March 2. Mother's calmness keeps me ashamed of the hot ache in my heart and the restlessness which makes it so hard for me to keep an outward composure. Hannah is rather shocked that she should be so entirely unmoved in the face of death, and the dear, foolish old soul, steeped in theological asperities from her cradle, must needs believe that Mother is somehow endangering her future welfare by this very serenity.

"Don't you think, Miss Ruth," she said to me yesterday, "that you could persuade your mother to see Mr. Saychase? She'd do it to oblige you."

"But it wouldn't oblige me, Hannah."

"Oh, Miss Ruth, think of her immortal soul!"

"Hannah," I said as gently as I could, she was so distressed, "you know how Mother always felt about those things. It certainly couldn't do any good now to try to alter her opinions, and it would only tire her."

I left Hannah as quickly as I could without hurting her feelings, but I might have known that her conscience would force her to speak to Mother.

"Bless me, Hannah," Mother said to her, "I'm no more wicked because I'm going to die than if I were going to live. I can't help dying, you know, so I don't feel responsible."

When Hannah tried to go on, and broke down with tears, Mother put out her thin hand, like a sweet shadow.

"Hannah," she said, "I know how you feel, and I thank you for speaking; but don't be troubled. Where there are 'many mansions,' don't you think there may be one even for those who did not see the truth, if they were honest in their blindness?"

March 4. How far away everything else seems when the foot of death is almost at the door! As I sit by the bedside in the long nights, wondering whether he will come before morning, I think of the nights in which I may sometime be waiting for death myself. I wonder whether I shall be as serene and absolutely unterrified as Mother is. It is after all only the terror of the unknown. Why should we be more ready to think of the unknown as dreadful than as delightful? We certainly hail the thought of new experiences in the body; why not out of it? Novelty in itself must give a wonderful charm to that new life, at least for a long time. Think of the pleasure of having youth all over again, for we shall at least be young to any new existence into which we go, just as babies are young to this.

Death is terrible, it seems to me, only when we think of ourselves who are left behind, not when we think of those who go. Life is a thing so beautiful that it may be sad to think of them as deprived of it; but the more beautiful it is, the more I am assured that whatever power made the earth must be able to make something better. If life is good, a higher step in evolution must be nobler; and however we mourn, none of us would dare to say that our grief is caused by the belief that our friends have through death gone on to sorrow.

March 8. This morning—

March 11. Mother was buried to-day. I have taken out this book to try to set down—to set down what? Not what I have felt since the end came. That is not possible, and if it were, I have not the courage. I suppose the mournful truth is that in the dreadful loneliness which death has left in the house, I got out my diary as a companion. One's own thoughts are forlorn company when they are so sad, but if they are written out they may come to have more reality, and the journal to seem more like another personality. How strange and shameful the weakness is which makes it hard for us to be alone; the feeling that we cannot endure the brooding universe about us unless we have hold of some human hand! Yet we are so small,—the poor, naked, timorous soul, a single fleck of thistle-down tossed about by all the winds which fill the immensities of an infinite universe. Why should we not be afraid? Father would say, "Why should we?" He believed that the universe took care of everything in it, because everything is part of itself. "You've only to think of our own human instinct of self-preservation on a scale as great as you can conceive," he told me the day before he died, "and you get some idea of the way in which the universal must protect the particular." I am afraid that I am not able to grasp the idea as he did. I have thought of it many times, and of how calm and dignified he was in those last days. I am a woman, and the universe is so great that it turns me cold to think of it. I am able to get comfort out of Father's idea only by remembering how sure he was of it, and how completely real it was to him. Yet Mother was as sure as he. She told me once that not to be entirely at ease would be to dishonor Father's belief, and she was no less serene in the face of death than he was. Yes; it would be to dishonor them both to doubt, and I do not in my heart of hearts; but it is lonely, lonely.

March 12. It is touching to see how human kindness, the great sympathy with what is real and lasting in the human heart, overcomes the narrowness of creeds in the face of the great tragedy of death. Hannah would be horrified at any hint that she wavered in her belief, yet she said to me to-day:—

"Don't you worry about your mother, Miss Ruth. She was a good woman, if her eyes were not opened to the truth as it is in Jesus. Her Heavenly Father'll look after her. I guess she sees things some different now she's face to face with Him; and I believe she had the root of the matter in her somehow, though she hadn't grace given her to let her light shine among men."

Dear old Hannah! She is too loving in her heart not to be obliged to widen her theology when she is brought to the actual application of the awful belief she professes, and she is too human not to feel that a life so patient and so upright as Mother's must lead to eternal peace, no matter what the creed teaches.

