There was no holiday for her, and no rest except in the
variations of her work. She seldom spoke, except it were to
Job, her husband, and never to him unless to scold.

She had probably married because four hands could do more
work than two.

But why Job had married her was still more questionable—
he had been crazy at one time of his life, and it may have been
during that malady, or induced by it; for certain it is, no mortal
ever saw any manifestation of love for the other on the part
of either of them; but though it would be curious to inquire
into the origin of their relation, our story leads us forward, not
backward, and our interest in the latter direction must be
sacrificed.

Enough that Sarah's father was a hardy, hen-pecked old
man, who did the drudgery, and was kept, or kept himself,
mostly out of sight.

Whether he was ever quite sane, nobody could determine,
as he was never heard to say enough, and never seen sufficiently
to warrant a conclusive judgment. If he appeared at
all, it was only in dodging from one concealment to another;
and if he spoke at all, it was merely in reply to some order
from Sarah or Sarah's mother.

Sarah herself has been known to say, in her wildest moods,
that he had vacant rooms in the garret.

No one ever thought of saying Mr. Morris; it was all old
Job, and the old man Morris; and the greatest deference he
ever received was to be called Sarah Morris's father, as, by
some of her more favored admirers, he has been know to be.
Even his house was not his own, nor his grounds; both were
considered and designated as Sarah Morris's, and in truth, and

[figure description] Page 130.[end figure description]

notwithstanding the shrew-tongue of her mother, she was mistress
of all.

There remains yet another individual, who, together with her
parents and herself, comprised all the household—this was a
youth named Elijah Burbank. In his boyhood he had been
indentured to Job Morris, and in his young manhood, as he
always had been, was known by the opprobrious epithet of
Sarah's bound boy.

He was slight and delicate, with hands as small as those of
his mistress, and much fairer; a face of extreme refinement,
and a mouth of that peculiarly sensitive expression that is apt
to awaken the tenderest sympathies in the opposite sex—and
the derision of men. His blue eyes and soft flaxen hair completed
the effeminacy of his appearance, and made his manhood
seem farther away by some years than it really was.

It was the evening of the day that Lije was twenty-one years
old that Sarah sat alone on the high south porch, known as the
two-story porch. There was no look-out from it except towards
a near and thick wood, and, moreover, it was pretty closely
curtained by trumpet flower and creeper vines; so the view,
such as it was, was considerably obstructed: and why she
chose this retired position was perhaps hardly known to herself,
for her custom was to recreate of evenings on the steps
of the front portico—a position commanding a mile-length view
of the high road.

Out upon this porch opened the door of Elijah's room, and
presently out of Elijah's room came with a soft step Elijah himself.

He was dressed in his new freedom suit; and as he stood
blushing in the moonlight, with one hand hiding itself in his

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yellow curls, there came to the heart of Sarah a feeling of
bashfulness and tremor that she could in no wise account for.
“What do you want, Lije?” she said directly. She meant by
her tone to demand why he was there, but somehow it yielded
concession and solicited confidence.

“I want you,” Elijah answered timidly, and looking down.

Sarah laughed a little foolishly, but recovered herself quickly,
and answered, playfully extending her hand, “Well, here I
am, take me.”

Elijah took the hand in earnest thus offered him in jest,
and bent his head so low over it that his lips more than touched
it.

“Nonsense!” cried Sarah, withdrawing her hand, “if you
are very hungry, Lije, you will find something in the cupboard
more eatable than my hand.”

Poor Lije! abashed and trembling for what he had done,
dropped on one knee and said, “I only wished, Miss Sarah, to
thank you for all your goodness to me, and if I—if I kissed
your hand, it was because I could not help it.”

“And if I box your ears,” replied Sarah, “it is because I
can't help it;” so saying she affected to slap his face, but it
was done so softly with the tips of her fingers that Lije did not
suffer any physical pain. “Besides,” continued Sarah, “what
do you want to thank me for? I have done nothing to
deserve your thanks that I know of.”

“Why, Miss Sarah, do you forget these nice new clothes,
and then your goodness to me all the while for so many years?”

“No, Lije, I don't forget that as my bound boy I was bound
to give you a freedom suit; and, by the by, I suppose you have
come to remind me that you are free.”

[figure description] Page 132.[end figure description]

“No Sarah, not that; I am not free—I am your slave, and
always shall be.” He bent over the unresisting hand again
and kissed it again; but Sarah's pride, which as yet was the
strongest feeling of her nature, was aroused by this time, and
rising she said, “I am glad to know I have a slave; but how
do you think you will like Mr. Hilton for a master?”

Poor Lije said he did not know, and went despondently away.

The Mr. Hilton alluded to was an old admirer of Sarah's;
and though it was suspected by Elijah that she had refused
him more than once, he was none the less annoyed by the
intimation she threw out. So, as I said, he went moping away,
and putting his hand in a cutting-box designed to chop oats
for cattle, made as if he would cut it off, almost hoping that by
accident he might do so, and that Sarah would then at least
pity him. He felt as if his brain had undergone some fearful
shattering, and for his life he could not tell whether Mr. Hilton
owned a thousand or fifteen hundred acres of land, nor could he
determine whether he owned two flouring mills and a saw mill,
or two saw mills and a flouring mill; but he was fully conscious
that in whatever shape his riches lay, he was a rich man,
and that the black shadow of his big stone dwelling-house
fell right over him, and would not even suffer him to see the
sunshine. His heart received a most thrilling telegraph presently
in the voice of Sarah calling him in a tone softer than
its wont. She had spread the table with unusual care, and was
herself waiting to serve the tea.

The little that was said during the meal had no reference to
what both were thinking of. Sarah praised the new clothes
at length, and intimated that Elijah would be leaving her for
some better place

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Elijah remembered that she had called him her bound boy,
and, drawing his manhood up to its full height, replied that he
should try to find some place to live where he was not despised,
and that the farm of his mistress, big as it was, did not comprise
the whole world.

Sarah replied, with a proud toss of her head, that she hoped
he would not only find a nice place to live, but that he would
get just such a wife as he desired, and she supposed that
would be some one very unlike herself.

“Unlike you in some respects, certainly,” replied Elijah,
rising from the supper of which he had partaken very sparingly.

Sarah began to sing gaily as she tossed the dishes together,

Elijah whistled his way to his own room, but returning
directly, threw a letter into Sarah's lap, saying he had forgotten
to deliver it sooner, and was especially sorry for it, as it was
probably from her lover, Mr. Hilton.

Sarah replied that she hoped so, though nothing was farther
from probabilities, and she knew it. It was addressed to her
mother, and in the writing of her mother's only sister, announcing
her severe and protracted illness, and begging her sister to
come and see her. Sarah did not that night go through the
formality of making the reception of the letter known to her
mother, but having broken the seal and read it, retired to her
own room, whether to think of Elijah or of her far-away relative
was known only to herself.

Sometimes in the course of the following day Mrs. Morris was

[figure description] Page 134.[end figure description]

made acquainted with her sister's illness, and shortly afterwards
fifty dollars were demanded of Job, and in a humor of especial
courtesy, Sarah informed him that she was going to visit aunt
Ruth, and that her return was uncertain.

When it became known to Elijah that she was actually going
from home, and for an indefinite time, the little pride that had
been developed in him wilted away, and he drooped like a plant
that lacks its proper nutriment. “If you are going away,”
he said one day to Sarah, “I will remain here till you come
back, for what would become of Job if both of us were
away?”

“Very well,” said Sarah, “don't let the old man suffer;”
but she was much more particular and earnest in her directions
for the care of her favorite riding horse. She need not to have
given any orders about anything that was hers, and Elijah in a
trembling voice could not help telling her so. Sarah tried to
laugh, but it was sorrowful laughter, and turning her face
away asked him—she had always ordered him till them—if he
would bring from the harvest-field a nice bundle of rye straw.
An hour had not elapsed when it was laid at her feet.

Sarah made no parting calls, and left no messages for her
friends—“if I die,” she said, “what good will it have done
that they smiled over me when I went away; and if I live to
come back, why we shall be just as glad to see each other as if
we had a formal parting.”

Up to the last moment of her remaining at home, poor Elijah
had promised his trembling heart one more interview with her,
and what was his disappointment and humiliation to find, as he
sought to join her on the portico the evening previous to her
departure, that she was already engaged in conversation with

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the rich miller, Mr. Hilton! All that night there was a rumbling
in his head as of mill-wheels, and all that night he
dreamed one dream over and over, which was that Sarah had
lost all her proud spirit and was a pale-cheeked prisoner of Mr.
Hilton's gloomy old stone house.

The miller had been married once, and report said the
gloomy old stone house had chilled the lost wife to death; but
Sarah only laughed when this was told her, and replied that if
she were born to be chilled to death she would not die any other
way; to the miller himself she was capricious as an April day,
now shining upon him in smiles, now frowning like a thundercloud;
but he was an obstinate prosecutor of his purposes, and
in no wise awed by a cloud, never so black though it were. It
was a matter of interesting speculation among Sarah's acquaintance
whether or not she would ever marry the miller; but it
was the opinion of the shrewdest of them that she was merely
dallying with him as the cat does with the mouse, and that
when the mood suited she would toss him aside contemptuously
and forever.

Probably such was her purpose; but she loved power, and as
almost all her young friends would have been proud of his
attentions, she exercised through him a pretty extensive
supremacy.

To Elijah, the big, silent house of Job Morris was desolate
enough when Sarah was gone—it seemed that the noon would
never come, and when it was noon that it would never be night.
Job worked silently on the same, and Sarah's mother scolded
and worked the same, but Sarah's wheel was still and Sarah's
busy feet were not to be seen, and so to Elijah there was
nothing worth listening to in the world.

[figure description] Page 136.[end figure description]

All the first evening long he sat on the stoop and talked with
Sarah's mother, albeit she scolded incessantly; it was now and
then about Sarah that she scolded, and to hear Sarah's name
pronounced in any way was a sort of miserable happiness to
the poor young man. He could not prevent himself from
speaking of the time when she would come back, as if it
brought it any nearer, and of talking of places greatly more
distant, as though that brought her nearer.

She had bidden him adieu with some careless jest about the
pain of parting, and he could not avoid recalling the tone and
the manner over and over, and of trying to find some latent
meaning that no one else could have found. Who but one who
is famishing for hope, can judge of his surprise and joy, when
on entering his room for the night, he discovered lying on his
bed, where Sarah had laid it, the new rye-straw hat she had
braided for him. It was trimmed with a bright blue ribbon,
and lined daintily with silk of the same color, and with this
slight and perishable foundation to rest all his future upon, we
will leave him till such time as he shall again cross the path of
our story.

The husband of the aunt Ruth, at whose door Sarah found
herself one morning in June, was a man of considerable cultivation
and some wealth. He was a dealer in furs, and
employed, in one way and another, a good many men, in one
of whom only we are particularly interested—this person's
name was Rodney Hampton. He was exceedingly handsome,
and Sarah thought his full auburn beard, penetrating blue eyes,
and polished manners contrasted with every one she had known
so as to throw them altogether in the shade. Aunt Ruth's
home was a comfortable and even pretty one, situated in one

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of the frontier towns of the West; but there was a refinement
and nicety about it that, to Sarah's uncultivated ideas, appeared
the height of style and elegance. Aunt Ruth was an invalid,
delighted with the sprightly companionship of her niece, and
rendered doubly dependent by the absence of her husband.
Rodney Hampton was this man's most confidential clerk, and
necessarily a good deal at his house—oftener still from choice,
after the arrival of the romping niece. She was speedily
known to half the inhabitants of the town, and a universal
favorite, as she was at home.

Is it any wonder if an impulsive, careless girl, as was Sarah,
should never have stopped to inquire who Rodney was, nor
whence he came, and how, more and more, the interest
awakened by her first introduction to him was settling down
into her heart? or if it be a wonder, why it must remain so?
for certain it is she did not inquire till she awoke one day to
find that only within the circle of his influence was there any
world for her. They rode together into the country, and came
home under the starlight and by the light of their own imaginations;
they walked together in the suburbs of the town, and
found interest in every ragged urchin or thorny shrub in their
path; they sat together in Aunt Ruth's pretty parlor and
smiled unutterable things.

By degrees the ruder portion of Sarah's rusticity became
toned down, and her extravagant taste subdued itself to a more
artistic fashion, so that when she had been with Aunt Ruth six
months she was regarded as quite the belle of the little city of
which she was an inhabitant.

And as the fall came on, not an evening passed that did not
find Rodney conversing with his gay-hearted favorite in tones

[figure description] Page 138.[end figure description]

that insinuated more than they said, and lingering and lingering
in such fond way as certainly contradicted indifference.
And to Sarah's credulous belief indifference was not only contradicted,
but admiration, respect, love—all proclaimed with
more than trumpet-tongued assurance.

He was a fine singer, and many a romantic song made
sweet promises to her heart, and many a meaning glance
confirmed the promises.

Every pretty cottage in the neighborhood had, at one time
and another, been selected as the future home of our lovers,
when there came one day to Sarah a letter, written in the
trembling and unpracticed hand of the almost forgotten Elijah.

It told her how much her mother wished her to come home;
how much, indeed, she needed her, and enlarged pathetically
on the miserable way the good woman was wearing off her
feet; it told, too, how much everybody wanted to see her, and
said how dreary and desolate the neighborhood was without
her; it even hinted that Mr. Hilton was pining away, and for
sake of pity of him, if for nothing else, she must come.

“The old house here seems lonesome as the barn,” urged
Elijah, but he did not say whether it were thus lonesome to
him, or to whom. “Your beautiful grey,” he concluded, “is
looking handsome, and is impatient to bear you about as he used
to do. Oh, Miss Sarah, for everybody's sake you must come!”

The funds for defraying the expenditure of the homeward
journey were inclosed, and when Sarah had finished reading
she was more sorrowful than she had been for a long while.

The door of an old and less enchanting world was again
open, and she saw that she must leave her soft dreams for
hard realities, for she had been used to hard work and hard

[figure description] Page 139.[end figure description]

fare at home, for the most part, and if she felt less tenderness
than a child should feel for its parents, why, they had felt less
for her than parents should feel for their child.

In reference to again meeting Elijah, she could not herself
understand the nature of her feelings—there was so much of
pity and tenderness, so much of protection on her part, and of
servitude on his, and, above all, so much love for Rodney, it is
no wonder Sarah could only cry, and wish she had never gone
away from home.

The letter was lying open in her lap, and the tears dropping
silently down her cheeks, red as roses still, when Rodney joined
her, and with a tenderness that seemed real, inquired the
nature of her sorrow.

She would have spoken, but grief choked her voice, and she
could only indicate the letter.

“From some lover?” asked Rodney, half angrily and half
reproachfully. Sarah shook her head, and he proceeded to
read it, saying, “Then of course you have no secrets from me?”
thus implying a right he had never asked for.

As he read he laughed many times in a sneering fashion that
Sarah did not like, and would have resented when her heart was
less softened than now, indicating, as he laughed, the numerous
blunders in the manuscript before him.

“Every one has not had your advantages, remember,”
pleaded Sarah; for Rodney was a ready, correct, and graceful
writer.

“I knew this fellow was your lover,” replied the dissatisfied
young man, and he mockingly placed the letter upon the heart
of the weeping girl.

“And what if he were my lover?” said Sarah, with

[figure description] Page 140.[end figure description]

something of her old ironical manner, smiling as she dried her
eyes.

