August 1. I said a thing to Tom to-day which was the most natural thing in the world, yet which teases me. He came to pay one of his rare visits to baby, and we were bending over her so that our heads were almost together. I was not thinking of him, but just of Tomine, and without considering how he might take it I declared that I felt exactly as if she were my very own.

"What do you mean?" Tom asked. "She is yours."

"Oh, but I mean as if I were really her mother," I explained, stupidly making my mistake worse.

"Would to God you were!" he burst out. "Would to God you cared enough for me to be now!"

I was of course startled, though I had brought it on myself. I got out of it by jumping up and calling to Rosa to take Tomine and give her her supper. Now recalling it, and remembering how Tom looked, his eyes and his voice, I wonder what I ought to do. I do not know how to make him understand that because George has left me I am no more likely to marry somebody else. I may not feel the same toward George, but nothing follows from that. I own to myself frankly that I respect Tom more than I do George; I can even say that I find more and more as time goes on that I had rather see Tom coming up the walk. The old boy and girl friendship has largely come back between Tom and me; and I am a little, just a little on the defensive on his account against the talk of the village. I think now all is over, and Julia in her grave, that might be allowed to rest. Only one thing I do not understand. I am no more moved by the touch of George's hand now than by that of any acquaintance; I cannot touch Tom's fingers without remembering Julia.

August 2. It is curious to see how Rosa's heart and her religion keep up the struggle. Ran's wife has obstinately refused to die, but has instead got well enough to send Rosa an insulting message; so the hope of finding a solution of all difficulties in Ran's becoming a widower is for the present at least abandoned. Rosa is evidently fond of Ran, and while the priest and her conscience—or rather her religious fear of consequences—keep her from marrying him, they cannot make her give him up entirely. She still clings to some sort of an engagement with Dennis; and she still talks in her amazingly cold-blooded way about her lovers, speculating on the practical side of the question in a fashion so dispassionate that Ran's chance would seem to be gone forever; but in the end she comes back to him. What the result will be I cannot even guess, but I feel it my duty not to encourage Rosa to incline toward Ran, who is really drunken and disreputable. I remind her how he beat his wife; but then she either says any man with spunk must beat his wife now and then when he isn't sober, or she declares that anybody might and indeed should beat that sort of a woman. I can only fall back upon the fact that she cannot marry him without incurring the displeasure of her church, and although she never fails to retort that I do not believe in her religion, I can see that the argument moves her. In dealing with Rosa it is very easy to see how necessary a religion is for the management of the ignorant and unreasonable. In this case the obstinacy of Rosa's attachment may prove too strong for the church, but the church is the only thing which in her undisciplined mind could combat her inclination for a moment.

Sometimes when Rosa appeals to me for sympathy I wonder whether genuine love is not entirely independent of reason; and I wonder, too, whether it is or is not a feeling which must last a whole life long. I seem to myself to be sure that if I had married George I should always have loved him,—or I should have loved the image of him I kept in my mind. I would have defied proof and reason, and whatever he did I should have persuaded myself that no matter what circumstances led him to do he was really noble in his nature. I know I should have stultified myself to the very end, rather than to give up caring for him; and it seems to me that I should have done it with my mental eyes shut. I should have been hardly less illogical about it than Rosa is. What puzzles me most is that while I can analyze myself in this lofty way, I believe I have in me possibilities of self-deception so complete. Whether it is a virtue in women to be able to cheat themselves into constancy I can't tell, and indeed I think all these speculations decidedly sentimental and unprofitable.

August 5. Aunt Naomi came to-day, like an east wind bearing depression. She has somehow got hold of a rumor that George is speculating. Where she obtained her information I could not discover. She likes to be a little mysterious, and she pieces together so many small bits of information that I dare say it would often be hard for her to say exactly what the source of her information really was. She is sometimes mistaken, but for anybody who tells so many things she is surprisingly seldom entirely wrong. Besides I half think that in a village like ours thoughts escape and disseminate themselves. I am sometimes almost afraid as I write things down in this indiscreet diary of mine, lest they shall somehow get from the page into the air, and Aunt Naomi will know them the next time she appears. This is to me the worst thing about living in a small place. It is impossible not to have the feeling of being under a sort of foolish slavery to public opinion, a slavish regard to feelings we neither share nor respect; and greater still is the danger of coming to be interested in trifles, of growing to be gossips just as we are rustics, simply from living where it is so difficult not to know all about our neighbors.

Speculation was the word which to-day Aunt Naomi rolled as a sweet morsel under her tongue. Any sort of financial dealing is so strangely far away from our ordinary village ways that any sort of dealing in stocks would, I suppose, be regarded as dangerously rash, if not altogether unlawful; but I do hope that there is nothing in George's business which will lead him into trouble. I know that I am bothering about something which is none of my affair, and which is probably all right, if it has any existence.