March 13. The gray kitten is chasing its tail before the fire, and I have been looking at it and the blazing wood through my tears until I could bear it no longer. The moonlight is on the snow in the graveyard, and must show that great black patch where the grave is. She cannot be there; she cannot be conscious of the bleak chill of the earth; and the question whether she is anywhere and is conscious at all is in my mind constantly. She must be; she cannot have gone out like a candle-flame. She said to Mr. Saychase, that day Hannah brought him and Mother was too gentle to refuse to see him, that she had always believed God must have far too much self-respect not to take care of creatures He had made, and that she was not in the least troubled, because she did not feel any responsibility about what was to happen after death. She was right, of course; but he was horrified. He began to stammer out something, but Mother stopped him.

"I didn't mean to shock you," she said gently; "but don't you think, Mr. Saychase, I am near enough to the end to have the privilege of saying what I really believe?"

He wouldn't have been human if he could have resisted the voice that said it or the smile that enforced the words. Now she knows. She has found the heart of truth somewhere out there in the sky, which to us looks so wide, so thick with stars which might be abiding-places. She may have met Father. How much he, at least, must have to tell her! Whether he would know about us or not, I cannot decide. In any case I think he would like her to tell him. She is learning wonderful things. Yes; she knows, and I am sure she is glad.

March 14. George has been to see me. In the absorption and grief of the last fortnight I have hardly remembered him, and he has brought his wife home without my giving the matter a thought. It is wonderful that anything could so hold me that I have not been moved, but they came back the day after the funeral, and I did not hear of it until a couple of days later. It gave me a great shock when I saw him coming up the walk, but by the time he was in the house, I had collected myself, and I had, I think, my usual manner.

He was most kind and sympathetic, and yet he could not help showing how ill at ease he was. Perhaps he could not help reflecting that my duty to Mother had been the thing which kept us apart, and that it was strange for this to end just as there was no longer the possibility of our coming together.

I do not remember what George and I said to each other to-night, any more than I can recall what we said on that last time when he was here. I might bring back that other talk out of the dull blur of pain, but where would be the good? Nothing could come of it but new suffering. We were both outwardly calm and self-possessed, I know, and talked less like lovers than like men of business. So a merchant might sell the remnants of a bankrupt fortune, I fancy; and when he was gone I went to prepare Mother's night drink as calmly as if nothing had happened. I did not dare not to be calm.

To-night we met like the friends we promised to be. He was uncomfortable at first, but I managed to make him seem at ease, or at least not show that he felt strange. He looked at me rather curiously now and then. I think he was astonished that I showed no more feeling about our past. I cannot have him unhappy through me, and he must feel that at least I accept my fate serenely, or he will be troubled. I must not give myself the gratification of proving that I am constant. He may believe I am cold and perhaps heartless, but that is better than for him to feel responsible for my being miserable.

What did he tell me that night? It was in effect—though I think he hardly realized what he said or implied—how our long engagement had worn out the passion of a lover, and he felt only the friendship of a brother; the coming of a new, real love had shown him the difference. Does this mean that married love goes through such a change? Will he by and by have lived through his first love for his wife, and if so what will be left? That is not my concern; but would this same thing have come if I had been his wife, and should I now find myself, if we had been married when we hoped to be, only a friend who could not so fill his heart as to shut out a new love? Better a hundredfold that it should be as it is. At least he was not tied to me when the discovery came. But it is not always so. Certainly Father and Mother loved each other more after long years of living together.—But this is not a train of thought which it is well to follow. What is must be met and lived with; but I will not weaken my heart by dwelling on what might have been.

George was most kind to come, and it must have been hard for him; but I am afraid it was not a happy half-hour for either of us. I suppose that any woman brought face to face with a man she still loves when he has done with loving her must feel as if she were shamed. That is nonsense, however, and I fought against the feeling. Now I am happy in the thought that at least I have done one thing. I have made it possible for George to come to me if hereafter he need me. If he were in trouble and I could help, I know he would appeal to me as simply as ever. If I can help him, I am yet free to do it. I thank God for this!

March 16. I have asked Charlotte Kendall to stay with me for a while. Dear old Miss Charlotte, she is so poor and so proud and so plucky! I know that she is half starving in that great, gaunt Kendall house, that looms up so among its Balm of Gilead trees, as if it were an asylum for the ghosts of all the bygone generations of the family. Somehow it seems to me that in America the "decayed gentlewomen," as they are unpleasantly called in England, have a harder time than anywhere else in the world. Miss Charlotte has to live up to her instincts and her traditions or be bitterly humiliated and miserable. People generally assume that the family pride behind this is weak if it is not wicked; but surely the ideal of an honorable race, cultivated and right-minded for generations, is a thing to be cherished. The growth of civilization must depend a good deal upon having these ideas of family preserved somehow. Father used to say the great weakness of modern times is that nowadays the best of the race, instead of saying to those below, "Climb up to us," say, "We will come down to you." I suppose this is hardly a fair summing up of modern views of social conditions, though of course I know very little about them; but I am sure that the way in which class distinctions are laughed at is a mistake. I hope I hate false pride as much as anybody could; yet dear Miss Charlotte, trying hard not to disgrace her ancestors, and being true to her idea of what a gentlewoman should do, is to me pathetic and fine. She cares more for the traditions of her race than she does for her own situation; and anybody who did not admire this strong and unselfish spirit must look at life from a point of view that I cannot understand. I can have her here now on an excuse that she will not suspect, and she shall be fed and rested as she has not been for years.