“Nothing, nothing,” replied Rodney, dropping the hand he
had been demurely coquetting with, and speaking in the tone
of one vitally injured. “But,” he added, “you must have
known, Sarah, you must have seen, you must have felt [here
he pressed his hand against his heart, as though, if possible, to
prevent its breaking then and there], that you were cherishing
hopes never, never to be realized. O Sarah! may heaven
deal gently with your conscience, and never suffer it to reproach
you, as mine would me under a similar accusation.” He ceased
speaking, and hiding his face in his hands, seemed to be weeping.
Sarah put her arms about his neck, for she loved him, and
love is not ashamed of such demonstrations, and said artfully:

“And if Elijah were not my lover, dear Rodney, why, what
then!”

“Can you wrong me so cruelly as to ask?” spoke Rodney,
still hiding his face from her. “You know that to make you
my wife was a hope dearer than life to me.” And he went on
with a pitiful deceit men are fond of practising upon credulous
women, to speak of a predisposition to early death in his
family, and to say it mattered not; nobody would grieve for
him, and least of all, Sarah.

Sarah affirmed that his death would break her heart, and
especially if she knew that by a single moment she had hastened
it, and she gave him abundant proof of what her grief would
be, in the passionate outburst of tears which even the suggestion
of so melancholy an event produced.

“No tears for me,” said Rodney, “I am not worth them.
You are so good, so pure—I would not have been worthy of

[figure description] Page 141.[end figure description]

you, dear Sarah, and it is better as it is. I must try to forget
you—try to live on; and you—you will soon forget me with
him.”

He hid his face in his hands again, as if to hide from himself
the terrible truth; for it is astonishing to what sacrifices of
truth men will resort in order to appear true.

Blinded by her love, and bewildered by his pathetic appeals,
Sarah told him in the honesty of her full soul, that Elijah was
not her lover, or if he were, that she did not love him in turn;
that only himself was dear to her, and that if it were true he
loved her as he said, there was nothing between them and
happiness.

Rodney kissed her cheek, and said he was blessed; but the
voice seemed devoid of meaning, and the kiss more like the
farewell to a dead friend then the betrothing to a living love.

When they parted it was under a positive engagement of
marriage—even the day was arranged that he was to come to
her father's house and “bear her away, his bride.”

Many times he sought to drag poor Elijah forward, and to
make him an insurmountable obstacle in the way of the fulfillment
of his dearest hope, as he called his engagement; but
Sarah saw in this the jealousy, and not the weariness of love;
and would not suffer the happiness of her life, and of her dear
Rodney's life, to be thus idly thwarted. So they parted betrothed
lovers. Aunt Ruth was better, and with the prospect
of so soon again seeing her niece, smiled her benediction, and
Sarah went away; the bloom in her cheek softened to the
tenderest glow, and the flashing of her dark eyes subdued to
the gentlest radiation.

Rumor runs faster than the wind, and the report that

[figure description] Page 142.[end figure description]

Sarah was coming home to get married preceded her, and
curiosity was on tiptoe to know who the intended husband was.

She made no denial of her engagement when her young
friends came round her with playful banter and laughing congratulations.
The general impression prevailed, that the rich
miller was the happy man; and that the engagement was of
old standing—an impression that Sarah did not discourage.
There was one who did not come to offer congratulations, to
entreat pity, or to breathe reproach—and this was Elijah
Burbank. With the intelligence that Sarah was coming home
only to get married, he had gone, no one knew why or
whither. Sarah's mother could divine no motive for his sudden
resolution. All at once, she said he had seemed to droop like a
motherless kitten, and scold hard as she would, she could get
no spunk into him. It seemed, she said, as though he had no
interest in any thing but Sarah's horse and Sarah's garden,
and that by the hour he would talk with the dumb critter, and
the flowers, as if they had been sensible beings—that his last
visit was to the garden, and that he had gone away with a
rose from Sarah's favorite tree in his hand.

Tears came to the eyes of the young girl when she heard
this; but they were speedily dried in the sunny happiness that
awaited her, for when we are very happy it is hard to believe
there is any great misery in the world.

And the wedding-day came near, and the wedding-people
were all invited; but who the bridegroom was, was still a
secret. The miller was observed to be repairing his old house
about this time, and the fact gave credence to the rumor that
he was to carry off the prize.

How proud and happy Sarah was as she half admitted the

[figure description] Page 143.[end figure description]

correctness of the suspicion, in the thought of the brilliant
undeceiving that awaited! What a triumph it would be to
have her friends look up expecting to see the miller, and
behold Rodney—the handsome, accomplished, and elegant
Rodney!

And the wedding-dress was made; and the wedding-veil was
ready; and the wedding-heart was beating with joyous expectations,
when there lacked three days of the marriage-day. It
was an evening of the late November that Sarah sat among
her myrtle pots on the portico watching the gloomy gathering
of the clouds, and the last yellow leaves as they fluttered on the
almost bare branches, and dropped now and then on her head
or at her feet. It would not rain—she was quite sure it would
not rain. She thought the clouds were breaking and drifting
away, though any one else would have seen them closing more
darkly and darkly, and any one but she would have heard in
the sound of the wind the prophecy of the long November storm.

She wore a dress of red and black stripes, and a little gay
shawl coquettishly twisted about her neck, some bright scarlet
flowers among her black hair, for Rodney had oftentimes admired
the contrast of scarlet blossoms in her dark hair, and it
was for him she was watching, as her quick vision swept the
long distance again and again.

At length, as the last daylight lost itself in shadow, her
heart beat so quick and so loud as almost to choke her. She
had heard hoof-strokes in the distance, and who should be coming
but Rodney!

Nearer they came and nearer. She could see the horseman
more and more plainly—fear completed what hope began, and
she sank down almost fainting.

[figure description] Page 144.[end figure description]

The miller—for it was he—attributed her emotion to the
delight she felt in seeing him; and his spirits rose, and his tender
attentions and soft insinuations were doubled.

Every moment Sarah hoped Rodney would come and rid her
of his disagreeable presence; but he came not.

Across the field, half a mile away, lights were seen and
voices heard. They were near the road-side, and as Sarah's
imagination linked everything with Rodney, she proposed
going to see what was doing, for she feared that some accident
might have happened to him—he might be dying perhaps
within sight of her.

Silently she went along, leaving the breathless miller tugging
after as he could, till she reached a little knoll that overlooked
what was going forward. A glance convinced her that Rodney
was not there; and in the reaction of mind she experienced,
she laughed joyously, and running back to meet the miller,
told him in a lively tone what she had seen.

The lights were the fires of a camp made for a night's rest
by some people who were moving from one part of the country
to another. As they descended the slope together, they could
see two women preparing supper, by a fire of sticks and logs,
while one man was busy chopping wood, and another with
some children lay on the slope in the light of the blazing fire.
Beneath a low oak tree, yet full of dry rustling leaves, a rude
tent was spread, within which voices of women in low and
earnest conference were heard.

“Seeing your lights,” said the miller, addressing the man at
the fire, “we crossed the field from our home, which is just
over the hill, in the hope that we might be able to serve you;

[figure description] Page 145.[end figure description]

this is my good lady who is with me, and indeed it was her
kindly heart that drew us this way.”

Sarah smiled her acquiescence in what the miller said, and
the delight he felt in being for half an hour believed to be her
husband, even by a few strangers whom he might never meet
again, manifested itself in a thousand exuberant antics. He
quite made himself master of their little camp, and pressed
their own hospitalities upon them with a generous kindness
that was amusing to witness.

Meantime the women and children hastened to do reverence to
Sarah by offering her a mat to sit upon, and insisting that she
should remain and partake of their fare. They seemed to be
poor people, scantily enough provided with necessaries, to say
nothing of comforts. The children were barefoot, and most
untidily dressed and combed, but they seemed healthful, and
were noisily frolicsome. The women who were preparing supper
looked pale, and seemed discouraged, but patiently enduring.
What they were going to they knew not; but they had
come from poverty and suffering, and they were willing to go
forward even faintly hoping for something better. Recognizing
instinctively, perhaps, the presence of strangers, a gossiping
old crone emerged from the tent, and pulling Sarah by the
sleeve, began to address her in whispers. She appeared to be
the mother of part of the campers, and affected or had maternal
feelings for all.

“You see,” she said, “we would get along well enough, my
sons and daughters and me, though I am ninety, but for one
we have in there—she don't belong to us, though—she is sick,
and I'm afraid she will neyer live to get to him, though if resolution
could keep a body up, it will keep her up, for I never

[figure description] Page 146.[end figure description]

saw so much soul, as you may say, in one poor little body.
Her baby was born after we were on the road, and that delayed
us a week a'most; but it was her, and not ourselves, that
we cared most about: poor young woman, maybe it will
brighten her up like to see your face—it looks cheery and
good: suppose you just step inside and see the baby, and encourage
her a little;” and as she spoke she took Sarah by the
hand and led her into the tent, while the wistful eyes of the
miller followed her.

It was a pitiful picture that presented itself: on a rude bed
of straw that was spread on the ground, and with the light of
a tallow candle falling upon her face, lay a young and beautiful
woman. One hand lay on the quilt of patch-work that
covered her; and Sarah could not but remark the extreme
delicacy and smallness of it, while the other rested on the head
of her baby. Her voice was low and sweet; but when she
spoke of the baby's father, whom she said she was soon to join,
it grew stron and full of enthusiasm and courage. By extreme
necessity, she said, and no fault of his, she had become separated
from him; and when the old woman alluded to the suffering
she had endured, she said, with an entreating earnestness
again and again, that it was not the fault of the baby's father.

She seemed so well-bred, and so continually ignored any
endurance on her part, that poor Sarah, whose sympathies were
all interested, was at a loss how to behave, or in what way to
offer such charities as she felt to be required.

She was not without a woman's tact, however, and by praising
the baby won her way to the heart of the mother—for
the child she would accept some milk—nothing for herself.
She was comfortably, nay more than comfortably provided.

[figure description] Page 147.[end figure description]

She held up the child for Sarah to kiss as she was about
going away, and as she did so her own enthusiasm was awakened
anew—the eyes, the hands, the hair, were all so like the
father of the dear baby—“If you could only see him,” she
exclaimed, “I am sure you would not wonder that I love
him!”

“Show the young lady his picture won't you?” interposed
the old woman.

“Oh, she would not care to see it,” replied the loving wife;
and she added, pressing the hand of Sarah, “pray, pardon me
for talking of him so much; but then he has never seen the
baby, nor me for so long—dear Rodney, how much it must
have grieved him!”

Sarah's eyes fixed themselves with a new and terrible interest
on the baby, as it lay asleep in its smiling innocence and
beauty—the blood settled back to her heart—a faintness came
over her and she sunk to the ground.

The old woman dashed a cup of water in her face, and she
recovered enough to say it was nothing; she was used to fainting
fits, and would presently be quite well.

“Show the picture, it will revive her like,” insisted the old
nurse.

“Yes, yes,” gasped Sarah, “I must see the picture!”

The young mother took it from her bosom, with some apology
for its not looking so well as the original, and presented it,
to complete, with its fair familiar smile, the undoing of a too
trustful heart. Her eyes in one long stony stare fixed themselves
upon it, as though she would fain look away the horrid
lie, that in some fearful way had obscured the truth of her betrothed.
Catching at the shadow of a hope, she whispered to

[figure description] Page 148.[end figure description]

herself, “I see, I see how it is, it is the brother of my Rodney.”

“Can there be another in the world,” cried the sick lady,
“who resembles Rodney Hampton? Where did you meet the
person you speak of? not surely in —?” She named the
place where Sarah had met Rodney—where she had loved him,
and where she had promised to be his wife.

“No, not there—not there,” replied Sarah; “the person I
know, you have never seen;” and pressing a kiss on the white
hand of the startled invalid, she went away with an unsteady
and hurried step.

Heavily she leaned on the arm of the miller as she slowly returned
homeward. “I suppose those people took you for my
wife,” he said, laughing foolishly.

“And what if they did?” replied Sarah.

“Nothing,” answered the miller, “only I wish it were true.”

Sarah walked on in silence; but more and more firmly till
she reached the homestead-door, and then she said with a
calmness that was fearful to hear, “There is a rumor abroad
that I am to be married the day after to-morrow—it was a
silly jest of mine—if you please you may make it truth.”

When she had received the miller's affirmative response, she
coldly silenced his tender demonstrations, and forbidding him
to see her again till the hour appointed to unite their fates,
she retired to her chamber, and gave herself up to the awfullest
of all tortures—the rack of unrequited love.

And the wedding day came, and the guests stood silent and
wondering when they saw the bride, for her eyes had lost their
lustre, and her cheek was hueless as death; but in due form
she was made the wife of Mr. Hilton, and in due time she

[figure description] Page 149.[end figure description]

accompanied him to the gloomy old stone house. From her marriage-day
she was never seen abroad, and her gay laughter was never
heard to ring out anywhere; her bright saddle was hung up
in the dusty garret, and her bright cheeks faded and grew thin.
The gallant grey was tied to the mill-wheel, and trod his sober
round; and Sarah trod her sober round, doing her duty, but
scolding the miller as loudly and sharply as her mother had
scolded Job. In the main, however, she was a good wife, and
if she scolded the miller, so the neighbors said, it was no more
than he deserved, for he was a hard, selfish, and tyrannical
master.

Many years they plodded on together; but at length the
miller was gathered to his fathers; and other years Sarah lived
on alone, wearing a mourning dress, and caring little to conceal
the silver streaks that were beginning to show above her temples.
One winter night as she sat by the blazing fire, the
flinty snow rattling against the pane, there was a loud knocking
at the door, and the next moment a strange gentleman was
borne in, who had been thrown from his carriage at her gate,
and considerably hurt. He was carried immediately to bed,
and the village doctor called, who pronounced his patient
badly bruised, but in no wise seriously injured. He was partially
unconscious at first, but after his face for a few minutes
had been bathed, he recovered sufficiently to thank his hostess,
and to inquire whether his luggage were safe—one box he was
particularly solicitous about, and could not rest till Sarah had
brought it to his bedside. On seeing it he smiled, and shortly
afterwards fell asleep. That smile seemed to join itself to some
old memory, but Sarah could not tell what; it might be with
Rodney perhaps, but if it were, it stirred no troubled thought.

[figure description] Page 150.[end figure description]

The stranger was certainly handsome, and from his dress and
belongings was evidently of no mean position in the world—a
man of leisure and money, Sarah thought, travelling probably
for his health, and while she mused and turned her eyes from
the refined and expressive face to the little white hand that
seemed reaching towards her, wondering who her guest was and
when she should find out all about him, the clock struck
twelve, more loudly than it had ever struck till then, it seemed
to Sarah, and the sleeping gentleman unclosed his eyes, and
fixed them earnestly and tenderly upon the watcher by his
side, and as he gazed his pale cheek blushed, and his mouth
lost the firm expression of manhood, and took the sweet sensitive
look of the loving boy.

“Can I do anything for you?” asked Sarah, not well knowing
what else to say.

“Yes,” replied the stranger, “I fear a long cherished treasure
is lost from this box. Will you please remove the lid that
I may see?”

Sarah slipped the covering aside, and for a moment stood
paralyzed, and then, as her eyes fell inquiringly upon the
stranger, the blush of twenty years again colored her cheek.