"I don't know much about speculation myself," Aunt Naomi observed; "and I doubt if George Weston does. He's got a wife who seems bound to spend every cent she can get hold of, and it looks as if he found he'd got to take extra pains to get it."

"But how should anybody know anything about his affairs?" I asked in perplexed vexation.

She regarded me shrewdly.

"Everybody knows everything in a place like this," she responded waggishly. "I'm sure I don't see how everything gets to be known, but it does. You can't deny that."

I told her that I was afraid we were dreadfully given to gossiping about our neighbors, and to talking about things which really didn't concern us.

"Some do, I suppose," she answered coolly, but with a twinkle from behind the green veil which is always aslant across her face. "It's a pity, of course; but you wouldn't have us so little interested in each other as not to notice the things we hear, would you?"

I laughed, of course, but did not give up my point entirely.

"But so much that is said is nonsense," I persisted. "Here Mrs. Weston has been in Tuskamuck for four or five months, and she is already credited with running into extravagance, and bringing her husband into all sorts of things. We might at least give her time to get settled before we talk about her so much."

"She hadn't been here four or five weeks before she made it plain enough what she is," was the uncompromising retort. "She set out to astonish us as soon as she came. That's her Western spirit, I suppose."

I did not go on with the talk, but secretly the thing troubles me. Speculation is a large word, and it is nonsense to suppose George to be speculating in any way which could come to much, or that Aunt Naomi would know it if he were. I do wish people would either stop talking about George, or talk to somebody besides me.

August 6. Mrs. Tracy came in to call to-day. She makes a round of calls about once in two years, and I have not seen her for a long time. She had her usual string of questions, and asked about me and baby and Tom and the girls and the summer preserving until I felt as if I had been through the longest kind of a cross-examination. Just before she left she inquired if Mrs. Weston had told me that her husband was going to make a lot of money in stocks. I said at once that I seldom saw Mrs. Weston, and that I knew nothing about her husband's business affairs; but this shows where Aunt Naomi got her information. Mrs. Weston must have been talking indiscreetly. I wonder—But it seems to me I am always wondering!

August 7. Kathie has not been near me since she left the house the other evening. It seemed better to let her work out things in her own way than to go after her. I hoped that if I took no notice she might forget her foolishness, and behave in a more natural way. I met her in the street this afternoon, and stopped to speak with her. I said nothing of her having run away, but talked as usual. At last I asked her if she would not come home with me, and she turned and came to the gate. Then I asked her to come in, but she stopped short.

"Is the baby gone?" she demanded.

"No," I answered.

"You know I shall never come into your house again while that baby is there," she declared in an odd, quiet sort of way. "I hate that baby, and he that hates is just like a murderer."

She said it with a certain relish, as if she were proud of it. I begin to suspect that there may be a good deal of the theatrical mixed with her abnormal feeling.

"Kathie," I said, "you may be as silly as you like, but you can't make me believe anything so absurd as that you hate Thomasine. As for being a murderer in your heart, you wouldn't hurt a fly."

She looked at me queerly. I half thought there was a little disappointment in her first glance; then a strange expression as if she unconsciously took herself for audience, since I would not serve, and went on with her play of abnormal wickedness.

"You don't know how wicked I am," she responded. "I am a murderer in my heart."

A strangely intense look came into her eyes, as if a realization of what she was saying took hold of her, and as if she became really frightened by her own assumption. She clutched my arm with a grasp which must have been at least half genuine.

"Oh, Miss Ruth," she said. "I don't know what I shall do. I know I am lost!"

I wanted to shake the child, so completely for the moment did I feel that a lot of her emotion was make-believe, even if unconscious; but on the other hand she was actually beginning to turn pale and tremble with the nervous excitement she had raised by her fear or her theatricals.

"Kathie," I said, almost severely, "you know you are talking nonsense. Come into the house, and have a glass of milk and a slice of cake. You'll feel better after you've had something to eat."

She looked at me with eyes really wild, and without a word turned quickly and ran down the street at full speed, leaving me utterly confounded. I am sure she acts to herself, and that her religious mania is partly theatrical; but then I suppose religious mania always is. Yet it has a basis in what she believes, and with her imaginative, hysterical temperament she has the power of taking up her ideas so completely that she gets to be almost beside herself. When she is so much in earnest she must be treated, I suppose, as if all her self-accusations and agony of mind were entirely real.