March 17. I forgot Miss Charlotte's plants when I asked her to come here. I went over this morning to invite her, and I found her trimming her great oleander tree with tender little snips and with loving glances which were like those a mother gives her pet child in dressing it for a party. The sun came in at the bay window, and the geraniums which are the pride of Miss Charlotte's heart were coming finely into blossom. If the poor old soul is ever really happy it is in the midst of her plants, and things grow for her as for nobody else.

"Do look, Ruth," she said with the greatest eagerness; "that slip of heather that came from the wreath is really sprouting. I do think it will live."

She brought me a vial full of greenish water into which was stuck a bit of heather from the wreath that Cousin Mehitable sent for Mother. Miss Charlotte had asked me if she might go to the graveyard for the slip. She was so pathetic when she spoke of it!

"It isn't just to have a new plant," she said. "It is partly that it would always remind me of your mother, and I should love it for that."

To-day she was wonderful. Her eyes shone as she looked at the twig, and showed me the tiny white point, like a little mouse's tooth, that had begun to come through the bark under the green water. It was as if she had herself somehow accomplished the miracle of creation. I could have taken her into my arms and cried over her as she stood there so happy with just this slip and her plants for family and riches.

I told her my errand, and she began to look troubled. Unconsciously, I am sure, she glanced around at the flowers, and in an instant I understood.

"Oh, I beg your pardon," I said before she had time to speak, "I forgot that you cannot leave the plants."

"I was thinking how I could manage," she answered, evidently troubled between the wish to oblige me and the thought that her precious plants could not be left.

"You need not manage," I said. "I was foolish enough not to think of them. Of course you can't leave them."

"I might come over in the daytime," she proposed hesitatingly. "I could make up the fire in the morning, and at this time of the year the room would be warm enough for them till I came back at night. I know you must be most lonely at night, and I would stay as late as I could."

"You are a dear thing," I said, and her tone brought tears to my eyes. "If you will come over after breakfast and stay until after supper that will do nicely,—if you think you can spare the time."

"There's nothing I can spare better," she said, laughing. "I'm like the man that was on his way to jail and was met by a beggar. 'I've nothing to give you but time,' he said, 'and that his Honor just gave me, so I don't like to give it away.' That's one of your father's stories, Ruth."

I stayed talking with her for an hour, and it was touching to see how she was trying to be entertaining and to make me cheerful. I did come away with my thoughts entirely taken off of myself and my affairs, and that is something.

March 20. It has done me good to have Miss Charlotte here. She makes her forlorn little jests and tells her stories in her big voice, and somehow all the time is thinking, I can see, of brightening the days for me. Peter was completely scornful for two days, but now he passes most of his time in her lap, condescending, of course, but gracious.

Miss Charlotte has been as dear and kindly as possible, and to-night in the twilight she told me the romance of her life. I do not know how it came about. I suppose that she was thinking of Mother and wanted me to know what Mother had been to her. Perhaps, too, she may have had a feeling that it would comfort me to know that she understood out of her own suffering the pain that had come to me through George's marriage.

I do not remember her father and mother. They both died when I was very young. I have heard that Mr. Kendall was a very handsome man, who scandalized the village greatly by his love of horses and wine, but Father used to tell me he was a scholar and a cultivated man. I am afraid he did not care very much for the comfort of others; and Aunt Naomi always speaks of him as a rake who broke his wife's heart. Charlotte took care of him after Mrs. Kendall died, and was devoted to him, they say. She was a middle-aged woman before she was left alone with that big house, and she sold the Kendall silver to pay his debts. To-night she spoke of him with a sort of pitiful pride, yet with an air as if she had to defend him, perhaps even to herself.

"I'm an old woman, Ruth," she said, "and my own life seems to me like an old book that I read so long ago that I only half remember it. It is forty years since I was engaged."

It is strange I had never known of this before; but I suppose it passed out of people's minds before I was old enough to notice.

"I never knew you had been engaged, Miss Charlotte," I said.