The box contained a coarsely-braided rye-straw hat, trimmed
with a faded blue ribbon!

Elijah! Sarah! was all they could say in the first joyous
shock of surprise. What more they said ultimately, let us not
care to inquire—enough that the day broke for them at midnight,
and there was never any more darkness in all their
lives.

p493-158 THE HOUSE WITH TWO FRONT DOORS.

[figure description] Page 151.[end figure description]

Twenty-five years ago there stood in a straggling village on
the banks of the Ohio, an old house, with two doors, and a
good many irregular windows in the front. Two clumsy chimneys
of stone showed squattily above the steep red gables—the
one for architectural effect, simply, the other the extension of a
veritable flue; and from this last, a cloud of black smoke
worked itself out, and after a little vain effort to keep itself up,
sagged towards the ground, for the air was heavy—the orange
light rapidly blackening against the yellow moss on the tops of
the western hills, and the evening coming in with the promise
of a wet night.

The village was not at all picturesque; a great hill that
extended as far as the eye could see, and the summit of which
seemed almost to touch the sky, formed its background, and
completely shut out the view in that direction. It was not one
of those poetic hills that are beautified with pasture-fields, shady
trees, flowery thickets—on the contrary, its village-side was
bare of vegetation, except, indeed, a scanty growth of stunted
oaks, together with some thistles, and dwarf blackberry vines,
which, in some sort, relieved its monotony of baked clay,

[figure description] Page 152.[end figure description]

cracked by the sunshine, and washed into deep gullies by the
rain.

The village streets were still less attractive—unpaved for the
most part—full of ruts, where refuse soaked and rotted, and
obstructed at all points with idle carts, coopers' stuff, heaps of
shavings and the like. They had their share, too, of stray cows
and quarrelsome dogs, and were provided with mud-holes, at
convenient distances, where swine, with patches of bristles
scalded off by the ill-natured housewives, took such ease as their
nature loveth, and by grunting and squealing further provoked
the wrath of their oppressors, for the hearts of women are not
always so gentle as poets say, and if the truth be fairly spoken,
are, I am afraid, no less accessible to induration than the faces
with which hard fortune plays such terrible havoc. But notwithstanding
the facts recorded, the town was not without pretensions
which no transient abider therein could gainsay without
disadvantage.

The clergyman's house, with its close-shut windows, carved
portico, and grey garden wall, set round with austere box—its
gravelled walk, along which tall sunflowers baked their great
cakes brown, together with the red brick meeting-house,
with its solemn burial-ground, where a thousand low headstones
shrugged their shoulders beneath the two or three grand
monuments, were perhaps, the distinguishing ornaments of the
place—the centre about which clustered the more exclusive
piety—the evangelical pride, so to speak, of the village
folks.

The market-house, which was, in point of fact, a dismantled
canal boat set upon dry land, was also an object, not only of
general interest, but one which kindled local admiration almost

[figure description] Page 153.[end figure description]

to enthusiasm. Real estate in this vicinity was estimated to
have doubled its value in consequence of this “improvement,”
and two or three owners of lots thereabouts retired from
business, and were thereafter clothed and fed, simply by virtue
of the market-house. No one will be disposed to doubt this
statement who has observed what a number of idiers a single
grocery store or turnpike-gate will maintain. I once knew two
able-bodied men to support themselves and their families on the
merits of a cross-road—but this, perhaps, was an extreme
case.

Then there was the squire's office, a diminutive lean-to of the
corner dry-goods store, in the official glory of which all ordinary
considerations of right and morality sunk completely out of
sight. The squire wore a weed on his white hat in memory of
the lamented Mrs. Bigsham, and this drew after him more than
a third part of the feminine sympathy of the town, and was perhaps
the basis of his popularity—every unmarried woman felt
as if that black band was an electric link between herself and
the great squire, which might at any time be converted to a
bond of perpetual union.

“The office,” as it was called, was the habitual resort of the
big academy boys—decayed pilots of river-boats, doctors' students,
who jested about “subjects” and drew teeth for half-price—
and, as may be inferred, the convocations of these learned
disputants were not a little promotive of exclusive feeling in the
neighborhood. True, the legal prestige was somewhat marred
by the fact that a poor shoemaker plied his trade in the rear of
the magisterial office, but aristocracy did all it could in self-defence
by suspending a curtain formed of a mosquito-net between
the bench of the obnoxious workmen and the arm-chair

[figure description] Page 154.[end figure description]

and the mottled spittoon of the squire. Inadequate as the
screen would seem, it required not even that to separate the
young shoemaker, who was lame and melancholy, from the rude
and boisterous frequenters of the official department, so that a
more impenetrable stuff was not in the least necessary. He had
been in the village a year, or more, and nobody knew anything
about him except that he was a faithful and honest worker, and
put himself in nobody's way, for he moved about quietly as a
ghost, and with as little interest in the earth apparently. He
was known to the old woman with whom he boarded, as Peter
Gilbraith, and to the other towns people, who knew him at all,
as “Shoe Pete”—but whether called by one name or another elicited
from him no indication of pleasure or displeasure. Nature
had gifted him with eyes of wonderful beauty—hair that curled
itself all the more gracefully for his careless management,
and a smile of that strangely fascinating sort, that seems made
up of mingled scorn and sweetness; but accident had dishonored
his fair proportions by curtailing one leg of its rightful dimensions,
which obliged him to walk with a stick, and gave to his
shoulders a perpetual stoop.

Whether it were poverty or lameness, or both, that made
him shrink from the little observation he excited, or whether
misanthropy were a part of his nature, nobody knew, and very
soon nobody cared—for in what way could “Shoe Pete,” they
argued, enhance the value of town-lots, or contribute to social
pleasure? And true it is that his great sad eyes seemed to
rebuke the spirit of mirth, and his smile made the beholder of
it feel as if he were more than half despised. His dress was
careless (with the exception of the high-heeled shoe, which was
neat in the extreme) not slovenly, however, and it always bore

[figure description] Page 155.[end figure description]

evidence of refinement, as did also his pale face, in spite of
neglected hair and beard.

From sunrise till sunset his hammer was never still, and
sometimes late into the night, even, its whack, whack, sounded
upon the soft leather, so that it is not strange that reports
gradually went into circulation, that Shoe Pete was “laying
up” money; nor that overtures towards his acquaintance began
to be warmly pressed. He remained inaccessible, however, and
was observed to walk with less stoop, and to show a bright
indignant spot on either cheek, after some customer had
been unusually condescending with him.

But whether the season was a busy one or not, the young
shoemaker was never idle—his candle made the small window
above his work-bench shine till midnight, and his leather apron
was in requisition late and early. There was always a book or
a newspaper under his pillow, in the morning, his landlady
reported, and this fact was accepted by her as presumptive
evidence, that Peter Gilbraith was a great scholar, and though
it may seem like a small basis on which to found a reputation
for scholarship, it was sufficient, and puzzling questions in geography
and grammar began to be propounded to him by the
young villagers when they came to have their feet measured.
Nevertheless, the sun threw his last rays from the yellow moss
on the tops of the western hills and sunk completely out of sight
on the evening upon which our story opens, and the shoemaker
had never as yet received the slightest recognition from the
great Squire Bigsham. Is it very singular if he started and let
fall his hammer, as the great man pulled his chair about so that
he faced the mosquito-net curtain, and said with easy familarity,
and as if he were in the habit of addressing him every day—

[figure description] Page 156.[end figure description]

“You are a happy dog, Gilbraith—I almost wish I was a shoemaker
instead of the public functionary I am?”

Gilbraith smiled, and took up his hammer.

“Let me see,” continued the squire, “how long have we
been acquainted?”

“I have worked in your office about a year, sir.”

“A year! Zounds! why it seems jest t'other day you come!”
He knew the time very well, but he wanted to make believe that
he was surprised so much time should have elasped without his
having cultivated friendly relations with his excellent neighbor.

The shoemaker had resumed his hammer and his old expression
of sad indifference.

The squire went on: “Bless my soul! a year! I wouldn't a'
believed any feller, if he'd a tole me that, exceptin' you, yourself.”
He laid special stress on the you, as if he held the young
man's veracity in high esteem.

The shoemaker smiled again at the implied compliment, but
made no other acknowledgment.

The squire was not to be thwarted, however—the news had
come to his ears that morning, that Shoe Pete had actually
purchased a lot adjoining the market-house, and paid a hundred
dollars down, for the same! so he gathered up his feet and said—
“Look-a-here now, did you ever see any man make a boot to
fit a feller's foot like that?”

Gilbraith clutched his hammer, or it must have fallen again—
the squire had, of a verity, indicated that shoemakers were
men, and at the same time had designated himself as a fellow!
He was too proud to disparage another man's work, and said
something to the effect that the boots seemed to have done
good service.

[figure description] Page 157.[end figure description]

“Well, sir, I'll tell you, sir,” continued the squire, bringing
his courtesy to a climax, “I want for you to make me a pair of
tip-top stogy boots, and you may jes put your own price onto'
em, too.” The shoemaker said his time was fully engaged for a
month or more, but that he would attend the order at his
earliest convenience, and limping forward he took the requisite
measure with the air of conferring, rather than of receiving a
favor.

The customary loungers dropped in one after another, and
each, after a little subdued talk with the squire—the upshot of
which was, it is reasonable to infer, the prosperous fortunes of
the shoemaker—dexterously dipped his conversation so as to
include that hitherto ignoble person. But his replies were brief
and cold, and on the entrance of the doctor's student, who was
usually inflated with great news—the mosquito-net resumed its
ancient effectiveness, and Gilbraith, the transitory man, was
resolved once more into Shoe Pete.

“I say, Doc, what is it?” said one of the idlers, smelling the
news afar off, “anything new about that ere miss what was
smuggled into the two-door house t'other night?”

“A few particulars have transpired,” replied the student
whom they called Doc, and sliding his legs apart, he thrust his
hands deep in his pockets and waited to be questioned further.

“What miss?”—“Which two-door house?”—“You one
with so many winders?” were a few of the twenty questions
asked in a minute.

“He means the house with the two front doors into it, and
the two stone chimbleys onto it—well one ov them chimbleys is
false, and maybe there's someten else 'ats falser an what the

[figure description] Page 158.[end figure description]

chimbley is, about that ere house—my daughter posted me up
as we went to meetin' last night.”

Having thus brought himself to a level in point of importance,
with the young doctor, the squire moved his hand graciously
towards him, and abdicated in his favor. He, nevertheless,
was slightly offended—slid his legs a little farther apart,
and said haughtily “that he didn't know that he could enlighten
the fellers so well as Squire Bigsham.” This obliged the
squire to make a humiliating confession—to say, in fact, that
he “knew nothing except that a young woman, no better un
what she ort to be, appeerently, had been lately smuggled into
the two-door house, and that the feller what brought her,
had shortly afterwards disappeared between two lights, leaving
her with a limited amount of chink, and with no livin'
soul to do for her, except the greenest kind of a green-horn.”

The shoemaker had lighted his tallow candle, and the squire
his big lamp, for it had grown quite dark, and a sudden gust
had just driven a dash of rain, mixed with yellow leaves, against
the window. The door burst suddenly open, and a slender,
freckled-faced girl, with blue eyes, staring wide, and red hair
flying in wild disorder, stood fronting the wondering group, and
with many catchings of breath and earnest gesticulations, made
known the facts that she lived with a lady “that was took
awful sick—that she had been after the ould dochther and the
ould dochther wasn't in it, and she was afther the young
dochther to come with her to the lady, who lived in the house
beyant, wid the two doors—and the young dochther had a right
to go wid her if he had any sowl.”

“Hooraugh!” shouted some of the rude fellows, “Go wid

[figure description] Page 159.[end figure description]

her, Doc! Why if the chap ain't a blushin' up to his eyes—
thought he had more pluck.”

And one of the most disreputable of the fellows seized his
hat, and volunteered to accompany the frightened girl, asseverating
that he himself was the young dochther.

All at once the shoemaker dashed aside the frail curtain,
and with his eyes flashing fire, stood in the midst of the vulgar
crew, almost erect.

“Whoever dares to lie further to this poor child, or to
insult her in any way,” he cried, “does it at his peril.” And
leaving the dastards dumb with astonishment, he motioned the
girl to follow him, and without another word went out into the
rain. Ten minutes afterwards the old woman with whom he
boarded, wrapt in shawls and bearing a lantern in her hand,
was feeling her way through the wet weeds of an alley towards
the old house with the two front doors.

Presently, through the windows of an upper room, the curtains
of which were carefully drawn, the lights were seen to
shine, and shadows to pass, as if there was hurrying to and
fro within, but the most watchful gossips could discern nothing
more. Rumor had not exaggerated the truth—that night,
when the storm was loudest and the sky blackest, the poor
young lady who had been a few days before cast helpless upon
her own sad fortune, took in her trembling arms the unwelcome
child that must bear witness to her frailty, through time
as deathless as the years of God.

The little window by which the shoemaker worked looked
toward the house with the two front doors, and often as he
drew out his long threads, his eyes wandered that way, his
own isolated condition quickened his sympathies for the young

[figure description] Page 160.[end figure description]

mother, at whom so many even of her own sex were ready to
cast stones. Sewing, and hammering, and pegging, he
dreamed a thousand dreams of improbable ways in which he
might serve her, and as he took his walk to his evening meals
he now and then went round by the lonesome house, and the
oftener he took that road the shorter it appeared, until it
seemed to him at last, as he climbed the weedy hill and
crossed the bare common, only to pass that house and hobble
down the hill again that he was taking the shortest way
home.

So far from losing anything in the estimation of the young
fellows who frequented the “office,” by the spirit he manifested
in defence of the poor girl and her mistress, he was
thereby promoted to a considerably higher degree of importance,
and it soon became a matter of no unfrequent occurrence
for them to address directly to him such narratives as involved
the exhibition of what they esteemed the most admirable
manly courage. But these polite attentions gained imperceptibly,
if they gained at all, upon his kindly feeling, and a
brief word, or a careless nod, was usually the only acknowledgment
he made.

The squire's boots were a complete success, and served to
give him at once the reputation of a “tip-top” shoemaker;
but this was not enough to lift him out of the socket of
obscurity in which he was sunken, and give him anything like
a desirable social position. But what was termed genteel
patronage began to be extended to him and by degrees he
became known as little Gilbraith, and to be called Shoe Pete
only behind his back.

One evening, when an importunate creditor presented

[figure description] Page 161.[end figure description]

himself to the squire, he suddenly turned round with the inquiry,
“Mr. Gilbraith, could you make it convenient to lend me five
dollars for a day or two?”

“Certainly, sir, with the greatest pleasure,” replied the
shoemaker, with a heartiness that he had never before been
known to use, and opening a well-filled purse he presented the
note.

As the squire went forward to receive it, the mosquito-net
curtain intercepted his way and with one dash of his great
hand he swept it to the ground, with the outraged exclamation:
“What dingnation fool ever put this thing up here anyhow!”

As may be supposed, it was never hung up again, and thus
the line of demareation between the “office” and the “shop,”
became somewhat wavering.

The yellow leaves were coming down in the fall rain, when
the shoemaker invested his first earnings in the lot adjoining
the market-house, in consequence of which the squire acknowledged
his humanity, and when the Christmas snow hung its
white garlands on the box along the clergyman's grounds,
heaped higher the mounds in the graveyard, and lay all unbroken
before the house with the two front doors, a bright tin
sign bearing the name of Peter Gilbraith, between two gilt
boots, was nailed on the office door in close proximity to the
squire's letter-box, and an apprentice had been taken into the
shop, and with this assistance the young shoemaker found it
difficult to fill his orders.

