AT an age when most children are tenderly wrapped in the cotton-wool of domestic seclusion, that golden-haired toddler, the warden's daughter, a motherless little creature, escaped from the careless durance of a busy maid of all work, had become, comparatively, a public character, and, no longer a private baby, had been tacitly appropriated by an entire prison community.

"Taking her walks abroad" in the roomy guard-room; pattering right and left, on tiny aimless feet, she peered curiously up and down and round about. With childish wonder (herself "the cynosure of neighbouring eyes") she peeped through tall iron gratings into mysterious corridors, with their endless stretches of dusky cells; at dizzy flights of iron stairs, where—pannikin in hand—listless men trod, day after day, the same weary road. More intently she looked into the shifting panorama of human faces, ever unfolding beneath her innocent gaze. Faces of prison visitors, of prison officers, and instructors; faces of that motley throng behind the bars; faces hard and evil, reckless and defiant, cowed and sullen, or sorrowful, shamed, and forlorn; yet none, among them all, turned disapprovingly upon her, the prison child, the single sunbeam, the one pure and beautiful presence in this attainted, unlovely place! Convict fathers,—hungry for baby faces, foregone through their own graceless folly and crime,—catching a passing glimpse of the golden head, a distant flutter of the white baby gown, were, for the moment, glad and blest.

Although, in the main, light of heart,—as are all young creatures drinking their first sweet wine of life,—little Mabel was not, altogether, as the outside children, who breathe untainted air, and have never neighboured with the wretchedness of that "black flower of civilisation," a criminal prison. Looking into hard, despairing eyes behind the guard-room grating, her own would sometimes fill with sudden tears; and marking, in dull procession, the tread of listless, joyless feet, the lithe young figure, with the springing step, would often instinctively slow itself to sympathetic rhythm.

But, when grown in grace and in favour with God, and the prisoner, Queen May, now a sedate maiden of five summers, had coaxed old Peter Floome, the prison runner, and her self-elected nurse, to her royal wishes; when lifted proudly in his arms she was permitted to pass bodily into the prison yard, that hitherto unexplored region,—to make a royal progress through the entire round of the workshops,—scattering, right and left, gracious smiles and pungent checkerberry lozenges saved up for this great occasion; when she was triumphantly borne to the underground prison kitchen, there to be handed gingerly around among as many aproned cooks as might have served "Old King Cole," at his jolliest, and was munched and kissed by lips,—presumably not morally of the cleanest,—yet what, indeed, mattered this to the uncritical child? The convict, like "Cathleen's dun cow," "Tho' wicked he was, was gentle to her;"—then it was that the glory of the occasion, and Peter Floome's pride in his beloved nursling, rose far beyond the high-water mark of words!

And here let it be stated that Warden Flint's baby daughter had, in the prison, another friend far more eligible than that brain-cracked convict, Peter Floome.

He was a prison officer, to wit, that notable turnkey who keeps the guard-room doors. His not over-euphonious name was Timothy Tucker, and, though a bachelor of fifty, and a very dragon at holding a door, to little birds and little children the turnkey's heart was as wax.

Soon after his instalment in the guard-room he had, with Warden Flint's grudging permission, hung, high in its tall window, five small bird cages. In these, three yellow canaries, a Java sparrow, and a dainty pair of love-birds, all optimistic creatures that—

hopped as contentedly, or sang as rapturously, as if the prison were indeed (as fabled in convict slang) "the palace." As for the prison child, from the first hour of her appearance in the guard-room, she had commanded the turnkey's susceptible heart. His "little Blossom," he had called her, and when, later, she imparted to him the pretty abbreviation of her name, it was he who wedded the two charming words, and so made the "prison name" of the warden's daughter, May-blossom. Seldom was the genial, child-loving turnkey too busy to pilot the small, tottering feet across the guard-room floor; to hold her high in his arms to "'ook at tunnin' birdies," or to lift her, in dizzy delight, to her favourite perch, his tall desk, by the rear window, commanding all the fascinating bustle of the prison yard. And when from prattling infancy she had advanced to garrulous, inquisitive childhood, it was he who lent an ever-ready ear to her thousand and one questions.

"Children, now, is curus," said Mr. Tucker to his landlady, over his evening pipe, "they beat birds all holler! There's May-blossom, now, only six years old, an' she sticks me sometimes, she does, an' no mistake!"

The train of thought, leading to these frank observations, had been started in the good turnkey's mind by the recollection of a recent theological skirmish with this astute little being, in which (to use his own forcible words) he "had ben most gol darn'dly beat." This embryo free-religionist having insisted upon being told "Why, if God, certain true, loved everybody, an' was bigger an' stronger, an' ever so much gooder than other folks, He didn't stop people's being bad, so's they had to be put in prison, without little children to kiss, an' kittens to play with, an' strawberries an' cake, an' things to eat?" Ah, little soul! too soon perplexed by the ancient riddle; why doesn't He—why, indeed! Young and old, wise and simple, we are all guessing together; and no man solves the immemorial puzzle!

Peter Floome—when, upon a Sunday, the prison chaplain exhorted his not over-heedful flock to pious dependence upon the divine care—was wont to make his own disparaging comments upon the well-meant, but often inapplicable discourse. "'Tain't a grain o' use" (said this volunteer critic, to his fellow-convicts) "o' the chaplain braggin' in here 'bout Providence, an' sich. Most prob'ly th' Almighty is, more or less, round 'tendin' to things; but, nat'rally, the devil takes charge o' prisons, an' runs 'em putty much his own way."

Peter, having had a good twenty years' stretch of prison life, his experience undoubtedly counted. His utterances were, however, to be taken with that corrective grain of salt with which one wisely qualifies the statement of the "crank;" for though, in the main, mentally sound, through long confinement, and much hopeless pondering, Peter Floome's brain had taken a decidedly pessimistic twist, and, in prison circles, he was unanimously dubbed "a crank." It was after the death of Warden Flint's wife, that Peter's theology became a shade more optimistic, for then it was that the warden's year-old daughter, by the tacit consent of all whom it might concern, fell to his especial care.

In his capacity of runner, Peter had, comparatively, the freedom of the prison, and was particularly detailed for duty in the warden's household. The child—with that unaccountable choice of favourites inherent in her kind—had taken famously to her convict dry-nurse. It was the sudden rising of this new star on the runner's narrow horizon, that inspired the following harangue: "Ef th' Almighty, as I say, don't jest put up in prisons, Himself, leastways He does, now an' agin, send little angels, an' sich, to keep up a feller's courage."

Peter and his "little angel" might now often be seen together; for the child, following hard upon his heels, had one day slipped furtively through the guard-room door, and had thus become a regular habituÉ of that semi-public apartment.

Ten summers of this exceptional child-life had passed over May-blossom's golden head, when Destiny (that other name for Providence) suddenly removed her to an environment far more kindly than that in which her sweet young eyes had opened upon this many-sided existence. But, to explain, we must escape at once from prison.

Here, in the soft September sky, not the faintest speck of a cloud may be seen. The river, broken into endless ripples by a crisp west wind, glances like molten sunshine; and not many rods from its pebbled shore, behold that goodly sight, an old colonial homestead!

Four generations of Parkers have lived their lives in this ancient dwelling beside the Saganock, which has all the well-to-doativeness (if one may coin a word) inherent in the ancestral homes of such favoured children of men as have much goods laid up for many years. And here, upon "the stoop," in after-dinner ease, sits the mistress of the mansion—Miss Paulina Parker. Miss Paulina is the last of the Parkers. In her snowy gown and gauzy dress-cap, she is, to-day, dainty as a white butterfly. Far and wide is she known as the Lady Bountiful of Saganock; and a dearer, lovelier old maid the sun never shone upon; and, though her sixtieth birthday falls on the twentieth of this very month, you would not take her to be a day over forty-five! The lean, gaunt old body, rocking beside yonder window, in the kitchen ell, is Harmy Patterson. For the last fifty years Harmy has cooked and saved for the Parker family, and still considers herself in the prime of her usefulness. She is reading the Boston Recorder, to her confrÈre—Mandy Ann, the second girl; who, all agape, swallows the delectable murders, marriages, and deaths that spice its columns. Reuben, the hired man, leisurely running a lawn-mower past the open window, pauses beneath it, from time to time, to solace himself with some especial tidbit of horror. While Miss Paulina, in pensive reverie, looks out on river and sky, and marks how, in the Saganock burying-ground, a maple or two has prematurely reddened, she is suddenly confronted by Harmy Patterson, newspaper in hand, spectacles pushed over her brown foretop, and cap-strings flying in the wind. Excitedly indicating, with her long forefinger, an especial column of her favourite journal, she pantingly exclaims: "Fur pity sake, Miss Paulina, du jes' read this!"

Promptly acceding to the request of the old body, Miss Parker reads attentively the following:

FEARFUL TRAGEDY AT THE STATE PRISON!

As the warden of the Massachusetts State Prison was this morning making his round of observation and inspection among the shops, being in the shoemaking department at about ten and a half o'clock, and passing the bench where one Hodges (a disorderly convict, who, after repeated and severe punishment, had, that morning, been remanded to his shop) was at work, Hodges suddenly sprang upon him from behind, stabbing him with a shoe-knife, and killing him instantly. The assassin was immediately secured, heavily ironed, and committed, for safe-keeping, to the "Lower Arch." The body of the unfortunate warden was removed to the hospital, a coroner summoned, and the inspectors convened. By this sad occurrence a young family is bereaved of paternal support, and the prison of a long-tried and faithful officer.

"Dear me, Harmy, what a sad affair!" cries the compassionate reader; "and Josiah Flint's moth—no; let me see! I have it now. Josiah Flint's grandmother was a—was a Parker, Harmy."

