, the fact that the only indulgence Anson ever permitted himself was an occasional visit to the doctor at East Burnham, was in itself enough to excite her jealousy. What had this old fogy to do with her boy? what attraction could he have to offer? At first she had fancied there might be a daughter in the case; that perhaps Anson, faithless to his first love, had lost his heart to one of the Miss Morses; that he had relinquished doctoring to please the old man. But all her speculations had come to nought, and now she had nothing more definite in support of her aversion than the same instinctive distrust which she had always cherished. And so it happened that when Anson said he was going to East Burnham his mother felt peculiarly frustrated, and she wondered in her heart what she had ever done to deserve so undutiful a son. It was true that he had always treated her with scrupulous justice, that she enjoyed her fair share of his business profits, that with all his alleged miserliness he paid his board


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 regularly, that he never spoke a disrespectful word to her, but all this had little weight. Jane Bennett took her blessings for granted. Her mind dwelt by preference upon her small vexations.

Yet if she had her faults, and no onecould deny them, the poor woman endured her full measure of punishment. Faults of disposition are not as grave as many of those to which human nature is heir, but they bring their own retribution. And while Jane Bennett alienated her son's affection by a course of steady opposition, of daily bickering, yet there was nothing which she craved as she did that very filial love which got no chance to blossom.

Perhaps she was in reality more sinned against than sinning. Certainly, when Anson, twenty-five years previous, had refrained from telling her the true story of the disaster which had fallen upon him, he had done heracruel injustice. The fact, too, that her husband had had no impulse to take her into his confidence showed that he also misjudged her. In spite of her narrow-mindedness, her self-conceit, her ill-temper, Jane Bennett had very strict ideas of right and wrong. If she once had been convinced that Anson had committed a wrong, even at her own instigation, she would have been eager to see the wrong atoned for. As it was, she lived in a tangle of vexations, to which she had no clue. How could she know that her son's life was one long expiation? How could she divine that he wore his shabby old


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 clothes and walked in a narrow, monotonous path in order that he might fulfil what he felt to bea sacred duty? Living herself in a state of chronic disappointment and chagrin, she badgered her son into a dull indifference, and underneath her apparent self-confidence was a mortifying and wounding conviction that he did not love her. When Anson returned from East Burnham that same evening, he did not go directly home. He went to his shop instead, closed the door behind him, lighted the gas, and fell to tinkering a pair of glasses that had been left with him for repairs. It was not the first time that he had sought refuge from unruly emotions in the exercise of his prosaic calling, but it was the first time that he had done so of a Sunday evening. He reflected, however, that his grandmother, Old Lady Pratt, always kept her Sabbath from sundown to sundown, and that what was a principle with her could not be a crime in her grandson. And so he worked away as industriously as though his daily bread had depended upon the immediate completion of that small job.

Meanwhile his face looked younger, happier, more animated, than it had looked for years, and no one seeing it would have guessed the nature of the errand from which he had just returned. He had gone that afternoon to consult his old friend upon his own condition; he had learned that certain strange and disturbing sensations he had experienced of late were the symptoms of a


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 malignant disease from which nothing but a severe surgical operation could possibly save him. He knew that the result of such an operation was very doubtful, yet he had determined to entrust his case to a young surgeon, James Ellery by name, whose education and opening career he had watched with an intense interest, the secret of which only Dr. Morse knew. James Ellery, the youngest of the five children left fatherless through Anson Bennett's fault, had shown an aptitude for study, and Anson had joyfully undertaken to educate the boy for the practice of medicine. Now at last the boy had grown to be a man, fully equipped for his profession, giving promise of unusual distinction, and Anson Bennett's heart was far more bound up in this young career than in his own colorless, eventless life. As he sat tinkering the old glasses a feeling of exultation made his heart beat faster. Yes, he, Anson Bennett, had been the determining power in this young man's life. Unaware though he was, of the very name of his benefactor, young Ellery owed his education, owed his future to him, the wretched quack, on whose ignorant ambition his father had been sacrificed. And now Dr. Morse saw no reason why this boy should not undertake to perform one of the most difficult operations known to science, and he, Anson Bennett, was to furnish the test.

The town clock struck nine, and Anson put up his tools and prepared to leave the shop. As he


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 stepped out into the night air, he found himself taking a round-about way home. It was prettier by way of High Street, he said to himself, but in his heart he knew that it was the presence of his old love in the ancient square house behind the elm trees, that lured his feet from the usual path.