“I think I will not go to supper to-night,” he said to his
apprentice one evening, as the last sunlight glittered on the
snow that hung over the caves of the house with two doors.

[figure description] Page 162.[end figure description]

There was a great deal of work to be finished that night, and
he had just lifted his hand to draw the curtain across the little
window, preparatory to lighting the candle when a new and
joyous light came suddenly into his eyes, and leaving the curtain
undrawn, he leaned his face against the window for some
minutes, and said, at length, with a changed tone and manner:
“I believe I will go, after all.”

The next minute the apprentice looked out, and was surprised
to see him going up the hill through the unbroken snow,
directly away from the house of the old woman with whom he
took his meals. He did not see the house with the two front
doors—much less the young woman at the window, holding a
little child in her arms, and trying to make it see the moon
come up, and if he had he would have been just as much at a
loss to know why Peter walked that way, and indeed that
young man might have found it difficult to explain the puzzle
himself.

“I never saw his lameness interfere so little with his
walking, as it seems to now, in spite of the snow,” mused
the apprentice, and he drew the curtain, and lighted the candle.

The snow hung in a great roll over the top of the stone chimney,
unstained and unmelted. “There is no fire below,” thought
Peter, and he sighed.

“Perhaps it is the woman's black hair that makes her face
look so pale,” he thought, as walking slowly he gazed upon her;
but suggestions of scanty fare would not be silenced, and he
sighed again and walked more slowly than before. Just then
the little child thrust its naked arms from out the ragged blanket
in which it was wrapt, and began to cry bitterly.

[figure description] Page 163.[end figure description]

Peter stopped and stood still. In spite of the tender coaxings
and cooings of the woman, which Peter could hear from
where he stood, the child cried more and more bitterly. Moved
by a sudden impulse he walked directly to the door nearest to
which the woman stood. She saw him and opened it at once,
with an air of such modest sweetness, as caused him to take
off his hat—a civility he had never shown to anybody since
coming to the village until then.

There was no fire, sure enough, and the other evidences of
comfort were all as meagre as imagination could have pictured
them. He hesitated for a moment when the young
woman paused as if expecting him to make known his errand,
but charity is never long in suiting means to ends, and he
replied to her silence that he was in need of a person to bind
shoes, and not knowing where to seek with the hope of success,
had ventured to inquire of whomever he chanced to see.

Before he had spoken half-a-dozen words the baby lifted its
head from its mother's shoulder, and with tears in its bright
wondering eyes remained looking at him, perfectly quiet—one
dimpled shoulder peeping from the ragged blanket above and
two little bare feet, blue with cold, dangling below.

Is it any wonder if Peter took both those little feet in his
hand, and tried to warm them under the pretence of seeing
whether he had ever made so small a shoe?

When he returned to his shop that night, he found two
young women, one of them the squire's daughter, waiting to
have measures for shoes taken.

They whispered and laughed with one another, not a little
rudely the shoemaker thought, as he was getting ready his measure,
and their orders were given in a manner that certainly

[figure description] Page 164.[end figure description]

bordered upon insolence—the squire's daughter was especially
presumptuous and troublesome.

She doubted very much whether he would be able to suit
her at all, she said, as she tossed her golden curls from her firered
cheeks; but she should not hesitate to send him back
twenty pairs of shoes, if he failed so many times to please her—
it was so hard to make such people understand what one
wanted—and with this little indication of her superiority and
willfulness, and with an indignant fling of her flounced skirt, she
withdrew without so much as the slightest bend of her pretty
neck.

But Mr. Gilbraith gave little attention to her saucy airs—
his thoughts were too busy with the pale-faced mother, and
her shivering baby.

When spring came, two more lots were added to the first
one, and the prosperous shoemaker built himself a fine new
shop with a great square show window, and a sign almost as
big as the squire's front door. And as a finishing stroke of
finery, there was an imported carpet on the floor, and
three yellow windsor chairs for the accommodation of the
ladies.

He was called Mr. Gilbraith almost altogether, and his store
was the fashionable one of the place; and when a brick pavement
was laid down in front of the door and an awning
stretched above it, that direction became the exclusive promenade;
and every day, after sunset, some twenty or thirty young
women were to be seen tripping over the pavement, and turning
their faces away from the window, of course. And last,
and first, and oftenest, the squire's daughter was sure to go by,
and more than any one else she stopped to examine the

[figure description] Page 165.[end figure description]

slippers in the window, at which times she took occasion to toss
her curls coquettishly, and smile in a most bewitching fashion.
But the shoemaker worked on at these times just as if her
pretty face was not at the window, and stimulated by his indifference
she stepped into the shop one evening and inquired the
price of a pair of slippers which she said had taken her fancy.
He replied without so much as glancing towards her. “I should
like to have them fitted,” she said, with a little more deference
in her tone than she had hither to used, and sitting down in the
yellow windsor chair she extended her little foot. The young
man motioned his apprentice to wait upon the lady, but she
would not be thus defeated. “They don't please altogether,”
she said, “perhaps it is the fault of the fitting—will you be
kind enough to give me your opinion, Mr. Gilbraith.” It was
the tone rather than the words that elicited the young man's
attention. He laid aside his work, and shaking back his curls
with a grace of artlessness surpassing art, came forward, the
faint color of his face heightened for the moment to a flush of
confusion that made him positively handsome. The young lady
thought so, and apologized for the trouble she was making.
He was not used to such deference, and as he fitted the slipper,
held the little foot in his hand longer than need were
“There! that is perfect,” exclaimed the beauty, referring to
the slipper.

“It is the foot that makes the shoe look so well,” he replied;
“shall I send them home for you?”

Oh no! the beauty would not give him so much trouble, she
was already greatly obliged—and with a bright smile and a
low courtesy that seemed to say she was receiving a favor, took
the parcel in her white hand and was just stepping from the

[figure description] Page 166.[end figure description]

door as a pale young woman, with a bundle of shoes in one
arm and a child hanging over her shoulder, came in.

All women love babies—the squire's daughter was no exception;
and with an ingenuous exclamation of delight she
stopped, took the rosy face of the little one between her hands,
and kissed eyes and mouth and cheeks, prattling the while, in
such a pretty way as went straight to the heart of the mother,
and made a softer impression on the shoemaker than all her
coquettish arts could ever have done, for some strange affinity
had drawn him towards that little helpless creature from the
dawn of its unfortunate existence. It often happened thereafter
that when the village beauty passed the shoemaker's
shop, he was at the door or window, and gradually the
exchange of the evening salutation began to be looked to by
both as the event of the day.

All the summer long the pale face was seen at the window
of the house with the two front doors, and late into the night
the candle would shine on the tired fingers that were always
busy binding shoes. The path up the hill from the shoe-shop
to the door was worn quite distinctly along the sod, and the
shoemaker was observed to walk along it very frequently—
more frequently, the neighbors thought, than business
required.

Meantime the baby grew more and more in the affection of
the young shoemaker, and he would often take with him when
he went to the house, a flower or an apple or some other trifle
to please her baby eyes, and she would reach her hands up to
be taken on his knee, and he would bend his head and allow
her to make playthings of his curls, at will. No wonder she
grew fond of him and learned to clap her hands and crow

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when she saw him, for is it not true that Providence “creates
the love to reward the love?” And when this little child had
found access to his heart it became gradually more accessible
to others, for the humanizing influence of love, even for a flower
or a dumb animal, is beyond calculation. Like the dew and
the rain that help to mould the dust into the rose, it falls
into the desert of life, and straightway a garden is produced.

Everybody said, “What a change has come over Gilbraith—
he is not the Shoe Pete he used to be at all;” but no one
dreamed what had wrought the change.

And the summer went by and the bright leaves fell on the
brighter head of the little girl as the shoemaker tugged her
about among the hollyhocks and poppies of the door-yard.

The house with the two front doors had a smoke in its chimney
all that winter, and the gossips said the mistress of it was
binding the shoemaker's heart as well as his shoes, but the
wisest gossips are at fault, sometimes.

It was the week before Christmas and the pale-faced shoebinder
was at her work, paler and perhaps more melancholy
than usual, for it was hard to get along at the best, and it was
now mid-winter, and her health, less robust than it used to be,
was scarcely equal to the demands upon it.

Little Orphie, for so the fatherless child had been named,
had learnt to lisp, “mother,” but she called that name less
often than Gabriel as she persisted in designating Mr. Gilbraith.
She had fallen asleep in his arms, and her upturned
face seemed asking to be kissed as her bright little head rested
against his bosom. He pulled down her coarse seanty dress,
for her bare legs dangled out of it, and said speaking partly

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to himself and partly to the child, “Next birthday little
Orphie shall have a new dress, bright as the poppies she likes
so much.”

Perhaps it was the allusion to her birthday that awoke in
the mind of the mother unwelcome memories, for throwing
down her work with angry haste, she laid the child in the cradle,
and with a scornful flush on her cheek removed it from the
warmth of the firelight into the darkest corner of the room.

“What did you do that for?” asked the shoemaker with
both authority and displeasure in his tone.

“What right have you to dictate in reference to my child?”
she replied, and resumed her work with an averted face.

“The right which my love for her gives me,” he said, in a
tone very gentle and winning.

The mother's heart was touched, and hiding her face in her
hands she burst into tears—poverty, shame, pride, and sorrow,
had produced a momentary feeling of harshness even for her
child, but the next instant she was humbly and heartily repentant.

“I wish I was dead,” she sobbed, at length, “or that I
never had been born—that would be better; nobody cares for
me in the world, and even you are stealing from me the heart
of my child!”

The young man was making some tender apology, to the
effect that it was through the child's heart that he had hoped
ultimately to reach the mother's, when a loud knock on the
door arrested the attention of both parties, and caused the
baby to sit suddenly upright, and stare wonderingly about.

“You may bring her cradle back where it was,” said the
mother softly, and hastily brushing the tears away, she opened

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the door with a smile that changed to an expression of pleased
surprise when she saw that the visitor was Squire Bigsham.

“You need not trouble yourself about the cradle,” she said,
almost coldly, and aside, as it were, to the shoemaker, and
from that moment, gave her undivided attention to the more
distinguished guest.

When Mr. Gilbraith returned home he found a dainty little
note awaiting him—Miss Bigsham presented her compliments
and begged the honor of Mr. Gilbraith's company on Christmas
Eve.

“By George! but she's the prettiest girl what's in this
town?” exclaimed the apprentice, as he presented the note, and
he added, as he saw the smile on his employer's face, “I cut
the best piece of ribbon in the store to make rosyetts to put
onto her shoes!”

“Quite right,” replied Mr. Gilbraith, and refolding the note,
he placed it carefully in his vest pocket.

The following evening the mistress of the house with the
two front doors failed to return her work, as usual—the
next day the apprentice was sent for it, and received the
answer that it was not yet completed. Among the rest were
a pair of slippers for Miss Bigsham. They must be sent home
before the Christmas Eve, and having waited as long as he
could, Mr. Gilbraith went himself, and in a mood less amiable
than common. Not a stitch had been set in the slippers,
and the fingers that should have done that work were busy
making a shirt for Squire Bigsham.

The shoemaker was angry, but his first expression of displeasure
was arrested by little Orphie, who clung to his knees,
saying, “Gabriel, Gabriel,” in her almost wild delight. He

[figure description] Page 170.[end figure description]

stooped and kissed her, and without another word left the
house.

Christmas Eve saw him at Squire Bigsham's, and no one of
all the gay assembly so much honored by the squire's beautiful
daughter as he. She was noted for her graceful dancing,
but that night she preferred, strangely enough, her friends
thought, more quiet amusements. Mr. Gilbraith, however, was
not ignorant of the fact that his inability to dance influenced
her preference, nor could he remain quite insensible to that
preference, for Miss Bigsham was the admiration of the village,
and he to whom she extended her lightest favor was
deemed fortunate indeed. Pride has more authority in matters
of love than we are apt to believe, and the shoemaker's heart
had its share of vanity and weakness.

Many a night after that, when he had been passing the
evening with the squire's daughter, he would go home by the
way of the house with the two front doors, and sometimes linger
a long time watching the lights as they moved about, sighing
regretfully; for the breach created between him and the
pale-faced young woman on the occasion of the squire's first
visit to her was destined never to close up, and be as it was
before. Little Orphie, however, did not share in the alienation,
and when her birthday came round, true to his promise,
he gave her the new dress, red as it could be, and exceedingly
beautiful in her eyes.

“You had better give it to the great beauty who has made you
so blind to everybody else,” said Orphie's mother ungraciously.

“Why do you decline to-say Miss Bigsham?” answered the
shoemaker, “for doubtless it is she to whom you allude—surely
that name is not so obnoxious to you.”

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A conversation beginning thus was not likely to end in a
more agreeable state of feeling than had previously existed,
and from that day the old breach was visibly widened, and the
intercourse between the lovers, for such they had really been,
was restricted entirely to the shoe-binding.

Once, indeed, afterwards, he knocked on one of the two doors
with the express design of humbling all his pride, and expressing
fully the sentiment which needed not the warranty of
expression, but when the door was opened by the hand of
Squire Bigsham, his tenderness and courage received together
a stroke from which they never recovered.

The springtime just beginning to bud in his nature was
blighted—he withdrew into himself, and suffered the old hardness
and indifference to divide him from men and women again.

The squire's daughter lost her brief power, and though she
tried to cover her discomfiture with gaiety and flirtation, she
steadily refused all offers of marriage, and the roses died out
of her cheeks, one by one.

When five years were gone her curls were put plainly away,
and she was grown as quiet and reserved almost as the shoemaker
himself, with whom meantime the world had continued
to prosper, and he was become one of the richest and most
influential of the citizens among whom he lived, for the little
town where he settled had grown to a city.

Little Orphie was big enough now to bring and carry work
to and from her mother's house; every day she was seen tripping
down the hill with a bundle in her arms, and every day the
shoemaker kissed her and called her his little sunbeam, and so
she was in fact, for she lighted his lonesome life more than anything
else.

[figure description] Page 172.[end figure description]

The squire's daughter and he had been almost estranged for
the last year. One day, to his surprise, she came to see him,
her face pale and her eyes swollen from weeping; her father
was about to be married, she said, to the woman who lived in
the house with the two front doors—she could never be reconciled
to such a marriage, and was about to leave her native
home to make room for the intruder, and could not go away
without seeing Mr. Gilbraith once more, and feeling that they
parted good friends. Her trembling voice and wet cheeks
told how bitter, at best, that parting must be; suffice it that it
never came about, and that instead, she became in due course
of time, the mistress of a fine house of her own, and the wife
of Mr. Gilbraith.—Everybody envied the couple and thought
them very happy, and so perhaps they were; nevertheless the
husband had his fits of melancholy, and had, it was reported,
a room set apart in his fine house where he was accustomed to
retire for hours together, during which times even his beautiful
wife was excluded from his sympathy.

The house with the two front doors was deserted, and when
Squire Bigsham's wife sat in the front pew of the church, or
invited her friends to dine, it was no longer remembered that
she had ever lived there in neglect and poverty.

When little Orphie was sick, Mrs. Gilbraith went home, and
when she died Mrs. Bigsham shook hands with Mr. Gilbraith,
and in the child's grave all unfriendly feeling was buried.