"Yes'm," replies the woman, who has the Parker genealogy at her tongue's end; "an' your pa's was second cousins; an' the warden, ef he'd a lived, would be your third cousin. Law sakes! I mind, as well as can be, young Josiah an' his pa comin' to Saganock. You was a girl then, an' old Josiah, he was minister in Salem, an' his father before him (an' hot and heavy he made it for witches, folks say). Well, he come to Saganock to preach for our minister, an' brung his boy along; an' bein' connections, they was asked to put up with us. Sakes alive! I remember it all well as ef it want but yisterday. That Sunday we had apple pie an' milk betwixt sermons, an' when afternoon meetin' was out, I gin 'em a pipin' hot supper. Well, the old man was a powerful preacher," rambles on the old retainer, while Miss Paulina, heedless of her chatter, sits pondering the situation. "An' I had remarkable exercises of mind that Sunday; but there! that boy, goodness gracious! didn't he make way with my clam fritters an' gooseberry pie? Well, well, this is a dyin' world; an' now his time's come; an' sich an awful providence, too!" And here, kindly oblivious of the ancient onslaught on her supper, old Harmy drops a pitying tear for the dead warden.

"Harmy," says Miss Paulina, decisively, "Josiah Flint's wife has been dead these nine years, and somebody must see to those poor orphan children. Tell Reuben to put Major into the carryall. I shall take the next train for Boston, and probably stay at the prison till the funeral is over."

In accordance with this humane resolve, Miss Parker packs her travelling bag, and, in her second best black silk gown, sets out at four p. m. for the State Prison. Very cold and gray, in the early autumn twilight, is the residence of the late Josiah Flint, when Miss Paulina Parker alights from the depot carriage at its frowning entrance. A jaded housemaid answers the bell, and ushers her into a slipshod parlor, and thus meets her inquiries for "the warden's family:"

"Famblee, is it, mem? sure, an' it's jist broken up, it is. There's himself (God rest him) as dead as a dooer-nail. The baby wint years ago, along wid the mother; an' the soon he died with the ammonia (pneumonia) lasht fall, whilst he was away to the schule; an' as fur the girl—she's that wantherin', sure, that I couldn't jist this minnit lay me finger on the crather."

Discouraged by this curt summary, Miss Parker half inclines to a French leave of the prison; but inspired by the hope of future usefulness to the small estray upon whom Bridget cannot "jist lay a finger," she resolves to remain, and somehow elbow her way into this dubious and fragmentary domestic circle.

"I am Miss Parker (she explains), the warden's cousin, from Saganock. I have come to stay over the funeral, if you can conveniently keep me.

"Sure, mem, no doot we can, if, be the same token, it proves convanient to yerself," responds the girl. "The korp, indade, is after wakin' itself in the bist chamber; but there's the intry bidroom at your service, intirely."

Miss Paulina graciously accepting the proffered chamber, Bridget kindly leads the way to the "intry bid-room;" and, bidding her "have no fear of the korp," hurries off in pursuit of the needful toilet furnishment, leaving the guest alone in the small dusky apartment.

Interwoven with her life experience, as it has ever been, death has hitherto been calmly confronted by Miss Paulina; but to-night, alone in a strange dwelling, with a murdered man in the adjoining apartment, and neighboured, no doubt, by scores of murderers, it is all unutterably depressing; and when Bridget, having, as she states, waited to "rub out a clane towel, an' hate a flat for that same," comes clattering through the hall, with the damp napery across her arm, a lamp in one hand, and a slopping ewer in the other, the nervous lady is half disposed to hug her for the bare relief afforded by her presence! Hastily arranging the dusty wash-stand, Bridget announces the instant "goin' on" of supper, and graciously invites her to "tak a look at the korp, an' thin walk doon." Left alone, Miss Paulina removes bonnet and shawl, bathes her face, dons her cap, and, ignoring "the korp," hastily descends to the dining-room.

The supper, a badly cooked, ill-served meal, is solitary and uncomfortable, the "childer" having, according to Bridget, kindly consented to be captured, to be put to bed, and to cry herself to sleep. Miss Paulina, weary and forlorn, soon retires. Already half-undressed, she finds that her travelling bag, containing her night gear and toilet necessaries, together with sundry toothsome packages, provided as "sops" for supposable hostile small Flints, has been left below stairs. Bridget being presumably beyond call, the good lady must herself seek the missing bag. It is safe in the entrance hall, and, hastily securing it, she essays to return to her own quarters. In her bewilderment, she somehow misses her bedroom door, and, instead, opens that of the chamber containing the corpse.

Already well into the apartment, she discovers her mistake, and, simultaneously, lets fall her lamp, surprised by the unlooked-for tableau confronting her. Here, in the dimly-lighted room, close to the murdered warden, whose face she has uncovered,—like some exquisite statue of Pity, mute, motionless, and scarce less pallid than the marble before her,—stands the night-robed figure of May-blossom. No childish recoil from that awful presence disturbs her sweet, earnest face. A solemn awe is in the wistful gray eyes, a mute interrogation of that confronting mystery, blent with the tender pathos of commisserating love. Startled by the clatter of the falling lamp, the child turns, and timidly awaits the approach of the unknown intruder. Dear, kind Miss Paulina! Surprise and wonder at once give way to the one absorbing desire to clasp in her warm, motherly arms this lovely, lonely child.

"Poor little darling," she murmurs, caressingly, approaching and kissing the tear-wet cheek. "Why are you here so late, and all alone?"

"I thought," apologizes the child, "I thought it might not be so very wrong. The nights are so long, and when I tried to sleep my eyes wouldn't shut; for I kept thinking of him (indicating reverently the corpse), and of the other, too. Peter says he's crazy, and awful wicked, and down there in the dungeon with the rats, an' all in irons! And when I thought of it, I got wider and wider awake, and then I came to father. When he was alive (apologetically), of course, he didn't care to have me around, and so I stayed mostly with Uncle Tim and Peter, and the others; but I thought he might be glad, up in heaven, if he saw me staying with him now when he is all alone."

"It was not at all wrong, dear child," says Miss Paulina; "but come away with me now. I am your father's cousin, my child, your Aunt Paulina. You shall try my bed to-night, and see if you cannot sleep there."

Permitting the child a last good-night kiss, Miss Paulina re-covers the dead face of Warden Flint, upon which the sharp agony of that cruel exit from life yet lingers, and the two pass reverently from the chamber.

Never, in all May-blossom's unmothered life, has there been a night like this. The warm cuddling in tender arms, two fairy tales, the tucking up in bed, and, last of all, the singing of a Scotch ballad, sweet as April rain, upon whose soothing rhythm the weary little soul floats awhile in semi-consciousness, and, at last, falls deliciously into the soft arms of sleep.

We may be sure that all the veteran funeralgoers (those irrepressible "mutes") were on evidence at the funeral of Warden Flint; that his most sequestered virtues were brought to the front, and put on parade for the occasion, and that the usual number in attendance pronounced the remarks "excellent." After the service the coffin is borne uncovered through the guard-room, and deposited in the prison yard. The convicts filing thither, in reverent procession, are permitted a last look at their warden. Hodges, the murderer, taken from his rayless dungeon, and blinking dazedly at the light, is (after the old-time experimental fashion) brought face to face with the corpse. He neither weeps nor smiles. His face wears the blank expression of utter imbecility. After much prodding from his attendants, he recognizes the warden, and babbles, "O dear! have I killed him?" When bidden to put his hand on the body, he recoils and shudders. He exhibits no other emotion, and, clanking his irons, is led supinely back to the "Lower Arch." The convicts retire in slow, orderly procession, and the coffin is returned to more private quarters. The lid is screwed down. Mrs. Jones, standing at the front window, counts the carriages, and, as the body is being adjusted on its hearse, Mrs. Miller, in a resonant whisper, asks Mrs. Brown, "How soon they expect to get into the new house, and if she's weaned the baby?" Amid this easy chit-chat, the mourning carriages fill, the procession starts. After this, the Joneses, Millers, and Browns go their ways. The funeral is over.

Warden Flint's successor, an oldish man with grown-up sons, promptly appointed by the governor, arrived upon the scene directly upon the heels of his departure (death's widest gaps are soon filled!), and, as there were none to say her nay, Miss Parker tacitly adopted his homeless child, and made ready for her departure. Miss Paulina (admirable as she was) had her limitations. The convict, viewed through the disparaging lens of her own immaculate spectacles, was not an eligible associate, and the tender, all-round leave-taking, permitted between her innocent charge and her attainted friends, was an heroic stretch of good-will on the part of this excellent lady.

At last, it was all well over. May-blossom had given her farewell hug to Peter Floome and "Uncle Tim," and her sweet eyes yet wet with tears, and hanging, as to a last plank, upon the cage of a fluttering yellow canary (the parting souvenir of the inconsolable turnkey), was safely bestowed in the two p. m. train on her way to Saganock,—now no longer a "prison child."

The general depression incident to the withdrawal of this sweet familiar presence from the gray old prison was slightly relieved by speculative interest in the new warden. It might reasonably be hoped that this bran-new broom would sweep away some time-honoured abuses—such as the iron crown, the ball and chain, the lash, and the parti-coloured prison attire. It was also inferred that he would reduce the number of consignments to the "Lower Arch," since a recently dungeoned culprit had gone stark mad in that unsavoury place, and refusing, on the expiration of his term of detention, to vacate in favour of an incoming tenant, had been, like some elusive rat, actually smoked out of his hole![2] As to that forceful incentive to propriety, the penal shower-bath, it was whispered that even the commissioners themselves had become shaky in regard to its usefulness, since the sad taking off of a prison warden had been the latest result of that mode of disciplinary torture, a description of which is here subjoined for the curious.

The refractory wretch, his arms, legs, and neck confined in wooden stocks, is seated, nude, in a small, dark closet. From three to four barrels of water are placed above his head, at an elevation of six to eight feet. Unable to change in the slightest degree his position, he receives upon the top of his head, drop by drop, in sudden shower or heavy douche (as may best suit the fancy of his tormentor), this terrible bath. As a devilish after-thought of the inventor, a trench-like collar is made to encircle the victim's neck; as the water descends, this collar fills, and it is so contrived that at the least movement of the sufferer's head the water shall flow into his mouth and nostrils, until he is upon the verge of strangulation. By order of the Board, the shower bath was, in 18—, set up in the State Prison. Could that criminal institution have furnished an unlimited supply of waterproof brains, it might have flourished there indefinitely; but mad convicts are troublesome, nay, sometimes dangerous, and insanity behind the bars is, therefore, not to be wantonly induced.