It was a bleak November evening. The wind swayed the bare branches of the trees in front of the old Ives homestead. A fragile-looking moon, about a week old, was pitching and tossing among the clouds, and Anson vaguely wondered if it might not founder. There were lights in several of the windows, and he paused a moment, looking at them. He did not speculate as to Alice's whereabouts in the house. Rather, he had a feeling that all that soft, curtained light emanated from her presence. And as he stood there he recalled the day, the very hour, in which he had last thought of her as a possible possession of his own. He remembered the exact appearance of the horse he was driving that day, the creaking of the wheel of his chaise, causing him to wonder whether he was going to have a hot box; he remembered how green were the meadows between which he drove, and most clearly, most poignantly did he recall the rich scent of the apple-blossoms, the peculiar delicacy of their color, and the way a stray petal came floating down and rested on his knee. 'To-night there was no longer any pain in these recollections. He seemed to be losing hold of his old


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 ing, as I do, Mrs. powerful assistance, and knowing the circumstances under which she consented to act Alhadra? A time will come, when without painfully oppressing her feelings, I may speak of this more fully. To Miss I have an equal, though different acknowledgement to make, namely, for her acceptance of a character not fully developed, and quite inadequate to her extraordinary powers. She enlivened and supported many passages, which (though not perhaps wholly uninteresting in the closet) would but for her have hung heavy on the ears of a Theatrical Audience. And in speaking the Epilogue, a composition which (I fear) my hurry will hardly excuse, and which, as unworthy of her name, is here omitted, she made a sacrifice, which only her established character with all judges of Tragic action, could have rendered compatible with her duty to herself. To Mr. judgement and full conception of Isidore; to Mr. accurate representation of the partial, yet honourable Father; to Mr. energy in the character of, and who in more than one instance gave it beauties and striking points, which not only delighted but surprised me; and to Mr. , to whose zeal, and unwearied study of his part, I am not less indebted as a Man, than to his impassion-


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 self and his old desires, and even as he stood before the house, whose roof sheltered Alice, his mind returned with a sudden rebound to the thought of what was coming, and he hurried home with a quick step and a light heart.

In the few days that intervened before the operation was performed, Dr. Bennett led his usual life, maintained all his usual habits. Every morning he walked in his shabby old overcoat to his little shop, where he industriously mended old glasses, or made an occasional sale of new ones. When meal-times came, he sat at table with his mother, and patiently answered her questions, letting her talk and speculate, criticise and suggest what she would in regard to the impending event. But though he never failed in attention to her words, he was singularly oblivious to the signs of anxiety and distress in her face and manner, which would not have escaped an ordinary observer. If he gave a thought to the matter, it was merely to note that she seemed more irritable than usual. He never guessed the tension of feeling under which she was living.

Once he said a very cruel thing to her. It was at breakfast two days before the Thursday which mother and son looked forward to with such different feelings. Anson did not notice the lines and shadows on his mother's face which betokened a sleepless night, nor did he dream that she had lain awake hour after hour, wondering what she could do to express her love and solicitude.


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 "Anson," she said, looking not at him, but at a hole in her napkin, which she seemed to have just discovered, "Anson, I've been thinking that I'd give you a new overcoat this winter, seeing as you don't care to buy one."

With that singular obtuseness where his mother was concerned, which had grown upon this good and conscientious man, he fancied that she only meant to shame him into doing as she wished, and he said, indifferently:

"I guess you'd better not, Mother. I may not need an overcoat after Thursday."

She was in the act of passing him his coffee, and her hand shook so that the saucer was quite flooded. Anson emptied the contents of the saucer back into the cup, suppressing his annoyance. He hated to have his coffee slopped, but he never found fault with his mother. He had the reputation of being a very considerate son.

They made up a bed for him in the little old sitting-room, where most of the evenings of his life had been spent. And his chief feeling, as he laid himself down upon the bed, was one of regret that he was not to be allowed to retain his consciousness, and be a witness to the skill of his young surgeon. He watched him with the greatest interest before the ether was administered. He liked the precision of the young man's movements, the clearness of his glance, the unobtrusive self-confidence of his manner. He heard Dr. Morse ask his mother to leave the room, and his


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 eyes did not follow her retreating figure, nor did he see the look she gave him as she turned away.

An hour later three figures sat beside the bed, waiting for signs of returning consciousness. Dr. Morse, his gray head bent and his shaggy eyebrows meeting, regarded the patient with calm watchfulness. The glance and attitude of the young physician were intense and eager. On the other side of the bed, close to the wall, sat a small, erect figure; the face, with a pinched look on it, showing sharp-cut against the wall-paper, on which gaily dressed shepherdesses smirked and courtesied. Jane Bennett's sharp black eyes were fixed upon the closed lids of her son. When Anson moved slightly, as he did several times before the lids were raised, she started eagerly forward; but when at last he opened his eyes, it was toward his old friend that they were turned.

"Well, Doctor," he said, in a feeble voice, "how did the operation go?"

"Splendidly," said Dr. Morse. "Splendidly! But don't exert yourself to talk."

With a look of perfect content the sick man closed his eyes.