"Then your mother never told you what she did for me," she answered, looking into the fire. "That was like her. She was more than a mother to me at the time"—She broke off, and then repeated, "It was like her not to speak of it. There are few women like your mother, Ruth."

We were both silent for a time, and I had to struggle not to break down. Miss Charlotte sat looking into the fire with the tears running unchecked down her wrinkled cheeks. She did not seem conscious of them, and the thought came to me that there had been so much sadness in her life that she was too accustomed to tears to notice them.

"It is forty years," she said again. "I was called a beauty then, though you'd find that hard to believe now, Ruth, when I'm like an old scarecrow in a cornfield. I suppose no young person ever really believes that an old woman can have been beautiful unless there's a picture to prove it. I'll show you a daguerreotype some time; though, after all, what difference does it make? At least he thought"—

Another silence came here. The embers in the fire dropped softly, and the dull March twilight gathered more and more thickly. I felt as if I were being led into some sacred room, closed many years, but where the dead had once lain. Perhaps it was fanciful, but it seemed almost as if I were seeing the place where poor Miss Charlotte's youth had died.

"It wasn't proper that I should marry him, Ruth. I know now father was right, only sometimes—For myself I suppose I hadn't proper pride, and I shouldn't have minded; but father was right. A Kendall couldn't marry a Sprague, of course. I knew it all along; and I vowed to myself over and over that I wouldn't care for him. When a girl tells herself that she won't love a man, Ruth," she broke in with a bitter laugh, "the thing's done already. It was so with me. I needn't have promised not to love him if I hadn't given him my whole heart already,—what a girl calls her heart. I wouldn't own it; and over and over I told him that I didn't care for him; and then at last"—

It was terrible to hear the voice in which she spoke. She seemed to be choking, and it was all that I could do to keep control of myself. I could not have spoken, even if there had been anything to say. I wanted to take her in my arms and get her pitiful, tear-stained face hidden; but I only sat quiet.

"Well, we were engaged at last, and I knew father would never consent; but I hoped something would happen. When we are young enough we all hope the wildest things will happen and we shall get what we want. Then father found out; and then—and then—I don't blame father, Ruth. He was right. I see now that he was right. Of course it wouldn't have done; but then it almost killed me. If it hadn't been for your mother, dear, I think I should have died. I wanted to die; but I had to take care of father."

I put out my hand and got hold of hers, but I could not speak. The tears dropped down so that they sparkled in the firelight, but she did not wipe them away. I was crying myself, for her old sorrow and mine seemed all part of the one great pain of the race, somehow. I felt as if to be a woman meant something so sad that I dared not think of it.

"And the hardest was that he thought I was wrong to give him up. He could not see it as I did, Ruth; and of course it was natural that he couldn't understand how father would feel about the family. I could never explain it to him, and I couldn't have borne to hurt his feelings by telling him."

"Is he"—

"He is dead, my dear. He married over at Fremont, and I hope he was happy. I think probably he was. Men are happy sometimes when a woman wouldn't be. I hope he was happy."

That was the whole of it. We sat there silent until Rosa came to call us to supper. When we stood up I put my arms about her, and kissed her. Then she made a joke, and wiped her eyes, and through supper she was so gay that I could hardly keep back the tears. Poor, poor, lonely, brave Miss Charlotte!

March 21. Cousin Mehitable arrived yesterday according to her usual fashion, preceded by a telegram. I tell her that if she followed her real inclinations, she would dispatch her telegram from the station, and then race the messenger; but she is constrained by her breeding to be a little more deliberate, so I have the few hours of her journey in which to expect her. It is all part of her brisk way. She can never move fast enough, talk quickly enough, get through whatever she is doing with rapidity enough. I remember Father's telling her once that she would never have patience to lie and wait for the Day of Judgment, but would get up every century or two to hurry things along. It always seems as if she would wear herself to shreds in a week; yet here she is, more lively at sixty than I am at less than half that age.

She was very kind, and softened wonderfully when she spoke of Mother. I think that she loved her more than she does any creature now alive.

"Aunt Martha," she said last night, "wasn't human. She was far too angelic for that. But she was too sweet and human for an angel. For my part I think she was something far better than either, and far more sensible."

This was a speech so characteristic that it brought me to tears and smiles together.

To-night Cousin Mehitable came to the point of her errand with customary directness.

"I came down," she said, "to see how soon you expect to arrange to live with me."

"I hadn't expected anything about it," I returned.

"Of course you would keep the house," she went on, entirely disregarding my feeble protest. "You might want to come back summers sometimes. This summer I'm going to take you to Europe."

I am too much accustomed to her habit of planning things to be taken entirely by surprise; but it did rather take my breath away to find my future so completely disposed of. I felt almost as if I were not even to have a chance to protest.

