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 of the family. It was like the first plunge into cold water. The family pride had shrunk from it, but a reaction set in almost immediately, and that same family pride experienced a glow of gratification that one of their number should be so capable and so well thought of. Small as was the sum which Mary was to receive for her services, it was relatively large—large measured by her previous limitations. Her more prosperous relatives had become so accustomed to the extremely small income which the William Pratts had to live upon that they had come to regard it as quite in the natural order of things, and to bear it with philosophical indifference. Now, however, that Mary had taken matters into her own hands, and was prepared to mould her own fortunes, they rejoiced with her as loudly as though they had hitherto realized her deprivations.

Old Lady Pratt alone withheld her approval. The fact of Mary's having a little more money seemed to her to be of small consequence in comparison with the girl's "prospects." She was made of sterner stuff than her descendants; she knew deprivation and hard work by heart, and she was not in the least afraid of them for herself or for anybody else. Even when Mrs. William Pratt told her that Mary had offered to pay three dollars a week for the "girl's" wages, Old Lady Pratt remained obdurate.

"Nonsense, Edna!" she said, sharply. "It wouldn't hurt you a mite to do your own work.


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 You'd a sight better do it than to have Mary turn out an old maid. There's Eliza Pelham, now. She acted jest so when she was Mary's age, and she'll teach school to the end of the chapter. She got so set in her waysand so high-flyin' in her notions that the Gov'nor himself wouldn't have suited her. You mark my words, Mary'll be an old maid, jest like Eliza. You see 'f she ain't."

And if Mary herself had been asked, she would have been the first to admit the reasonableness of her grandmother's predictions. She had never been so happy in her life as she was the day on which she stepped upon the platform at school and assumed the responsibilities of "schoolmarm." Mary William loved to teach, and she loved also to rule—an art which she understood to perfection. There were some pretty black sheep among her flock, but before she had had them a month they had learned a lesson in wholesome discipline which seemed to them much more incontrovertible than anything Murray had to say against alliances between plural subjects and singular verbs, or any of Greenleaf's arithmetical theories. The new teacher's success made so strong an impression upon the school committee that by Christmas-time Miss Pratt's name was mentioned in connection with a $500 vacancy to occur the coming year in the high-school. Meanwhile Mary revelled in her independence; and if she thought of matrimony in

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 connection with herself, it was as a state of bondage to be avoided at any cost.

One pleasant day in April the young teacher had just dismissed a class in compound fractions, and sat looking down upon the motley collection of boys and girls arranged with geometrical symmetry over the large room. She was aware of a spirit of restlessness among them. There were more boys than usual engaged in the time-honored custom of twisting their legs in intricate patterns about the legs of their chairs, more girls gazing dreamily at the budding tree-tops just visible through the high windows. Mary knew by her own uneven pulse that the seeds were sprouting in the ground outside, and that the spring trouble was stirring in the veins of all that youthful concourse. Mary William was in some respects wise beyond her years, and she did not reprove the vagaries of boyish legs and girlish eyes. Butshe kept a careful watch upon them during the study hour which preceded the long noon recess.

Just before twelve o'clock she was surprised by the entrance of two well-dressed ladies who did not look quite like products of Dunbridge soil. As she went forward to meet them they called her by name, the more stately of the two introducing herself as Mrs. Beardsley, of Stanton. Mary William, though somewhat mystified, bade her guests welcome with a very good grace, saying that she was on the point of dismissing the school.

The dispersion of the fifty or more boys and


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 girls was a matter of some ceremony—a ceremony regulated by a succession of strokes on the teacher's bell, and usually very strictly observed. At a certain critical point in the proceedings to-day, of all days of the year, the boys broke loose, and made a stampede for the door, the girls remaining in the aisles, with their arms crossed behind them—models of propriety before company. Mary William's face flushed brightly, and she struck the shrill bell three times in rapid succession. Instantly the rabble of unruly boys stood transfixed. Two or three of them who had already escaped into the sunshine came sneaking back at the peremptory summons, while Mary William's voice, with a bell-like ring in it, said: "Boys, return to your seats!"

When all the boys' seats were filled with more or less contrite occupants, the order of exercises was resumed on the part of the girls, who filed quietly out of the room. Then Mary turned to her guests in a disengaged manner, with the assurance that she was quite at their service. A momentous conversation ensued.

Mrs. Beardsley stated that she was the Mrs. Beardsley whose school for young ladies had so long maintained its reputation as the leading school for young ladies in the state. Miss Pratt had doubtless heard of Mrs. Beardsley's school for young ladies. Miss Pratt was very sorry, but she was totally ignorant of any young ladies' school whatever outside her own town.


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 Mary had the discrimination to perceive that Mts. Beardsley was a thorough woman of the world, and that she thought extremely well of herself. Nevertheless, she listened with entire self-possession to the revelations which followed.

Mrs. Beardsley was in search of a teacher to fill the place in the coming year of a valued assistant about to retire. She had heard Miss Pratt well spoken of by her cousin, the Rev. Mr. Ingraham, of Dunbridge, and she had come, with her sister, Miss Ingraham, to interview Miss Pratt. Miss Pratt signified her willingness to be interviewed, asking permission at the same time to dismiss the culprits, whose durance she considered to have been sufficiently long. This time the dispersion was performed with a precision which an army sergeant might have envied. As the door closed behind the last round jacket, Mrs. Beardsley resumed the thread of her discourse:

"My requirements, Miss Pratt, are somewhat severe. My school has a reputation to sustain, which necessitates rather exceptional qualifications in my assistants. The sort of discipline, for instance, which you have just carried out so successfully with those rough boys, would be entirely out of place in a school whose members are young ladies from the first families in the state. 'Tact and worldly wisdom are essential in the government of such a body. Having no doubt of your acquirements as a mere teacher of the branches desired—namely, Latin and mathematics—I am


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 disposed to dwell more especially upon my exactions of a social nature. A teacher in my school must have the good-breeding and the equanimity of alady, and, pardon my suggestion, she must dress in perfect taste."

Mary flushed slightly, being conscious of the ugliness of her gown, which had descended to her from a cousin whose means exceeded her discretion in matters of taste.

Mrs. Beardsley, having paused a moment, that the full weight of her words might take effect, asked, "Do you feel, Miss Pratt, that you are fitted in every particular to fill such a position?"

The flush on Mary's face had subsided, and to her own surprise she did not flinch. She raised her clear hazel eyes to those of her catechist, and with a direct gaze, in which there was unmistakable power, she said, quietly, "Yes, Mrs. Beardsley, I do."

Mrs. Beardsley returned the girl's look with an accession of interest. The "woman of the world" was not a creature of impulse, but she was a student of character, and, without a moment's hesitation, she said, "I engage you."

"Thank you," said the new assistant, as though the conversation were ended.

Mrs. Beardsley and Miss Ingraham exchanged glances, and waited for Mary's next remark; but it was not forthcoming. Mary seemed for the moment to have forgotten herself. She was looking about the homely room where she had served


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 her short apprenticeship, lost in wonder over her sudden good fortune. Mary William was deeply impressed by Mrs. Beardsley's personality. She had always wanted to have a taste of the "great world." She loved the amenities of life, she loved the power which social training gives, and to her unsophisticated mind it seemed as though a school presided over by Mrs. Beardsley—a school where were gathered the daughters of the "first families in the state"—must offer an opening through which she might get at least a peep into that same great world.

Finding her future assistant disinclined to take the initiative, Mrs. Beardsley said, "You have asked me nothing about terms, Miss Pratt."

"Oh yes! Terms!" answered Mary William, recalled to practical affairs, in which she felt no sentimental lack of interest.

"That is, of course, in a certain sense, my affair," Mrs. Beardsley resumed; "but I should be curious to know your ideas on the subject."

Mary looked at her shrewdly. "I suppose the salary would be proportionate to the requirements," she said.

"A very reasonable supposition," Mrs. Beardsley admitted. "Then we will come to the point. As only a small number of my pupils live in my family, I shall not require your services there. You will, therefore, be at some expense for your living, and I had thought of offering you"—she paused a moment to notice whether the girl


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 looked eager, but Mary William gave no sign—"twelve hundred and fifty dollars. Should you think that a fair compensation?"

Mary's eyes sparkled. Touched by the generosity of such an offer to a mere grammar-school teacher, she cried, impulsively, "I ought to bea better teacher than I am, to be worth all that to you."

Mrs. Beardsley was gratified, but she only said, "If you are not worth that, you are worth nothing to me."

Mrs. Beardsley had gone out in search of a "treasure," and she had found one. As for Mary William, she had set forth on an errand almost as humble as Saul's, and, like him, she suddenly found herself endowed—to her own thinking—with a kingdom.

All summer long Mary spent much of her time in fashioning tasteful garments, wherein to meet one, at least, of Mrs. Beardsley's requirements, and her needle went in and out as gayly as though set to music.

Her friends told her of proposed journeyings or weeks to be spent at the, but she envied none of them. What were a few weeks of pleasuring compared to the gift of liberty to live your own life in your own way? As she tried on one completed garment after another, examining the effect critically in the glass, she thought of Mrs. Beardsley and of that formidable band of school-girls, and she took heart of hope.


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 One day she stood before her mirror, arrayed in a claret-colored cashmere, which was to be her "Sunday gown" in the coming winter. There was a trimming of velvet ribbon which was highly effective, and the broad tatting collar was very becoming to the round white throat within it. Mary studied the dress with some satisfaction, and then she inadvertently looked up at her reflected face. For the first time in her life she was struck with her own good looks, and her eyes danced with pleasure. Mrs. Beardsley would be more likely to approve her, the school-girls would perhaps like her, if she looked like that. She smiled at herself, and the pretty teeth thus revealed added greatly to the favorable impression.