For many hours Anson seemed to be sleeping peacefully. Yet to the mother's perception, no less than to the trained eye of the physician, it was Clear that his life was ebbing.

The day wore away and night came on, and still the two men watched beside him; and still that small rigid figure kept guard between the


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 bed and the pictured shepherdesses. Once or twice the doctors asked some service of her, which she performed swiftly and exactly, after which she slipped back to her disregarded post.

Just after midnight Anson opened his eyes once more, and smiled faintly. Dr. Morse bent toward him.

"Bennett," he said, with a compassionate look toward the mother, "Bennett, this has been a great strain upon your system. It is only fair to tell you that it is possible that you may not pull through."

"Tell me again," the patient questioned, "was there anything wrong about the operation?"

"The operation was magnificent," his friend declared, "but you don't seem to have the vitality you need."

"That's no account, Doctor, that's no account." The dying man's voice was almost querulous. "The operation's the thing. That's all we care about."

Then turning to Ellery he added, half apologetically: "You see, Doctor, I once did a little doctoring myself, and I've kept up my interest in these things."

His mother put her hand on his, and he looked at her wonderingly.

"Why, mother," he said. "You up so late? Hadn't you better go to bed?"

Toward morning he rallied once more, and signed to Ellery to come nearer. The young man bent a grave face to listen.


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 "Dr. Ellery," said Bennett slowly. "Don't you worry because you've lost a patient. You've done your part magnificently. Didn't you hear Dr. Morse say so? Magnificently! And he's a good judge—I tell you—he's—a—good—judge."

His voice wavered a little on these last words, as though the thought were eluding him. His mind had evidently wandered.

And Jane Bennett, whose self-assertion had never before failed her, only sat there, with a piteous, drawn look about her lips, her eyes fixed upon the tranquil face which did not turn toward hers. Dr. Morse had grasped the patient's hand, and bent down to hear what he might say. The sick man's eyes were open, and there was a strange, remote look inthem. Suddenly a change came, his face lighted up, and he whispered eagerly:

"See! See! Apple-blossoms!" And with their fragrance on his spirit, Anson Bennett died.

Then, too late to reach his ears, a voice sharp with agony cried:

"Anson! O Anson! You forgot your mother!"


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DISAGREEABLE sensation was caused throughout the entire Pratt family when Mary William announced her intention of "keeping school." Old Lady Pratt, who knew the history of the family ever since she came into it, some sixty years before, could testify that no daughter of that highly respectable house had ever "worked for a living." An unprejudiced observer might have thought that Old Lady Pratt herself had worked for a living, and worked harder than any school-teacher, all through the childhood of her six boys and girls. But that, of course, was a different matter, as anybody must understand. A woman toiling early and late for husband and children was but fulfilling the chief end and aim of her being, but a woman who set out to wrest a living from the world, when she "need want for nothing at home," was clearly flying in the face of Providence.

"Well, Mary," she said to her grand-daughter, "you must not expect me to countenance any such step."


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 "Why not, Grandma?"

"Why not? Because I don't approve of young women gettin' dissatisfied with the sphere to which they've been called. That's why not."

"But I haven't been called to any sphere. Now that Bessie and Willie are almost as grown up as I am, mother doesn't need me any more, and I don't see why I'm not entitled to a change if I want one."

"If you want a change," said Grandma, promptly; "you'd much better get married."

"Now, Grandma! You know well enough that I never had an offer. If I had, you'd have heard of it fast enough."

"And you don't deserve to have one," cried the old lady, with asperity, "if you go and spile everything by turning schoolmarm."

This was a sore subject with Old Lady Pratt. She, who was the sworn foe to single blessedness, had constantly to hear that her own granddaughters had "never had an offer." It was not that they were less sought than other girls of their age, but early marriages had almost gone out of fashion since Grandma's day, and many a handsome girl might get to be well on in the twenties before a serious suitor made his appearance.

Mary William—so called to distinguish her from her Uncle Anson's daughter, who went by the name of Mary Anson—Mary William was at this time twenty-one years of age. Her father, the


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 hero of the family, had been killed at the first battle of Bull Run, six years previous. He had left his affairs, what there was of them, in such perfect order that his widow knew precisely what she had to depend upon—a fact on which all the Pratts laid great emphasis. But to know one's financial status, if that status chance to be extremely low, is scarcely compensation for hardships and privations, and Mrs. William Pratt used fervently to wish that there had been just sufficient inaccuracy in her husband's accounts to leave a margin of possibility that a windfall might yet occur.