"But I never thought of giving up the house," I managed to say.

"Of course not; why should you?" she returned briskly. "You have money enough to keep up the place and live where you please. Don't I know that for this ten years you and Aunt Martha haven't spent half your income? Keep it, of course; for, as I say, sometimes you may like to come back for old times' sake."

I could only stare at her, and laugh.

"Oh, you laugh, Ruth," Cousin Mehitable remarked, more forcibly than ever, "but you ought to understand that I've taken charge of you. We are all that are left of the family now, and I'm the head of it. You are a foolish thing anyway, and let everybody impose on your good-nature. You need somebody to look after you. If I'd had you in charge, you'd never have got tangled up in that foolish engagement. I'm glad you had the sense to break it."

I felt as if she had given me a blow in the face, but I could not answer.

"Don't blush like that," Cousin Mehitable commanded. "It's all over, and you know I always said you were a fool to marry a country lawyer."

"Father was a country lawyer," I retorted.

"Fudge! Cousin Horace was a judge and a man whose writings had given him a wide reputation. Don't outrage his memory by calling him a rustic. For my part I never had any patience with him for burying himself in the country like a clodhopper."

"You forget that Mother's health"—I began; but with Cousin Mehitable one is never sure of being allowed to complete a sentence.

"Oh, yes," she interrupted, "of course I forgot. Well, if there could be an excuse, Aunt Martha would serve for excusing anything. I beg your pardon, Ruth. But now all that is past and gone, and fortunately the family is still well enough remembered in Boston for you to take up life there with very little trouble. That's what I had in mind ten years ago, when I insisted on your coming out."

"People who saw me then will hardly remember me."

"The folks that knew your father and mother," she went on serenely, "are of course old people like me; but they will help you to know the younger generation. Besides, those you know will not have forgotten you. A Privet is not so easily forgotten, and you were an uncommonly pretty bud, Ruth. What a fool you were not to marry Hugh Colet! You always were a fool."

Cousin Mehitable generally tempers a compliment in this manner, and it prevents me from being too much elated by her praise.

She was interrupted here by the necessity of going to prepare for supper. Miss Charlotte did not come over to-day, so we were alone together. No sooner were we seated at the supper-table than she returned to the attack.

"When you live in Boston," she said, "I shall"—

"Suppose I should not live in Boston?" I interrupted.

"But you will. What else should you do?"

"I might go on living here."

"Living here!" she cried out explosively. "You don't call this living, do you? How long is it since you heard any music, or saw a picture, or went to the theatre, or had any society?"

I was forced to confess that music and painting and acting were all entirely lacking in Tuskamuck; but I remarked that I had all the books that attracted me, and I protested against her saying I hadn't any society.

"Oh, you see human beings now and then," Cousin Mehitable observed coolly; "and I dare say they are very worthy creatures. But you know yourself they are not society. You haven't forgotten the year I brought you out."

I have not forgotten it, of course; and I cannot deny that when I think of that winter in Boston, the year I was nineteen, I do feel a little mournful sometimes. It was all so delightful, and it is all so far away now. I hardly heard what Cousin Mehitable said next. I was thinking how enchanting a home in Boston would be, and how completely alone as for family I am. Cousin Mehitable is the only near relative I have in the world, and why should I not be with her? It would be delightful. Perhaps I may manage to get in a week or two in town now and then; but I cannot go away for long. There would be nobody to start the reading-room, or keep up the Shakespeare Club; and what would become of Kathie and Peggy Cole, or of all that dreadful Spearin tribe? I dare say I am too proud of my consequence, and that if I went away somebody would be found to look after things. Still I know I am useful here; and it seems to me I am really needed. Besides, I love the place and the people, and I think my friends love me.

March 23. Cousin Mehitable went home to-day. Easter is at hand, and she has a bonnet from Paris,—"a perfect dream of a bonnet," she said with the enthusiasm of a girl, "dove-colored velvet, and violets, and steel beads, and two or three white ostrich tips; a bonnet an angel couldn't resist, Ruth!"—and this bonnet must form part of the church service on Easter. The connection between Paris bonnets and the proper observance of the day is not clear in my mind; but when I said something of this sort to Cousin Mehitable she rebuked me with great gravity.

"Ruth, there is nothing in worse form than making jokes about sacred subjects."

"Your bonnet isn't sacred," I retorted, for I cannot resist sometimes the temptation to tease her; "or at least it can't be till it's been to church on Easter."

"You know what I mean," was her answer. "When you live with me I shall insist upon your speaking respectfully of the church."

"I wasn't speaking of the church," I persisted, laughing at the gravity with which she always takes up its defense; "I was speaking of your bonnet, your Paris bonnet, your Easter bonnet, your ecclesiastical, frivolous, giddy, girlish bonnet."