"How absurd I am!" she said to herself, and she laughed aloud. She had never seen her laughing face before. It had been a prematurely serious countenance which she had associated with herself. "Oh, isn't it delicious to be alive?" she exclaimed, confidingly, to her own image.

If vanity is pleasure in one's own good points, Mary William was rapidly developing her share of it. But the beauty and originality of her vanity consisted in the turn it took. It looked only to pleasing a middle-aged woman and a school full of young girls, and, as such well-regulated vanity deserved, it was crowned with success.


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 The first week in September—for schools began earlier in Mary William's day than in ours—Mrs. Beardsley's "treasure" arrived upon the scene, and took all hearts by storm. It would be difficult to say whether the exhilaration of her spirits made the new teacher charming, or whether her almost instant popularity was the secret of that same exhilaration. Such things go hand in hand. Certain it is that Mary William lived in a round of pleasures far more stimulating, and far more satisfying too, than the pleasures usually thus designated. She loved her work so thoroughly that its very difficulties but lent it zest. She liked the girls, and she regarded Mrs. Beardsley with the enthusiastic devotion felt by a subaltern for his superior officer.

And so the first school term went by only too swiftly, and the long Christmas vacation came as an unwelcome interruption. How much more unwelcome would it have been had Mary William known what it held in store for her! Nothing could have been more unlooked for, nothing could have been to Mary more unwished for, than the events which followed upon the arrival from his Western ranch of the minister's son, Fred Ingraham. When Mary returned home for the holidays, he had been in Dunbridge scarcely a week, and had not yet ceased to be the sensation of the hour.

Fred Ingraham came into her life with all the freshness and insistency of a prairie breeze, which


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 goes sweeping across level leagues unhindered by any obstacle, unabashed by any contrary currents. This minister's son, with his high-bred features and his air of conscious power, belonged to the finest type of ranchman. In him many of the best qualities springing from the old civilization existed side by side with the spirit and vigor which animate the pioneer. There was not lacking a touch of the absolute monarch, such as your genuine ranchman was five-and-twenty years ago. Being, then, a young man of ready decision and of hitherto unalterable determination, no sooner did he behold the little girl whom he had patronized in big-boy fashion a few years previous, transformed into a surprising likeness to his secretly-cherished ideal of a woman, than he fell precipitately in love with her. There was no time to be lost in preliminaries, and Fred pressed his suit with the courage and persistency which might have been expected of an absolute monarch—to say nothing of a Yankee boy accustomed to deal with rough cowboys and pitching bronchos.

Mary was at first thrown off her guard by the very suddenness of the assault. She had been predisposed in his favor by all she knew of the daring and independence of his course in breaking loose from family traditions and choosing his own rough path in life. She looked upon him as a kindred spirit, and they had many a long talk and more than one walk together in the sparkling Christmas weather before she took the alarm.


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 He had often talked to her of ranch life—so new and interesting a theme in those early days, before the cowboy had been tamed into print. He told her of the life of adventure and hardship which he had known, of his vast herds of cattle, and his wide domains. It seemed to her as though this dominion over men and over beasts had conferred upon him a certain patent of nobility, and she listened with kindling attention to all he had to say. But if he seemed to her to be something of a hero, it was the hero of a realm as remote from her as were the lands of the Orient or the ages of the past. And because of the remoteness and foreignness of her interest hitherto, because of her perfect sense of aloofness from it all, she had listened without suspicion or constraint.

They were walking home together from the skating pond one afternoon, their two pairs of skates rattling gayly together in her companion's hand, making a pleasant metallic accompaniment to his narration.

Suddenly he interrupted himself to say: "Mary, you would like ranch life immensely. I am sure of it. Don't you think you would?"

His words were harmless enough, but the sudden pleading urgency of his manner, and something new and intensely personal in his tone, startled her, and she instantly bristled.

"Oh, yes!" she said. "I've no doubt I should like it if I were a man. But it must be a hideous life for a woman."


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 Fred bore the rebuff manfully, though it felt as grating and as blinding as a sudden prairie sandstorm. He turned and looked at her as she walked erect and strong by his side. A more defiant-looking young person he had never seen, nor a more altogether desirable one. Good heavens! the very curve of her chin was worth dying for, and Fred drew a deep breath and swore within himself that she should yet be vanquished.

The rest of that day Mary tried vainly to believe that her panic had been foolish and uncalled for. But she knew better. She feared that it was unmaidenly and conceited; that she was deserving of all the worst epithets usually applied to a forward girl; but she knew as positively as though Fred had told her so in plain English that this remarkably strong-willed young man was planning to overturn her whole scheme of life, to wrest from her her precious independence, to make her life subordinate to his. She would not allow herself to think in terms less harsh of his designs, and she put herself on the defensive in a manner so transparent that it would have been amusing to any one less immediately interested in her state of mind than Fred.

He meanwhile did his best to retrieve that first blunder by the exercise of an almost superhuman discretion. He saw his opportunity slipping away with the fleeting vacation days; he knew that in a cruelly short time Mary would be once


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 more intrenched in her beloved work under the protection of that much-respected dragon Mrs. Beardsley. But he also knew that her mind, if not her heart, was set against his suit, and he did not dare defy her openly. They met less frequently now, Mary having developed a talent for eluding him which was most baffling. She seemed to feel a new interest in all the other young men and maidens of her acquaintance, and she distributed her favors with an irritating impartiality. So persistent was she in this course that a man less accustomed to having his way, or with less confidence in the righteousness of his cause, might well have been discouraged. But Fred Ingraham had that deeply rooted faith in his own instincts which a life spent on very close terms with nature, even in her rougher moods, tends to develop. He felt that it was not "in the nature of things"—a favorite expression of his—that such an absolute, such an unquenchable, such an altogether reasonable love as his for Mary should waken no response. He used to watch her as she moved about in company, bestowing her frank smile and quick sympathy upon indifferent people, and in his inmost heart he said:

"She is mine! I am the only person on earth who knows it, but she belongs to me, and there is no escape for her."

All through those tedious days of wasted opportunity he never for a moment questioned his inalienable right in the woman of his choice.


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 Mary meanwhile did not consciously yield an inch. Any intruding thoughts of this lover, whose very existence was so importunate, she drowned in plans which had a peculiar meaning and fascination for her.

"Summer after next," she would say to herself, "I shall go abroad"; and she marshalled all the wonders and delights of Europe to the support of her resolution.

A needless help had she felt as certain of herself as she thought she did. Surely Mary William was the last girl to marry any man out of tenderness for his feelings. She was not weakly soft-hearted. Other feelings than his must have been involved before her position could be thus endangered. The story of Mary William's reasonings and self-communings during that memorable holiday season would read like a psychological treatise.

The last night of the old year—which was also the last night of her visit at home—was to be celebrated with a "social gathering" at the Rev. Mr. Ingraham's house. Mary was arrayed for the occasion in her claret-colored cashmere, intending to accompany her family to the very stronghold of the enemy, when a sudden misgiving seized her, and she decided not to go.

"You may say I have a headache, if you like," she told her mother.

"But, Mary, it will never do to leave you alone in the house. You know Bridget is going out,


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 and we've let the furnace fire go down, and you'll take cold."

"I can light a fire in the hall grate," said Mary. "That will make the house warmer when you come in. Besides, I shall go to bed early."

When the house was quite empty, Mary moved a small table up before the fire, placed a lighted lamp upon it, and armed with an old guide-book of Switzerland, which she had borrowed of one of her cousins, sat down to a cozy evening. Strange to say, the book did not seem interesting, the shadows among the pillars in the dimly-lighted hall disturbed her, and, worst of all, she found herself thinking of Fred. She probably should not see him again for a long time; there would be no more need of evasions, no more reasonings with herself. She had a feeling that she had passed through a time of probation, and a certain lassitude crept over her which was soothing, after the perplexities and self-discipline of the past ten days. She let her thoughts take their own turn, knowing well where they would tend. It was such a pity about Fred; he was so much nicer than any one else. Yes, she could afford to say it, now that it was all over—she liked him "best of anybody."

"Oh, dear," she said, half aloud, with a hard, hungry feeling at her heart, "I wish there wasn't any such thing as marrying!"

She watched the blue flames dancing on top of the bed of coals, and the little rows of sparks run-


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 ning along the soot at the back of the chimney—"folks going to meeting," she had been taught to call them. Somehow the suggestion of a string of people all bound for the same place made her feel cross.

"Everybody's always doing just the same thing as everybody else. It is so tiresome! If nobody else had ever got married, Fred would never have thought of anything so foolish"; and then she laughed at her own childishness. She would have liked to cry just as well as to laugh, but she usually drew the line at tears.

It must have been about nine o'clock when there was a sharp ring at the door-bell. Mary shuddered. Was it some midnight marauder? Alas! her forebodings were worse than that. Thieves and murderers she might perhaps know how to deal with, but there was an enemy more to be dreaded than they. The bell rang a second time, reverberating loudly through the empty house, before she answered it. Her worst fears were realized.

"Why, Fred, is that you?" she said, holding the door half open in a gingerly manner. "Did mother want anything?"

"No. It's I that want something. Aren't you going to invite me in?"

"Oh, yes! Come in. I was so surprised! How could you leave your party?"