Hodges, a provokingly incorrigible sinner, had been, time out of mind, "under treatment." At the command of Warden Flint, he had (putting it in Peter Floome's own forcible English) "ben showered out of his wits, and into his wits, an' then showered right over agin." In the abnormal mental state induced by this prolonged torture, the wretched creature had finally turned upon his tormentor. Discouraged by this unlooked-for practical result of the shower-bath, the Board subsequently ordered the discontinuance of its use in the prison; and Hodges was the last subject of that infernal contrivance.

He was brought to trial for the murder of his keeper, and acquitted on the ground of insanity; and finally made good his escape from this troublous life, by a leap from an upper window of the State Insane Hospital.

Hodges was an accomplished rogue, and a second comer to the prison, and it is to be inferred that by the door of death "he went to his place," leaving the world none the poorer by his withdrawal from it; all the same, he is to be congratulated on his ultimate escape from the penal water cure.

It is May-day; and high tide with the Saganock. It is a brimful hurrying river, and, at this moment, fully verifies that distracting old saw, "Time and tide stay for no man." And here, amid budding lilacs and singing robins, some half head taller, and two good years older than on the day when she bade a final adieu to the prison, is May-blossom. On this sunny slope of the Parker lawn she is prospecting for early violets. Her sweet face has grown thinner. Violet circles underline her soft gray eyes. Her lips are as threads of scarlet wool, and, listening, you may hear her cough—deep and hollow. Alas! It is a sound to make the heart ache.

Soon wearied by her futile search, the child returns to her cosy corner on "the stoop," and there, curled up beneath the soft warm folds of an afghan, watches the westering sun, the fleecy clouds, and the familiar river speeding on to the sea.

Meantime, at the north door, Dr. Abel Foster, the family "medicine man," briskly alights from his buggy. Before his hand can touch the knocker it is opened by Miss Paulina herself. "Good afternoon, my dear lady; and so pussy is still ailing, is she?" cries the good doctor (this with assumed nonchalance, slightly overdone).

"Yes, Doctor Foster," replies Miss Parker; "and will you kindly sound her lungs to-day, and let me know the worst? One flinches indeed, but, if it must come—why, then—" an ominous quaver in the gentle voice; and the doctor shrewdly interrupts:

"Bless you, madam! I'm in a terrible hurry! Twenty patients waiting for me this minute! Let me see the little girl at once."

May-blossom is called in, her blue-veined wrist consigned to the doctor's big feelers; her tongue submitted to a critical inspection; and, after undergoing a prolonged professional thumping and hearkening, she is soundly hugged and kissed, and, with a nod and a smile, dismissed. After this, Doctor Foster and the lady of the mansion are closeted awhile together. The buggy then passes down the drive, and disappears on the long dusty road. Soon after, the south door opens, and a face, pale and sad, but very calm, bends over the child, who has again returned to her out-door seat. Very tenderly is the warm afghan folded about the small, fragile form. The robins no longer sing. The sun, half-obscured, is going down. The burying-ground stands drearily out against the murky sky. The pines wail mournfully, and the river—at ebbing tide—murmurs in sad refrain. Old Harmy, moulding tea-biscuits at her kitchen window, imparts to Mandy Ann—who is shaving the dried beef for tea—her belief that Miss Paulina "hes gone clean crazy, settin' out-doors with that child, an' the dew a fallin' this very minnit, like sixty!" Miss Paulina—recovering her wits—hurries her darling in. The tea-table is already laid in the south keeping-room, beside the wide fireplace, with its ancient crane, and its Scriptural border of watery blue Dutch tiles; and, in the cheerful apple-wood blaze, the two partake together of that now almost obsolete meal—a substantial six o'clock tea. May-blossom is then snugly settled among the cushions of a wide chintz lounge, and the elder lady, in a low seat beside her, and holding lovingly her small wasted hand,—as is her wont,—chats pleasantly with her darling, in the soft, quiet gloaming. At nine, they pass, hand in hand, to Miss Paulina's own chamber, where the child's cot has long been established. May-blossom undressed, kissed, and blessed, creeps drowsily between its warm blankets, and is soon sound asleep. Miss Paulina, in her dressing-gown, broods over the dying fire, far into the night. Alas! have not all her best beloved gone from her? Why might not Heaven have spared to her this last—the one ewe lamb, so tenderly carried in her arms, and warmed in her lonely bosom? Why not; ah, why? She recalls the blessed comfort of two love-lightened years; the daily lessons, when to teach this bright little creature had been a mere pastime; their woodland fern and flower-gatherings, their winter fireside cosiness, all the nameless homely delights of love's dear fellowship—wayside flowers, that, scarce perceived, blossom along life's trodden ways. And now it is all coming to an end! Nothing will be left her but one small, grass-grown grave! As if there were not already graves enough in her world!

May-blossom, though not a sickly child, had never been robust; and when, at midwinter, she had taken the measles, this epidemic of childhood had gone hard with her. She had convalesced but slowly; an ugly cough had set in, and could not be routed; and now there were hectic afternoons, debilitating night-sweats, succeeded by mornings of lassitude; and, to-day, Doctor Foster had summed up his diagnosis in one dreadful word—consumption!

"The child," explained the good doctor—tears blinding his kind old eyes—"has grown up (as it were) in the cellar; delicate nervous organization; too much brain; too little out-door life; and the outcome of it all is simply this—with that cough, and that constitution (God help us!) an angel from heaven couldn't save her!"

Summer is coming. The buttercups are here. May-blossom is better. She sleeps well, coughs less, and her appetite is mending. Buoyed by deceitful hope, Miss Paulina takes heart, and the train for Boston, from whence,—crowned with the spoil of a half day's shopping,—she is, at this very moment, returning. The carryall fairly groans under its accumulated bundles; and the steel-clasped bag upon her arm is plethoric, to the last degree. Hours have passed since she parted from her darling. Hastily alighting, she hurries in. There is an under-quaver of anxiety in her voice as she calls, "May! May, May, dear!" Where can the child be, that she has not run to meet her! "May!" again, and louder—still no reply. Yet now a never-to-be-mistaken voice comes cooingly from the kitchen. "Who can the darling be fondling? (Harmy Patterson, though staunch and loving, is not one to unbend to endearments!) Her kitten, most likely."

She softly opens the kitchen door. Amazement stays her feet upon the threshold! Harmy, mute with horror, indicates with stretched forefinger her own clean patchwork-cushioned rocker, wherein, bolt upright, sits an unknown man,—and such a man! His coarse, dusty garments (evidently fashioned without the slightest reference to their present wearer) hang scarecrow-wise upon his graceless form. Under his slouched hat (which he democratically retains) he seems to skulk abjectly from the gazer's eye; as well he may, for, unshaven and unshorn, his wide mouth stained with tobacco, his hands and face begrimed with dust, he looks, every inch, the wretched outcast that he is! And (no wonder that old Harmy gapes distraught), seated lovingly upon this creature's knee, her dainty fingers clasping his dirty hand, her golden curls brushing his grimy neck, is May-blossom,—yes, May-blossom, her own sweet self, beaming, and fond, and absolutely unconscious of the incongruity of the situation. And this forlorn being, craving still of humanity but leave to carry on its shoulders the shamed head of a man, is a convict,—our old prison acquaintance, Peter Floome, May-blossom's sometime nurse, and always friend!

Lightly springing from her unseemly perch, the child hastens to greet Miss Paulina, and, hanging fondly upon her hand, cries eagerly, "Oh, auntie, darling, I'm so glad you've come! Here's Peter, dear old Peter! He's pardoned out, auntie, and, isn't it nice? He can come and see me every day now if he likes.

"Why, auntie! (somewhat crestfallen) aren't you glad? and won't you shake hands with him? Peter is nice, auntie, and he used to take such care of me when I was ever so little. You'll like Peter when he's washed up, and so will Harmy, though she does mind him just a little now, because she's not acquainted with him." (Harmy, sotto voce, and emphatically, "Lord sakes, no; an' don't never want to be!") Here, reminiscences of prison etiquette visiting Peter's dazed mind, he shuffles bashfully to his feet, and, pulling distractedly at his matted forelock, goes through a certain gymnic performance, supposed, by himself, to constitute a bow. The ice thus broken, Peter finds his tongue, and blurts out a "Good day, marm, hope I see yer well, marm."

Miss Paulina bows, a pause, ensues. Peter looks admiringly at May-blossom, and, thereby gaining inspiration, finds himself equal to a second attempt at conversation.

"She's growed, marm, like the mischief!" he asserts; "but I knowed her, I did, the minute I sot eyes on her out there in the mowin' lot! an' she knowed me, she did! Yes, yes, she knowed Peter; she knowed him. Poor old Peter! who don't hardly know himself nowerdays." Here Peter's voice gets husky, and, brushing away a dirty tear, with his greasy coat sleeve, he seems to await the issue. Peter Floome is downrightly the social antipodes of the lady of the homestead. Conventionally they do not stand side by side in the human group, but, like Swedenborg's unfraternal angels, "feet to feet." Yet in the artless harangue of this poor creature there is a touch of honest nature that at once makes them kin.

"And I, too, must know you, Peter," she says, cordially advancing and taking in her own clean palm his dirty hand.

Unable to express his appreciation of the honour thus conferred, Peter twirls his thumbs, ventures a side glance at Harmy, and, again utterly disparaged in his own eyes, looks uneasily at the floor.

Prompt to reconcile the cowed creature to himself, Miss Parker courteously says: "And now, Peter, you would, I think, like to go up to Reuben's bedroom and have a good wash. By and by Harmy shall give you tea, and then we must hear all about the pardon, and how you happened here, and what you mean to do with yourself, and what we can do for you. Come, Mabel, dear; Peter, you know, is your company. Show him up-stairs, my darling."