"Oh, you may think it too young for me," she said eagerly, forgetting the church in her excitement, "but it isn't really. It's as modest and appropriate as anything you ever saw; and so becoming and chic!"

"Oh, I can always trust your taste, Cousin Mehitable," I told her, "but you know you're a worldly old thing. You'd insist upon having your angelic robes fitted by a fashionable tailor."

Again she looked grave and shocked in a flash.

"How can you, Ruth! You are a worse heathen than ever. But then there is no church in Tuskamuck, so I suppose it is not to be wondered at. That's another reason for taking you away from this wilderness."

"There are two churches, as you know very well," I said.

"Nonsense! They're only meeting-houses,—conventicles. However, when you come to Boston to live, we will see."

"I told you last night that I shouldn't give up Tuskamuck."

"I know you did, but I didn't mind that. You must give it up."

She went away insisting upon this, and refusing to accept any other decision. I did so far yield as to promise provisionally that I would go abroad with her this summer. I need to see the world with a broader view again, and I shall enjoy it. To think of the picture galleries fills me with joy already. I should be willing to cross the Atlantic just to see once more the enchanting tailor of Moroni's in the National Gallery. It is odd, it comes into my mind at this moment that he looks something like Tom Webbe, or Tom looks something like him. Very likely it is all nonsense. Yes; I will go for the summer—to leave here altogether—no, that is not to be thought of.

March 24. The whole town is excited over an accident up at the lake this morning. A man and his son were drowned by breaking through the ice. They had been up to some of the logging camps, and it is said they were not sober. They were Brownrigs, and part of the family in the little red house. The mother and the daughter are left. I hope it is not heartless to hate to think of them. I have no doubt that they suffer like others; only it is not likely folk of this sort are as sensitive as we are. It is a mercy that they are not.

March 25. The Brownrig family seems just now to be forced upon my attention, and that in no pleasant way.

Aunt Naomi came in this forenoon, and seated herself with an air of mysterious importance. She looked at me with her keen eyes, penetrating and humorous even when she is most serious, and seemed to be examining me to discover what I was thinking. It was evident at once that she had news. This is generally true, for she seems always to have something to tell. Her mind gathers news as salt gathers moisture, and her greatest pleasure is to impart what she has heard. She has generally with me the air of being a little uncertain how I may receive her tidings. Like all persons of strong mind and a sense of humor, she is by nature in sympathy with the habit of looking at life frankly and dispassionately, and I believe that secretly and only half consciously she envies me my mental freedom. Sometimes I have suspected her of leading me on to say things which she would have felt it wrong to say herself because they are unorthodox, but which she has too much common sense not to sympathize with. She is convinced, though, that such freedom of thought as mine is wrong, and she nobly deprives herself of the pleasure of being frank in her thoughts when this would involve any reflection upon the theological conventions which are her rule of life. She gratifies a lively mind by feeding it on scraps of gossip and commenting on them in her pungent way; she is never unkind in her thought, I am sure, but she does sometimes say sharp things. Like Lady Teazle, however, she abuses people out of pure good nature. I looked at her this morning as she sat swinging her foot and munching—there is no other word for it!—her green barÈge veil, and I wondered, as I have often wondered before, how a woman really so clever could be content to pass so much of her time in the gathering and circulating of mere trivialities. I suppose that it is because there is so little in the village to appeal to the intellectual side of her, and her mind must be occupied. She might be a brilliant woman in a wider sphere. Now she seems something like a beaver in captivity, building dams of hairbrushes and boots on a carpeted floor.

I confess, too, that I wondered, as I looked at her, if she represented my future. I thought of Cousin Mehitable's doleful predictions of what I should come to if I stay in Tuskamuck, and I tried to decide whether I should come in time to be like Aunt Naomi, a general carrier of news from house to house, an old maid aunt to the whole village, with no real kindred, and with no interests wider than those of village gossip. I cannot believe it, but I suppose at my age she would not have believed it of herself.

"We're really getting to be quite like a city," Aunt Naomi said, with a grimness which showed me there was something important behind this enigmatic remark.

"Are we?" I responded. "I confess I don't see how."

"Humph!" she sniffed. "There's wickedness here that isn't generally looked for outside of the city."

"Oh, wickedness!" I said. "There is plenty of that everywhere, I suppose; but I never have thought we have more than our share of it."

She wagged her foot more violently, and had what might have seemed a considerable lunch on her green veil before she spoke again—though it is wicked for me to make fun of her. Then she took a fresh start.

"What are you knitting?" she asked.

"What started in January to be some mittens for the Turner boy. He brings our milk, and he never seems to have mittens enough."

"I don't wonder much," was her comment. "His mother has so many babies that she can't be expected to take care of them."