When Peter Gilbraith, junior, was christened, there was a
great merry-making at Squire Bigsham's, and when he was six
years old there was no boy to be found who had so fine a
beauty and so manly a courage as he. It was the autumn of
that year, a rainy night, and the yellow leaves were coming

[figure description] Page 173.[end figure description]

down with every gust. Mr. and Mrs. Gilbraith sat chatting
before a little fire, very happily, and making plans for the celebration
of their wedding day. Little Peter was playing in the
room specially dedicated to his father—he was fond of being
there because it was a liberty not often granted him. Suddenly
he came staggering towards his parents—his eyes staring
wide, and his face white as it could be. As soon as he could
speak he said that while he was at play, a little girl wearing a
red dress came to him and kissed him, and that when he spoke
to her she turned into a shadow. The anniversary celebration
was talked of no more that night.

p493-181 UNCLE JOHN'S STORY.

[figure description] Page 174.[end figure description]

“Halloo the house!”

“Halloo! Who is there?”

It was about eight o'clock of a March evening, a good many
years ago, that I sat in the chimney corner at my grandfather's
house, watching the smoldering logs, and listening to the rain,
which had been pouring and pouring for three long days. The
meadows were soaked, the creeks swollen, and pools of water
standing everywhere.

I was lonesome and homesick, for I was away from home
for the first time in my life; and though it was at my grandfather's
house, I received none of those privileges and petting
attentions that children are now a-days accustomed to expect
from grandparents.

The ancient homestead was one of the most retired and
altogether unattractive that ever resisted the peltings of a
March storm. Indeed, it would be difficult to imagine a less
enjoyable situation for a young woman of twelve years old, or
thereabouts, to be placed in. Too young to appreciate the
sage and solemn doctrine that made up the discourse of the old
people, and too thoughtless to press reason into my service,
there was little for me to do, but suffer and be still.

[figure description] Page 175.[end figure description]

If I looked through the small window-panes, down which the
rain was pouring in streams, I could see nothing but a circle
of woods, if my eyes wandered beyond the patch of cleared
land that held the house and barn and mill, the main road
being quite out of view. If I had been a few years older, I
might have found the sunshiny face of Cyrus Hall, who was my
grandfather's hired man, genial as the sunshine itself; but as it
was, though I received alleviation, even comfort from his kindnesses,
I was far from that state of beatitude which bringeth
utter forgetfulness of clouds. He had told me over and over
that it would stop raining in a day or two, and that the wet
cornstalks which lay between the wood and the mill would in a
single day get dry enough to burn; and then he would gather
them up in heaps and burn them after nightfall, and have—oh,
such fun! But he found it hard to make me believe, in my then
state of mind, that the sun would ever shine again, or that the
cornstalks would ever be dry enough to burn, and if they should
be, grandfather would not allow us to burn them, I argued, for
my mood of mind inclined me to augment my sorrows.

To the best of my knowledge and belief, my ancient grandmother
would continue to knit at the stocking she was busy
with till the day of doom, and that my grandfather would ever
close the big Bible from which he was reading, and speak or
smile again, I had not the remotest idea. The very cat
stretched across the hearth, seemed to me indicative of final
repose. No wonder the tears would start now and then.

There was one candle burning, and besides a little glow from
the fire there was no other light, except what Cyrus's eyes
made, and they were as bright as they could be with hope and
good humor. He was about twenty years old, red-cheeked,

[figure description] Page 176.[end figure description]

and beautiful as a young rose, and in exuberance of spirits
contrasted strikingly with the severe gravity of my white-headed
grandfather.

Now and then, the cattle in the sheds lowed uneasily, for
they, too, were tired of the rain; or one of the work-horses
put his head out of the window of his stable and neighed, and
except these, there was no sound but that of the rain on the
roof, and the ticking of the clock; for Cyrus talked in whispers
as a single word spoken above the breath, while my grandfather
was reading, would have been an awful breach of family
discipline. He had exhibited whatever he possessed that
could amuse me—from the picture-book presented by his schoolmaster,
with “Reward of merit” written on the fly-leaf in
flourishing characters, to a late purchase of a silk pocket-handkerchief
and razor; and at the time our story opens, was telling
me the history of his life—partly, perhaps, for the want of
a better listener. His father was a wood-chopper, who rented
a cabin, and moved from one place to another, as opportunities
of work offered inducements; at nine years old, he himself
had been compelled to earn his own living, and in his tossing
about the pendant world, had gained all the knowledge he was
possessed of.

There fell a shadow across his face towards the close of his
story, such as I had never seen it wear before, and when I
asked him what the matter was, he answered “nothing,” and
then said he was thinking of something I could not understand.
I said I would try, and then he told me that he knew a young
woman once, not much bigger than I, whom he liked better
than he ever liked any one else, but that she was rich and
himself poor, so he had come away from the

[figure description] Page 177.[end figure description]

neighborhood where she lived, and never expected to see her any
more.

Suddenly he ceased his narrative—my grandmother let fall
her knitting work, and my grandfather, closing the old Bible,
walked straight out into the rain, and responded—

“Halloo! Who is there?” to the “Halloo the house!”
recorded in the opening of this chapter. The wonder who
could be coming at that time of night, and in so terrible a
storm, held us all breathless.

“Cyrus, bring out the lantern—quick!” called my grandfather,
and in a moment, without hat or coat, Cyrus was in
the yard, the lantern glimmering before him.

How much I wished to ask my grandmother who she thought
was coming, but to ask direct questions was not among my
privileges, so I contented my curiosity as well as I could by
listening towards the open door through which the rain was
driving freely. The door-yard gate creaked on its hinges, and
then came a noise like a team drawing a wagon that cut its
slow way heavily through the soaked earth.

“Whoa!” was heard next, and the team stood still right
against the blue stones at the door.

“Take my hand, Uncle John, and step here!” I heard a
voice that was all music and melody say, and presently a
young woman, muffled in a shawl and hood, came into the
house, leading by the hand a grey-haired man with a very pale
face.

“Bring your lantern this way, Cyrus,” called my grandfather,
as he saw them feeling their way through the dark, but
no Cyrus appeared, and presently, his white hair clinging to his
head, and accompanied by a boy of some fourteen years, he

[figure description] Page 178.[end figure description]

entered and, closing the door, presented the strangers by
saying, “Here are some travellers come to stay all night with
us—the bridge is swept from Bear Creek, and they can get no
further at present.”

“We are very sorry it happened so,” said the pale man,
“but you must not allow us to make you more trouble than is
necessary—myself and Thomas can lie on the floor before the
fire, but Nanny here is sickly, poor child, and if you could give
her a bed, why, we will do as much for somebody some time, if
not for you.”

He put his arm around the waist of the girl, as he spoke,
and I saw that she was trembling—almost crying.

“You are wet, poor Nanny,” he said, untying her hood, and
passing his hand tenderly along her hair.

She evidently made a strong effort to recover herself, and
answered in a tone of assumed cheerfulness—

“I shall do well enough, Uncle John, but you will be sick
I am afraid;” and she placed a chair for him, saying apologetically
as he felt about awkwardly to find it—“My uncle is
blind, and I bespeak the spare bed for him.”

“I guess,” said my grandmother, “we can give you all beds,
and something a little comforting besides.” And relieving
Nanny of her wet shawl and hood, she hastened to put on the
tea-kettle.

My grandfather, meantime, was brightening up the fire, and
entertaining Thomas with an account of the damage done in
the neighborhood by the rain.

Nanny was pretty, but her blue eyes had, I thought, a
bewildered and frightened look, and she almost clung to the
hand of Uncle John as it lay in her lap.

[figure description] Page 179.[end figure description]

“There was another one who came out and assisted us in,”
said the blind man, directly, as he listened to the different
voices—“where is he, Nanny?”

The girl's face flushed red as fire, and she answered nothing.

“That was Cyrus, my hired man,” replied my grandfather,
speaking very loud, as if a blind man was necessarily deaf too,
“and he is feeding your horses.”

“I wonder he don't come in,” he added, speaking to himself.
Nanny's face had grown white now, and she leaned against
Uncle John's shoulder, saying, in answer to his inquiries, that
the fire made her feel faint, she believed. My grandmother
proposed all the cordials at her command, but Nanny steadily
refused, saying she would be better directly. She gave no
signs of being better, however, and when it was proposed that
she should lie down till supper was ready, she acceded with
an eager thankfulness, and was led away to the tiny bedroom
where my grandmother kept her silver spoons, and extra china,
in a corner cupboard.

My services were brought into requisition in the arrangement
of the supper-table, and on going to the corner cupboard for
the spoons, I perceived that Nanny had turned her face from
the light and was evidently crying.

I forgot my own homesickness in my anxiety to do or say
something that might comfort her, but I was bashful, and only
dared to shade the light and walk on tiptoe by way of manifesting
my interest. At last we had the supper prepared,
toast and tea and honey, and I know not what all besides, and
my grandmother set the tea to draw in the best china teapot,
and the puffing tea-kettle close by it, and we ranged ourselves
round the fire to wait for Cyrus to come in.

[figure description] Page 180.[end figure description]

All eyes turned to the blind man—my grandmother sighed
heavily, and there fell a sympathetic silence over the group.

“I see how it is,” said Uncle John, smiling, “but there is
no need that you should pity me; and if you have any pity to
spare I entreat that you will give it to my little niece, Nanny,
for whose sake, in fact, we are on our travels, more than for
anything else. We hoped it would divert her mind from an
unhappy memory, but it seemed to-night as if the old feeling
mastered her again—I knew it by her trembling voice and
hand.”

“Poor dear child!” said my grandmother, with a woman's
quick sympathy—“I'll go straight and carry her a cup of tea—
I hope she did not catch cold;” and she had Nanny's little
feet in her hands, almost while she spoke. She presently
returned, saying with a cheerful manner, and addressing herself
particularly to Thomas, that his sister seemed to be sleeping
very sweetly.

I have suspected since that the sweet sleep was all an affectation.

“How did it happen that you lost your eyes?” asked my
grandfather, perhaps more to arouse the blind man from the
revery into which he had fallen, than from curiosity.

“Tell them all about it, Uncle John,” said Thomas, speaking
for the first time, and blushing with embarrassment, “it's
good as a sermon.”

“Oh, it's no story at all,” replied Uncle John; but we all
said, “tell us about it, at any rate;” and having listened for a
moment at the door to see whether Nanny were still asleep, he
began:

“I may begin by saying, so as to prevent further waste of

[figure description] Page 181.[end figure description]

sympathy, I am voluntarily blind. My earliest memory is connected
with lamentations about my blindness. My parents
were wealthy, and I, a fondly-expected son, so you can perhaps
imagine the suffering occasioned by what they termed my misfortune;
it was the first great sorrow of their lives, and my
own happiness was constantly diminished by the knowledge
that I was a heavy burden to their hands. Sometimes hearing
the merriment in the parlor, I would feel my way along the
walls and by the furniture till I would touch my mother's
knees; but it seemed as if a great melancholy shadow fell over
them all at my entrance, and the voices were subdued, and the
laughter hushed; so I learned by degrees to live much alone,
and it is astonishing within how small a compass we can find
enjoyment enough. I was naturally of a happy and contented
disposition, and in sitting in the sunshine often experienced
more delight than my playmates seemed to find in their greater
privileges.

“I learned to read, and what with my books and my play
made myself so happy that my parents felt their burden lighter,
and finally, as they became used to my condition, I believe I
really afforded them a good deal of comfort. I was always,
however, called poor unfortunate little John, and to the end of
their days they held frequent consultations concerning operations,
which my mother could never quite consent to, and of
famous opticians who had made the blind to see.

“I did not feel the loss they lamented so much, and could run
up and down the stairs, from room to room, and about the door-yard
as readily as any one. I could distinguish everybody I
knew by their step—all the colors I had fixed in my mind,
which was stored, too, with pictures of all my friends. My

[figure description] Page 182.[end figure description]

parents died, thank God, without my having ever seen either
of them. Not for the world would I have had the sweet
impression I still retain of their faces, unsettled.

“I was forty years old when I went to live with my brother
Moses, and then came a new torture in the shape of new sympathy.
It was all `poor Uncle John,' now, as it had been
`poor little John' when I was a boy. Only Nanny, dear little
girl, never mourned over me—I wish I never had over her; she
used to climb on my knees and read stories by the hour, and
sing songs for me, and tell me how everything looked that I
could not see, and laugh and clap her hands at the odd fancies
I had formed. She was full of frolic and fun, and made the
house gay with her chattering from morning till night—poor
Nanny!

“When they told me she was fifteen years old, I could not
believe it, for to me she was a pet and plaything, and try as I
would I could not make her a woman. About this time my
brother Moses, who was beginning to grow feeble, hired a young
man to assist in the farm-work, Thomas being then at school.
He often talked of his poverty, and told us stories of the hard
times he had seen; but he was hopeful and genial, almost making
a jest of his misfortunes—then, too, he was so industrious
and obliging that we all learned to love him. As for myself I
liked him none the less on account of his poverty—I could not
feel any difference, and as I could not see any, why it made no
difference to me whether he were poor or rich.

“One frosty evening Nanny was sitting on my knee, singing
one of my favorite songs, when `Cy,' as we always called him,
came in from the field and sat down by the fire.

“`Dear me, Uncle John!' exclaimed Nanny, breaking off her

[figure description] Page 183.[end figure description]

song, `Cyrus has no stockings on!—mustn't he be cold?'
`Cold! No,' replied Cyrus, `I have seen the time I had no
shoes—did I never tell you about my first pair?—I was ten
years old when I got them, and earned the money to buy them
myself.' `Pray tell me all about it,' said Nanny, and she
was off my knee and sitting beside the young farmer, in a
twinkling. I don't remember what the particulars were, and
no matter—enough that Nanny found them interesting; and
not long after this when I missed a ring I had put on her
finger, and inquired what she had done with it, she replied
artlessly that she had given it to Cyrus!

“So it came about that I liked the young man less and less,
and Nanny liked him more and more—indeed she was never
weary of praising him.

“My brother, who was growing feebler all the time, seeing
that his end approached, became doubly anxious that my eyes
should be operated upon. If he could leave me guardian of his
children he would die happy, he said. How little we under
stand what we ask for.

“As if in answer to his wishes, there came into the neighborhood
a great oculist, and partly to soothe my dying brother,
and partly to realize the heaven I had been taught to believe I
should find if I but had my sight, I submitted my blind organs
to his operative skill, and to the astonishment and joy of every
one, I was made to see!

“Bequeathing me the care of his children, Moses died happy,
and more than happy.

“But whatever pleasure my new sense gave to others, it was
only a source of discomfort to me. It was quite superfluous,
and I could do nothing with it. It clashed with all my previous

[figure description] Page 184.[end figure description]

ideas of things, and I could not reconcile anything. Colors I
could not distinguish, except by the old method of passing my
hand over them; of distances I could form no idea, and I fell
down continually if I undertook to walk, so when I desired to
go from one place to another I was obliged to close my eyes
and feel my way as I used to. In fact, I had no pleasure, so
continually was I running into the fire or the water, or against
the wall, except in bandaging my eyes and making believe I
was blind again.

“My friends I did not know, and strange to say, did not like
as my new sense revealed them. I became dissatisfied with
myself, and with everything; irritable, and ultimately, I think,
not far from insane. Is it any wonder if Nanny became more
and more alienated from me, and more and more attached to
Cyrus?