"That was easy enough. I just walked out of the room. How pleasant it looks here! This is the hall you dislike so much. Pity you should!


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 It makes an uncommonly good setting. And the fire is so pretty! I don't wonder you liked it better than a crowd of people. We burn wood at the ranch—great logs four feet long. They make a blaze to warm the very cockles of your heart. May I get a chair?"

Mary had never known him to be so voluble, but she was not in the least reassured by his flow of words.

"What are you reading?" he asked, as he sat down on the other side of the fireplace.

Her fingers still clasped the red book, though she had not opened it for an hour past. At mention of it, she recovered herself.

"It is Murray's guide-book of Switzerland. Have I never told you that I am going abroad summer after next?"

"Really? How enterprising you are!"

"Oh, it can be easily managed. You know I have quite a princely income."

"Mary," he cried, abruptly, "give up your income, give up Europe, give up all those plans. Come with me! Not now—of course you couldn't—but next summer."

She shut her lips firmly together, and stared at the fire.

"See!" he went on. "I put it in the baldest words. I concede everything from the very beginning. I know you would be giving up everything you care for; I know I am asking a perfectly tremendous sacrifice."


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 "Would you make such a sacrifice for me?" she asked, in a hard, dry tone. "I love my way of life just as well as you do yours. Would you give up your ranch and come and teach school with me?"

"That's not a fair question, Mary. You might as well ask if I would wear girl's clothes to please you. You wouldn't respect me if I did."

"I don't agree with you at all," she said, sharply and argumentatively. It did not sound like her pleasantly-modulated voice. "I don't see that the sacrifice would be any greater for you than for me. My work and my ambitions are just as necessary to me as yours are to you. And you would never think of sacrificing yours for my sake."

"I'm not so sure that there is anything under heaven that I wouldn't do for you, Mary," he cried, impetuously. "But that is something you would never ask. You wouldn't be yourself if you did. Men sacrifice their lives for women, not their careers. It would not be in the nature of things for you to ask of me what I am asking of you."

He paused a moment, and then he was sorry he had done so. Her face was set and repellant. But she spoke before he could stop her.

"No, Fred, I can't do it," she said; "and please don't talk to meany more. Didn't mother say I had a headache?"

"As though I believed that! I don't believe


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 you ever had a headache in your life. And supposing you have? What is a headache, I should like to know, compared to a heartache? If I can bear to hear you say no in that horrid cold voice, you can bear to hear me talk as long as ever I choose. Mary, you shall hear me, and I am going to tell you something that will make you think you hate me. You know that I love you with all my heart and soul. But it seems foolish to talk about that. Of course I love you. Who could help it? Cousin Letitia adores you, though she may not tell you so. Everybody adores you, simply because you are the most perfectly adorable woman that ever lived. But, Mary," and his voice sank to a lower key—"Mary, there is one thing you don't know, and that I am going to tell you—you love me."

"How dare you say such a thing to me, Fred Ingraham?" cried Mary, springing to her feet, white with anger, her eyes flashing, her breath coming fast.

"I suppose it does sound like a brutal thing to say," he admitted, "here in the house, where everything is conventional."

He was also standing now, leaning back in the shadow against the chimney, watching Mary's face with the uncertain firelight on it. The lamp was behind her. She had not got her breath sufficiently to speak again. The red book had dropped to the floor, and her hands were clinched. As he looked at her a sudden pity came over him.


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Rh and take refuge under Thy protection; and Thee, before Whom as my Judge I cannot stand, I long for as my Saviour. To Thee, O Lord, I show my wounds, to Thee I lay bare my shame. I know my sins are many and great, for which I am afraid. My trust is in Thy mercies, of which there is no end. Look therefore upon me with the eyes of Thy mercy, O Lord Jesus Christ, God and man, crucified for man; hearken unto me, whose trust is in Thee;  have mercy upon me, who am full of sin and misery, O Thou fount of mercy, that will never cease to flow. Hail, saving Victim, offered for me and all mankind on the cross of suffering and shame. Hail, noble and precious Blood, flowing from the wounds of my crucified Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and washing away the sins of the whole world. Be mindful, O Lord, of Thy creature, whom Thou has redeemed with Thine own Blood. I repent that I have sinned; I desire to amend what I have done. Take therefore away from me, O most merciful Father, all my iniquities and sins: that, being cleansed both in body and soul, I may worthily taste the Holy of holies;  and grant that this holy feeding on Thy Body and Blood, of which, unworthy as I am, I purpose to partake, may be for the remission of my sins, and the perfect cleansing of all my offenses, for the driving away of all evil thoughts and the renewal of all holy desires, for the healthful bringing forth of fruit well-pleasing unto Thee, and the most sure protection of my soul and body against the wiles of all my enemies. Amen.

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 His voice was tender, as though he feared to hurt her more.

"I had meant to walk home with you from our house, and tell you then, Mary. There is lovely starlight outside, and out under the stars one doesn't mind the truth. We have wonderful starlight on the ranch, Mary. The air is so clear out there that you almost feel the stars throb. When I have been keeping watch the night after a round-up, riding round and round the great black mass of sleeping cattle on the wide black plains, it has seemed to me as though there were nothing real and lasting in all the universe but just those stars. Now there will be one thing as real and lasting as they, and that is my love for you. And, Mary, you may deny it; you may fight it down and try to kill it, but I tell you solemnly, you will never look at the stars again as long as you live without knowing that you love me."

She had clasped her hands now, and held them tight together, but she would not lift her eyes from the fire. It seemed like a disembodied voice that she was listening to, and there was a strange compelling power in it that frightened her. She made a movement as though she would protest, but he interrupted her.

"Don't, Mary. Don't say it again. Wait till you can say yes. Wait, just as you are, and think. I know you will say yes if you wait a little. You are too true not to see the truth."


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 Then she lifted her face in the firelight. "Fred Ingraham," she cried, in a despairing tone, "I believe I do hate you—you are—so—cruel."

Fred looked at the tragic face, and an exultant light came into his own.

"It's a kind of hate I'm not afraid of, Mary," he said, and he held out his arms.

The shadows among the baronial pillars seemed to be swaying and wavering before her eyes, and her own step faltered. But she went to him, because she could not help it. He kissed her, rather cautiously, and she made no resistance. A strange, delicious, poignant happiness overwhelmed her.

That night Mary cried herself to sleep for the first time since she was a little child. But in that beneficent storm of grief her last tottering defences were swept away. When, but a few hours later, the time of parting came, her valiant lover knew that her surrender was complete.

Mrs. Beardsley generously forgave her young cousin for robbing her of her "treasure," though, as her short period of possession went by, she learned still better to measure her impending loss. She permitted herself but one form of revenge, which, however, she always clung to. As often as she had occasion to write to him in after years, she never failed to address him as her "dear bandit."

As for Old Lady Pratt, though Mary had gone contrary to all her prognostications, she was too


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 much relieved to resent being put in the wrong. Her unfailing comment when the event was discussed in the family was: "Mary William's got more sense, arter all, than I giv' her credit for."


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VERYBODY liked Mattie and Hattie Pratt, and it would have been strange if such had not been the case. Even the fact of their universal popularity failed to create cavillers. The boys and girls of Dunbridge would as soon have thought of questioning the merits of the sunshine and the west wind, as the claims of Mattie and Hattie to their loyal goodwill. Indeed the simile is not inapt. The darkeyed Mattie, four years the elder, had in her disposition much of the staying, heart-warming quality of sunshine, while there was a refreshing breeziness about her sister which was ever welcome and ever new.

It had been something of a trial to Mrs. Ben Pratt, who was not without a sense of euphony, that the exigencies of family relationship should have obliged her to name her two daughters Martha and Harriet. The inevitableness of the descent to "Mattie" and "Hattie" could not be denied, and the hopeless lack of distinction in the reiteration of that flat a was very depressing


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 to a woman who was something of a connoisseur in names, having herself been born a Hazeldean. But Ben would not hear of calling the first daughter for any one but his wife, and when, four years later, the second girl appeared upon the scene, Mrs. Ben could do no less than reciprocate, by naming her for her husband's eldest sister, Harriet. More especially since a boy, whose arrival had intervened, bore his mother's maiden name of Hazeldean. By the exercise of great vigilance and determination Mrs. Ben succeeded in keeping Hazeldean's name intact, but this effort so exhausted her energies that she yielded the "Mattie" and "Hattie" almost without a struggle.

Names, however, owe their chief significance to the people who bear them, and it rarely occurred to any one but Mrs. Ben that the names Mattie Pratt and Hattie Pratt could be improved upon.

On second thoughts that statement demands modification. Before the time of our story—when Mattie had reached the mature age of twenty-three—more than one young man had thought that his own surname might be substituted with advantage for hers. Unfortunately for these young men, Mattie had not been of the same mind. She had considered the claims of each candidate with a deliberateness, which in a less sincere and kindly young person might have been censured, and then she had skilfully trans-


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 formed the misguided aspirant into a more or less resigned friend.