Again the small, soft hand is laid in the rough, brown paw, and Peter Floome,—in a state of absolute bewilderment as to his personal identity,—shuffles awkwardly off with the delighted child. And what says Harmy Patterson to all this? "Here's a convict, a horrid convict," cries she, "and invited to tea, an' that child a huggin' an' kissin' him, in cold blood! Lord! Lord! what is the Parkers comin' to?" Here, unable further to pursue the fallen social fortunes of the house, Harmy covers her face with her checked apron and bursts into tears. Grieved at the discomfiture of her old servant and friend, Miss Parker essays a word of expostulation. She appeals to her hospitality, her humanity, reminds her of her professed discipleship of Him who "sat at meat" with the sinner. In vain! as well might she have addressed herself to Harmy's stone molasses jug, which, dropped from her grasp in the sudden shock of Peter's advent, now lies prone upon the kitchen floor. Foiled in her kindly endeavour, the mistress quietly withdraws. Harmy, left alone, sobs herself into a comparatively tranquil frame of mind. Coming to the rescue of her molasses jug, she carefully ascertains that no minute fracture is consequent upon the fall, and that no wasteful drop has exuded from the wooden stopper, and, forthwith, sets vigorously to, on a batch of soft gingerbread, whose manufacture had been interrupted by the entrance of Peter Floome. While she stirs her cake, Harmy sighs, and profoundly resolves in her mind "the fitnesses." In her social lexicon a convict is a vile wretch. In her catechism he is given over to damnation from the foundation of the world—God-devoted to the very devil himself!

Miss Paulina Parker, in her chamber, washes her hands, and also ponders the "fitnesses." This starved outcast is her brother. She has taken him by the hand. Christian ethics demonstrate the fitness of this act. The hand was, no doubt, dirty. Yet, what matters it? Soap and water set one right again. Soap and water tell, too, upon Peter Floome, when, after a characteristically superficial ablution, he emerges from Reuben's bedroom, a trifle improved in complexion, but still a sorry specimen of humanity, and, escorted by May-blossom, is whisked out-of-doors, on a hasty tour of inspection. Led by this happy little creature (now holding his hand, now dropping it to run on and, turning, take in his effect, and then skip gayly in advance), Peter visits the chicken-coop, the beehive, the flower garden, the stables, and the pig-pen, and, last of all, the apple orchard, now rosy-white with bloom.

There, reclined upon the grass, beneath the flowering boughs of a patriarch tree, Miss Paulina ere long comes upon the oddly matched pair. Peter, wreathed with buttercups and dandelions, and wearing his flowery honours like another "Bottom," sits beside his "Titania," who in fond infatuation "His amiable cheek doth coy."

"Pity," thinks the intruder, "to spoil so quaint a picture." The sun is, however, already low, and she calls her darling in from the dewfall. In the kitchen, Harmy has made reluctant preparations for Peter's inner man; grimly remarking to Mandy Ann (who has meantime returned from an errand at the store) that "it does go agin' her, to put on span clean table-cloths for sich creeturs, an' to waste good vittels where they can't no how be sensed." A convict being, at Mandy Ann's estimate, an ineligible, if not dangerous guest, as Peter and May-blossom enter at one door, she vanishes by another. Harmy dons her cape-bonnet, and marches stiffly into the kitchen garden, leaving the disreputable visitor to his child hostess.

Peter Floome had not figured at a tea-drinking for many a long year, and, naturally, his company manners are somewhat rusty. Possibly, his table etiquette (or, rather, his entire lack of it) might have shocked his too partial entertainer (who, with fine innate courtesy, has laid herself a cup and plate, and is keeping her guest in countenance by taking her own tea with him), had not his evident satisfaction in the meal entirely engrossed her mind, for (Harmy to the contrary, notwithstanding) Peter is inherently inclined to "sense good vittels." It is quaintly picturesque, this tea-drinking of "Bottom" and "Titania;" this odd contrast of loutishness and elegance, although (as I grieve to record) "Bottom" does absolutely ignore the butter-knife; does thrust his wet spoon into the sugar bowl; and, vigourously blowing his hot tea, in scorn of popular prejudice, lap the same from his slopping saucer, and shovel in the apple sauce with his knife-blade. "Titania's" pretty efforts to put "Bottom" at his ease are, indeed, a thing to behold; for, conscious of his own want of keeping with the unwonted occasion, Peter is, to the very last degree, awkward and abashed. Nevertheless, the encouraging smiles of his small hostess carry him victoriously to the end of this harrowing experience. Other social exigencies yet await this much-tried man. Directly after tea, he is taken by May-blossom to that inner sanctuary, Miss Parker's parlour, where, amid oppressively elegant surroundings, he is further weighed to earth by the disparaging sense of his own abjectness.

Prison life, on the solitary plan, is not conducive to colloquial glibness, nor is Peter Floome habitually garrulous. Many cups of Harmy's strong green tea have, however, limbered his tongue, and, once he is well seated, and has made a final, though terribly unsatisfactory, disposal of his long arms and obtrusive legs, he finds himself sufficiently at ease for narrative effort, and, at the request of his gracious hostess, wades desperately into his subject.

"I s'pose now, marm," he begins, "that you dun' know as my real name ain't Peter Floome. No more, either, does this pretty little creetur. The Ballous, you see (Ephryam Ballou's my name), was allers stuck on theirselves, an' when it come to prison, I says to myself, anyhow, I won't spile the fambly-tree, so I got put down anonermous-like on them prison books, an' Ephe Ballou ain't never been heerd on to the 'palace,' you bet. Its twenty-three years, come next fall, marm, sence I sot Hiram Hall's barn afire. I was mighty peppery in them days, an' Hiram an' me, we had a fallin' out. He served me darned mean, Hiram did, an' my dander was up an' so was his'n, an' we had it hot an' heavy, an' (savin' your presence, marm, an' hern) I told Hiram I'd give him h—l some day. After that, I cooled off some, and went home. I was pretty riley yit, though, an' all suppertime I sot thinkin' to myself how I'd come up with that d—d blasted sneak. That's what I called him then, marm, fur I'd had a leetle too much old cider, an' didn't feel like pickin' out my words. 'By jiminy!' says I to myself, 'I've got it now! I'll hide in Hiram's barn, an', when folks is turned in, I'll jest let the critters out, and set fire to the old shebang! That'll plague him fust-rate.' Well, arter supper, I sez to mother, sez I, 'I'm goin' to be out middlin' late to-night, mother, an' you better not set up for me. Put the key under the door-mat, an' I'll be all right,' sez I.

"Poor old mother!" continued Peter, reflectively, and lowering his voice. "Arter that I was out; and a long while, too, an' she sot up fur me, mother did. Bless her patient old soul! Yes, yes, she sot up fur her bad boy jest five year an' six months, an' then her old heart broke, an' she turned in for good an' all, mother did, an' I couldn't so much as see her kivered up!"

Here Peter is fain to take breath and heart, and Miss Paulina (herself in tears) comforts May-blossom, who is sobbing aloud. After this pathetic interruption, Peter, apparently composed by a prolonged fit of sneezing, regains the thread of his narrative.

"'Scuse me, marm," he apologizes, "I b'leeve thinkin' o' mother I got a leetle grain ahead o' my story, but, as I sed, I'd made up my mind how to come up with Hiram, an' that night I got ahead on him sure afore he locked up, for there I was, stowed away in his haymow, as slick as grease! Well, jest as the Presberteren meetin'-house time struck 'leven, I crep' down to the stalls, turned out the cow an' the horse, an' druv 'em down to the medder lot; then I walked back, put a match er two under the mow, an' made tracks fer hum. Well," sighed Peter, "the rest on it's an ugly story, marm, an' p'r'aps you druther this innocent little creetur shouldn't hear it." May-blossom is now "all ears," and Miss Parker, signifying her assent, Peter goes on. "Well, 'bout 'leven the wind riz, an' afore that barn got well agoin' it blowed a perfect harrycane, an' them sparks was a flyin' like the mischief! 'Lord help us,' sez I, looking out my bedroom winder, 's'pos'n' it kerries 'em as fur's Hiram's house!' An' sure 'nuff, it did; an' it bein' a dry spell, the ruff blazed up like tinder! I was there in a jiffy, helpin' on' em git out the truck. I'd got all over my huff now. I was sober as a jedge, an' I'd' a' gin my head for a football to had that night's work undid! Well, there was lots o' furnitoor in the house, an' Hiram he was a graspin' man, an' bound to git the hull on it out, an' arter it got too hot fur the rest on us, he hung on, an'—well—the last time he went in, he stayed. Poor Hiram! I could e'en a'most have changed places with him; for arter that, I wa'n't no ways sot on livin'. I knowed I wa'n't nothin' less than a murderer, an' I wa'n't easy nowhere, 'specially to hum, where mother was round, settin' as much store by me as ever. Well, by'm by, when folks got wind o' my havin' a spat with Hiram, an' his owin' on me, they put this an' that together, an' I was took up for arson; an' I can't say as I was sorry, neither.

"Well, to make short on't, I was nigh about hung; but the governor, he stepped in at the last minnit, an' sent me to State Prison for life. When it come to that pass, 'I won't disgrace the fam'ly,' sez I. 'The Ballous figgered pooty well in the revelooshing,' sez I, 'an' that name sha'n't never be writ in the prison 'count book, ef I kin hinder it.' So, es I've told you, marm, I had myself writ down as Peter Floome. I hadn't no nigh relations 'cept mother and sister Betsy. Uncle George's family'd settled in Illinoise, an' we didn't hear from 'em once in a dog's age. Betsy was a young gal then an' had a beau. She was allus pooty toppin', an' sez I, 'it don't stan' to reason she'll be comin' to the State Prison to see her own brother; but there's mother,' sez I, 'she'll come reg'lar, I reckon; same's she did to the jail;' so I writ her a letter, an' gin her word how I was, an' who she must ask arter in case she come. Bless her dear old soul!

"The very next Friday, there she was on the spot! Arter that, reg'lar as clock work, once in three months, rain or shine, there was mother!

"Mothers, you see, marm, never misses. Wives, an' sisters, an' children, now an' then do keep up to the mark, but mothers, on the hull, is about the only reg'lar prison stan'bys. Well, mother sot a good deal o' store by me, an' when I see her gittin' thin, I knowed what fretted her, an' sez I to myself, 'she won't hold out forever, an' when she's gone, the Lord help me!'