August 8. I have been to lay a bunch of sweet-peas on Mother's grave. I wonder and wonder again if she knows when I am so near the place where we left her, the place where it always seems to me some life must yet linger. I have all my life been familiar with the doubt whether any consciousness, any personality survives death; and yet it is as natural to assume that life goes on as it is to suppose the sun will rise to-morrow. I know that my feeling proves nothing; but still instinctively I cling to it.

In any case there is the chance the dead are alive and alert somewhere in the shadows, and if they are they must be glad not to be forgotten. I should not be willing to take the chance, and neglect the grave of one who had been fond of me. Mother loved me as I loved her; and this decides I shall run no risk of her being unhappy after death in the thought that I have forgotten.

I suppose I cling to a feeling that there must be some sort of immortality largely from the loneliness I feel. The idea of never seeing Father or Mother again is more than I could endure. Father used to say that after all each of us is always really alone in this world, and even our best friends can no more come close to us than if they did not exist; but this always seemed to me a sort of cold, forlorn theory. The warmth of human companionship somehow makes it impossible for me to feel anything like this. When I said so to Father, I remember he smiled, and said he was glad I did find it impossible.

One thing I am sure of to the very bottom of my heart: that things are somehow completely right, so that whatever death means it must be part of a whole which is as it should be.

August 10. To-day Tom brought me a bunch of cardinal-flowers. He had been up to the Lake Meadows, he said, and thought I might like them. The whole parlor is alive with the wonderful crimson—no, scarlet, of the great flaming armful of blossoms. Tom used to get them for me when I was a girl, but since those days I have had only a stray spike now and then. They bring back the past, and the life-long friendship I have had with Tom. I wonder sometimes why I have never been in love with Tom. Life never seemed complete without him. In the years he kept away on account of George I missed him sorely, and more than once I have thought of all sorts of ways to bring things back to the former footing; only I knew all the time it was of no use. It is the greatest comfort to have the old friendship back, and now Tom must understand that I have no more than friendship to give him. It would be vexing if he should misunderstand, but I must take care he does not.

August 11. I have been at the Town Hall helping to make ready for a raspberry festival, to raise money for the church. Miss Charlotte came after me, and of course I had to go. She said all that was wanted was my taste to direct about decorating the hall, but I have been told so before, and I knew from experience that taste is expected to work out its own salvation. To be really fair I suppose I should say I cannot stand by and give directions, but have to take hold with my own hands, so it is nobody's fault but my own if I do things. Besides, it is really good fun among the neighbors, with the air full of the smell of cedar, with all the pretty young girls making wreaths and laughing while they work, and with your feet tangled in evergreens and laurel whenever you cross the floor. Miss Charlotte is in her element at such a time. Her great-throated laugh, as strong as a man's, rings out, and she seems for the time quite happy and jolly with excitement.

It came over me to-day almost with a sense of dismay how old I seem to the young girls. They treated me with a sort of respect which couldn't be put into words exactly, I suppose, but which I felt. Somehow I believe the breaking of my engagement has made me seem older to them. Perhaps it is my foolish fancy, but I seem to see that while I was engaged I had still for them a hold on youth which I have now lost. I suppose they never thought it out, but I know they feel now that I am very much their senior.

At a time like this, too, I realize how true it is that I am somehow a little outside of the life of the village. I have lived here almost all my life. Except for the years I was at school, and a winter or two in Boston or abroad I have been generally at home. I know almost everybody in town, by sight at least. Yet I always find when I am among Tuskamuck people in this way that I am looking at them as if I were a spectator. I wonder if this means that I am egotistical or queer, or only that my life has been so much more among books and intellectual things than the life of most of them. I am sure I love the town and my neighbors.

The thing I wish to put down, however, has nothing to do with my feelings toward the town. It is that I am ashamed of the way I wrote the other day about Mr. Saychase. He entered the hall this afternoon just as old Mrs. Oliver came limping in to see the decorations; and the lovely way in which he helped the poor old lame creature made me blush for myself. I almost wanted to go to him and apologize then and there. It would have been awkward, however, first to explain that I had made fun of him in my diary, and then apologize! But he is a good soul, even if he did think I was a sort of nineteenth century Zorahida, to give up Mohammedanism for the sake of wedding a Christian chief.—And here I go again!

August 15. I have been reading to-night a book about the East, and it has stirred me a good deal. The speculations of strange peoples on the great mystery of life and death bring them so close to us. They show how alike all mankind is, and how we all grope about after some clue to existence. On the whole it is better, I think, not to give much thought to what may come after death,—no more thought, that is, than we cannot help. We can never know, and we must either raise vague hopes to make us less alive to the importance of life, the reality of life—I do not know how to say it. Of course all religion insists on the importance of life, but rather as a preparation for another existence. I think we need to have it always before us that what is important is not what will happen after we are dead and gone, but what is happening now because we are alive and have a hand in things. I see this is not very clear, but I am sure the great thing is to live as if life were of value in itself. To live rightly, to make the most out of the life we can see and feel, is all that humanity is equal to, and it is certainly worth doing for its own sake.