The nineteen-year old Hattie had, up to this time, boasted but one actual "offer." It was on the day that Dickie Lewis first went into trousers, that he set himself to sue for the very sticky hand of his young contemporary in a gingham apron. This interesting scene occurred during the school recess, the maiden of his choice being at the moment engaged in eating molasses candy behind the currant bushes. A large piece of this delectable concoction was rapidly reducing itself to its original consistency in her warm little grasp, while he made his declaration of undying devotion. Little Hattie gazed with the most flattering interest at Dicky in his newly acquired dignity. Those trousers were very imposing. But yet, but yet, she felt in her heart of hearts that she loved Jimmy Jones, with the court-plaster on his nose, better than she loved Dicky, and truth compelled her to say so. 'Touched by the hopelessness of Dicky's case, she held out to him the whole big piece of molasses candy, and to her mingled relief and chagrin, he seized and devoured it, with an appetite unimpaired by his disappointment. Hattie Pratt's faith in manly devotion had never recovered from that crushing blow. As she grew older she regarded the comings and goings of her sister's lovers with a certain scepticism, and when any rash young man ventured to bestow upon her a sentimental word or look she remembered


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 Dicky Lewis and laughed it off. Thus it will be seen how an early disenchantment may eat into the fabric of one's faith in human nature.

Among the frequenters of the Ben Pratt house, a stranger had recently enrolled himself, a stranger whose assiduity in calling once a week did not escape Hattie's mocking criticism. He was the new head-master of the high-school, a tall, grave-looking individual, who wore glasses and limped slightly. Indeed, his limp was so very slight that the irreverent Hattie concluded that his shoes were too tight for him.

Mr. Emerson Swain, for such was his classic name, had seemed so particularly fitted for his post as schoolmaster, and so entirely unfitted to play any lighter rôle, that his arrival in town had occasioned very little comment or inquiry. Nothing was known of him beyond the fact that he had come highly recommended by the authorities of a Western college, that his learning was probably profound, and his social talents correspondingly limited. On the occasion of his first appearance at a social gathering in Dunbridge he had made the acquaintance of the Pratt girls, and, to every one's amusement, it became evident that he had straightway fallen a victim to Mattie's charms. With old-fashioned punctiliousness, he had, a few days later, sought an introduction to Mrs. Ben, and asked permission to call upon herself and her daughters. From that time forward he was a weekly visitor at their house. He usually came on Sat-


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 urday evening, as a reward, Hattie declared, for having "tried all the week to be good." It was his habit to remain exactly one hour, which time was passed in conversation with Mattie and the elder members of the family. Hattie, who had no mind to allow herself to be shut out in the cold, and who usually sat by with Dixie, the fox-terrier, in her lap, used occasionally to throw in a light-minded observation, thus giving an unexpected turn to the conversation, and causing Mr. Emerson Swain to gaze benignantly at her through his spectacles. "It is such fun to make him blink at me," the bad child would say, when remonstrated with by her family.

Mr. Swain's conversation was quite worth listening to in a very different spirit from that which Hattie deigned to honor it with. Mrs. Ben maintained that he had "the best informed mind" she had ever met with, and she confided to her mother-in-law, Old Lady Pratt, that she almost hoped that Mattie might fancy him.

"It's high time she fancied somebody!" the old lady had declared, true as always to her faith in early marriages. Mattie, for her part, listened most politely and attentively to all the schoolmaster had to say, responding in a ladylike manner, which seemed to give him entire satisfaction, if one might judge by the regularity of his visits. She did not acknowledge, even to her family, that she found such elevated conversation a trifle tedious.


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 "Why do you stay in the room when Mr. Swain calls?" she would ask Hattie. "You might just as well be amusing yourself in the library."

"Oh, but he amuses me," Hattie would cry. "He's just nuts! He arranges his sentences so beautifully, and his spectacles look so owlish. Do you know, Mattie, he seems a great deal too old and solemn to fall in love."

"Very likely he is," assented Mattie, for the two girls had agreed between themselves that he must be "well over thirty." "There isn't any question of his falling in love, as far as I know."

Now Hattie Pratt, though not of a literary turn of mind, had a certain knack with her pen, which had stood her in good stead in more than one of the small crises of her lively existence. One day in February she might have been seen curled up in the cushioned window-seat of the parlor, in close consultation with the lyric muse. It was a Sunday afternoon, and she had some misgivings as to the godliness of her undertaking. But, unfortunately for her Sabbath-day morals, an incident had occurred on the previous evening which had filled her with thoughts of vengeance, whose execution would no longer be deferred.

Mr. Swain had been speaking of one of the assistant teachers at the high-school, the teacher who had the misfortune to stutter as often as he became at all agitated, and Hattie, who was a nat-


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 ural mimic, could not let pass such an opportunity for the display of her powers. At mention of the young man's name, she cried, in excellent imitation of him: "B-b-boys! Such b-b-behavior is inexc-c-cusable."

Their visitor had looked at her reproachfully through his glasses, and had said, with most uncalled-for emphasis: "Yes, Miss Hattie, it is a cruel infirmity."

For once, Hattie's ready wit had deserted her. To her consternation and disgust, she felt the blood rush to her face, and she dropped her eyes before those penetrating spectacles, in unwilling acknowledgment of defeat. She shuddered even now as she thought of her discomfiture, and then she wet the point of her pencil on the tip of her small, unruly tongue, and applied herself with renewed concentration to the work of vengeance. The day had been beautiful. The level rays of the sun, which was sinking in the west, fell aslant of Hattie's curly brown head, revealing a picturesque disorder, which frequent wild clutches for inspiration had wrought. With her feet drawn up under her, and her head bent over her work, all semblance of her graceful little person was lost. Suddenly her brow cleared, her pencil raced over the paper, and, with a sigh of successful accomplishment, she sat up straight, extending her slippered feet to the end of the cushion, leaned her head against the casement, and fell to reading her effusion:


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"There! If that doesn't make him blink his conceited old eyes," she thought, with vengeful glee.

The sun was already cut in two by the line of a black hill on the horizon. Hattie turned and looked straight into the golden disk. Her strong young eyes, which had fallen before a certain pair of spectacles, did not waver in the face of the god of day. Her cheeks were flushed from the mental strain of composition, and her eyes were bright. As the sun dropped behind the hill a golden light crept up into the sky, higher and higher, and then the most beautiful waves of color spread themselves along the line of low hills. The young face softened, the lips that had been so firmly compressed relaxed into their natural sweet expression, and a dreamy, faraway look came into the dark-blue eyes. The splendors of the sunset deepened and grew, and then the color faded, and the last uncertain light


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 fell upon the face of a sleeping child, a face where long dark lashes fringed the closed lids, and a mouth as innocent as a baby's was parted in a half smile.

When Hattie awoke, however, at the lighting of the gas, the spirit of mischief awoke with her. For though her face had softened when the sunset color swept the sky, her hard little heart had not changed one bit.

She ran to her own room where she would be safe from disturbance, and there she copied her verses in an elaborately disguised hand. For to-morrow would be St. Valentine's day, and the shot must be fired early in the morning.

Accordingly, when her father was starting, the next day, to drive into the city, she gave him the letter "to post in town." Ben, to whom all girls' scrawls looked exactly alike, did not observe anything peculiar about the handwriting, and readily undertook to do his daughter's bidding. Ben was a fairly obedient father in all small matters, and as such was a great favorite with his children. As the day went by Hattie was full of self-glorification.

"He may not get it till to-morrow," she reflected, "but he will know it was sent to-day, and won't he be puzzled? Oh! I am so glad I did it! I am so glad I did it!"

Poor Hattie! Her joy was to be short-lived!

"Rather, did you post my letter?" she asked, as she helped him off with his great-coat that


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 evening. Mr. Ben Pratt's face was red and his whiskers prickly with the frost as Hattie had discovered when she kissed him a moment before. The dutiful father beamed with inward satisfaction, as he rubbed his hands together to get them warm.

"Better than that! Better than that!" he answered. "I met Mr. Swain just as I turned into Main Street, and for once I had my wits about me."

"You didn't give him the letter!" cried Hattie, in breathless suspense.

"That's just what I did do," her father answered, complacently. "I told him it was something my daughter Hattie had asked me to post, and I thought perhaps he could find the owner," and Ben passed on into the warm library without a glance at the miserable little victim of his ill-judged zeal.

Hattie meanwhile had fled up-stairs, with pert little Dixie close at her heels. As she shut the chamber door behind her, Dixie, at the risk of his life, dashed in, giving a squeal of anguish as the door nipped his tail.

"O Dixie, you poor little angel," she cried, seizing the small imp in her arms, "did I squeeze his tail in the door? Oh! how could I?" and she tenderly laid him on the bed, and knelt beside him, incoherent and distracted. "O Dixie! Dixie! That horrid man! And your poor little tail! And he knows who wroteit! And he will


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 think!—oh! what won't he think! And how it must have hurt, you poor little martyr. And oh, dear, how I wish I was dead! O Dixie! Dixie! did it hurt very bad?"

All this time the "poor little martyr" was beating the coverlid with his injured tail, and industriously licking his mistress' nose and chin and eyebrows, saying, as plainly as he knew how, that he had forgotten all about his tail, and the best thing she could do would be to forget all about that horrid man too. And then the supper bell rang, and Hattie had to wash away the traces of her tears and go down and face her family, Dixie following close behind. At supper Hattie seemed to be in hilarious spirits, which her family attributed to the half-dozen valentines she had received in the course of the day. She chattered like a magpie, and gave Hazeldean tit for tat in a manner that delighted her father, and caused her mother to wonder whether she would never grow up. But all the while a certain foolish bit of doggerel was ringing in her ears, sending the blood in sudden tingling waves up among the curls in her forehead.

Ugh-h—

Oh! how hideous it all was! How perfectly hideous!


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 The next day went by, and the world had not come to an end. Wednesday came, and Thursday, and Hattie began to wish that something would happen, if only to end this wretched suspense. And then on Friday something did happen.