"Well," continued Peter, huskily, "by'm by she went, mother did; but (dropping his voice to a confidential whisper) mothers is master hands to hang on, an' no mistake! An' sure's you're 'live, ef she didn't keep right on with them visits! jest as reg'lar as ef nothin' hed turned up! Ev'ry time the quarter come round, on a Friday night, jest as the clock struck one, there stood mother, large as life, at the gratin' o' my cell. She never once opened her head; but, when I see her stan' there so smilin' an' pleasant, I sez to myself, 'she's done frettin', anyhow;' an', though I warn't never no great hand at prayin', I did thank God for that. I never let on 'bout them visits, for 'bout that time things got pesky upside down with me, an' the boys they used to say, 'Peter's cranky.' 'So,' sez I, 'ef I was to tell 'um, they wouldn't none on 'em b'leeve me.' An' I jest kep' dark, an' year arter year mother come reg'lar, an' we had it all to ourselves. By'm by Hiram, he come. Not reg'lar, like mother did, but off an' on. Well, ghosts is poor company, marm; an' arter a while I got clean upsot, and wa'n't wurth an old shoe.

"But I'm gittin' kinder ahead o' my story. Arter mother died, Betsy she thawed out some, an' come to see me twice, an' then she got married an' went to Californy. She writ one or two letters to me an' I answered 'em punctooal, but by'm by she left off writin', an' I knew she'd gin me up. An' then I got sorter cross-grained an' callous; an' sez I to myself, 'what's the odds anyhow, it can't last to all etarnity; an' by'm by I'll go out o' this, feet fust, an' I hope 't 'ill be the last o' me.'"

"But Peter, my poor fellow," piously interposes Miss Parker, "you read the Bible sometimes, I trust, and found some comfort there; you couldn't have doubted God's providence, all His blessed promises to the penitent and believing soul?"

"Why, yes'm," responds Peter; "I read my Bible some, purty reg'lar, too, 'long at fust; an' mother bein' a church-member, I was brung up to set on providence 'en sich like; but them promises you tell on works best outside o' prisons; an' 'long 'bout the time I got upsot, I'd gin up readin' even in the Bible; for 't wa'n't no use; the letters all stood wrong eend up. I did hang on to providence a spell, but by 'm by, I see that wa'n't no use, nuther. 'Providence,' sez I, 'don't take no 'count o' me, an' I may as well try to jog along on my own hook.'

"Well, finally, I was took down with roomatic fever, an' went into the hospital a spell; an' arter I got round agin, I wa'n't strong enough to go back to the shoe shop, an' the doctor said a change would set me up agin. Twelve year I'd ben a workin' there at the same bench, an' one day exactly like t'other, till it 'peared to me as ef I was a sewin' one 'tarnal everlastin' shoe, over an' over, an' back an' forth, an' no mortal hope o' comin' to the eend on't in this world or next. An' when they sot me to runnin' arrants in the prison, an' doin' chores fur the warden's folks, I was mighty glad, I tell you! An' things kinder got right eend up agin. 'T wa'n't long arter that, afore this dear little creetur come to town. Children air strange now, ain't they, marm? Would you b'leeve that, afore that child could set alone, she took a reg'lar shine to me! I was beat, I tell you! An' when I felt them two little arms 'round my old neck, things somehow lifted up like; an' though I didn't go to prayer-meetin', and didn't ezackly git religin, as some on 'em do, I took a reg'lar hitch on to the Almighty; 'fur,' sez I, 'it's right down handsome in Him to send a blessed little angel to sich a place as this.' Fur she was a reg'lar angel to us, a growin' up there, so innocent, purty an' lovin'; an' she did our souls a heap more good than all the chaplain's Sunday sermons; an' when the boss got killed, an' you took her off, it seemed as ef there wa'n't nothin' left. I s'pose I took on, to myself, a leetle too hard, fur arter I'd had one or two poor spells, the doctor he overhauled me, an' I heered him say there was trouble with the heart; an' sez I to myself, 'you're right there is!' Next day as I was cleanin' up his office, the warden asked me 'bout my folks; an' how long I'd ben to the prison, an' how long I'd got to stay, an' so I told him, nigh as I could, the hull story, 'cept 'at I didn't let on 'bout mother, an' them reg'lar visits. He wouldn't 'a' b'leeved me, you see, an' besides, I never did like to let on much about her.

"Well, that was long in the neighbourhood o' Fast Day; an' now an' then on holidays, marm, as p'r'aps you know, the gov'nor makes a p'int to pardon a prisoner; an' when the warden gits up them days in chapel, with a paper in his hand, we know what's comin', an' some hearts there gives awful thumps, I tell you! There's lots of 'em, you see, has hopes, havin' folks a tryin' fur 'em outside, or bein' took up by the prayer-meetin' or the inspectors; but I hadn't eny hopes; so that day when the warden riz, with his pardon, an' begun to make a speech, I sot there as unconcerned as ever.

"'Twenty-two years ago,' sez he, 'one of your number in a state of intoxication committed a great crime, an' was sentenced for life to this prison. Durin' these twenty-two years,' sez he, 'he hain't sot foot outside these walls; an' durin' the hull o' that time,' sez he, 'he hain't once ben reported for bad conduct. In his sober moments he's allers ben sorry fur his crime,' sez he, 'an' now he's a worn-out old man, an' I have spoken in favour of his pardon. His name,' sez he, 'is Peter Floome.'

"By the Moses, marm! when I heerd my name called, ef I wa'n't beat! Well, I riz up to go forrard. My knees was mighty shaky, an' the chapel was spinnin' round like sixty. I heerd 'em clappin' on me, an' then, well, that pardon was a leetle too much for me; an' I jest up an' fainted dead away. Arter a spell they brung me to; an' arter riggin' me out in a bran-new coat an' weskitt an' trowsis, they brung me into the guard-room. Well, there was the warden, the chaplain, an' the deputy, an' lots o' folks, an' all as smilin' as a basket o' chips. Lots on 'em shook hands with me, an' wished me joy. A tall man in a long, black coat, an' green specs, was a stannin' along side o' the warden. He was powfell glad to see me, an' gin me lots o' good advice (out o' the Scriptures, I should say), though I didn't ezackly sense, bein' cumflustered like. Arter that, I got leave to say good-by to some o' the boys; an' then the warden he sent fur me to come into his office, an' there was two of the inspectors, an' the chaplain, an' the State agent, an' the chap in the long coat an' the goggles, as big as life.

"Well, each on 'em talked a spell to me, an' treated me, on the hull, I should say, considerable han'some. An' the tall man he gin some more d'rections 'bout my behaviour. Some on it, I took it, was his own words, an' some on 't was Bible, an' sounded mighty han'some. The State agent he gin me the four dollars a comin' to me from the State; an' sez he, 'when you've made up your mind what you're goin' to do, come to my office, Peter, en I'll do what I kin fer ye.' An' arter he'd gin me a card with the street an' number o' his place on 't, I shook hands all round agin, an' off I goes. Lord bless you! Marm, when I gits outside that prison ef I ain't e'en a'most as helpless as a baby! an' where to go to, or how to go at all, is more'n I knowed! Howsumdever, I kinder scooted off, best way I could; for thinks I, I'll git over to Boston and put up to a tavern there, where folks don't know me, an' 't won't leak out 'bout my havin' ben in prison. So I goes on, an' arter I turned the corner, an' got into another street, an' walked on a piece, somebody steps up behind me, an' teches me on the shoulder. 'Lord,' thinks I, 'what is comin' now!' but I jest turned round square ter face the music; an' who should I see but Mr. Holt, my old instructor in the shoe shop! An' sez he, 'Peter,' sez he, 'I want you to go 'long o' me. You'll make a poor fist on 't jest now, goin' round streets alone. You come to my house a spell,' sez he. I was glad, I tell you, marm. Well, I staid to his house three weeks in all, an' durin' that time got sorter steady in my head, an' used ter goin' round loose.

"Well, arter goin' to his office five times, I ketched the State agent in, one day. He knew me right off, like a book; but he was awful busy, an' couldn't talk to me but a minute. I told him I had a own uncle an' some fust cousins out to Illinoise, an' I reckoned I'd go out there an' stay a spell, ef he'd a mind to put me through. Sez he, 'I can send you as fur as Buffalo, Peter, an' arter you git there, you'll mebbe git a job an' make enough to carry you on to your folks. The West'll be the makin' on you. It's the very place for you convicts,' sez he. So he gin me a ticket, an' hustled me off.

"Well, I went home to Mr. Holt's, an' we talked it over, that night, an' next day he went to Boston with me an' clean over to the deepott to put me into the right keer, an', arter thankin' on him a thousand times, I set out for Buffalo. But, Lord a massy, marm! how them keers does scoot! It's 'nuff to take away your breath—to say nothin' o' yer senses. Arter a while we come to a stop an' I wa'n't a bit sorry. 'I'll git off a spell,' sez I, 'an' kinder stiddy my head, an' stretch my legs, while the ingine's restin'.' The railroad hedn't come our way till arter I was shet up, so I was middlin' clumsy round keers, an' goin' down them pesky high steps, I gin my left ankle a turn, an' out it goes! I sot down a minnit; folks was goin' an' comin', but nobody twigged me. Arter a spell, I riz up, an' hobbled inside the deepott buildin', an' jest as I was takin' off my shoe an' stockin' to look at the damage, that plaggy keer-man blowed his whistle, an' afore you could say Jack Robinson, off went them divilish keers, an' me left in the lurch, with a ticket that sez 'good for this trip only!' 'O Lord,' sez I, 'what shall I do! Fust thing,' sez I, 'I'll count my cash;' so I took out my little wallet, an' there was the four dollars 'at the State agent 'lowed me, an' ten dollars 'at Mr. Holt gin me the day I cum off.

"Well, arter I thought it over, I put on my shoe and stockin', an' sung out to a feller who 'peared to be hangin' 'round for a job, an', sez I, 'Mister, this here ankle's awful; an' I'll be obleeged to you, ef you'll take me to the tarvern; an' mebbe, as we go 'long, you wouldn't mind stoppin' at the 'poth'cary shop to let me git a bottle o' Opedildock?'