The idea which has struck me most in what I have been reading to-night is the theory that each individual is made up of the fragments of other lives; that just as the body is composed of material once part of other bodies, so is the spirit built up of feelings, and passions, and tendencies, and traits of temperament formerly in other individuals dead and gone. At first thought it does not seem to me a comfortable theory. I should not seem to belong to myself any more, if I believed it. To have the temper of some bygone woman, and the affections of another, and the tastes of a third,—it is too much like wearing false hair! It does not seem to me possible, but it may be true. At least it is a theory which may easily be made to seem plausible by the use of facts we all know. If it is the true solution of our characters here, it is pleasant to think that perhaps we may modify what for the present is our very own self so it shall be better stuff for the fashioning of another generation. I should like to feel that when this bunch of ideas and emotions goes to pieces, the bits would make sweet spots in the individuals they go to make part of. I suppose this is what George Eliot meant in the "Choir Invisible," or something like this. As one thinks of the doctrine it is not so cold and unattractive as it struck me in the reading. One could bear to lose a conscious future if the alternative was happiness to lives not yet in being. I should like, though, to know it. But if there weren't any me to know, I should not be troubled, as the old philosophers were fond of saying, and the important thing would be not for me to know but for the world to be better. I begin to see how the doctrine might be a fine incentive to do the best with life that is in any way possible; and what more could be asked of any doctrine?

August 17. Baby was ill night before last, and we three women were smitten to the heart. Hannah went for Dr. Wentworth, and when he came he laughed at our panic, and assured me nothing serious was the matter. It was only a little indigestion caused by the excessive heat. I do not know how I should have behaved if it had not been that Rosa was in such a panic I had to give all my spare attention to keeping her in order. It came to me then what an advantage an officer must have in a battle; he cannot break down because he has to look to his men. Last night I wished greatly Tom were in reach; it would have been dreadful if anything really serious had happened to baby, and he not to know it until it was too late. Yet he could have done nothing if the worst had been true and he had been here. It would have been no comfort to poor little sick Tomine to have one person by her more than another, so long as her nurses were not strangers. A father is nothing to her yet. I wonder when he will be.

Yesterday Tomine was better, and to-night she seems as well as ever; but it will take time for me to be rid entirely of fear. I wonder if she had gone whether her little bunch of vitality would have been scattered through new lives. She can hardly have much personality or individuality yet. Sometimes the universe, the power that keeps going on and on, and which is so unmoved by human pain, strikes me as too terrible for thought; but I cling desperately to Father's idea that nature is too great to be unkind, and that what looks to us like cruelty is only the size of things too big for us to grasp. It is a riddle, and the way I put it is neither so clear nor wise, I suppose, as the theories of countless religious teachers, they and I alike guessing at things human insight is not equal to. I doubt much if it is profitable to speculate in this vein. "Think all you can about life as a good and glorious thing," Father wrote to me once when I had expressed in a school-letter some trouble or other about what comes after death, "but keep in mind that of what came before we were born or will happen after we are dead we shall never in this life know anything, no matter how much we speculate, so dreaming about it or fretting about it is simply building air-castles." I have said over to myself ever since I began to be perplexed that to speculate about another life is to build air-castles.

Baby is well again and I will not fret or dream of what it would mean if she had slipped away from us.

August 20. I must settle myself a little by writing, or I shall be like old Mrs. Tuell, who said that for years she never slept a wink because her nerves wiggled like angleworms all over her inside. I have certainly been through an experience which might make anybody's nerves wiggle.

About half past two o'clock Rosa brought me a note, and said:—

"That Thurston girl left it, and told me not to give it to you till three o'clock; but if I don't give it to you now, I know I'd forget it."

I opened the note without thinking anything about the time. It was written in Kathie's uneven hand, and blotched as if it had been cried over. This is what it said:—

Dear Miss Ruth,—This letter is to bid you good-by. You are the only one in the world I love, and nobody loves me. I cant stand you to love that baby better than me, and God is so angry it dont make any difference what I do now. When you read this I shall be in torment forever, because I am going down to Davis Cove to drownd myself because I am so wicked and nobody loves me. Dont tell on me, because it would make you feel bad and father wouldnt like it to get round a child of his had drownd herself and mother would cry. Yours truly and with a sad and loving good-by forever,

Kathie Thurston.