It had been raining hard all day. The streets were rivers and the side-walks ponds. Hattie had been shut up in the house for so many hours that she suddenly discovered that she could not bear it another minute. She declared her intention of going out for a walk, and, wrapped in a long waterproof cloak, with the hood over her head, she was soon splashing along the sidewalk in her rubber boots, the excitable Dixie racing on ahead and barking wildly. She did not carry an umbrella. Waterproof cloaks had only lately come into fashion, and the owner of one would have scorned an umbrella.

The rain splashed in her face and collected in the "puckers" of her hood. Her hair lay in spirals, beaten flat against her wet forehead. She trudged along, enjoying this conflict with the elements as much as she could enjoy anything just then. She looked at the gambols of Dixie with the melancholy indulgence with which an aged person regards the sports of children. Still that miserable jingle pursued her, echoing through her brain with senseless persistency.


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 Would she ever touch pen to paper again? No! Never! Never! Never!

She was out on the long bridge now that led to the city. She did not often get so far as that in her walks, even on a fair day. Here the wind had room to rage, unimpeded by trees or buildings. She bent her head and fought her way in the teeth of the storm, looking neither to the right nor to the left, where, on either side of the bridge, the great sheets of ice were being tossed upon the dark waters.

Suddenly Dixie gave a joyful bark of recognition, and a pair of long legs, clad in much-bespattered trousers, appeared a few feet away, in the line of her down bent vision. She steered off to the right, but the legs stood still, and an alarmingly familiar voice exclaimed:

"Why! Miss Hattie! Where are you going?"

"I am going for a walk, Mr. Swain," she said, distinctly, trying to pass him by.

"Ror a walk? My child, are you crazy? You will get blown off the bridge!"

He had turned and was walking by her side. She said nothing, but pushed on faster and faster.

"I see you are trying to get away from me," he remarked, as he easily kept alongside of her, in spite of his slightly limping gait.

"I came out to have a walk by myself," she shouted back, for the wind was roaring.

"I shall not let you walk alone on this


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 bridge," he declared. His tone of calm authority exasperated her.

"I don't know what right you have to force your company upon me," cried Hattie, lifting her face defiantly, unmindful of the storm that beat upon it.

He looked down upon her, as he walked by her side, and quietly took in the picture. The slender figure battling with the storm, the crimson cheeks and sparkling eyes, the rain-drenched hair, the tiny waterfalls on the end of her nose and chin. The wind suddenly subsided, and it became so quiet that he could hear the splash of the water, as she resolutely tramped along.

"I have the best right in the world to take care of you," he said, in a low, penetrating voice, "because I love you."

"You don't, you know you don't!" cried Hattie, with such vociferous denial that Dixie felt called upon to interfere, and sprang wildly about her and upon her.

The wind had risen again, and her tormentor shouted: "Won't you please turn back now?"

Mechanically she turned, and having the wind at their backs, they went on faster than before. But the bridge seemed to Hattie perfectly interminable. On and on she tramped, with the rain beating upon her shoulders like a hundred hands. Would she never get away from this "dreadful man," keeping pace with her so persistently, and knowing that she knew that he had


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 said those horrible, those insulting words. For what was it but an insult to tell her that he loved her, when she knew it was just because he had been so stupidly conceited as to think she was in earnest when she wrote that wretched valentine.

At last they left the bridge and passed on into the town, where they were somewhat sheltered from the storm. They were still two miles from home. Not acreature was moving in the streets besides the rain-drenched trio, man and girl and dog. They might as well have been on a desert island, for any chances there were of interruption. And still he walked like a shadow at her side.

"You contradicted me just now," he said at last, firmly and deliberately, "and so I must tell you again that I love you. I have loved you ever since I knew you, but I did not think I should tell you so. It was not very likely that you would ever care for a half-blind cripple like me. But at least I could see you often, and hear your voice, and know a little of what was passing in your mind, and that was something. I even fancied that we might get to be friends some day. But when you sent me that valentine, although, of course, you never meant me to know who wrote it, I knew it was either one of two things—either you liked mea little, or you despised me. And though I am afraid I know your answer beforehand, I must have it. Hattie, am I right? Was it one of those two things?"


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 "You don't love me," she cried again, with increasing vehemence. "You don't love me! You love somebody else! You haven't any right to talk to me like that. You thought I meant that odious valentine. I didn't mean it. Nobody meant it. It was nothing at all."

"Hattie," he cried, with a sudden access of anger, which was not altogether unbecoming; "Hattie, you shall not talk to me like that. You shall listen tome. You shall believe what I say! I do love you—I love you with all my heart. I loved you the first time I ever saw you—I have thought of you from morning till night every day of my life since that day. I love you always—I love you when I am with you, and I love you when you are absent. I love you when you are sweet and kind, and I love you when you are—not sweet and kind. I love all your looks, and all your words—I would dare swear that I love all the thoughts you think!"

On and on they tramped, through the rain and the mud, and on and on he talked. He, who usually "arranged his sentences so beautifully," could not seem to talk fast enough, to say what he had to say. She did not hear half his words. They were drowned and confused by the wind and the rain, by her own bewildering emotions. Only one terrible, overwhelming fact was borne in upon her guilty little soul. He did love her, and she could not help herself.

At last they got to her own gate, and, with his


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 hand upon it, he said: "Hattie! Which is it? Tell me once for all. Do you love me, or do you despise me?"

Then Hattie lifted up her head and looked him full in the face, and said: "Mr. Swain, I can't bear you!"

He opened the gate for her without another word, and, as she and Dixie passed through, he lifted his dripping hat and said good-bye.

Her mother met her at the door, anxious over her long absence, and Hattie threw herself, wet waterproof and all, upon her mother's neck, and cried: "O Mother! Mother! He says he loves me! That dreadful man!"

"My child, what do you mean?" cried Mrs. Ben, thinking that Hattie had taken leave of her senses. "Come up to your own room and get off these soaking things."

They went up-stairs, followed by the faithful Dixie.

"He says he loves me, Mother," she lamented again, as her mother pulled off her waterproof, and commanded her to change her shoes and stockings.

"And your petticoats are wet through!" cried Mrs. Ben. Her motherly heart was in much greater terror of colds than of lovers, which latter dispensation was in the natural order of things, and could not be averted.

It was not until the child was clothed again that her mother was ready to believe that she


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 was also in her right mind, and then she sat down beside her, prepared for confidences.

But, the first rush of feeling being over, Hattie did not find it so easy to tell her story. She looked at Dixie as though she thought he might help her out of the difficulty. But Dixie, who evidently felt that one exciting scene was all that his nerves could bear, had curled himself up in a corner and sought refuge in slumber.

"Well, Hattie, now what is it?"

"Nothing, Mother, only he told me he loved me for more than two miles."

"Hattie Pratt!" cried Mrs. Ben, reduced to extremity. "If you don't tell me who it is that has been talking nonsense to you in all this mud and slosh—I'll shake you!"

This, though unquestionably a little mortifying to a young lady who had just received a declaration, was well calculated to recall her to her senses. And Hattie, with the frankness which was one of her brightest virtues, told her mother the whole story from beginning to end, palliating nothing, excusing nothing.

Mrs. Ben heroically suppressed her inclination to smile at this rather comical tale of woe, and, faithful to her sense of duty, said, severely: "And now you have got your deserts."

"O Mother! I didn't deserve anything so bad as that!" Hattie protested. "How can you say I deserved anything so bad as that?"

"Well," rejoined Mrs. Ben, "I think myself


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 you have been sufficiently punished." She looked for a moment at the woe-begone face of the culprit, and then she said, consolingly: "Hattie, I don't believe he was as serious as he thought for, if that's any comfort to you. He has probably tried to make himself think he is in love with you, just to spare your feelings. Any gentleman would feel bound to do what he could in such a situation,—and Mr. Swain is a gentleman, if he is a little stiff in his manners."

"I think, Mother," Hattie replied, with conscious dignity, "that if you had heard him talk, you would not have any doubt about his being in earnest."

Nor did Hattie ever admit any question on that point. Emerson Swain's words, and still more his manner, had been too convincing. She could not mistake the accent of sincerity with which he had said: "I love you." Gradually the first horror with which those words had filled her wore away, and she began to think of them with something very like toleration. It was asthough they were repeated over and over every day, so haunting was the tone of voice in which they had been spoken. After all, he was a man, this grave, self-contained schoolmaster. It was a man's love that had been offered her, and not a boyish fancy. There was something wonderfully stirring in his honest passion, which had asserted itself'so stoutly, in spite of his self-distrust and genuine humble-mindedness. She could not forget his words—she


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 could not forget him, though she saw no more of him in the weeks that followed. A strange humility had come over her. She began to feel as though an honor had befallen her, of which she had shown herself unworthy. She had not been enough of a woman to accept it, or even to appreciate it; but if she had been a great deal older and a great deal wiser, she might have taken it differently. She was sorry he did not come to the house any more. His conversation had really been very interesting. She would not have understood anything about the Mexican colonization scheme, and the tragic fate of Maximilian and Carlotta, if it had not been for Mr. Swain. He had promised, too, to take them all over to see the glass-works some day. She would have been glad to see the glass-works. Nobody else would ever think of taking them there. None of the young men they knew seemed to be interested in anything but themselves and their own concerns.

Perhaps Hattie might not have drawn so many comparisons in favor of her lame and spectacled suitor if his society had been thrust upon her. But ever since that eventful walk he had studiously avoided her. The blustering winter months had stormed themselves out, April, with all its sweet caprices, had gone the way of other tears and smiles, and now May had come, bringing young leaves and dandelions, and making green the lawns and hedges. And in all that time Mr. Hmerson Swain had only once come to the house.