"Well, to git to the eend o' my long story, that ankle, marm, laid me up a hull week; an', by the time I got round agin, my cash was 'bout gone. My ticket wa'n't no arthly valloo, nuther. So I gin up Illinoise, paid the damages to the tarvern, bought a lot o' crackers an' cheese, an' sot out on my travels, dead broke. I guess 't wa'n't more'n ten miles from Boston where I bust my ankle; but I made up my mind not to ask no questions, fur, sez I, 'Peter, 't won't do to show your ignorance, ef you do 't may leak out 'bout the prison.'

"Fust, I thought I'd look 'round for a job; but I dursn't, fur folks would naterly want to know where I come from, an' ef the boys got wind o' my bein' a convict, they'd prob'ly holler arter me, an' p'rhaps set the dogs on me. So I jest shet my head tight, an' sot out.

"I'd ben travellin' 'bout two days when my grub gin out, an', long in the arternoon o' the third day, I come in sight o' this here buildin'. Thinks I ter myself, 'I can't drag on much furder, anyhow, an' it does look mighty pooty there in that green lot with the yallar buttercups a bloomin' all round. I reckon I better tumble over them bars,' sez I, 'an' lay down a spell under that big warnut tree. Mebbe,' sez I, 'I sha'n't git up in a hurry (fur I was clean beat out), but 't ain't no matter,' sez I, 'there's folks close by, an' when my troubles is over, they'll find me layin' a top o' the buttercups, an' they can't do no less'n put me under 'em.' You see, marm, livin' behind the bars, a feller gits shaky on Providence, and I didn't once suspicion 'at Providence was bringin' me to the right shop; 'at I was makin' a bee-line fur the only creetur in the hull world 'at wouldn't turn the cold shoulder on me. So, when I clim over them bars, I couldn't (beggin' the Almighty's pardon) ha' flipped a cent fer my miserable old life. When I laid down under the warnut tree, I felt kinder drowsy-like, an' so I shet my eyes; but the birds, they was singin' like all possessed, an' the grass smelt sweet as new butter, an' I hadn't seen a mowin' lot risin' o' twenty year. So I riz up on my elbow, to take a squint 'round, an' there, not more'n ten rods off, I seed this blessed little angel a pickin' buttercups. She'd grown, marm, but I knowed her, fur all that, the minnit I sot eyes on her. 'T ain't nateral I shouldn't, when there ain't another like her in God's world. Yes, I knowed her, an' she knowed me, she did, though when I sot straight up, an' kinder coughed, she gin a leetle start. An' then I sez to myself, 'O Lord! she's goin' to run away! As sure as the world, she's afeared of her poor old Peter, 'at used to tote her in his arms!' But she didn't run. She jest turned round an' gin me a good look, an' then she claps her two hands, she does, an' sez she, 'Peter! Peter! it is Peter!' an' runs straight up to me, with her cheeks as pink as roses, an' puts her two arms 'round my miser'ble old neck. An' then, marm, I broke right down, an' cried like a baby. But I didn't want to make her pooty little heart ache, so I wiped up, an' told her all 'bout the pardon, an' 'bout the folks over to the 'palace' (that's our name, marm, for the prison), an' it 'peared to me she'd never git through askin' questions 'bout one or 'nother, for bein' brung up in the prison, she kinder took to us, though we do seem poor shucks to you, I reckon. Use is everything, an' no matter how bad convicts is, they all sot the world by her. Well, arter we'd talked a spell, an' I'd et a hunk o' gingerbread she gin me, I perked up, an' told her I'd go along home with her; 'fur,' sez I, 'I can't leave her now, nohow. I've ben starvin' too long for the sight on her,' sez I. So here I am, marm, an' you know the rest.

"Mebbe you'd know some place 'round here where I could do chores for my vittels, or p'r'aps you'd giv' me a job yourself, an then I'd git a look at this little creetur every day, sartin sure. 'Scuse me, marm, ef I make too free ('Titania' had crept close to Bottom and was fondly stroking his hand); but I kerried her in my arms a long spell, an' habit's second natur."

Peter's long story concluded, Miss Paulina kindly assured him that he should not yet be sent far away from his pretty nursling. Already, she had determined where to bestow him for the night. In the rambling old garden stood a small, nondescript erection, supposed to have served, in remote times, as a summer-house, and though now appropriated to the safe-keeping of garden tools, still weather-tight and easily convertible into a sleeping-place, for an unambitious guest. With this energetic lady, to will was to do. And, with the help of Reuben's strong arm, and the half-reluctant aid of Mandy Ann, who had consented to leave for a time the sheltering four walls of her attic bedroom, the tool-house was cleared up and made clean. A light cot-bed was conveyed hither, and duly furnished for Peter's occupancy, and, with his last lingering look devouring May-blossom, he was escorted by Reuben to his new quarters. There, a cup of hot coffee, a generous plate of biscuits, and a clean nightcap awaited him. And, installed in these comparatively elegant lodgings, we leave him to sound sleep, and happy dreams.

Harmy's pet bantam had long since crowed in a new day, and Harmy herself had been two full hours astir, when Peter Floome, rubbing his old eyes, awoke from untroubled slumber. Essaying to rise, and with one foot already planted on the floor, he becomes painfully aware of his inability to do so. A small, round table, the summer-house settee, and chairs reel tipsily in their places. The diamond-paned window wavers before his eyes, the very walls of the apartment seem like—

and, catching the general impulse, he, too, lets go his centre of gravity, and falls fainting across the bed. Half an hour later, Peter awakes to conscious life, and an overwhelming smell of camphor. Harmy Patterson, not without evidence of strong repulsion, bends desperately over him. Her expression, in the main, is that of solemn determination. She is "bringing him to." This accomplished, she stiffly beckons to Reuben (who stands "watching afar off"), and, signifying her desire to wash her hands of this disreputable patient, commits Peter to his care, and grimly retires.

Miss Paulina is hastily interviewed, and informed of the convict's "faint spell," and his subsequent "bringin' to." And Harmy, forthwith, expresses her decided conviction that "it's ketchin', an' she shouldn't a bit wonder if the hull family was took down with it," and, furtively suggesting the "poorhouse," she withdraws to the more momentous concerns of her kitchen. There she sends cold shivers down Mandy Ann's back, by a recountal of the late occurrence. "I hain't," she declares, "had a wink of sleep the whole blessed night, a thinkin' of that horrid convict, an' not knowin' what might happen, with sich creeturs 'round. At four o'clock I come down and went into the garden to settle my mind, an' pull a few cherry reddishes for breakfast. I jest stepped down to the summer-house a minute, to take a good look 'round, and there was the door wide open!"

Feelin' (as she averred) in her bones that the creetur might ha' gone off in the night with the pillow-case and towels in his trowsers' pocket, she had (to make assurance doubly sure) stepped over the threshold, with them cherry reddishes in her apron, an' her heart a beatin' like a mill-clapper. And, raisin' her two hands, she had let go her apron, an' them reddishes had gone rollin' every which way, while she gin such a screech that Reuben heered it, way off in the cow-yard, and nigh about jumped out of his skin. The hired man arriving on the scene, she had said, "Reuben, is he gone?" and, loosing his shirt collar, Reuben had made answer, "Gone? no, he's alive an' kickin', you bet. Run git the camfire, Harmy, an' don't disturb the folks. You'll fetch him 'round ef ennybody kin." How her camfire, strong enough to bear up an egg, had at length brung the miser'ble creetur round, to give 'em all some dretful sickness he'd ketched, etc., etc.

Mandy Ann's fascinated attention, and her lively alternations of horror and surprise during the above recital, this feeble pen may not describe. Miss Paulina, meantime, visiting the summer-house, detects no evidence of fever in Peter's system, and is convinced that the poor body's ailment is not, as Harmy opines, "ketchin'." Kindly looking after his comfort, she relieves Reuben's watch, and forthwith despatches him for Doctor Foster, who in due time looks in upon the strange patient, and pronounces his sudden illness an attack of heart disease. "Twenty-two years of hopeless toil," declares the good doctor, "short commons, and vitiated air, have damaged the poor human machine beyond repair; and, though it may run a while longer, don't be surprised if it stops any day, and without notice." The doctor rides away on his morning round; Miss Paulina gives May-blossom her late breakfast, and, with many careful admonitions, allows her to go to Peter, who now—tolerably recovered—"is receiving" in an old Boston rocker, hunted up for his special use; and in which, sitting bolt upright, he rocks with indescribable relish, assuring May-blossom that "it's the very spawn o' mother's own rockin'-cheer, an' makes him feel as ef he was right in the old chimbly corner, to hum."

While Peter rocks and chats with his little visitor, the good lady of the house, turning over his affairs in her mind, thus soliloquises: "Poor creature, as Doctor Foster says, he'll not trouble any one long. He loves my precious child. Why should I part the two?—both, alas! going the same sad road. The summer-house could easily be made habitable. He could live there, quite by himself—at least till cold weather sets in. The cost of his maintenance I can well spare from my abundance. The neighbours, to be sure, will object; and there's Harmy to be reconciled; but what is to become of the forlorn, shelterless creature, if I turn my back on him? What indeed (with a resolute nod, and thinking aloud)! My mind is made up. He shall stay. Right is right. One is sure of that; and Providence takes care of the rest."

In accordance with this resolve, Peter Floome, that very day, goes to housekeeping. A Lilliputian laundry-stove, with an improvised flue, is set up in the summer-house by the tinman. An old cupboard, vis-À-vis with the stove, is scoured, and well stocked with provisions and cooking utensils, and a sufficiency of homely table and other furniture is placed at his disposal; and Peter literally groans under "an embarrassment of riches." A box of coal is also appropriated to his use, and, when he receives permission to chop for himself unlimited kindlings from Miss Paulina's teeming woodpile, tears of grateful joy trickle down the worn old cheeks of Peter Floome. From the luxurious depths of his Boston rocker, he watches dazedly these munificent preparations for his housekeeping, declaring over and over to May-blossom (who is in an equal state of delight), that "this does beat the Dutch, an' he never, an' it's jest like bein' took up by one o' them fairy godmothers in the story-book!" But when actually measured by the Saganock tailor, he is subsequently arrayed in a pair of trousers, cut with especial reference to his own clumsy legs, and a coat which, though coarse and homely, has not been fashioned without some slight reference to the dimensions of its wearer; a bran-new necktie, and a decent straw hat, not to mention a clean print shirt (of the latter, there is a magnificent reserve of five others, equally new and clean), his admiration and wonderment, and May-blossom's pride in him, are absolutely indescribable. Even Harmy herself, softened by this metamorphosis of the fairy godmother, becomes distantly amicable, scarcely recognising in this decent old body the objectionable being of her sometime suspicion and aversion. After the lapse of an entire week, she grimly remarks to Reuben that "she hain't missed nothin' yit, tho', to be sure, its awful resky havin' sich creeturs 'round."