P. S. If they get me to bury will you please put some flowers on my coffin. No more from yours truly

K. T.

My first impulse was to laugh at this absurd note, but it came over me suddenly that there was no knowing what that child will do. Even now I am bewildered. I cannot get it out of my mind that there is a good deal of the theatrical in Kathie, but I may be all wrong. At any rate I reflected how she has a way of acting so that apparently she can herself take it for real.

I thought it over a while; then I got my hat and started down the street, with the notion that at least it would do no harm to go down to Davis Cove, and see if Kathie were there. As I walked on, recalling her incomprehensible actions, a dreadful feeling grew in my mind that she might have meant what she said, and she would be more likely to try to drown herself because she had told me. A sort of panic seized me; and just then the town clock struck three.

I had got down just opposite the Foot-bridge, and when I remembered that three was the time when I was to have the note, I feared I should be too late, and I began to run. Fortunately, there was nobody in sight, and as I came to the bend in the street I saw George coming, leading Kathie by the arm. She was dripping wet, and half staggering, although she kept her feet. I hurried up to them, too much out of breath with haste and excitement to be able to speak.

"Hullo!" George called out, as I came up to them, "see what a fish I've caught."

"Why, Kathie," gasped I, with a stupidity that was lucky, for it kept George from suspecting, "you've been in the water."

She gave me a queer look, but she said nothing.

"A little more and she'd have stayed there," George put in.

"You are wet too," I said, looking at him for the first time.

"Yes," he returned; "luckily I got off my coat and vest as I ran, so I saved my watch, but everything else is wet fast enough."

"How did it happen?" I asked.

"She was trying to get sugar-pears from those trees by the water," George answered; "and I suppose she lost her balance. I was going along the road and heard her scream."

"Along the road?" I echoed; for I knew Davis Cove is too far from the road for him to have heard a cry.

"She fell in just by the old shipyard on the point," he said.

"The boys were in swimming in the cove," Kathie explained, in a way which was of course unintelligible to George.

"Well," George commented, after a moment in which he seemed to clear up her meaning, "the next time you want sugar-pears you'd better get them when the boys are out of the way, so you needn't go in swimming yourself."

We had been walking along the road as we talked, and by this time had reached the Foot-bridge. I told George he must go home and get on dry clothing, and I would see to Kathie. He demurred at first, but I insisted, so he left us to cross the bridge alone. We walked in silence almost across the bridge, and then I asked her what kept bumping against me as I held her up.

"It's rocks in my pocket," she answered, quite in a matter-of-fact way. "I put 'em there to sink me."

I could have shaken her on the spot, so uncharitable was my mood, but I managed to answer her in a perfectly cool tone.

"Then you had better take them out," I said.

She got her hand into her pocket and fished out three or four pebbles, which all together wouldn't have sunk a three-days-old-kitten; and when these had been thrown over the bridge we proceeded on our drabbled way. My doubts of the genuineness of the whole performance grew in spite of me. I do not know exactly why I am coming so strongly to feel that Kathie is not wholly ingenuous, but I cannot get rid of the idea.

"Kathie," I asked, "did you see Mr. Weston coming when you jumped in?"

She looked up at me with eyes so honest I was ashamed of myself, but when she answered unhesitatingly that she had seen him, I went on ruthlessly to ask if she did not know he would save her.

"I thought if he was coming I'd got to hurry," she returned, as simply as possible.

I was more puzzled than ever, and I am puzzled still. Whether she really meant to take her life, or whether she only thought she meant it, does not, I suppose, make any great difference; but I confess I have been trying to make out ever since I left her. I would like to discover whether she is consciously trying to fool me or endeavoring as much to cheat herself, or is honest in it all; but I see no way in which I am ever likely to be satisfied.

I asked her to say nothing at home about how her ducking happened, and I satisfied her mother by repeating what George had said. To-morrow I must have it out with Mr. Thurston somehow or other; although I am still completely in the dark what I shall say to him. I hope the old fairy-tales are right when they say "the morning is wiser than the evening."

August 21. The morning is wiser than the evening, for I got up to-day with a clear idea in my mind what I had better do about Kathie. It is always a great comfort to have a definite plan of action mapped out, and I ate my breakfast in a cheerful frame of mind, intending to go directly to see Mr. Thurston while I should be fairly sure of finding him. I reckoned without Kathie, however, who presented herself at the dining-room window before I had finished my coffee, and begged me to come out.

"I can't come in without breaking my word," she said.