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 That was on an evening when he knew perfectly well that Mattie and Hattie had gone to a dance, and he made no pretence of having come to call on any one but their mother. Mrs. Ben had enjoyed his visit very much. She had found him so talkative and easy—not nearly so stiff in his manners as he used to be—that she felt justified in assuring Hattie that if he had ever suffered from any disappointment he must have got over it entirely.

But Hattie knew better. That faith in the immortality of love, which most young girls cherish, had asserted itself in her heart. Emerson Swain, who had given up the game with a half-pitiful, wholly-contemptuous smile at his own expense, would have been surprised and touched if he had suspected anything of the almost passionate loyalty with which his scornful little divinity believed in him.

Meanwhile the last of May had come, and Decoration Day was close at hand. Decoration Day, which meant so much when first it was celebrated, soon after the close of the war. It seemed that year as though the very flowers knew why they bloomed, and pressed forward to meet the day. In the fields about Dunbridge the daisies and buttercups ran riot, and all the brooksides were blue with long-stemmed violets. Brilliant columbines grew about the rocks, and fragile wood anemones and hardy cornel blossoms hid side by side in the woods. All the young people of the town had


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 been out gathering them, and now, in the late afternoon, a score of them were met together in the high-school building, to weave their flowers into wreaths, and sword-hilts, and crosses. The next day the boys and girls would walk in procession, led by the little company of veterans, to lay the fading offerings upon the soldiers' graves. The youngest child who was to carry a posy could remember the war. There was no need to tell him what all these flowery tributes meant.

The group of young people in the schoolhouse worked together, subdued and solemnized by the memories the day recalled, and when the work was done they quietly dispersed, carrying their flowers with them to be kept fresh till morning. On the way home Hattie Pratt remembered that she had left her scissors behind her. She slipped away from the others, and, burdened with flowers as she was, she ran back alone to the schoolhouse. About her neck was a garland of daisies, a wreath of buttercups hung from her wrist, while other wreaths and garlands filled her arms.

Her light step made little sound as she ran up the stairs and into the great hall, the door of which was open. There among the litter of bright blossoms and green leaves stood Emerson Swain,—with his hands behind him looking down. In her haste Hattie had come close upon him before she saw him. She gave a little cry of consternation and started to leave the room. He too looked disconcerted, but when she turned to go he pulled


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 himself together and said very composedly, "Don't let me drive you away, Miss Hattie. You have come back for something."

"Only my scissors," she stammered, "but it isn't of the least consequence."

"Let me help you find them."

And he began moving the fallen leaves and petals about with his cane. The scissors soon turned up. As he handed them to her he said:

"You will perhaps be glad to hear—that is, if you care about it one way or the other—that I am going away for good in July. I have not told any one yet, for my new appointment was only settled this morning."

Hattie stood still in helpless embarrassment. She felt that she must say something. Shecould not go away leaving such an announcement as that in mid-air. It would be too cowardly. At last she gave a constrained little laugh, and asked, inconsequently:

"What do you think of all this clutter in your schoolroom, Mr. Swain?"

He hesitated a moment—

"Would you like to know what I was thinking when you came in? Iwas wondering whether the fellows who got killed did not have the best of it after all. Whether it was not better, for instance, than hobbling through life?"

"But—but—you were not in the war," cried Hattie, suddenly forgetting her embarrassment and self-consciousness.


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 "And why not?"

"And did you get"

"Yes—I got shot."

Her eyes were big with wonder.

"Oh! please tell me about it. When did it happen? How did it happen?"

"It happened early in the war—I got well enough to go back again."

"You went back again after you had got shot?"

"Of course I did. Iwas not such a cripple that I could not serve. A lame leg," he added bitterly, "disables a man more in after life than it does in action. Men respect their captain none the less for being a little damaged."

"Oh! What did they do to thank you?"

He looked down upon the glowing young face rising up out of the garland of daisies, and he wished she would go home and not stay there looking like that. But he said in a matter-of-fact voice:

"They treated me very well—they made me a colonel before we got through."

"A colonel! How brave you must have been!"

And then, as she stood before him and met his eyes, into which a look had come which she did not quite understand, her self-consciousness came rushing back upon her, and she turned abruptly and awkwardly enough and left him.

She went down stairs and out into the long yellow sunlight, thinking new and solemn thoughts.

It was the first time that Hattie had ever been


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 brought face to face with a personal heroism that rose above the commonplace of every day. It appealed to all her enthusiasm—all her idealism. It touched her as nothing else could have done, it made a woman of her. And yet she was still so much a child that her mood changed from moment to moment, her thoughts flew from great things to small, and all the while she never dreamed whither she was tending.

He had been in the war. He had stood his ground when the bullets whistled about him, when men fell dead on every side. He had been wounded, crippled, and then he had gone back and faced the bullets again. And Hazeldean had dared to call him "a muff." And she! And she! Oh! What had she been thinking of to treat him so! And she might never see him again. If he had avoided her for three months it was not likely that he would do any differently in the little time remaining. But she must ask his forgiveness. She could not let him go away forever with those contemptuous words to remember. He had offered her the devotion of a brave man, and like a petulant child she had flung back the proffered gift with scorn and contumely.

Then, as asudden anti-climax, came the memory of certain foolish words she had once spoken. Oh! dreadful thought! She had said his shoes were too tight for him! That smote her conscience more cruelly than all the rest, and without knowing when she had turned, she found herself


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 hurrying back to the schoolhouse, with a wild terror lest he should be gone, and she should have lost her last chance to ask his forgiveness.

She ran up the stairs and burst into the room. There he stood, where she had left him, looking at the flowers that her feet had trodden upon.

"Mr. Swain!" she cried, still panting from her rapid walk, "Mr. Swain, I have come back because I was afraid I should never see you again, and I wanted to ask your pardon."

He looked down upon her, very gravely and indulgently.

"Ask my pardon for not liking me? You could not help it, little girl. There was no reason why you should have liked me. It was kinder to be truthful."

"But I was so rude! Oh, I was so abominable. Won't you please forgive me?"

"Miss Hattie," he said, his voice vibrating in spite of all he could do, "I will tell you something that I hope you may never have to learn in any other way. When a man gets maimed for life he does not particularly care whether it was a or a swordcut that did it."

"And you won't forgive me?" There were tears in the beseeching childlike eyes, and yet, in the gesture of entreaty, a certain dignity which was more appealing still.

"I don't see anything to forgive," he answered, with a strong effort to govern his voice. "But if it will make you any happier—yes—I forgive you."


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 He held out a very cold hand, which she took, dropping some of her flowers at his feet.

"I am so sorry!" she said again, pleadingly, with her hand still in his.

"Sorry you do not love me?"

"Sorry I said I didn't," she whispered very, very softly. But Emerson Swain thought he should have heard that whisper if he had been in battle, with the roar of the cannon in his ears.

They walked home together in the long afternoon light, home to Ben and his wife, whom they found pacing the garden path arminarm. These long-tried lovers looked incredulously at the apparition coming toward them. It was many weeks since they had seen this tall, limping figure within their gates. Did that usually grave face ever before seem so young and animated? did those gray eyes ever before send such a cheerful challenge through the intervening glasses? And more perplexing still was their own Hattie, decked out like a sacrificial lamb, with a look of radiant meekness in her face, which yet was a little pale and awe-struck.

She had not a word to say for herself, but Emerson Swain was under no embarrassment.

"Mrs. Pratt," he said, as they stopped before her, "Hattie has promised to be my Valentine henceforth and forever."

"And I believe they will be very happy," said Mrs. Ben to Mr. Ben, as they talked it over later in the evening. "He is not exactly the kind of


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 man I should have supposed Hattie would fancy, and she is rather scatter-brained to begin life as the wife of a college professor. But they love each other, and that is the principal thing."

"Yes, Martha. That is the principal thing. There's no doubt about that. I don't suppose it really makes any difference in the end," Ben added, with a chuckle of ill-disguised fatherly pride, "but, as far as I can make out, Hattie seems to have done most of the courting!"


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LD LADY PRATT was failing, and being a shrewd old lady, even at the age of ninety-one, she was very well aware of the fact.

"My faculties ain't what they used to be," she would say, with all her old decision in statement. "I ain't what I used to be, nor what my mother was at my age, and I ain't goin' to be flattered into thinkin' I be."

Everybody liked Old Lady Pratt, though many people were a little afraid of her. Her bright, black eyes dimmed as old age crept upon her, but they rarely softened. The deep, clean-cut furrows in her dark face were the marks of alertness, good-sense, and humor, rather than of gentler qualities. A black "front" with a straight, uncompromising muslin "part," hid the grace and dignity of her white hairs. Her speech was always incisive, often piquant, but never tender. She sat so straight in her chair—thanking Heaven that she had a back of her own—that she never gave that impression of feebleness which makes old age so irresistible in its appeal to the kind


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 hearted. Dr. Baxter, the oracle of the neighborhood, used to say of her, that she was "keen as a brier," and that was the accepted estimate. The respect in which she was held among her acquaintances was negatively indicated by the fact that nobody ever thought of calling her little, though her height was, in reality, a trifle short of five feet.

She suffered no pain nor discomfort in her latter days, and she was willing enough to "bide her time," but after her ninetieth birthday she began to realize that life had lost something of its relish.

"Grandma," said her great-grandchild Susie one day, "when you are a hundred years old your name will be in all the papers."