Mrs. William Pratt was not a woman of much energy or resource. She had a few fixed ideas, one of them being that she could not consent to "come down in the world." Coming down in the world meant to her comprehension renting or selling the commodious, well-built house in which her husband had installed her during the days of their prosperity, and moving into smaller quarters. Her house was Edna Pratt's special pride. It was large and rambling, with a front hall which did not confine itself to the manifest mission of furnishing a landing-place from the stairs, but spread itself out into an octagonal space, wherein pillars stood supporting arches; a dim ancestral-looking hall, which could not fail to impress astranger. But as strangers rarely visited Mrs. William Pratt, and as nearly all the frequenters of the house distinctly remembered its erection a dozen or more years previous, the hall


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 did not make quite the baronial impression which might have been expected. Mary William, especially when performing the arduous duties of maid-of-all-work minus the wages, used to murmur within herself against the hall, and against all the spacious rooms, which seemed to have taken their cue from it. For she reflected that every superfluous square yard of floor meant just so much more carpet to sweep; that every inch of wood-work offered just so much more ofa resting-place for dust. Mary William was of the opinion that her youth had been deliberately sacrificed to the house, and pre-eminently to the pillared hall, and she secretly rebelled against it with all her might and main. Not work for her living, indeed? How many a time had the one "girl" of the establishment been dismissed on some slight pretext! How many a time had her "place" remained vacant, and while Mrs. William Pratt sat in the parlor or lingered among the baronial pillars, complaining to visitors of the inferiority and scarcity of servants, the unfortunate Mary William had stood scorching her face over the kitchen stove, or cleaning the set of elaborate repoussé silver, which lent such an air of distinction to their sideboard.

But Mary William was a young person of much determination and rather unusual intelligence, and while her hands grew rough and her temper just a little sharpened in the drudgery of her daily life, she saw to it that no rust should


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 gather upon her excellent mental faculties. She had graduated from the high-school at the head of her class, and after her education was thus "completed," she managed with the aid of the public library, to do a good deal of solid reading and some studying. Mary William was not intended for a bookworm, but she turned to books as being the most congenial and the least exacting society within her reach. She was not able to dress well and tastefully. She was not able to entertain her friends at home, being far too poor for such luxuries. Neither was she the girl to enjoy playing a subordinate part in life, and she felt keenly the social disabilities which her poverty imposed upon her. She had never been of a complaining disposition, and no one suspected her of any discontent with her lot. But in her own mind she had long contemplated a declaration of independence, to be made when she should come of age. This was to occur in July, but she had no intention of hurrying matters. When she came down to breakfast, however, on the very morning of her twenty-first birthday, she suddenly found it impossible to refrain from making known her plans.

"Teach school!" cried her mother, in a tone of ineffectual protest.

"Be a schoolmarm!" cried Bessie; while Willie, who was still subject to the redoubtable race of schoolmarms, gazed upon her with a mixture of awe and incredulity.


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 "I never heard of such a ridiculous idea," said Mrs. William Pratt.

"I don't see anything ridiculous about it," Mary retorted, giving vent to her feelings with unprecedented freedom. "I've been scrimping and pinching and slaving all my life, and now I want to try how it feels to have a few dollars of my own."

"A few dollars of your own!" cried her mother. "Why, Mary, what an ungrateful girl you are! Doesn't your Aunt Harriet give you twenty-five dollars every single birthday?"

"Yes, Aunt Harriet is very kind; but twenty-five dollars isn't what you would call an ample income."

"But you have more than that to spend, and your living not costing you a cent either!"

"No; neither does her living cost Bridget a cent"; and then Mary William stopped, and did not pursue the comparison, an act of forbearance which should be recorded to her credit.

After breakfast sixteen-year-old Bessie came up to her with wondering eyes, and said, "Mary, do you suppose you'll get rich teaching school?"

"Not very rich, puss."

"I wish there were some way of getting rich, don't you?"

"Indeed I do, Bessie."

"What would you do, Mary, if you were rich?"

"I should sail for Europe next week; and I should send Willie to college when it came time."


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 "And me?"

"You?" said Mary, looking thoughtfully at her pretty little sister. "I would give you every single thing you wanted."

This feeling for Bessie, that she was a creature born to have every wish gratified, was common to all who knew the child. Mary had no fear that in the event of her leaving home she should shift the burden of household drudgery on to her younger sister's shoulders. Even Mrs. William Pratt would not have made Bessie work.

Now Mrs. William Pratt, though a weak woman, and both vain and selfish, was much respected in her husband's family. All were grateful to her for having kept up appearances on so small an income, and the fact that this had been done at her daughter Mary's expense was not wholly understood, even by her sharp-eyed mother-in-law. Hence, when she raised a cry of indignation at Mary's revolutionary behavior, she was sustained by a full chorus of disapproval from the whole clan.

Nevertheless Mary carried her point. Her venture was successful beyond her hopes. She had not led her class in the high school for nothing. No sooner had she made known her intentions than she was offered the position of assistant in the grammar-school of her own district, with the munificent salary of $350.

Singularly enough, her actual engagement as a teacher wrought an entire change in the feelings