I could not argue with the absurd chit in that situation, so I went out into the garden with her and sat down on the bench by the sun-dial. The big red roses Father was so fond of are all in blossom, and in the morning air were wonderfully sweet. It was an enchanting day, and the dew was not entirely dried, so the garden had not lost the freshness it has when it first wakes up. I was exhilarated by the smell of the roses and the beauty of everything, and the clearness of the air. Rosa held baby up to us at the nursery window above, and I waved my hand to her, smiling from pure delight in everything. Kathie watched me with her great eyes, and when I sat down on the bench she threw herself at full length on the grass, and burst out sobbing.

"You do love her better than me!" she wailed. "I came to say how sorry I was, but I'm sorry now that I didn't stay in the water."

I took her by the shoulder, and spoke to her so sternly that I startled her.

"You are not to talk in that way anymore, Kathie," I said. "I am fond of you and I am fond of baby; but if baby were big enough and talked this silly way about you, do you suppose I would allow it? Sit up and stop crying."

I have always been careful not to hurt her feelings; perhaps I have been too careful. She sat up now, and then rose to her feet in a dazed sort of way. I determined to see if anything was to be made out of her mood.

"Kathie," said I, "how much of that performance yesterday was real, and how much was humbug? Tell me the truth."

She grew a little paler and her eyes dilated. I looked her straight in the face, half minded to force her if need be to give me some guidance in what I should do.

"I really meant to drown myself," she answered solemnly, "only when I saw the water and thought of hell I was afraid."

She stopped, and I encouraged her to go on.

"I saw Mr. Weston, and I was scared of him and—and everything, and so I jumped in."

I reflected that very likely the child was more of a puzzle to herself than she was to me, and in any case I had more important ends to gain than the satisfying of my curiosity, so I asked her as gently as I could if she really believed she would be eternally lost if she killed herself.

"Oh, yes, Miss Ruth!" she cried with feverish eagerness.

"Then why do you do it?" I went on. "How do you dare to do it?"

She looked at me with a growing wildness in her face that was certainly genuine.

"I'm lost, anyway," she burst out. "I know I have been too wicked for God to forgive me. I have committed murder in my heart, and I know I was never meant to be saved."

"Stop!" I commanded her. "You are a little, foolish girl, too young even to know what you are talking about. How dare you decide what God will do?"

She regarded me with a look of stupefaction as if I were a stranger whom she had never seen; and indeed I can well believe I seemed one. Then the perversity of her mind came back to the constant idea.

"That's just it," she declared. "That's just my wickedness."

After this I refused to go into the subject any further. I got up and asked her if I should find her father at home. She begged me not to go to see him, and then said with an air of relief that he had gone out to Connecticut Mills to visit a sick woman. I did not stay with her longer. I said I must go into the house, and as she refused to come, I left her, a forlorn little figure, there among the roses, and went in. It seemed hard to do it, but I had made up my mind she had better not indulge in any more talk this morning.

August 22. Cousin Mehitable, in a letter which came this morning, pities me because of my colorless existence; but I begin to feel that life is becoming too lurid. I have to-day bearded—no, Mr. Thurston hasn't any beard; but I have had my interview with him, and I feel as if I had been leading a cavalry charge up a hill in the face of a battery of whatever kind of guns are most disconcertingly destructive.

I am somewhat confused about the beginning of our talk. I got so excited later that the tame beginnings have slipped away; but I know I said I had come to make a proposition about Kathie, and somehow I led up to the child's mad performance the other day. I showed him the note and told him the story, but not until I had made him promise not to mention the matter to the child. When he had finished he was as pale as my handkerchief, his thin, bloodless face positively withered with pain.

"I cannot keep silence about this," he said when I had finished. "I must withdraw my promise, Miss Privet. My Kathie's soul is in danger."

I am sure that I am not ill-tempered, but over Kathie and her father I find myself in a state of exasperation which threatens to destroy all my claims to be considered a sane and temperate body. I had to struggle mightily to keep myself in hand this morning, but at first, at least, I succeeded.

"Mr. Thurston," I said, "I cannot release you. I should never have told you except on your promise, and you cannot honestly break it. Now listen to me. I have no right to dictate, but I cannot stand by and see dear little Kathie going to ruin. I am sure I know what is good for her just now better than you do. She is a good child, only she has gone nearly wild brooding over theologic questions she should never have heard of until she was old enough to judge them more reasonably."

He tried to interrupt me, but I put up my hand to stop him, and went on.

"You know how nervous and high-strung she is, and you cannot think her capable of looking fairly at the awful mysteries with which a creed deals."

"But I have only instructed her in those things on which her eternal salvation depends," he broke in.

