D

uring the winter a great piece of news stirred Grassy Ford, and in spite of the snow-drifts on our walks and porches furnished an excuse for a dozen calls that otherwise would never have been made so soon. Old Mrs. Luton was discovered in a state of apoplexy on our steps, but on being brought in and divested of her husband's coon-skin cap, a plush collar, a scarf, a shawl, a knitted jacket, and a newspaper folded across her chest, recovered her breath and told her story. Mrs. Neal, so Mrs. Luton said, had been heard to say, according to Mrs. Withers, who had it from Mrs. Lowell, who lived next door to Mrs. Bell—who, as the world knows, called more often than anybody else at the Neal farm-house, feeling a pity for the lonely woman there, as who did not?—Mrs. Neal had been heard to say, what Mrs. Luton would not have repeated for the world to any one but her dear Miss Primrose, who could be trusted implicitly, as she knew, and she had said it in the most casual way—Mrs. Neal, that is—but secretly very well pleased, though, Heaven knows, she, Mrs. Luton—

"Won't you have some coffee?" asked Letitia, for the breakfast was not yet cold.

"Yes, thank you, I will, for I'm as cold as can be," exclaimed her visitor, laughing hysterically, and she was profuse in her praise of Letitia's beverage, and inquired the brand. Her manner of sipping it as she sat in an easy-chair before the fire did away with all necessity for a spoon, but was a little trying to a delicate sense of hearing like Letitia's, and was responsible beside for what was wellnigh a disastrous deluge when in the midst of a copious ingurgitation she suddenly remembered what she had come to tell:

"Ffff—Peggy Neal's a-living in New York!" she splashed, her eyes popping. It would be impossible to relate the story as Mrs. Luton told it, for its ramifications and parentheses involved the history of Grassy Ford and the manifold relationships of its inhabitants, past and present, to say nothing of the time to come, for in speculations Mrs. Luton was profound.

Mrs. Neal, it seems, had broken her long silence and had been heard to allude to "my daughter Peggy in New York." Some years had passed since the farm-gate clicked behind that forlorn and outcast girl, and in all that time the mother had never spoken the daughter's name, nor had any one dared more than once to question her. Letitia had tried once, but once only, to intercede for the pupil she had loved, the manner of whose departure was well enough understood in the town and country-side, though where she had gone remained a mystery.

On leaving the farm that September evening, Peggy, with a desperate and tear-stained face, had been met by a neighbor girl, who as a confidant in happier hours, was intrusted with the story. It was not a long one. The mother had pointed to the gate.

"Look there!" she cried. "He went that way. I guess you'll find him, if you try, you—"

Then her mother struck her, Peggy said. She did not know it was the name which felled her.

Now after silence which had seemed like death to the lonely woman in the hills, Peggy had written home to her, to beg forgiveness, to say that in a life of ease and luxury in a great city, she could not help thinking of the farm, which seemed a dream to her; she could never return to it, she said, but she wondered if her father was living, and if her mother had still some heart for her wayward daughter, and would write sometimes. She said nothing of a child. That she was still unmarried seemed evident from the signature—"Your loving, loving Peggy Neal." That some good-fortune had befallen her in spite of that sad beginning in her native fields, was quite as clear, for the paper on which she had scrawled her message was of finest texture and delicately perfumed; and, what was more, between its pages the mother had found a sum of money, how much or little no one knew.

It was observed that the mother's face had relaxed a little. That she had answered her daughter's message was asserted positively by Mrs. Bell, though what that answer was, and whether forgiveness or not, she did not know. It was assumed, however, to have been a pardon, for the mother seemed pleased with the daughter's progress in the world, which must have seemed to her the realization, however ironical, of her discarded hopes; and it was she herself who had divulged the contents of the letter. To the cautious curiosity manifested by elderly ladies of Grassy Ford, who called upon her now more often than had been their wont, as she took some pleasure in reminding them, to their obvious discomfiture, and to all other hints and allusions she turned her deafer ear, while to direct questions she contented herself with the simple answer:

"Peggy's well."

"You hear from her often, I suppose?" some caller ventured. The reply was puzzling:

"Oh, a mother's apt to."

She said it so sadly, looking away across the farm, that Letitia's informant as she told the story burst into tears.

"She's a miserable woman, Miss Letitia, depend upon it. She's a miserable, broken-down, heart-sick creature for what she's done. 'You hear often, I suppose?' said I. 'A mother's apt to,' says she, and turned away from me with a face so lonesome as would break your heart."

For myself, as Letitia told me, I had my own notion of the mother's sad and evasive answer, but I held my peace.

It was the coldest winter we had known in years. For weeks at a time our valley was a bowl of snow, roads were impassable, and stock was frozen on the upland farms. Suddenly there came a thaw: the sun shone brightly, the great drifts sank and melted into muddy streams, and early one morning Farmer Bell, his shaggy mare and old top-buggy splashed with mire and his white face spattered, stopped at the post-office and called loudly to the passers-by.

"Old Neal's dead and I want the coroner."

To the crowd that gathered he told the story. Neal's wife, waiting up for him Christmas night, had made an effort to reach the Bells to ask for tidings, but the wind was frightful and the drifts already beyond her depth. She had gone back hoping that he was safe by his tavern fire, but she sat by her own all night, listening to the roaring of the wind and the rattling windows through which the snow came drifting in. At dawn, from an upper chamber, she peered out upon a sight that is seldom seen even in these northern hills. The storm was over, but the world was buried white; roads and fences and even the smaller trees were no longer visible, and the barn and a neighbor's cottage were unfamiliar in their uncouth hoods. For days she remained imprisoned on the lonely farm. She cut paths from the woodshed to the near-by barn and saved the cattle in their stalls. Then the thaw came, and she reached the Bells.

Hitching his mare to his lightest buggy, for the roads were rivers, the farmer drove through the slush and the remnant drifts to the corner tavern where Neal had been. The bartender stared blankly at his first question.

"Neal?" he stammered out at last.

"Yes, Neal! John Neal, confound you! Can't you speak?"

The man laid the glass he was wiping upon the bar.

"Neal left here Christmas day—along about four in the afternoon, when the storm began."

As Bell drove homeward he saw two figures at the Neal farm-gate—that gate which Peggy had closed behind her—and, coming nearer, he made out his own man Tom and the widow, lifting the body from the melting snow.

Peggy Neal did not come to her father's funeral. Letitia herself would have written the news to her, for the woman, dry-eyed and dumb and sitting by the coffin-side, had aged in a day and was now as helpless as a child.

"Shall I write to Peggy?" Letitia asked her, but she did not hear. Twice the question was repeated, but they got no answer, so Letitia wrote, and laid the letter on the casket, open and unaddressed. It was never sent.