Peter Floome, though he takes a whole bottle of Doctor Foster's drops, never quite rallies from that first grave attack of his fatal disease. May-blossom, too, is more ailing. Peter's advent at the homestead, with its attendant excitement, has been too much for the delicate little frame. Already those deceitful tokens of convalescence, so cheering to Miss Paulina's heart, have disappeared. Before the summer roses go, it is plain to all, that, ere long, death will claim for his own this bud that "never will become a rose."

Miss Paulina hears the graveyard pines wailing in weary monotone, while, gliding serenely beneath the sapphire heaven of June, the river repeats the mournful undersong. Alas, and alas, that ever life, and death, and true love should dwell side by side in this goodly world! Faithful old Peter, never wearying in his love-labour, bears hither and thither, in careful arms, the wasted young form, now too feeble to bear its own light weight. On pleasant days he conveys it tenderly from couch to garden. For it is still May-blossom's delight to swing dreamily in a low hammock, hung from the stout boughs of two gigantic elms, sometimes thinking to herself, oftener confiding her innocent dreams to Peter, or Miss Paulina. Often her thought goes back to the gray old prison. Loving memories of her child-life, and tender reminiscences of shabby old friends in that dreary abode, are still with her. To this young, gladsome creature, not yet replete with its sweet new wine, existence is still infinitely dear; and, though Death is coming, she does not hasten to meet him, but, turning her face lifeward, lives (as in God's mercy it befalls many a dying one to live) in the sweet, brief to-day. And well it is, for the coffin and the tomb, even to the "life undone," are not things to brood upon.

While Peter Floome, armed and equipped with a splint fly-brush of his own clumsy manufacture, presides, dragon-like, over the out-door siestas of his enchanted princess, the summer grows old, and it behooves us to look after the ex-convict's housekeeping. Harmy Patterson, has, to be sure, anticipated us, and, as a result of her observations, has long since averred that "it's awful to see that man mess 'round, an' spill grease on the summer-house floor!" And, indeed, even to the unprejudiced eye, it is painfully apparent that Nature, in fashioning Peter Floome, had not in her "mind's eye" a cook, or a housewife, or even a scullion. Although no one could be more willingly helpful, he is so clumsy of touch at all indoor employment, save the gentle tendance of May-blossom, that one half inclines to the fantastic supposition that this exceptional aptness may be the result of some preexistent experience of Peter as child's-nurse.

Peter's gentle inoffensiveness, his ever-respectful deference to Harmy's wishes, and Harmy's judgment, and, above all, his idolatrous devotion to "that blessed lamb, May-blossom," bid fair, at last, to overcome even Harmy's social prejudices. One morning, when the poor man is ailing, and for a day or two has been "sloppy, poky, and messy," beyond his wont, the good woman is encountered by Miss Parker on her way to the summer-house, bearing a breakfast-tray, fit to serve a king. Colouring, as if detected in some covert derogatory act, Harmy apologetically observes that, "when folks is sick, you can't stan' by an' see 'em suffer, an whatever they air, dropped eggs, an' muffins, an' broma'll do 'em no harm. As for men-folks," asserts she, "they never be fit to cook an' do for theirselves, an' p'r'aps, arter all, 'twould be a savin' to the family ef she was to see to his vittels right along."

In these frugal and humane sentiments her mistress hastily concurs; and, henceforth, Harmy does "see to his vittels;" thereby vastly bettering the sanitary condition of poor Peter, whose "messes," whatever other excellence they may boast, are not anti-dyspeptic. Peter, like most of his sex, especially open to the seductions of the cuisine, is deeply impressed with the domestic worth of his caterer, and, in confidential discourse with Reuben, admiringly observes that "Miss Patterson's cookin' does beat the Dutch; an' for scourin' a floor he never see her ekal; an' ef she'd 'a' got hitched in her younger days, what a wife she'd 'a' made!"

Having thus put Peter's kitchen to rights, Harmy suggests to herself the practicability of correcting a certain irregularity in his conduct, "which has (as she expresses it) ben a weighin' on her mind quite a spell."

As this is a reform not to be undertaken lightly or single-handed, she determines to make an alliance with Reuben; and to this effect, one moonlight evening when the two are quite alone, she takes the hired man into her confidence. "For," says the good woman, "I put it to you, now, an' bein' old enough to be your mother, sich things is no harm between us, Reuben. I put it to you, ef it don't seem scand'lus for a man to ondress, an' git into bed with his door wide open, an' a decent woman overlookin' on him from her bedroom winder? To be sure, I never once turn my eyes his way, but I can't help sensin' on it, an' 's true's you're alive, Reuben, ef he don't sleep there night arter night, with his door stretched, right afore my face!"

"P'r'aps he wants air," pleads Reuben, in excuse.

"Then why on airth," returns Harmy, "don't he open his winder! Now, Reuben, to please me, do go this very night an' shet that door. Ef folks don't know what manners is, it's best to give 'em a hint, I say, an', ten to one, he won't be the wiser fur it till mornin', fur, to my knowledge, he's been abed a hull hour by the kitchen clock."

Thus urgently besought, and willing to oblige, Reuben steps gingerly down the garden path, and, reassured by the heavy snores within, softly closes the summer-house door. He is about to retrace his steps when, bounce upon the floor, comes Peter Floome! Open goes the door with a bang, and a voice, so energetically fierce that Reuben turns upon his heel to assure himself that the speaker is really Peter, angrily exclaims, "No, you don't, now! Hain't I ben shet up like a dog in a kennel night arter night fur twenty-two year, say? An' what the d—l's the use o' pardonin' a man out, ef you can't give him the swing o' his own bedroom door?"

Reuben, who relishes a bit of humour, details to his mistress, on the morrow, this unsuccessful attempt of Harmy to compel Peter's respect to the proprieties. Miss Paulina, kindly wise, decides in favour of the open door, and thereafter, Peter, like "him that hath the key of David, openeth, and no man shutteth." The intense satisfaction of this cell-worn creature in his open door is, indeed, a thing to contemplate, and, touched, no doubt, by the homely pathos of the bowed, motionless figure sitting (often far into the night) in his low doorway, bathed in the tender beauty of the summer moonlight, or sharply projected on the darkness in momentary silhouette, by lurid flashes of summer lightning, Harmy herself is at length modified, and tacitly condones Peter's bold breach of decorum.

Through long disuse of the power of speech, Peter Floome has become habitually taciturn. His protracted fits of almost dogged silence are, however, relieved by equally abnormal attacks of garrulousness. In these moods he holds long and confidential discourse with Reuben. On a summer evening, seated in his humble doorway, he will recount for his entertainment such bits of prison gossip, or such incidents of prison life, as have retained their hold on his failing memory. Often on these occasions a dash of the old cynicism gives pungency to his speech, but, ordinarily, he is amiably at one with destiny, and at peace with himself and his neighbour. Behold him to-night, already in his talking-cap. Harmy and Mandy Ann are seated upon the summer-house steps; Reuben, wearied by a long day's haying, is reclining lazily upon the grass; Peter, meantime, is graciously intent in serving up for the three his most relishing prison tidbits. Harmy, being rheumatic, does not often grace these out-door assemblages with her august presence; "but to-night," as she herself explains, "havin' a longin' for a breath of fresh air, she jest strolled into the garden, an' thought she might as well set down with 'em and rest a spell." Peter's audience secured, he opens his budget of prison reminiscence and rehearses a long, heart-breaking drama, at which Harmy pulls out her handkerchief, and complains of a cold in her head, while Mandy Ann sobs outright, and Reuben himself is detected in an audible sniff.

"'Tain't a lively yarn, I'll 'low," apologizes the narrator, "an', p'r'aps, I hadn't oughter told it to you wimmin folks. Well, we've all got to go when our time comes; an' death ain't the wust thing in the world, no, not by a jug full! An', whenever the Almighty summons us, I hope we'll all face the music, an' go off with flyin' colours."

Harmy, who considers Peter's similes objectionably secular, here suggests, as an appropriate lesson, the parable of the ten virgins, and advises Reuben and Mandy Ann to "jine the church, an' have their lamps trimmed an' burnin' when the bridegroom cometh."

Peter, ignoring the parable, irreverently observes that "all the Ballous had ben handsomely buried;" an', when his turn comes, all he asks is to hev a marble gravestone, with verses cut on to it, same as the rest o' his folks. As to what's comin' after death (he philosophically avers), "'tain't no use to worry 'bout that; fur it stan's to reason that the Lord ain't goin' to hang on to His creeturs, through thick an' thin, in this world, an' then go back on 'em in t'other."

Reuben, who is not reflective, here yawns audibly, and, expressing his intention to "turn in," bids them a drowsy good-night. The "wimmin folks" follow his lead, and Peter is left alone in his moonlit doorway.

"There never was," as Harmy repeatedly asserts to Mandy Ann, who is about retiring, "such a night; light enough to pick up a pin by the moon, an' too pleasant fur any mortal to think o' sleepin'!"

Leisurely setting her sponge for the morrow's baking, gathering up her silver, bolting the doors, and looking after the window-fastenings, the good woman reluctantly retires to her chamber.

Having no disposition for sleep, Harmy, half undressed, sits looking out upon the moonlit garden. Her mind is ill at ease. "We live in a dyin' world," she drearily soliloquises. "Here's our May-blossom, now, poor blessed lamb! a growin' that weaker every day that it stan's to reason she can't last but a spell longer; an' Miss Paulina that bound up in the child, that how she's goin' to stan' the partin' the Lord only knows! An' there's Peter, goin' round with that pesky onsartin' heart, liable to stop beatin', without a minnit's notice, eny day.