“Glad of any pretext, I argued if his motives were honorable
it was necessary he should he more explicit, for with all his
demonstrations, he had never said he loved Nanny, as she
owned, and never asked her to marry him. Besides, I said it
was a scandal that she, who was an heiress, should marry her
father's hired man! Poor Nanny could only hide her face and
cry; and the end of it was the dismissal of Cyrus upon some
false pretext and the breaking of Nanny's heart.

“When he had been away six months you would not have
known her for the same girl—there was no singing, and no
story-telling any more, but only moping and sighing from morning
till night. I settled all my fortune upon her, but she never
smiled half so brightly as I had seen her when Cyrus but gave
her his hand.

“I sent for the physicians whose skill recommended them,

[figure description] Page 185.[end figure description]

but spite all they could do, she grew quietly and steadily thinner
and paler, until she became the sickly and unstable creature
you saw to-night. I was glad when I found the darkness
spreading over my eyes again, and hiding from me her reproachful
face.

“My friends besought me to have recourse to the oculist
anew, but I steadily persevered in my refusal, and joyfully went
back into blindness, and gradually my confused brain became
clear and quiet again.

“We hoped the little journey we are taking might make
Nanny better, but unless we hear tidings from Cyrus, I think
we shall make her a bed by her father before long.” He
groaned and covered his face, as he finished the story.

“I wonder where my Cyrus lived before he came to work
for me?” said my grandfather, rising and stirring the fire.

“He lived with Uncle John, and loved Nanny, though he
never dared to tell her so,” answered Cyrus, as he came forward
and grasped the blind man by the hand.

He had come in in the middle of Uncle John's story, and seating
himself quietly in the corner, had remained there till its
conclusion, unobserved.

So much merry noise as there was in my grandfather's house
had never been heard there till that night. I think only for a
moment was there silence—when, having placed the teapot on
the table, my grandmother went to bring Nanny out to
supper.

And such rosy cheeks were never seen as she and Cyrus presented
when they shook hands, just as if they had not seen and
recognized each other when they met in the door-yard.

What a pleasant supper we had, and what a happy time we

[figure description] Page 186.[end figure description]

had telling stories round the fire afterwards, and what laughing,
when grandmother said she would give her spare bed to
Thomas and Uncle John, for she was quite sure Nanny could
sit up all night, well enough!

The following morning the sun was shining brightly, as
Cyrus had predicted—the strangers remained at my grandfather's
all day, Thomas assisting Cyrus to rake the cornstalks
into heaps, and when night came, Nanny and I went out to
the field and helped to burn them. Why should I linger?—
everybody who has ever loved, guesses the end of the story,
and those who have not, will feel no interest in hearing.

p493-194 MAKING THE CHILDREN SOMETHING.

[figure description] Page 187.[end figure description]

Five o'clock in the great city—a roar as of a mighty sea in
the streets, for the multitude is heaving hither and thither in
pursuit of interest or pleasure. “Dinner-time,” said Mrs.
William Hartly, looking up from the torn lace she was trying
to stitch together, “and I have not seen Annie to-day—what
can the girl be about?”

The door opens, and a feeble little man, with no more color
in his face than is in his handkerchief, enters, and in querulous
accents inquires, “What are you doing, my dear? and why
are you not dressed?” and opening his watch, he continues—
“five minutes past five,” which in the lady's estimation seems
equivalent to having said, “You outrage all propriety;” for
she hastily puts down the torn lace, and disappears with an
air not the most amiable in the world.

The white-faced feeble man walks nervously about the room
for some ten minutes, more or less, when the lady returns,
“made up” for the ceremony of dinner, which the bell has
rung for twice during her preparation.

“You are looking very sweetly, my dear; and Mr. William
Hartly slips the ringed fingers of his stout wife through his

[figure description] Page 188.[end figure description]

own tiny and wiry arm, and in pompous solemnity they descend
together.

“Where is Pet?” he asks, placing a chair for the stout
woman, and crooking his lips into what is meant to be a
smile.

“If you mean Annie,” answers the injured wife, “I don't
know anything about her.”

“Very strange, madam,” says Mr. Hartly, unfolding his napkin
with trembling hands, “that we can't even eat and drink
like other folks—where is Albert?” The wife and mother
simply shakes her head this time, and the sensor continues:
“Have you resigned the government of your own household,
madam?”

And he goes on with some complaint about the soup, while
the wife, with eyes bent intently on the name of “Hartly,”
graven on her silver spoon, answers, with no submission except
in her words, that she will have nothing to do with children or
servants any more, and that if her husband thinks it so easy a
task to put his own notions into other people's heads, he is
welcome to try—she has tried and tried till she is tired, and
she can't make anything of either Albert or Annie, and she is
quite willing to resign the task to abler hands.

Mr. Hartly bows in acknowledgment of the compliment, and
says he will see what can be done, and his tone has in it something
of the authoritative meaning of a schoolmaster; for he was
bred in early life to the profession of one. His iron-grey hair
stands up with a more determinate expression, and his white
face grows whiter in the calmness of settled resolve.

A lubberly, yellow-haired boy of twelve years old kicks open
the door at this juncture, and with his fine and

[figure description] Page 189.[end figure description]

fashionablymade clothes soiled and torn, dashes his cap at one of the servants
in waiting, by way of eliciting attention to his wants, and
seats himself at table, without noticing father or mother.
“Albert, my son,” says the father, “what has detained you?
have you no excuse?”

“Detained myself,” replies the boy, “and that's the reason;
and besides, I stole a piece of molasses cake at school, and did
not get so hungry for dinner as common.”

Mr. Hartly frowned and Mrs. Hartly sighed, the one looking
the picture of indignation and the other of despair.

“Tell you what, old folks,” said the boy, without noticing
the troubled expression of his parents, “I'll run away from
school if you make me go there, 'cause I hate books—there
haint none of them got no sense in them—and I hate masters;
there never was a schoolmaster that had sense: I'm a going
to hire out to a livery-stable, and learn to nick and dock,
that's what I'll do; and when I'm sixteen I'll be sot up in the
trade, and I'll keep the fastest trotters in town. Old folks, do
you hear that?”

Both father and mother looked as though they did hear; Mrs.
Hartly dropping knife and fork, and limberly falling together
as if there were no more courage in her, and Mr. Hartly bracing
himself up as though about to be swept over the Niagara
Falls.

“What's matter? Anything in my composition surprise
you?”

“I think there are some things in your composition that
must be beaten down or wrenched out,” said the father; “and
now, sir,” he continued, “don't open your mouth again till I
give you liberty.”

[figure description] Page 190.[end figure description]

“How will I eat, old man,” replied the boy, “if I am to
keep my mouth shut?”

Mr. Hartly here arose, and having struck the broad shoulders
of the lad with his little delicate hand, led him away by
one ear, assuring him that for the next forty-eight hours he
should have nothing but bread and water to eat.

Annie, ignorant of how matters stood, made her appearance
at this moment; carrying a great platter of steaming pudding,
her flushed face radiant with smiles, for she had made the pudding
with her own hands, and evidently in the expectation of
affording her parents a happy surprise.

No smile answered hers, however, as she placed the pudding
dish on the table, timidly turning her eyes from father to mother.

“Doesn't it look nice?” she ventured to say at last; “Mr.
Wentworth showed me how to make it—shan't I ask him to
come and eat with us?”

“I think you look nice,” said the mother, eyeing the flour on
Annie's apron, and the rosy face indicative of the cookery she had
been engaged in; “it's no use,” she continued, as Annie stood
still aghast, “I can't make anything of you, and I may just as
well let you run wild—go and live with Mr. Wentworth, and
learn to make butter and cheese; I expect that would suit you
better than going to dancing-school and practising your piano,
as you ought to do. Your father and I have used every means
in our power to make something of you and your brother—you
have had money enough spent on you, the dear knows, to make
you as accomplished as anybody in the city; and then, to the
neglect of your proper duties, you go in the kitchen and talk
about pumpkins with Mr. Wentworth, if that is the man's
name, and make puddings, and appear at the dinner-table with

[figure description] Page 191.[end figure description]

your hair in that frightfully plain fashion—it's enough to break
a mother's heart.”

Annie answered that she did not know it was wrong to make
a pudding, nor to ask Mr. Wentworth to eat some of it when
he was so good as to show her the way to make it—and it was
such a cheap way.

“Economy is not the chief end and aim of our lives, my
dear,” said the father; “there may be people to whom a pound
of flour, more or less, makes a difference, but I humbly trust
you will never be in their sphere of life;” and for a moment
Mr. Hartly subsided, and seemed to be saying, “Does the forty
feet stone front of our house look like practising economy in
the making of a pudding? Do the stone steps and the stone
baluster look like it? Does the man-servant who attends the
door-bell look like it? Do the lace curtains, ten in all, look
like it? Do my wife's brocades look like it? Do the entertainments
I give look like it, or anything in any way appertaining
to us? No, no; nobody would suppose us to be people
to economize.” And having thus mentally soliloquized, he
turned to Annie, who stood at the foot of the table like a culprit.
“No, my dear, no; we are not the people to count the
eggs that go into a pudding;” and having emphasized the fact
by tapping his silver fork lightly against his plate, he added,
“Whom have you in the kitchen, and what is his occupation?”

“Why, father, it is Mr. Wentworth—you know him,” said
Annie, looking a little encouraged.

Mr. Hartly slowly moved his head from side to side, as though
he said, “I wash my hands of it—I know nothing of him.”

“One of these men, you know,” said Mrs. Hartly, in an explanatory
way, “who make pumpkins and milk, and cultivate

[figure description] Page 192.[end figure description]

butter, and manufacture corn and cattle, and such things—a
man that lives in an open place, you know, where there are
trees, and where there are no streets, you know; no houses,
only wigwams, or bamboo huts, or something; you know,
William, it's the old person that brings us our butter and
apples.”

Mrs. Hartly said person, to indicate that she did not know
exactly whether he were black or white, man or monkey. It
was a sheer affectation on her part, for Mrs. Hartly was a
woman of naturally good plain common sense, if she could
have been satisfied to let plain common sense be plain common
sense, but she could not; she had a large amount of that
“vaulting ambition which is apt to o'erleap itself and fall on
t'other side.” She was the daughter of a retired horse-jockey,
and could, in her youth, drive or ride the most unmanageable
animal in her father's stable, and not unfrequently did ride
without saddle from the suburbs of the village where she lived,
to the city, half a dozen miles away, where she served apprenticeship
as a milliner, and afterward herself kept shop. All
these things were doubtless forgotten, for they were long ago,
when stout Mrs. Hartly was gawky Debby Smith, and before
her nature was smothered and lost in affectations. Somewhere
about the same time, Mr. William Hartly, the present opulent
merchant, was a country schoolmaster, near the village of the
milliner, carrying his candle to the log school-house for the
evening meeting, and paying board by working in the garden
of nights and mornings. In the course of time it came about
that Debby Smith was employed by the schoolmaster, aforesaid,
to make shirts—for plain needle-work entered into the
young woman's accomplishments—and from these beginnings

[figure description] Page 193.[end figure description]

had come the present wealthy merchant, the stone-fronted
house and all the appurtenances thereof, the pompous Mrs.
Hartly, the young woman Annie, and the hopeful Master
Albert.

There had been no sudden influx of wealth, such as often
turns the heads of silly people—all had been the growth of
years of steady industry and economy, attended with constant
good luck. And with the wealth, affectations had grown, for
Mr. and Mrs. Hartly were under the impression that their present
position demanded it—it was a duty they owed to the
world at large, in view of the stone front, the man-servant, the
rosewood furniture, and the inheritors of their great fortune,
Annie and Albert; the first a most active, good-tempered
young woman, but plain, and “without hope of change;” the
latter a coarse, vulgar lad, on whom no refinement could be ingrafted,
and whose natural abhorrence of books and love of
horses were not likely to be easily overcome.

So there they were together in their fine house, being supposed
to be dining at five o'clock, easily and elegantly, having
taken luncheon at twelve, and with tea and supper to be served
in due and proper course of time—supposed to be, I say, for
the luncheon, and the supper, and the tea, were all myths; the
luncheon, when traced to its reality, consisting chiefly of bread
crusts, strong butter, scraps of meat, and the like, kept in the
closet, and resorted to from time to time by such members of
the family as were about the house, and felt the demands of
appetite too importunate to be refused till the regular dinner
hour. Mr. and Mrs. Hartly had done well for themselves, as
they believed—all they could do; they wore good clothes, and
used what they thought good words; they affected high

[figure description] Page 194.[end figure description]

breeding, and believed in their hearts that the pretence was the possession—
paste was not less genuine to them than diamonds.
Mr. Hartly had worn himself thin and pale; had, in fact,
coined his life-blood into money and the effort to be genteel.
Mrs. Hartly had, as she supposed, expanded easily to a model
of dignity and deportment; but she saw not herself as others
saw her—she was, in fact, in her best phases, a big woman
with fine clothes on. Her misfortune was, that nothing would
fit her; rings and ear-rings seemed hung on; dresses seemed
pinned on and hooked on, but not to have been especially made
for her, or in the least becoming to her; they might have belonged
to Mrs. Lundy, or any other woman who had money
enough to buy them; she was a personage on whom all these
things were hung, and when she wore a velvet train, she was
simply a big woman with a velvet train, and she was nothing
more.

Whether she improved her broad flat face in any very great
degree by the little curls she was at infinite pains to twist
along either temple was questionable to everybody but herself;
and whether the powder which she deposited among the pimples
of her face was not calculated to call attention to her
sorry complexion, was also questionable; but these were Mrs.
Hartly's taste, and in some sort the necessities of her station,
she thought. They had taught themselves divers little forms
and ceremonies, in the use of which they were most punctilious,
and a dozen times a day Mrs. Hartly sent her compliments to
Mr. Hartly, with some sweet and lady-like inquiry as to his
health, or wishes with reference to what dress she should appear
in at dinner, and as often Mr. Hartly sent back his compliments,
from the garret where he was putting in a pane of

[figure description] Page 195.[end figure description]

glass, or the cellar where he was sawing wood, as the case
might be, begging that Mrs. Hartly would oblige him by wearing
the blue dress, or the green one, and he often topped these
princely messages by a request that Mrs. Hartly, if she could
make it consistent with her previous engagements, would do
him the favor to accompany him on a visit to the house of
general, or governor so-and-so. The Hartlies liked to hear
themselves sending these messages; it had a lofty look in their
eyes to appear to know little about each other's affairs; their
house was so big, and the duties of their station so multifarious;
their suits of apartments so vast and separate, that they could
not be expected to know much of each other's movements.
These affectations were all that was left of them; as the moss
grows over a dead tree, so they were overgrown by them.
Thus they stood, ornaments of their age and generation, in
their own estimation—shams, to other people. If by any means
the children could have been screwed up, or pinched down;
stretched or flattened to genteel proportions, it would have
been done—but alack! they had been put through the artistic
mills in vain—they would not be made anything of.

This conviction, forced home upon Mrs. Hartly to-day, reduced
her to the ill-natured and somewhat natural demeanor,
of which she was grown mortally ashamed, and which she
essayed to cancel by the double distilled affectation about
cheese and butter. And to the close of this exquisite manifestation
of ignorance we return.