"Poor Mrs. Turner," I said. "I should think the poor thing would be discouraged. I am ashamed that I don't do more for her."

"I don't see that you are called upon to take care of all the poor in the town; but if you could stop her increasing her family it'd be the best thing you could do."

When Aunt Naomi makes a remark like this, I feel it is discreet to change the subject.

"I hope that now the weather is getting milder," I observed, "you are not so cold in prayer-meetings."

She was not diverted, even by this chance to dwell on her pet grievance, but went her own way.

"I suppose you'll feel now you've got to look out for that Brownrig girl, too," she said.

"That Brownrig girl?" I repeated.

I tried not to show it, but the blood rushed to my heart and made me faint. I realized something terrible was coming, though I had nothing to go upon but the old gossip about Tom and the fact that I had seen him come from the red house.

"Her sin has found her out," returned Aunt Naomi with indignant emphasis. "For my part, I don't see what such creatures are allowed to live for. Think what kind of a mother she will make. They'd better take her and her baby and drown 'em along with her father and brother."

"Aunt Naomi!" was all I could say.

"Well, I suppose you think I'm not very charitable, but it does make me mad to see that sort of trash"—

"I don't know what you are talking about," I interrupted. "Has the Brownrig girl a child?"

"No; but she's going to have. Her mother's gone off and left her, and she's down sick with pneumonia besides."

"Her mother has gone off?"

"Yes; and it'd be good riddance, if there was anybody to take care of the girl."

It is useless to ask Aunt Naomi how she knows all that goes on in the town. She collects news from the air, I believe. I reflected that she is not always right, and I hoped now she might be mistaken.

"But somebody must be with her if she's down with pneumonia," I said.

"Yes; that old Bagley woman's there. The Overseers of the Poor sent her, but she's about twice as bad as nobody, I should think. If I was sick, and she came round, I know I'd ask her to go away, and let me die in peace."

It was evident enough that Aunt Naomi was a good deal stirred up, but I did not dare to ask her why. If there is anything worse behind this scandal, I had rather not know it. We were fortunately interrupted, and Aunt Naomi went soon, so I heard no more. I was sick with the loathsomeness of having Tom Webbe connected in my thought with that wretched girl, and I do hope that it is only my foolishness. He cannot have fallen to such depths.

March 27. I have heard no more from the Brownrigs, and I must hope things were somehow not as Aunt Naomi thought. To-day I learned that she is shut up with a cold. I must go in to-morrow and see her. Miss Charlotte is a great comfort. The dear old soul begins really to look better, and the thinness about her lips is yielding to good feeding. She tells me stories of the old people of the town whom I can just remember, and she is full of reverence for both Father and Mother. Of course I never talk theology with her, but I am surprised sometimes to find that under the shell of her orthodoxy is a good deal of liberalism. I suppose any kindly mortal who accepted the old creeds made allowances for those nearest and dearest, and human nature will always make allowances for itself. I should think that an imaginative belief in a creed, a belief that realized the cruelty of theology, must either drive one mad or make one disbelieve from simple horror. Nobody but a savage could worship a relentless god and not become insane from the horror of being in the clutch of an implacable power.

March 28. I have had a most painful visit from Deacon Webbe. He came in looking so gray and old that it shocked me to see him. He shook hands as if he did not know what he was doing, and then sat down in a dazed way, slowly twirling his hat and fixing his eyes on it as if he were blind. I tried to say something, but only stumbled on in little commonplaces about the weather, to which he paid so little attention that it was evident he had no idea what I was saying. In a minute or two I was reduced to silence. One cannot go on saying mechanical nothings in the face of suffering, and it was impossible not to see that Deacon Webbe was in grievous pain.

"Deacon Webbe," I said at last, when I could not bear the silence any longer, "what is the matter?"

He raised his eyes to mine with a look of pitiful helplessness.

"I've no right to come to you, Miss Ruth," he said in his slow way, "but there's nobody else, and you always were Tom's friend."

"Tom?" I repeated. "What has happened?"

"It isn't a thing to talk to a woman about," he went on, "and you'll have to excuse me, Miss Ruth. I'm sure you will. It's that Brownrig girl."

I sat silent, and I felt my hands growing cold.

"She's had a baby," he said after a moment.

The simple bald fact was horrible as he said it. I could not speak, and after a little hesitation he continued in a tone so low I could scarcely hear him.

"It's his. Think of the shame of it and the sin of it. It seems to me, if it could only have been the Lord's will, I would have been glad to die rather than to have this happen. My son!"

The wail of his voice went to my heart and made me shiver. I would have given anything I possessed to comfort him, but what could I say? Shame is worse than death. When one dies you can at least speak of the happiness that has been and the consolation of the memory of this. In disgrace whatever has been good before makes the shame only the harder to bear. What could I say to a father mourning the sin and the disgrace of his only son?