"To be sure, now," she retrospectively muses, "it was a cross las' spring to hev a convict brung right into the family; an' to see that child a hangin' on to him, an' a huggin' an' kissen on him, same's ef he was her own flesh and blood; but there (judicially and emphatically), I will say that fur him, though he's no end mussy an' sloppy about housework, and does hev scand'lous notions about his bedroom door, there ain't a grain o' real harm in Peter Floome; an' it's lots o' company to see him a settin' there nights in that summer-house doorway. Well, he's gone an' turned in, I see; an' it's 'bout time I follered suit, I guess."

The night wind is rising. It soughs rhythmically through the great pine, beside the west door, and sends a miniature snow-storm of syringa petals upon the garden walks.

It winnows spice-like odors from ancient clumps of clove-pink. Tall summer lilies, nodding drowsily upon their stems, breathe, incense-like, upon the dewy air. Brooding birds twitter sleepily among the green Linden boughs; and, over it all, lies, like God's benediction, the wonderful glamour of the still white moonlight.

"Well," declares Harmy, giving voice to her thought, as she ties her nightcap strings, and takes one more good look at the garden; "I mus' say that the Lord's put His creeturs into a han'some world; an' no mistake! I s'pose now," she adds, compunctiously, "that I'm turrible wicked to say it, but, somehow, I can't jest see my way to believin' that things is fixed the way they'd orter be. To my mind, it would 'er ben more to the pint to 'a' made all on us Methusalehs. It's dretful upsettin' to hev to live in a dyin' world, no matter how pooty it is."

Still heavy with anxious foreboding, Harmy puts out her candle, and, presently, "dropping off," forgets in sleep the unsatisfactory arrangement of mundane affairs.

At early dawn she is aroused by the ringing of Miss Paulina's chamber bell; and, before she has got well into her gown, Mandy Ann comes to summons her to the bedside of May-blossom. The child is fast sinking. Doctor Foster is already here; but human help is of no avail. A hard coughing spell has been followed by a cruel hemorrhage, which has already drained her thin blue veins. Exhausted and unconscious she waits upon the border-line, betwixt life and death; and there, wringing Miss Parker's trembling hand, and pressing a last kiss upon the brow of the dying child, the good doctor leaves her to Him in whose hand are the issues of life and death.

All day long, with wide unseeing eyes "looking," as Harmy quaintly expresses it, "right straight up into heaven," May-blossom lies senseless upon her couch of white.

No priceless "last word" breaks the silence of her sweet folded lips. There is nothing more for hope to hang upon, not even the sad anticipation of a dying smile; and so the slow day wears on to night.

Miss Paulina—heart-broken—hangs over the dear unconscious form; and, in yonder corner ("how in the world Miss Paulina come to give her consent to his stayin' here sence mornin', without a mou'ful o' victuals an' drink, an' not so much as a word of notice for his best friends," Harmy Patterson cannot opine; "but there! folks will do curos things sometimes; an' to see a man settin' that way, hour after hour, all doubled up, an' the tears a tricklin' down his shirt-front, is turrible tryin'!") sits Peter Floome. At midnight, Harmy persuades Miss Parker to "lop down a minnit; you'll be all beat out afore the fun'al," she urges. "Do now hear to me! I'm the oldest, Miss Pauly, an' hev seen lots o' sickness an' death in my day." Thus persuaded, the poor worn lady seeks her chamber, and is soon in a troubled, but heavy sleep. Harmy in a flowered "loose gown," wonderful in color and design, watches the death-bed of May-blossom. Peter Floome, silent, motionless, with bowed gray head, still holds his place—rejecting every advance of his comforter, who says irritably to herself, "Land sakes, I'd 'bout as soon be stark alone!"

How still the night is! A mother robin, brooding her fledglings in the tall linden, beside the open window, twitters drowsily, from time to time. A persistent June bug, bouncing clumsily against wall and ceiling, wantons jarringly with the solemn silence. On the bureau stands May-blossom's own pet vase—a Parian hand. It still holds a faded cluster of lady's delights, placed there, but yesterday, by her own sweet hand. The long July night wears on. Harmy, at regular intervals, steps softly to the bedside, and, bending tenderly over her charge, listens a while to the laboured breathing of the child, and then, with a stealthy side glance at the silent watcher,—whose presence, to her mind, but ill accords with the occasion,—returns to rock softly, and moan, under her breath, "Dear, dear, dear o' me! I s'pose it's the Lord's will; but, when I look at that precious child, I can't, nohow, help prayin' straight agin it! P'r'aps I may as well read a few chapters (taking a heavy Bible from a stand beside the fireplace); the Scripters is wonderful comfortin' in times of affliction."

And now, Harmy Patterson,—good old-fashioned Christian, never once doubting that God Himself literally penned every word between the covers of her "King James edition,"—gets mightily edified and reassured by a pious perusal of the Book of Lamentations! Harmy likes long chapters, and many of them; and, having exhausted Lamentations, she reads on and on, until (if you should put her to the rack, you couldn't make her confess it) she falls fast asleep.

Hark! Is it the robin twittering in the linden? Ah, no! a sadder and more hopeless sound disturbs her repose. It is the death-rattle! A moment more, and she is hastening to the child. Peter Floome has already anticipated her; and, kneeling by the bedside, is clasping, in his rough brown palm, the slender white hand of his precious nursling. A cruel spasm convulses the tender frame. The little arms are up-flung in agony! A moment; and it has passed—thank God! the last mortal pang! And now the sweet Carrara marble face is lighted by a dawn that is not of earth. A smile of ecstasy sweetens the dying lips; and, as the conscious gray eyes look fondly upon the familiar bowed head beside her, she whispers in rapturous surprise: "Why, Peter! Peter! It is morning!" A faint gasp—a single flutter of the failing breath, and all is over. Harmy Patterson, bending her stiff old knees, grasps the hand of Peter Floome, and the two weep silently together. Peter's adoring gaze is still fastened upon the dear dead face, and, with his right hand still clasping that of May-blossom, he presses in his left that of Harmy, and broken-heartedly wails: "Oh, Miss Patterson, Miss Patterson! the' ain't nothin' left!"

"It's the will of the Lord, Peter," piously exhorts Harmy; "an' we must all bow down to it, an' bear up under it. But, O land, (rising abruptly to her feet)! how in the world I'm to break it to Miss Paulina (an' she not here at the last minnit) is more'n I know; but I must do it, an' right off, too." And, leaving her fellow-mourner still upon his knees, she hurries from the room on her distasteful errand. Harmy, in spite of her best intentions, delays awhile. "It's a pity"—she says to herself—"to wake her up to her trouble, and she so sound, an' quiet. I've a mind to let her lay a minnit longer." And she does, but, ere long, the two women are beside the dear dead form. Miss Paulina—true to her own sweet self—holds in abeyance the sorrow of her aching heart, while she kindly seeks to comfort the poor bowed creature still clinging to his beloved nursling. Tenderly clasping his disengaged hand, she strives with gentle force to draw him from the room. The hand is nerveless, and chill. The entire form seems strangely limp and listless! The truth at last dawns upon her her—"Peter Floome is dead!" Yes, his fond, faithful spirit, following hard upon the flight of that—

had gone softly and painlessly out of mortal life; and who shall say that, in the "house of many mansions," the convict, "delivered from the body of his sin," may not dwell, side by side, with the innocent prison child?

Rough-handed men come, with heavy tread, to bear the dead man from the room, but it is Miss Paulina, herself, who tenderly disengages the interclasped hands, and, then stooping reverently to the bowed gray head, she lays her own in silent benediction upon it, and voicelessly transposes the gracious words that, centuries ago, fell from the blessed lips of the divine man: "His sins, though many, are forgiven, for he loved much."

And now, already the red rose of dawn blooms in the summer sky, and, like belated ghosts, that may not bide for the coming sun, we steal noiselessly from the chamber of death.

Year after year the blue-eyed periwinkle blooms upon a low, short grave in that "City of the Silent," the Saganock burying-ground. Its headstone is a shaft of Carrara marble. A carven lily, broken on its stem, in emblem of the unfilled promise of a life, droops over this simple inscription:

"Her name was Mabel."

In the old burying-ground beneath the pines is another grave, and, before the sod had greened upon it, it was Miss Paulina's pious care to order for it a modest headstone, and, mindful of Peter's heart's earnest wish, she had "verses cut on to it."

Resolutely turning her face from her own sad world of graves, Miss Paulina lives unselfishly on, in other lives. Gentle deeds of beneficence and love blossom thickly along her gracious life-road, as roses flower upon their stems, and never dream that through them the world is made more sweet.

Harmy, at seventy, still considers herself quite equal to any domestic exigency. Reuben, "taking heed to his ways," has minded her sage admonitions. He has "jined the church." Mandy Ann and he have become one. This marriage scarce makes a ripple in their tranquil lives, which are still consecrated to the service of the House of Parker.

Timothy Tucker no longer keeps the iron doors of the prison guard-room. Soon after the sudden departure of Warden Flint, and the consequent subtraction of May-blossom from his uncongenial existence, he migrated to California. He has become, in sunny San Francisco, the pleased proprietor of a flourishing bird store. As duly set forth on his sign of blue and gold, "birds, cages, and seed, with bouquets and cut flowers of every description," may be obtained at this mercantile establishment. The ex-turnkey's favourite customer is a little maid, of ten sweet Californian summers. Her eyes are like the sapphire of a noon-day heaven. Her hair is the braided sunshine of her own golden clime.

No one (not even the charming little buyer herself) guesses why the bird and flower dealer invariably gives this fair creature twice her money's worth of violets, pinks, or roses, or why, last winter, he trained, to the utmost of their pretty possibilities, two yellow canaries as a Christmas "gift for his fair." But one day, as this little maiden, bearing in her hand a lavish bunch of Parma violets, turned smiling from his door, the listening parrots heard him thus pensively soliloquize: "Blue eyes, but jes' such hair, an' her step, to a T! An' a wonderful takin' little creetur you air, to be sure. But (sorrowfully shaking his grizzled head), you ain't her. No, no, no! Not by a long shot!"