The old lady turned her gleaming spectacles upon the rosy young person of sixteen, and a queer look came into her face. "I hope my name will be in the papers before that," she said, curtly.

"What do you mean, Grandma?"

"Mean, child? Why, among the 'deaths and marriages,' to be sure."

Miss Susie was rather a thoughtful child, and after gazing for a moment at the red flicker in the isinglass window of the stove, she said, "Grandma, would you like to live your life all over again just as it has been?"

"Yes, I should," said Old Lady Pratt. "For one reason," she added in a lower tone.

"I should think it would make you tired to think of all those years."


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 A wonderfully bright, youthful look came into the aged face. "Nothing could make me tired if your grandfather was alive again. But there! What do you know about that?"

"I wish I could remember Grandpa Pratt," said the little girl, sympathetically. "Tell me about him."

"There isn't much to tell. Only he was the best man that ever lived, I do believe. You've seen his picter?"

"Oh, yes, Grandma; and it looks so much like Sir Walter Scott's."

"He was a great reader of Scott, and had a very high opinion of his works. But I always said it was just as honorable a calling to be a builder of houses, like your great-grandfather, as to be putting up castles in the air that never kept the rain off anybody's head."

There was a silence, during which the isinglass gave an occasional crackle, and once the whole body of the stove seemed to stretch itself and sigh profoundly.

"Susie," said grandma, after a while, "I hope you ain't goin' to be like your old-maid sisters. There's Bella, twenty-five years old last 'lection, with no more idea of marryin' than she had ten years ago. Mark my words, child, a woman should be early married. Your grandfather was courtin' me when I was your age, and at seventeen I was a happy bride."

"But, Grandma," said Susie, deprecatingly,


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 yet with a light-hearted laugh, "there isn't a single person courting me. What am I to do about it?"

To the old lady it was no laughing matter. She frowned a little and looked slightly contemptuous. The rising generation seemed to her very slow and unenterprising, in spite of their railroads and telegraphs. Was a man more a man for being whisked over the earth's surface at the rate of twenty miles an hour? Stuff! How many of them would walk from Framingham to Boston and back, as her grandfather had done, to fetch a betrothal ring for his sweetheart? She wore the ring to-day, a thin gold circlet with the outlines of a coffin just discernible inside. The words, "Till Death" had worn quite away since it came into her possession.

But Old Lady Pratt's mind did not often dwell upon the rising generation and its shortcomings. Even the great-great-grandson, in whose small person the family beheld its fifth generation among the living, had but a transient hold upon her attention. From him her thoughts wandered to her own grandchildren and their pranks, and there were certain reminiscences, especially of Uncle James, the eldest, which the children were never tired of hearing.

"Grandma," they would ask, "how did that spot come on the ceiling?"

Now there was in reality no spot whatever on the ceiling. It had had many a coat of white-


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 wash in the last forty years, whose passage had left so little impression on the failing memory.

"That spot!" Grandma would answer. "I can't seem to see it very plain, but I guess that must be the spot your Uncle James made when he was a little boy."

"Why, how could he make a spot so high up?"

"He threw a spit-ball."

"Why, Grandma! And what did you do to him?"

"Do? I boxed him!"

This always came out with a snap, which delighted the souls of the children.

"You did, Grandma? Poor Uncle James!"

"Poor Uncle James, indeed! He was as impudent a young rascal as ever lived."

"Why, what did he do?"

"He looked up in my face and said,  ' You Paddy!

Nothing could be better than grandma's relish of this story. She was not a great talker, however. In fact, her daily life was a peculiarly silent one, her only companion being her unmarried daughter, Betsy, whose deafness precluded all possibility of conversation. There had been a time when the old lady fretted a good deal about this.

"It does seem to me," she would say, "as though Betsy's deafness would drive me crazy." Or again, when very much vexed: "I do believe it ain't all deafness. The girl hasn't got any


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 spunk, that's the trouble. If she had, she'd make out to understand something now and then by her wits."

But this had been when grandma was only seventy or eighty years old, and the impatience of youth was not yet wholly subdued.

Now it was different. She had got used to seeing the large, loosely built figure always at her side, with its slightly bobbing head, which had once been such an annoyance to her, and she had come to appreciate the unobtrusive virtues of a faithful slave.

Aunt Betsy had not much spunk, it is true. Her wits seldom came to the assistance of herimperfect faculties. But she knew all her mother's needs and wishes by heart; and the absolutely unswerving devotion, day by day, and hour by hour, of the sixty odd years of her life had come, by the mere process of accumulation, to have the weight and importance in the old lady's mind which they deserved. The black eyes of the elder woman often looked approvingly at the meek old face in its pretty frame of soft gray curls. It was a pity that Betsy never knew that the reason she had not been allowed the dignity of a "false front," to which she had so ardently aspired, was because her mother thought her curls "too pretty to be covered up."

Once in a great while when Betsy had rendered her some especially timely service, the old lady had called her to her side to say: "Betsy you're


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 a good girl. I don't know what I should do without you." And Betsy had gone about with a warm feeling at her heart for weeks after.

Thanksgiving had always been a great day in the Pratt family, for then its scattered members came from far and near to keep the good old festival. Their numbers had years before outgrown the capacity of the little old house in Green Street, and the celebration had been transferred to "Harriet's."

Harriet was Mrs. Pratt's eldest daughter, the widow of a rich man, and she dwelt in a very grand house, with a terraced lawn in front anda cupola atop, a house where any family might be proud to meet together. Her long, wide parlors, with their thick Turkey carpets and their red velvet furniture; the large mirrors over the two black mantelpieces which were adorned with gilt candelabra hung with rainbow prisms; the pier glasses at either end, multiplying indefinitely every objectin the room; the numerous oil-paintings which had the air of having been bought by the dozen;—all this was very splendid indeed.

And the queen of this palace on Thanksgiving Day was Grandma Pratt. Every one paid his respects first to her as she sat bolt-upright in the stiff, high-backed "Governor Winthrop" arm-chair. Aunt Harriet took but a secondary place in her own house on that day.

It was as queen of the New England feast that the old lady's memory always lived in the minds


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 of her descendants, perhaps because she was more "herself" on the last Thanksgiving of her life than at any time later.

The great dinner with its many courses may have seemed a little long to her, though she drank her annual glass of sherry with the old relish; but it was when they all gathered for a frolic in the brightly lighted parlors that she seemed most thoroughly in her element.

She joined in the quieter games, such as "Button, button," and "Neighbor, neighbor," and grew much excited over the traditional "Blindman's Buff," which she witnessed from a remote corner of the room, Aunt Betsy sitting by to ward off the impetuous "Blind Man" when he made too wild a dash in their direction.

When the young people were tired of romping—they were all young people to Old Lady Pratt—they gathered about in a far-reaching circle, and clamored for grandma's stories of their fathers and grandfathers, and of her own youth.

It was a pretty sight: the wide circle of faces,—old and young, dark and fair, all focusing upon one point—upon that small, upright figure which time had failed to bend; upon those clear-cut, animated features which ninety years had not subdued. It was a picture which the children, old and young, never forgot, and no Sibyl of ancient days was ever listened to with more rapt attention than Old Lady Pratt.

Last of all came the dance, which was the


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 crowning pleasure of the gala-day. As the circle of her listeners dispersed, Uncle James came up to Grandma Pratt, and with old-time gallantry invited her to lead the Virginia reel with him. After coquetting a little, as she always did, and reminding him that she was an old woman, she suffered herself to be led to the end of the room, and, as the long lines were forming, her little old feet tapped the floor impatiently, and her eyes grew bright behind her gold-bowed spectacles. Mary Anne, who was generally conceded to be the "unselfish" member of the family, went to the Chickering grand piano, and struck up the jolly old jig, not too fast (as it is often played nowadays), but allowing time for the "steps."

Grandma moved lightly forward, and made the preliminary courtesy to her opposite grandson in a manner which should have been a lesson to a degenerate age. She had no more admiring spectator than Aunt Betsy, who could not dance herself, because it made her head swim, and who watched her mother with a sort of awe as she wound in and out in the mazes of the figure, her step brisk, her head erect, and cap-strings flying. Then came the march, grandma leading her half of the procession with great spirit, a light flush coming on her old face, her eyes shining brighter and blacker than ever, while the merry train of revellers clapped their palms together and gayly shouted. Then they all joined hands and formed a continuous arch the whole length of the long


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 room, and Old Lady Pratt, with her favorite grandson at her side, passed down between her children and her children's children for the last time.

She panted a little when they reached the foot of the row, and James said, "I don't know how you feel, Grandma, but I'm kind o' tuckered out. Let's go and look on."

"That's a fib, James Spencer," she answered, sharply. "You think I'm tired and need to rest."

"You, Grandma? You never get tired. We all know that. But it's because you're so light on your feet. I guess you would be tired, though, if you'd gained fifteen pounds in a year, as I have."

And he escorted her resolutely to the straight-backed arm-chair, which she was glad enough to take, since she had not been obliged to "give in."

It was but a week after this Thanksgiving Day, on which she had seemed so young and gay, that Old Lady Pratt gave Aunt Betsy a great fright by not getting up to breakfast. It was an event without a precedent, and the fact that she only owned to feeling a little "rheumaticky" did not reassure her anxious daughter.

Immediately after the untasted breakfast, Eliza was despatched to summon Harriet, and Harriet was soon at her mother's bedside.