“A decent sort of person, I suppose,” said Mr. Hartly, in the
benevolent supposition that it is barely possible, and he is inclined
to hope for the best.

“Oh, he seems such a good old man, and he has got on

[figure description] Page 196.[end figure description]

such a nice coat that he says his wife spun!” exclaimed Annie,
in ecstasy at the kindly disposition of her father.

“How foolish you are, Petty!” said Mrs. Hartly, in a kind of
softened and polite scorn; and she added, in a sweet pouting
style, “I would not have a big ugly wheel in my house, they
make a noise like one of these great winnow things that countrymen
have to put their chaff through. My grandfather
told me about one once. I never saw one. I would not look
at it.”

All this time Mr. Hartly has been sitting with knitted brows,
and twitching almost with the culmination of some most important
matter. At length he says: “Annie, my daughter, I am
resolved to send you to the wilderness with this old man as you
call him, and keep you there too, till you will be glad to come
back to civilized life.” Annie bites her red lips together, trying
to look demure; but a smile breaks out in her face that is
brighter than was ever there before.

Mrs. Hartly lifts up her hands and looks heavenward, as
though incredulous of her mortal understanding. “I am
determined,” continues Mr. Hartly, “that in some way I will
make something of my children. I have used bribes, and now
I shall use punishments. I have spent thousands of dollars to
accomplish my children, and what good has it done?” He
broke off abruptly, and sent his compliments to Master Albert,
with a request that he would drink a glass of wine with him.

The lad sent no message in return; but with cap pulled
down over his red eyes, and lips puffed out with anger, thrust
his sister aside, and commenced eating the pudding with a
table spoon. “Don't, my dear, don't,” said the mamma softly;
“I am afraid that odd-looking dish won't agree with you.”

[figure description] Page 197.[end figure description]

“If you think this kind of stuff is going to hurt you,” replied
the boy, “I am glad of it—cause I could eat a
bushel.”

“Mother, shan't I give you some?” asked Annie, looking
proudly at her pudding.

“Petty, you speak so loud—it's vulgar,” said the mamma;
and she sends a servant to the other end of the table with her
compliments, and the reply that she will trouble her daughter
to be so good as to send her part of a spoonful. And having
received, she cuts it apart, and dips it up and down in order to
see whether it is made of anything of which she has any
knowledge, concluding, as it appears, that she has not—
for she tastes not, and presently ceases to touch and to
handle.

“My son,” said Mr. Hartly, lifting his glass.

“I see you,” answers the hopeful; “and when I finish this
pooden, I'll drink a bottle or two; haint got my appetite
squinched yet, and come to my drinkotite. I was at confession,
you know.”

For a while Mr. Hartly's head falls, as if a hammer struck
him; there is no doubt but that his suffering is sincere. At
length he says, in subdued and sorrowful accents: “Albert, it
has been the aim and the hope of my life to make something
of you, and now the time has come that you must choose a profession,
or rather begin one; for I am resolved to make a painter
of you. I shall send you to Florence at once, to study the
old masters.”

“I've studied you, haint I?” replies Albert; “I saw you
paint the kitchen floor, and I didn't learn nothing as I know
of.”

[figure description] Page 198.[end figure description]

“I don't mean to paint houses, my son; you misapprehend—
I intend you shall make great pictures.”

“Well then, say what you mean, and don't go to sticking on
airs, and I'll tell you what trade I want to go to. I want to
be sot up in a stable—and you can fork out the cash as soon as
you like.”

“Why, baby dear,” says the mother, “you are just in fun—
a real live horse would scare you to death.”

“Scare your granny!” replies the baby; “just as if I didn't
run away from school every day, and curry horses and such
things, in the stables. You don't know me, do you?” And
with such a saucy, impudent look, as can't be described, he goes
on with the pudding.

Mrs. Hartly sends her compliments to Mr. Hartly, with the
suggestion that they make a poet of the hopeful; and Mr.
Hartly sends compliments in turn, though only the table
divides them, and begs that Mrs. Hartly will consider the
matter settled—the hopeful must be an artist, which is
responded to by a whisper of—“Just as you please, my
dear.”

This, then, being concluded, the person whom Annie had
so audaciously called an old man, and who, whatever he may
be, is supposed to answer to the name of Wentworth, is summoned
by his great patrons, and promptly answers the call;
not humbly and deferentially, but with a firm step, and a manner
of self-respect that commands respect.

Mr. Hartly waves him to a seat in a distant part of the
room, and proceeds to inform him that he desires the girl who
has just made his acquaintance in the kitchen, to be banished
to his residence, wherever that may be, and kept there on

[figure description] Page 199.[end figure description]

bread and water, or whatever else the person may be in the
habit of eating himself, till she shall be willing to return home,
and appreciate her advantages. Annie sits down on a stool
close by the old man, and rubs the flour from her apron by
way of keeping down her disposition to laughter; and the person
replies that he hopes to give his visitor something better
than bread and water, though the accommodations of his house
will be far short of what she is used to.

Mr. Hartly replies that it is not as a visitor that he
proposes to send his child, but as a boarder, or rather a prisoner.

Mr. Wentworth smiles, and says his folks have never taken
boarders or prisoners, but he is sure they will not object to
receive his little friend, for a time. She looks as if she might
make bread or butter with the smartest young women he
knows; and he smiles and lays his toil-hardened hand on Annie's
head as the finishing of his compliment.

Mrs. Hartly begins a little scream, which she concludes by
whispering in the white ear of her white-faced husband, that
she supposes the person don't know our child from any common
child and so the affair is negotiated.

While Annie is being denuded of ear-rings and breast-pins,
and all other ornaments, and having laces, and flounces, and
furbelows packed away for the uses of the genteel time that is
to come after her banishment—and such plain ginghams, calicoes,
aprons, and the like, as are thought suited to the term of
her imprisonment, made ready—Mr. Hartly, who is unwilling
that even the person, old man, farmer, or whatever he may be,
should remain ignorant of his great consideration, asks condescendingly,
whether he has ever seen so fine a house before.

[figure description] Page 200.[end figure description]

The old man, who seems in no way overcome with the grandeur
about him, answers that it seems to be a good house; but
that, for his part, he prefers his own little farm and house. It
may be very fine, he thinks, but he doesn't want it.

“Good heavens!” exclaims Mr. Hartly; “you ain't in your
right mind, are you? have you seen what my house is? have
you seen the stone front, the balustrade? Why sir, the window-curtains
cost me five hundred dollars each—more than all
you are worth in the world, I expect.”

The old man says, it may be so; still he seems disposed to
regard his own possessions as preferable.

Mr. Hartly confronts him as he sits quietly contemplating
the carving of the marble mantel—thrusts his thin white fingers
through his iron-grey hair, sets his teeth together, and
sucks in a long breath, and then as though the countryman
were an idiot that he would make see if there were any eyes in
him, he takes him by the hand, and leads him up the broad
flights of stairs, and through all the rooms with their splendid
appointments; however, the old man sees nothing but things
that have cost money. It is all very well, he says, for people
that like it; but, for his part, he would not have the trouble of
taking care of so many things, even if they were given to
him.

In the great easy-chair of the parlor Mr. Hartly sinks down
exhausted, and locking his little white fingers together, repeats to
himself; “Well, well, well!” each time a little louder, and as
though nothing could be said of such stupidity. Meantime the
farmer makes his way out into the sunshine, seeming to find
that more genial than the heavy, damp air within the thick
walls. The stout horses, having eaten their dinner of oats, are

[figure description] Page 201.[end figure description]

ready to go home, and the coverlet is spread over the straw that
fills the wagon-bed, for the accommodation of Annie, who presently
makes her appearance and tells her friend that her father
wishes to speak to him.

“Old person,” says Mr. Hartly, as though it were not likely
the man had a name, “I consign my daughter to your charge
for a certain time, and for reasons that to me are greater than
you can comprehend; and I wish you to receive an equivalent,
that is pay, for the trouble she may give you—what sum shall
you accept? Not that it makes any difference to me—money
is to me no object.”

These are not precisely his words, to be sure; but both
manner and words indicate, or are meant to indicate, that he
has had money till he is tired of money. However, it is finally
arranged that Annie shall work for her board for her own punishment
merely, and not to save a few sixpences, more or less.
She is also required to keep a journal of her exile life, and once
a week submit the same to her very loving parents, which letterwriting
is supposed, on their part, to pave the way to making
her a famous author. And she is informed, that when
she shall find herself willing to come home, and wear silks and
laces, and learn dancing and music, keep out of the kitchen,
and, in short, be made something of, she shall return. She is
furthermore bidden to take an affectionate leave of Master
Albert, who, she is informed, is to be sent immediately to
Florence to be made into a painter. Miss Annie essays an
embrace, but the hopeful twists out of her arms, and with a
rude push informs her that he means to run away and be a
horse-jockey, for that the old folks can't make him over into
anything that he aint.

[figure description] Page 202.[end figure description]

“That has been my notion pretty much,” said the old man;
“I have always thought it was best to let natur' have its
way; and Joshua, that's my eldest son, has made a preacher;
and Cliff, who is sturdy and stout, and full of fun, has staid
on the farm with me. It seems to come nat'ral to him to work,
somehow.”

Mr. Hartly looks pityingly on the old person's ignorance; and
abruptly turning away, offers his arm to dear Mrs. Hartly, and
with one or two affected little sobs, she is led off.

I will pass over all the preparation made for the departure of
Master Albert, nor trouble the reader with an account of Mrs
Hartly's protracted darnings of lace, and hemming, scalloping
and fringing, crimping and curling—all the hanging on, and
the taking off of fine things—all the powdering, and the combing
of her poodle—and likewise pass by all Mr. Hartly's
examinations into the quantities of meat cooked for dinner, all
his parcellings out of beans and potatoes, all his contemplative
pacings up and down before his own house, in happy admiration
of the extent thereof—all compliments sent back and forth for
the space of eight days, when I must beg the reader to imagine
him in his great chair—spectacles shoved up over his hair—a
sealed paper lying before him on the table; and also to imagine
the transport with unusual form and dignity, to Master Hartly
of his compliments, begging that he will oblige his father by his
immediate presence—also of a similar message to Mrs. Hartly,
with fear that she may be detained by the general pressure of
her position.

The simple fact is, a letter has been received from Annie,
which is about to be read. That it is a sort of humiliation and
prayer to be permitted to return home, is expected; and

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that the effect on the hopeful may be salutary, is believed—
but he, failing to make his appearance, the reading goes on.
The letter was as follows:

“Dear Father and Mother:

“I have so many things to say, and am so little used to
writing, that I don't know how to begin; but as I promised to
keep a sort of journal of every day's experience, I suppose I
may as well begin now, for this is the second night of my being
here. You can't imagine what a nice ride we had in the open
wagon, so much pleasanter than being shut up in a coach—it
was such a pleasure to see the stout horses pull us along, and
trotting or walking just as Uncle Wentworth directed: I say
uncle, because I like Mr. Wentworth, and wish all the time he
was some true relation. The straw in the wagon smelled so
sweet, sweeter than flowers, it seemed to me; and when we got
into the real country everything looked so beautiful, that I
laughed all the time, and Uncle Wentworth said folks would
think he had a crazy girl. I was very much ashamed of my
ignorance, for I thought all country people lived in holes in the
ground, or little huts made of sticks, and that cows and horses
and all lived together; but we saw all along the road such
pretty cottages and gardens, and some houses indeed as fine as
ours. I kept asking Uncle Wentworth what sort of place we
were going to, for I could not help fearing it was a very bad
place; but he only laughed, and told me to wait and see. A
good many men were at work in fields of hay—some cutting
and some tossing it about—and I kept wishing I was among
them, they seemed so merry, and the hay was so sweet. In
some places were great fields of corn, high as my head, with

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grey tassels on the tops of it. I thought men were at work
there too, it shook so; but Uncle Wentworth said it was only
the wind. And back of the fields, and seeming like a great
green wall between the earth and the sky, stood the woods. I
mean to go into them before long, but I am a little afraid of
wild beasts yet; though uncle says I will find no worse thing
than myself there. We met a good many carriages, full of
gayly dressed people coming into town; and saw a number of
young ladies dressed in bright ginghams, tending the flowers in
front of the cottages, sometimes at work in the gardens, indeed,
so my dresses will be right in the fashion. In one place we
passed a white school-house, set right in the edge of the woods;
and when we were a little by, out came near forty children,
some girls as big as I, and a whole troop of little boys, all
laughing, and jumping, and frolicking, as I never heard children
laugh. I asked Uncle Wentworth if it were proper? and he
said it was their nature, and he supposed our wise Father had
made them right. Some of the boys ran and caught hold of
the tail of our wagon and held there, half swinging and half
riding, ever so long. Pretty soon uncle stopped the horses, and
asked a slim, pale-faced girl, who was studying her book as she
walked to ride; and thanking him as politely as anybody could
do, she climbed up, right behind the horses, and sat down by
me, and spoke the same as though she had been presented.
She had a sweet face under a blue bonnet, but was as white,
and looked as frail, as a lily. After she was seated, she looked
back so earnestly, that I looked too, and saw the schoolmaster
come out of the house and lock the door, and cross his hands
behind him as he turned into a lane that ran by, which seemed
to go up and up, green and shady as far as I could see. I

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could only see that his cheeks were red, and that he had curls
under his straw hat. The girl kept looking the way he went;
but if it were he she thought of, he didn't turn to look at her.
Close by a stone-arched bridge, from under which a dozen birds
flew as we rattled over it, Uncle Wentworth stopped the horses,
and the young lady got out, and went through a gate at
the roadside; and I watched her walking in a narrow and deepworn
path that was close by the bank of a run, till she turned
round a hill, and I could not see her any more; but I saw a
lively blue smoke, curling up over the hill-top, and in the hollow
behind, Uncle Wentworth said she lived.

“We were now eight miles from the city—the sun was
almost down; we saw great droves of cows coming towards the
milk-yards—not driven as they are in the streets, but coming
of themselves, and flocks of geese waddling out of ponds, and
going towards home; I began to feel a little tired, and sleepy,
with the motion of the wagon, when all at once the horses
began to neigh and trot fast, and Uncle Wentworth said,
`Here's your prison, Annie; how do you like the looks of it?'
We were right before a white gate that was being opened by a
black man, who was smiling so as to show all his teeth, and
who bowed twice to us as we drove through and along a
gravelly narrow lane towards a barn as large as our house. I
could hardly think it the place where I was to stay, at first—
all was so beautiful. The house itself is really as good as our
house, built of stone—blue hard stone—better than is in ours;
and on every side of it is a white porch, curtained with green
vines, some bearing red, and others blue flowers. About the
house is a large yard inclosed by white pickets, against which
is a perfect thicket of currant-bushes, raspberries and roses. It

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is like an orchard, all about, with cherry, and apple, and
quince, and peach-trees—the latter sticking full of little green
peaches, and some of the apples turning red and yellow.
There were flowers of all colors growing here and there; and
while I sat in mute surprise, a huge dog lifted himself up on the
wheel of the wagon, and frightened me so, that I almost cried,
though he neither barked nor growled. Uncle Wentworth
said he was only saying `How do you do?' And, indeed, it
seemed as if that was what he meant; for as I went towards the
house, he walked along by me very quietly. A middle-aged
woman came to the door to meet us; she was wiping her hands
on a towel, and by her heightened color and the speck of flour
on her apron, I saw she had been at work in the kitchen. She
shook hands with me as though I were some friend, when
Uncle Wentworth said who I was, and went with me herself
to the tidiest little bedroom you ever saw, telling me, just as
though she had been my mother, to put all my things away
neatly, showing me where; and when I had done so, to come to
her in the kitchen. There was no carpet on the floor, which
was very white, and the bed-spread and the curtains were
white too. I had my dresses hung up and my other things in
the bureau very soon, and hearing some one speaking in the
yard, I raised the window, and saw coming down the straight
walk, which was carpeted with tan-bark, Uncle Wentworth,
and a young man with a seythe swung over his shoulder He
had on a broad-brimmed straw hat, grey trowsers, and a
shirt of white and blue calico fastened about the waist with a
leather strap. I drew my head in a little when I saw him, but
not till Uncle Wentworth had spied me, and calling out aloud,
(for I was up stairs), he said, `Annie, this is my boy, Cliff—

[figure description] Page 207.[end figure description]

you must go out and help him mow to-morrow.' It was such
a funny introduction, that I felt my face all burning red as I
tried to answer the polite salutation of the young man, for he
took the straw hat quite off, and bowed so low, that his brown
curls fell along his forehead, and made him look just like a picture.