"Her eternal salvation does not depend on her being driven into a madhouse or made to drown herself," I retorted, feeling as if I were brutal, but that it couldn't be helped. "The truth is, Mr. Thurston, you have been offering up Kathie as a sacrifice to your creed just as the fathers and mothers of old made their children pass through the fires to Moloch." He gasped, and some thin blood rushed to his face, but I did not stop. "I have no doubt they were conscientious, just as you are; but that didn't make it any better for the children. You have been entirely conscientious in torturing Kathie, but you have been torturing her."

His face was positively gray, and there was a look of anguish in his eyes which made me weak. It would have been so much easier to go on if he had been angry.

"You don't understand," he said brokenly. "You think all religion is a delusion, so of course you can't see. You think I don't love my child, and that I am so wrapped up in my creed I can't see she suffers. You won't believe it hurts me more than it does her."

"Do you think then," I asked him, doing my best to keep back the tears, "that it can give any pleasure to a kind Heavenly Father? I do understand. You have been so afraid of not doing your duty to Kathie you have brought her almost to madness, almost"—

"Don't! Don't!" he interrupted, putting out his hand as if I had struck him. "Oh, Miss Privet, if she had"—

I saw the real affection and feeling of the man as I have never realized them. I had been hard, and perhaps cruel, but it was necessary to save Kathie. I spoke now as gently as I could.

"No matter for the things that didn't happen, Mr. Thurston. She is safe and sound."

"But she meant to do it," he returned in a tone so low I could hardly catch the words.

"Meant?" I repeated. "She isn't in a condition to mean anything. She was distraught by brooding over things that at her age she should never even have heard of. I beg your pardon, Mr. Thurston, but doesn't what has happened prove she is too high-strung to be troubled with theology yet? I am not of your creed, but I respect your feeling about it. Only you must see that to thrust these things on Kathie means madness and despair"—

"But she might die," he broke in. "She might die without having made her peace with her Maker, and be lost forever."

There was anguish in his face, and I know he meant it from the bottom of his heart; but in his voice was the trace of conventional repetition of phrases which made it possible for me to be overcome by exasperation. I looked at him in that mingled fury of impatience and passionate conviction of my ground which must have been the state of the prophets of old when the spirit of prophecy descended upon them. I realize now that to have the spirit of prophecy it is necessary to lose the temper to a degree not altogether commendable in ordinary circumstances. I blazed out on that poor, thin-blooded, dejected, weak-minded, loving Methodist minister, and told him he insulted the God he worshiped; I said he had better consider the text "I will have mercy and not sacrifice;" I flung two or three other texts at him while he stood dazed with astonishment; I flamed at him like a burning-bush become feminine flesh; and fortunately he did not remember that even the Old Nick is credited with being able to cite Scripture for his purposes. I think the texts subdued him, so that it is well Father brought me up to know the Bible. At least I reduced Mr. Thurston to a state where he was as clay in the hands of the potter.

Then I presented to his consideration my scheme to send Kathie away to boarding-school for a year. I told him he was at liberty to select the school, if only it was one where she would not be too much troubled about theology. Of course I knew it would be hopeless to think of her going to a school entirely unsectarian, but I have already begun to make inquiries about the relative reasonableness of Methodist schools, and I think we may find something that will do. To put the child into surroundings entirely new, where her mind will be taken away from herself, and where a consciousness of the keenly discerning eyes of girls of her own age will keep her theatrical tendencies in check, should work wonders. I made Mr. Thurston give his consent, and before I left the house I saw Mrs. Thurston. I told her not to trouble about Kathie's outfit, and so I hope that bother is pretty well straightened out for the present.

August 24. George has taken a violent cold from his ducking, and is confined to the house. I hope that it is nothing serious. It is especially awkward now, for Mr. Longworthy is coming over from Franklin in a day or two to go over his accounts as trustee.

Kathie came over this morning while I was at breakfast, and tapped on the dining-room window. She was positively shining with happiness. I never saw a child so transformed.

"Oh, Miss Ruth," she cried out, as soon as I turned, "oh, won't you come out here? I do so want to kiss you!"

I asked her to come inside, but she said she had promised not to, and rather than to get into a discussion I went out to her. She ran dancing up to me, fairly quivering with excitement.

"Oh, Miss Ruth," she said, "it is too good to be true! You are the most loveliest lady that ever lived! Oh, I am so happy!"

I had to laugh at her demonstrativeness, but it was touching to see her. She was no more like the morbid, hollow-eyed girl she had been than if she had never had a trouble. It is wonderful that out of the family of a Methodist parson should come a nature so exotic, but after all, the spiritual raptures and excesses which have worn Mr. Thurston as thin as a leaf in December must have their root in a temperament of keenly emotional extremes.