It seemed to me a long time that we sat there silent. At last he said:—

"I didn't come just to make you feel bad, Miss Ruth. I want you to tell me what I ought to do, what I can do. I ought to do something to help the girl. Bad as she is, she's sick, and she's a woman. I don't know where Tom is, and I'm that baby's grandfather." His voice choked, but he went on. "Of course I ought not to trouble you, but I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do. My wife"—

The poor old man stopped. He is not polished, but he has the instinct of a good man to screen his wife, and plainly was afraid he might say something which would seem to reflect on her.

"My wife," he said, evidently changing the form of his words, "is dreadfully put out, as she naturally would be, and of course I don't like to talk much with her about it. I thought you might help me, Miss Ruth."

Never in my life have I felt more helpless. I tried to think clearly, but the only thing I could do was to try to comfort him. I have no remembrance of what I said, and I believe it made very little difference. What he wanted was sympathy. I had no counsel to give, but I think I sent Deacon Daniel away somewhat comforted. I could only advise him to wait and see what was needed. He of course must have thought of this himself, but he liked to have me agree with him and be good to him. He will do his duty, and what is more he will do his best, but he will do it with very little help from Mrs. Webbe, I am afraid. Poor Deacon Daniel! I could have put my arms round his neck and kissed his weather-beaten cheek, but he would not have understood. I suppose he would have been frightened half out of his wits, and very likely would have thought that I had suddenly gone mad. It is so hard to comfort a slow-minded person; he cannot see what you mean by a caress. Yet I hope that Deacon Daniel went away somewhat heartened. Oh, if Tom could only realize the sorrow I saw in his father's eyes, I think he would have his punishment.

March 29. When Deacon Webbe said last night that he did not know where Tom was, I thought for just a moment of the sealed address Tom left me. I was so taken up with pity, however, that the thought passed from my mind. After the Deacon was gone I wondered whether I should have spoken of the letter; but it seemed to me that it was better to have said nothing. I thought I should open it before saying anything; and I needed to consider whether the time had come when I was justified in reading it. Tom trusted me, and I was bound by that; yet surely he ought to be told the state of things. It was imperative that he should know about the poor girl. I have never been able to be sure why he did not let his family know where he was, but I fear he may have quarreled with them. Now he must be told. Oh, it is such wretched business, so sad and dreadful!

I went upstairs after thinking by the fire until it had burned to embers, and indeed until the very ashes were cold. I took out Tom's letter, and for a moment I was half sick at the thought that he had degraded himself so. It seemed almost as if in holding his letter I was touching her, and I would gladly have thrown it in the fire unopened. Then I was ashamed to be so squeamish and so uncharitable, and realized how foolish I was. The sealed envelope had in it a card with Tom's address in New York, and this note:—

"If you open this it must mean that you know. I have nothing to say in my own defense that you could understand; only this is true, Ruth: I have never really cared for any woman in the world but you. You will not believe it, and you will not be likely to find it very easy to forgive me for saying it now, but it is true. I never knew better how completely you have possession of me than I do just at this moment, when I know I am writing what you will read hating me. No, I suppose you can't really hate anybody; but you must despise me, and it is an insult for me to say I love you. But I have loved you all my life, and I cannot help it. I shall go on till I die, even if you do not speak to me again in my whole life. Do not make me come home unless I must. Forgive me, if you can."

The note had neither end nor beginning. I was so overcome by it all, by the pity of it, that I could not trust myself to think. I sat down and wrote to Tom just this message, without salutation or signature:—

"Your father has been here to see me. The Brownrig girl is ill of pneumonia. Her baby was born night before last, and is alive."

I sent this off to-day. What he will do I cannot tell. I cannot even be sure what he ought to do, and I had no right to urge him to come or to stay away. Certainly for him to marry that outcast creature seems impossible; but if he does not the baby must go through life with a brand of shame on her. The world is so cruel to illegitimate children! Perhaps it has to be; at least Father believed that the only preservation of society lay in this severity; but I am a woman, and I think of the children, who are not to blame. Things are so tangled up in human relations that one thread cannot be drawn taut without bringing about tragedies on other lines.

Yet to marry this girl—Oh, it is not possible! To think of Tom Webbe's living in the same house with that dreadful creature, of his having it known that he had married such a woman—

It is horrible, whichever way I look at it. I cannot be kind in my thoughts to one of them without being cruel to the other. I am so thankful that I have not to decide. I know I should be too weak to be just, and then I should be always unhappy at the wrong I had done. Now, whatever I was called upon to take the responsibility of was done when I had written to Tom.