“I now began to consider my dress, for it was full of
wrinkles with sitting on the straw, and riding so far, and looking
in the glass that hung over the bureau, I found my face
was white with dust. There was no water in the room; so I
went down, and finding Mrs. Wentworth, whom I call Aunt
Margaret now, taking biscuits out of the stove, I asked her for
water, and she directed me to a shed outside the door, where
there was a cistern, and all conveniences for washing. I
was quick, you may be sure; for I feared Cliff, whom I
heard talking to his dog on the other side of the house, might
come round and see me; and as I went towards my room to
put on a smooth dress, Aunt Margaret patted my cheek and
told me I must be very smart, for that supper was all ready.
I told her not to wait—that I would come presently; and I
did try to, but everything went wrong—the hooks were off
from one dress, and another fitted so ill, and then my hair
never looked so badly; it was nearly dark in my room, and I
had no light, so that altogether I was vexed and flurried a
good deal when I went down. Aunt Margaret had taken me
at my word, and Uncle Wentworth and Cliff were already gone
away from the table; they had their evening work to do, she
said, and would not stand upon ceremony. She had kept some
tea and biscuits warm for me, and I ate heartily, for the ride
had made me hungry. While we were yet at the table, the
black man who opened the gate, and whose name is Peter, and

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a yellow woman, called Maria, who is his wife, passed along
the porch, carrying four tin pails full of milk, and Aunt Margaret
said I might have a bowl of it, which I accepted, and
found sweeter than any milk I ever drank. I found Peter and
Maria very nice and kind, and while they took their supper I
staid by and talked with them, which seemed to please them
very much. Peter offered to make a swing for me, to show me
about the barn, to teach me to milk, and many other things;
and Maria said she would make me as good a cook as herself,
when I told her about the pudding I had made. Aunt Margaret
came into the kitchen, and as Maria washed the dishes,
dried them on a towel, and helped about almost everything.
Coffee was ground for breakfast, and short-cakes made, and
all the parcels which Uncle Wentworth had brought from
town were put each in its place, sugar and spice and dried
beef, and I don't know what all. Among the rest, or rather
above the rest, was one paper carefully pinned up, at which
Maria and Aunt Margaret wondered not a little, and opening
it they found it to contain the neatest little cap that ever was—
it had no flowers on it nor ribbon, except the strings, but it
was real lace, and prettier, I thought, than ma's gay caps.
Maria lighted another candle to look at it, and doubled herself
together with laughter, she was so pleased, and Aunt
Margaret said it was just like Uncle Wentworth, he was
always buying things she didn't send for, and that she would
rather he had bought a new hat for himself. She is a good
woman, and I loved her the more when she said so. Maria
would make her try it on, and she and I thought it becoming;
but Aunt Margaret says she thinks it a little too small—though
she would not say so to Uncle Wentworth for anything.

[figure description] Page 209.[end figure description]

“He and Cliff had taken some chairs out beneath a cherry
tree, and staid there talking together in the moonlight; the
great dog, whose name is Guard, lying by them on the grass.
The moonlight fell about them pleasantly, and if Cliff had not
been there I would have gone out; but I thought he would
think me bold, or perhaps not want me there. The big-clock
which stood at the foot of the stairs where I came down, struck
nine directly, and Aunt Margaret said I must be tired and had
best go to bed, for that they eat breakfast at six o'clock in the
morning. She gave me a candle and told me to find my way,
which I did, and on opening the door I saw a whole handful
of flowers—some lying about the floor, and others on the
pillow—looking as if they had been thrown in at the window
and lodged just as they were. I don't know who could have
done it; perhaps Peter—but I don't care who did it, they
made the room very sweet, and I left them seattered just as
they were, on bed and floor. I was not sleepy, I suppose,
because of the strange place, and sitting down by the table at
the window, I found a book lying upon it, which proved to be
a volume of bound newspapers. On the blank leaf was written,
`The property of Clifton Wentworth,' in the roundest,
best hand I ever saw; I could read it as well as print; so the
young man knows something if he does live in the country. I
read a good while in the papers, selecting the pieces which
seemed to have been most read, for I supposed they were the
best; and, indeed, I found some excellent articles, better than
I remember to have read before. I went to bed under the
roses, at last, and listened to the strange sounds in the air,
of birds and insects. Nothing else could be heard, except now
and then a team rattling along the turnpike road.

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“The sun was shining bright across my bed when I woke,
and afraid I had slept too long, I hastened down, and sure
enough, breakfast was over, and Uncle Wentworth and Cliff
gone out to the fields, and milking done, and Aunt Margaret
making bread, for it was after eight o'clock.

“I asked why she didn't call me; and she said she knew I
was tired and sleepy, and that I would soon learn their way,
and she complimented me by saying I seemed very smart and
clever. I tried to atone for my sloth, and be as good as she
had thought me; so I told her she must not let me sleep so late
again—that I was to work for my board, and would begin
then. I hope Uncle Wentworth did not know I was sleeping
so late—he might think badly of me; Cliff, of course, would
not think of me at all. I breakfasted on milk-toast, and then
having put my room in order, went with Maria to the garden,
where we picked a basin of currants, and another of green
beans; and afterwards, sitting in the shade of a tree, prepared
them to cook. It is not lonesome here as I thought it
would be; everything seems happy and busy; bees, and birds,
and butterflies, and chickens, and men and women the busiest
of all. It was noon before I dreamed of it, and Aunt Margaret
said it was time to `set the table,' which she showed me
how to do, telling me I was `handy,' and that work seemed
to come natural to me. I like her more and more, she is so kind
to everybody, and working seems to her like play; her bread
bakes just right, and everything is just where she wants it.
She says we must like work in the first place, and then have a
place for everything and everything in its place, and all will go
well; and she says if I keep on for a week as well as I have
begun, I will more than earn my board, and she will give me

[figure description] Page 211.[end figure description]

a dollar. I mean to be up to-morrow morning in time to help
get the breakfast. We had for dinner to-day beans and pork
and potatoes, and baked apples, and custard pies, and milk; I
blew the dinner horn myself, as well as anybody, Aunt Margaret
said.

“Cliff was gone to get his scythe mended, and he did not
come home to dinner, which I was sorry for, though no more
for him than I would have been for Uncle Wentworth. He
said the dinner was very nice, and he supposed it was because
I helped to prepare it.

“When the dishes were put away, Aunt Margaret put on a
clean dress and cap, and sat in the porch with some sewing,
and having given the required attention to my own wardrobe,
I sat with and assisted her for the rest of the afternoon. We
had a pleasant time together, and though we talked all the
while, I made two shirt-sleeves for Cliff, stitching the wristbands,
which was more than Aunt Margaret did.

“At sunset I assisted to set the table again—this time on
the porch; and just as the light became a little dim, we sat
down, altogether. Aunt Margaret told Cliff I had made a
pair of sleeves for him, and said a good deal more about how
smart I was, which made me ashamed—he did not share my
embarrassment, but laughing, said, as he shook his curls away,
that was very well for me, but that he knew a young lady who
could make an entire shirt in an afternoon. His mother said
that was one of his stories, and I believe it is—I am sure he
doesn't know any such young woman. After supper I went out
with Peter to learn to milk, and Uncle Wentworth told Cliff
to go and show me; but though he came along, he only laughed
at my awkwardness a little while, and went away—he is

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most provoking, but as handsome a young man as ever I saw—
the dress he wears is so becoming. I have not yet seen him
wear a coat, but am sure he looks better without than he
would with one, and I don't believe he has studied dress as an
art at all. I found him examining the new sleeves when I
came in, and he politely offered me his chair, providing another
for himself—for all were sitting together on the porch.
I don't know why, but I declined, and went straight to my
room, where I found on the table a small leaf basket full of
ripe blackberries. I don't know who put them there; it could
not have been Cliff, for he don't think anything about me.
The book was open too, and a rose laid on this verse:

“I wonder if Cliff had anything to do with all this? More
likely it was the work of Peter or Maria.

“THIRD EVENING.

“Two days have gone since I came here, and two days so
short I never saw, and yet they are not broken in upon by calls,
by dressing, or by going out, though Aunt Margaret says we
shall go visiting a little and see some visitors, she hopes, when
the harvest is past. I do not feel the need of any change yet;
it will keep me busy for a month more to see all the things on
the farm, and it will require longer than that to learn to keep
house well, Aunt Margaret says. While it was yet dark in my
room I heard such a crowing of roosters as I never heard before—
it was like a band of music, and especially when,

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as it grew lighter, a thousand birds in the trees and bushes
about the yard began to shake their wings and sing as if it did
their hearts good. I cannot make you understand how sweet
it was—I could not bear to lie in bed, and as soon as I could
see to dress, arose, and throwing the window open wide, looked
out: there was no dew on the grass, though yesterday
morning it was all wet, and streaked with green paths where
footsteps had been. One great white star stood away in the
south, as it were right in the tree-tops; and where the sun was
coming up lay a long bank of clouds, red as fire. No wind
stirred the leaves, or the curtain of my window, and I could
not smell the hayfields as I did yesterday. I heard dogs barking
across the hills, and boys calling the cows, but mostly it
was very still. While I staid at the window I saw a young
man walk along the turnpike road, with a brisk lively step,
and an energetic swing of the arms, as though he had something
important to do, and was thus early astir to do it; as he
passed by I knew it was the schoolmaster, and on telling Aunt
Margaret about it, she said he walked so every morning—
sometimes two or three miles—for his health's sake, and that
he is thought a young man of great promise, and is educating
himself to go as a missionary to some distant country. I
thought about the young schoolgirl, and wondered if she
would go with him.

“I put my room in nice order before I left it to-day, which
Aunt Margaret said was greatly better than coming down an
hour after breakfast. I thought to be the first one up; but
Maria and Peter were already gone to milk, the tea-kettle was
steaming, and Aunt Margaret was spreading the table.

“Seeing nothing I could do, Aunt Margaret told me I

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might go out and feed the chickens, and she showed me how
to make food for them by mixing corn-meal and water together.
I had two quarts or more of it, which I scattered about the
ground, calling the chickens to come; and I do believe two
hundred of them came running from every direction: roosters,
red and black and speckled, with tails shining like a peacock's;
and hens of all colors—some old and having feathers
hanging loose; others with cunning brown eyes, and combs as
red as roses, and looking plump and sleek, and well to do—
these I take to be the young lady hens; and then there were
faded prim-looking ones that kept apart and made no noise,
and these I supposed to be the old maids: the lean ruffled
ones, seeming cross and picking at other hens, I thought were the
worn mothers of hungry broods, themselves giving all to their
little ones. But the dear little chickens were prettiest of all—
some yellow as gold, and some black as a crow, and others
speckled—I could not tell which was the most cunning, all
were so pretty. I caught one or two of them in my hands;
but the mother hens, seeing me, flew right at my face, and I
was glad to let them go. While I was feeding, Uncle Wentworth
came along from his morning work at the barn, and I
said to him I wished Albert was there to see the chickens and
ride the horses, but that I supposed he was gone to Florence
before that time to learn to paint. He asked me if Albert had
any genius for painting; I told him I did not know, but that I
was sure he liked horses better than pictures; and he then said
money would not put genius into anybody—it must be born in
them, and that a great thing couldn't be got out of a man
unless it was first in him. The minds of people, he said,
were just as various as their bodies, and we could not greatly

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change the form of the face, nor could we any more the mind.
It seemed to me worth thinking about, but perhaps you will
not agree with me.

“While we were talking, Cliff joined us, having in his hand
a small basket full of eggs—all fresh and white: he said he
would show me where the nests are, that I may gather them
to-morrow myself. He is very handsome, but I don't believe
he gave me the berries. I went this afternoon to the meadow
where he was at work to see if I could find any—I thought,
perhaps, he would think I came to see him, and so I kept on
the other side of the field. Uncle Wentworth came and showed
me where there were plenty of berries, and I soon filled the
little basin I had quite full. I then thought I would sit a little
while in the shade of a walnut tree that grew in the meadow,
and see them make hay, for there were a dozen men in the
field, some mowing, some pitching, some raking, and others
loading and hauling it into the barn. All worked as fast as
they could, for uncle said it would rain—black clouds were
flying about the sky, and now and then a gust of wind swept
through the corn-field, making a solemn sort of noise, and
away in the orchard I could hear the apples falling from the
early trees, as they call the harvest-apple trees. The horses
were almost covered up with the great load of hay, as they
drew it towards the barn—two or three men followed, the others
remaining to work in the field, for the clouds grew blacker and
began to close together. I was not near the house, yet I
thought I could run home when the sprinkling began, and sat
still. I could see the schoolhouse across the field, and see the
children when they came out to play—up and down the woods
they ran, talking and laughing so loud that I could sometimes

[figure description] Page 216.[end figure description]

hear what they said. I noticed the young girl that rode with
us—I knew her by the blue bonnet, and the quiet, melancholy
way she had; for she did not join in the playing nor the talking,
but went apart, picking flowers. I left my berries, crossed
the meadow, and joined her in the woods, intending to ask her
to come and see me at Uncle Wentworth's; but we were
scarcely seated on a mossy log together when the rain came
dashing down in a perfect torrent, so that I was forced to go
with her into the schoolhouse for shelter. The master made
me welcome very politely, saying many pleasant things which I
do not remember. The name of the young girl is Mary Bell,
and the master's name is Hillburn. I noticed that Mary kept
the flowers she had gathered in her hand, and I could not help
thinking she would gladly have given them to the master, but
she did not, and presently seeing that she was picking them to
pieces I took them out of her hands, and the master coming
that way shortly after admired one of them very much, and on
my giving it to him he set it in his button-hole and wore it
while I staid, which was not long, for the storm was soon
past, the heavy wind seeming to drive away the clouds. The
trees swung their tops together, and we heard the fall of some
dead limbs in the woods, which made me a little afraid. The
master told me there was no danger—that the trees near the
schoolhouse were too sound to break, and that the wind was
not strong enough to uproot them. Mary, who sat by me, was
trembling with fright, and her pale cheek was paler than ever,
but he spoke never a word to her about her fear or anything
else. She is a sweet, modest girl, and I could not help putting
my arm around her and kissing her when I came away. The
schoolmaster is handsome, having black curls along his smooth