"I always wanted to go to boarding-school," Kathie went on, possessing herself of my hand, and covering it with kisses; "but Mother always said we couldn't afford it. Now I am going. Oh, I shall have such a beautiful time!"

I laughed at her enthusiasm, but I tried to moderate her extravagance a little by telling her that at boarding-school she would have to work, and to live by rule, so that she must give up her wild ways.

"Oh, I'll work," she responded, her ardor undampened. "I'll be the best girl you ever heard of. I beg your pardon for everything I've done, and I'll never do anything bad again."

This penitence seemed to me rather too general to amount to much, but that she was so much pleased was after all the chief thing, so I made no allusion to particular shortcomings, I did not even urge her to come into the house, for I felt this was a point for her to work out in her own mind. We walked in the dewy garden, discussing the preparations for her leaving home, and it was droll and pathetic to find how poverty had bred in her fantastic little pate a certain sort of shrewdness. She said in the most matter-of-fact way that it would be nice for her father to have one less mouth to fill, and that she supposed her smaller sisters could have her old clothes. I confess she did not in talking exhibit any great generosity of mind, but perhaps it was not to be expected of a child dazzled by the prospect of having a dream come true, and of actually being blessed with more than one new frock at a time. I am not clear what the result of sending her among strangers will be, and I see that a good deal of care will be necessary in choosing the school. I do believe good must come of it, however; and at least we are doing the best we can.

August 25. I went over to George's this morning to find out whether he is able to see Mr. Longworthy. He was in bed, but insisted upon seeing me. I have had a terrible day. I left him completely broken down with his confession. O Mother! Mother!

August 26. Childishly I cried myself to sleep last night. It is so terrible to feel that a friend has done wrong and proved himself unworthy. I could not help shivering to think of George, and of how he has had night after night to go to sleep with the knowledge of his dishonesty. I settled in my own mind what I could do to cover his defalcation, which fortunately is small enough for me to provide for by going to Boston and selling some of the bonds Aunt Leah left me, and which Mr. Longworthy has nothing to do with. Then I lay there in the dark and sopped my pillow, until somehow, I found myself in the middle of a comforting dream.

I dreamed that I was a little girl, and that I was broken-hearted about some indefinite thing that had happened. I had in my dream, so far as I can recall, no idea what the trouble was, but the grief was keen, and my tears most copious. I was in the very thickest of my childish woe when Father came behind me, picked me up like a feather, and set me down in his lap. I had that ineffable sense of companionship which can be named but never described, and I clung to him with a frantic clasp. He kissed me, and wiped away my tears with soothing words, and then at last he whispered in my ear as a precious secret something so infinitely comforting that my sorrow vanished utterly. I broke into smiles, and kissed him again and again, crying out that it was too good to be true, and he had made me happy for my whole life. So keen was my joy that I awoke, and lay in bed half dreaming still, saying over and over to myself his enchanting words as if they would forever be a safeguard against any pain which life might bring. Gradually I became sufficiently wide awake to realize what this wonderful message of joy was, and found myself ecstatically repeating: "Pigs have four feet and one tail!" Of course I laughed at the absurdity, but the comfort stayed with me all the same, and all day I have gone about with a peaceful mind, cheered by the effect of this supernaturally precious fact of natural history.

I went to Boston and came back without seeing anybody but business men. I saw George a moment on my way from the station, and now everything is ready for Mr. Longworthy to-morrow. Both George and I may sleep to-night in peace.

All the way to and from Boston I found myself going over my whole acquaintance with George, questioning myself about what he has been and what he is. To-night I have been reading over what I have written of him in my diary, and the picture I find of him this year has gone to my heart. I am afraid I have not been kind, perhaps have not been just; for if what I have been writing is true George is—he is not a gentleman. It does not startle me now to write this as it would have done two days ago. I am afraid it will be years before I am able to get out of my remembrance how he looked when he confessed. It seems almost as if I should never be able to think of him again except as I saw him then, his face almost as colorless as his pillow, and then red with shame. He looked shrunken, morally as well as physically. I do not know whether I blamed him more or less because he was so eager to throw the whole blame on his wife's extravagance; I only know that it can hardly have been more cruel for him to tell me of his dishonor than it was for me to hear.

If he had asked me I would have lent him money, or given it to him, for that matter, and done it gladly rather than to have him troubled. To think how he must have been teased and bothered for this pitiful sum, just two or three hundred dollars, before he could have made up his mind to borrow it on my securities! He might have got it honestly, it was so little; but he did not wish anybody to know he needed it. Pride, and folly, and vanity,—I am so hurt that I begin to rail. I will put the whole thing out of my mind, and never think of it again if I can help it.