She found the old lady seeming very well and bright, and quite scoming the idea of calling in


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 Dr. Baxter. Rheumatism, if rheumatism it was, was an entirely new guest in the sound old frame, and Harriet did not quite believe in it.

Just as she was about to leave her mother she said, abruptly: "Have you done anything to strain yourself, Mother? It don't seem quite natural for you to give out all at once so. Come, tell me."

The old lady looked up at her from among her feather pillows and said, rather petulantly: "You always was a sight smarter 'n Betsy. I sometimes think you're a leetle too smart."

Harriet sat down again, not ill pleased to be thus taxed with an excess of smartness.

"Tell me about it, Mother."

"That's jest as I choose," said the old lady, with some defiance in her tone. "Will you promise not to tell anybody?"

"Of course I will if you say so. Did you fall on the ice?"

"Not exactly."

Then, with a curious manner, half-reluctant, half-amused, she said: "I went out into the kitchen yesterday afternoon when Eliza was up attic changin' her gown, and there was that curtain over the sink all askew ag'in. I'vespoke to that girl about it forty times if I have once, and I was too mad to speak the forty-fust time. So I thought I'd fix it myself and it might be a lesson to her."

"But, Mother, you couldn't reach it! You're not tall enough."


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 "A pretty state of things it would be if we couldn't get hold of anything that was out of our reach!" the old lady retorted, with ready paradox. But she did not seem to want to go on.

"Well, what did you do?"

"Do? What would anybody do? I got a chair and climbed up on the edge of the sink."

"Dear me! And did you strain yourself?"

"No. I had a fall. But I fixed that curtain fust; straighter 'n it had been fer some time."

"And you fell onto the floor, all that distance? I don't wonder you feel lame."

"Well, no"—and here the reluctance became more evident,—"I fell into the sink!"

She looked defiantly at her daughter, as though daring her to laugh. This the daughter had no inclination to do.

"But, Mother, how did you ever get out?" she asked anxiously.

"Oh, I got out easy enough. But I felt kind o' stiff this mornin'," she admitted, after a pause, "and I thought I'd see how you'd all take it if I was to lay abed for once in my life. But mind you don't let on to anybody," she added, more sharply. "I ain't goin' to be the laughin'-stock of the neighborhood in my declinin' years."

The old lady was about again in a day or two, but she was pretty lame after this, and, indeed, she never seemed quite the same again. She would sometimes fall asleep in her chair—a thing which she had never been known to do before—and


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 she was always mortified and vexed when she awoke.

One afternoon she started up suddenly from a nap, saying, "Betsy, what did you say?"

"What is it, Mother," said Betsy, turning her head to listen.

"What did you say?" asked the old lady.

"Nothin', Mother, nothin'."

The strained voice became a little querulous. "Betsy, I ask you what was you a-talkin' about?

"Nothin', Mother, nothin' at all."

Then a flash of anger, her last fit of "temper," lit up the old eyes, and she cried, "What was you a-thinkin '  of?"

"Nothin', Mother, nothin'," declared the bewildered Betsy.

"Betsy, I heard ye!" screamed the baffled old lady; and she sank back exhausted, only to fall asleep again in a few minutes.

Yes, Old Lady Pratt was breaking up. She did not "take to her bed," as the saying is. She died one morning before "sun-up."

For a few days before her death she kept her own room, sitting, still upright, in the stuffed chair, in her sunny south window. It was January, and the snow lay glittering on the ground.

"I like it; it's so bright and cheerful," she declared, when they asked her if it was not too dazzling.

Betsy did not leave her side for several days and nights, till at last Harriet insisted upon


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 taking her place for what proved to be the last night.

She arrived, escorted by one of her grandsons, early in the evening, and they went directly up the narrow stairs. As they reached the upper landing they heard a strange sound—an aged, quavering voice crooning a lullaby.

The door of the bedroom stood open, and a candle was burning dimly. The old lady sat in her stuffed chair, with her faithful daughter close beside her. She held one of Betsy's hands, which she stroked softly from time to time, as she sang, in a high, broken treble, to the old tune of "Greenville":

Betsy, alas! could not hear the familiar lullaby, but she felt the caressing touch. The gray head nodded gently, as was its wont; but the passive look upon the patient face, across which the light of the candle flickered, had given place to one of deep content.

Harriet and the boy turned and crept down the stairs again, the boy hushed and embarrassed, Harriet crying softly to herself.

"I'm glad I came," she said, with a sob—"I'm glad I came. I think mother'll die to-night."

Old Lady Pratt "passed away" very quietly. The going out of the light which had burned so


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 bravely and steadily for more than ninety years was almost imperceptible to the watchers at her side.

The next two days were for Betsy a time of bewilderment. She sat, with a dazed look upon her face, receiving the visits of condolence. As one neighbor after another entered and pressed her hand in respectful sympathy, she would rouse herself to say, in a vague, wandering voice: "Mother's gone. Yes, mother's gone." And then she would sink back into silence, while the conversation went on about her in subdued tones.

"Poor Aunt Betsy!" they all said. "She's quite broken. It almost seems as though she were losing her mind."

Ah, it was not her mind she was losing, poor soul! She could have better spared that. It was the heart which had quite gone out of her.

Happily she was saved any acute feeling of sorrow in those first days by the merciful apathy that had fallen upon her. She was like a boat that has slipped its moorings, but floats upon a quiet sea. There were no wild tossings to and fro, no great waves to swallow up the fragile bark. It might drift far out on the darkening waters, or the incoming tide might rudely crush it on the rocks. For the moment it floated gently and aimlessly upon the bosom of the deep.

The stir and excitement of the funeral roused Betsy somewhat. She was pleased with the wreaths and crosses and other floral emblems


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 which were sent in, making the air of the little house heavy with their fragrance. She was even interested in her own mourning when they brought it to her and helped her put it on. Hach token of respect, each ceremony of grief, gratified her, as a tribute to the imperious little woman who had ruled her every thought and action.

There was consolation, too, in the peaceful figure in the rosewood coffin. The face she loved looked so life-like and so serene, that she could not grasp the idea that it must be put away from her sight, that all this pageant, as it seemed to her simple mind, was to end in utter blackness and emptiness.

She was taken in the first carriage with Sister Harriet; and even when the mournful procession slowly moved on its solemn way she was upheld by a grateful consciousness of the long line of carriages, with their many inmates, paying honorable tribute to her mother's memory.

It was a bitterly cold day, and the services at the grave were short—short, but terribly real and final. As she stood there in the cruel wind, poor drifting soul, the inevitable tide was rising, and the rocks were very near.

Harriet was to stay with her that night; and when they had had their dinner and set the house in order, she proposed to Betsy that they should both go to their rooms and lie down.

Betsy had been looking on with a feeling of jealousy foreign to her gentle nature, as Har-


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 riet worked with her about the little rooms, straightening the furniture and replacing the ornaments upon the tables. She was thankful to be left, for a time, at least, in possession of her own, so she meekly went up stairs and lay down on the bed, while Harriet retired to the "best chamber."

The rocks were very, very near, and the poor soul was fast drifting upon them. She lay upon her bed for a few minutes in helpless misery. Then she got up, and sat awhile in her window. The mere inaction, to which she was unaccustomed, was distressing to her, but she did not know where to turn for escape.

"Oh, dear!" she moaned softly to herself; "oh, dear! I ain't got anybody to do for any more."

She got up and went into her mother's room, and moved about, taking up and putting down again the little personal belongings: the faded pin-cushion on the bureau, the old receipt-book, the worn spectacle-case with the steel-bowed glasses,—the gold spectacles had only been worn on "occasions," and were kept under lock-andkey. She went to the great double-bed with the calico flounce around it, and softly smoothed the pillows.

By and by she took a dust-cloth and went over every bit of the furniture. It comforted her, for the moment, when she found a speck of dust to be removed. But when the humble task was finished, the comfort was past.


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 "Oh, dear! I wish I could do something for her," she whispered, as she crept down the narrow stairs to the sitting-room.

Eliza was making a cheerful clatter in the kitchen, and some English sparrows were squabbling in the snow; but for Betsy's ears there was nothing to break the sense of utter emptiness and desolation.

"Oh, dear!" she kept saying to herself—"oh, dear!"

She moved toward the parlor, where her mother had lain in state. As she opened the door a fierce chill struck her, and she went and got her little gray knit shawl, which she pulled tightly about her shoulders. Everything in the parlor was in its accustomed place, yet nothing was the same. She moved to the table in the middle of the room, and laid her hand upon its hard, cold surface. In the shadow beneath a window she saw a small object lying. She picked it up. It was a little bunch of pansies which one of the great-grandchildren had brought "to Grandma Pratt."

"Oh, dear!" murmured Betsy. "It's the pansies. They've been forgotten. And they was always her favorite flower."

She lifted them to her face a moment, and then she laid them down on the table. By and by she went to the kitchen and fetched a tumbler of water, and set the pansies in it.

After that she wandered aimlessly about again.


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Page:Remorse. - A tragedy, in five acts. (IA remorsetragedyin00cole).pdf/14

 ed realization of, as an Author;——to these, and to all concerned with the bringing out of the Play, I can address but one word—!—but that word is uttered sincerely! and to persons constantly before the eye of the Public, a public acknowledgement becomes appropriate, and a duty.

I defer all answers to the different criticisms on the Piece to an Essay, which I am about to publish immediately, on Dramatic Poetry, relatively to the present State of the Metropolitan Theatres.

From the necessity of hastening the Publication I was obliged to send the Manuscript intended for the Stage: which is the sole cause of the number of directions printed in italics.

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