Andrew Zane was leaning on his elbow, in bed, listening to the tolling bell for the old pastor of Kensington. He had not attended the funeral, fearing to trust his eyes and heart near Calvin Van de Lear, for the unruly element in his blood was not wholly stilled. Good and evil, gratitude and recollection, contended within him, and Agnes just escaped from the long shadow of his father's rage—had forebodings of some violence when the two young men should meet in the little thoroughfare of Kensington—the one with the accumulated indignities he had suffered liable to be aroused by the other's shallow superciliousness. Agnes had but one friend to carry her fears to—Him "who never forsaketh." She had not persisted that her husband should attend the old pastor's funeral, whither Duff Salter escorted her, and going there, relieved from all imputation, her evidently wedded state was seen with general respect. People spoke to her as of old, congratulated her even at the grave, and sought to repair their own misapprehensions, suspicions, and severities, which Agnes accepted without duplicity.

Andrew Zane was leaning up in bed hearing the tolling bell when Agnes reappeared.

"Husband," she said, "only Knox Van de Lear was at the grave, of the pastor's sons."

"Ha!" exclaimed Andrew.

"He looked worse than grief could make him. A terrible tale is afloat in Kensington."

Husband and wife looked at each other a moment in silence.

"They say," continued Agnes, "that Calvin Van de Lear has fled with his brother's wife. That is the talk of the town. Professing to desire some clothing for the funeral, they took a carriage together, and were driven to Tacony yesterday, where the afternoon train, meeting the steamboat from Philadelphia, took them on board for New York."

Andrew fell back on his pillow.

"God has hedged me all around," he answered. "While Calvin Van de Lear lived in Kensington I was in revengeful temptation all the time. He has escaped, and my soul is oppressed no more. Do you know, Agnes, that the guilty accomplice of Calvin, his brother's wife, wrote all the worst letters which anonymously came through the post?"

Agnes replied:

"I never suspected it. My heart was too full of you. But Mr. Salter told me to-day that he unravelled it some time ago. Calvin Van de Lear showed him, in a moment of egotism, the conquest he had made over an unknown lady's affections, and passages of the correspondence. The keen old man immediately identified in the handwriting the person who addressed him a letter against us soon after his arrival in the East. But he did not tell me until to-day. How did you know she was the person?"

Andrew Zane blushed a little, and confessed:

"Agnes, she used to write to me. Seeing the anonymous letters you received, I knew the culprit instantly. It was that which precipitated the flight. She feared that her anonymous letters would result in her arrest and public trial for slander, as they would have done. The magistrate promised me that he would issue his warrant for every person who had employed the public mails to harass my wife, and when you entered this room my darker passions were again working to punish that woman and her paramour."

"Dearest, let them be forgotten. Yes, forgiven too. But poor Mr. Knox Van de Lear! They have stolen his savings and mortgaged his household furniture, which he was confiding enough to have put in his wife's name. That is also a part of the story related around the good pastor's grave."

"Calvin has not escaped," exclaimed Andrew Zane. "As long as that tigress accompanies him he has expiation to make. Voluptuous, jealous, restless, and, like a snake in the tightness of her folds and her noiseless approach, she will smother him with kisses and sell him to his enemies."

"Do you know her so well?" asked Agnes placidly.

"Very well. She was corrupt from childhood, but only a few of us knew it. She grew to be beautiful, and had the quickened intelligence which, for a while, accompanies ruined women: the unnatural sharpening of the duplicity, the firmer grasp on man as the animal, the study of the proprieties of life, and apparent impatience with all misbehavior. Her timid voice assisted her cunning as if with a natural gentleness, and invited onward the man who expected in her ample charms a bolder spirit. She betook herself to the church for penance, perhaps, but remained there for a character. My wife, if I have suffered, it was, perhaps, in part because for every sin is some punishment; that woman was my temptress also!"

His face was pale as he spoke these words, but he did not drop his eyes. The wife looked at him with a face also paled and startled.

"Remember," said Andrew Zane, "that I was a man."

She walked to him in a moment and kissed his forehead.

"I will have no more deceit," said Andrew. "That is why I give you this pain. It was long, my darling, before we loved."

"That was the source, perhaps, of Lottie's anger with me," spoke Agnes.

"I think not. There was not a sentiment between us. It is the way, occasionally, that a very bad woman is made, by marriage or wealth, respectable, and she declares war on her own past and its imitators. You were pursued because you had exchanged deserts with her. You were pure and abused; she was approved but tainted. Not your misfortunes but your goodness rebuked her, and she lashed you behind her alias, as every demon would riot in lashing the angels."

"My husband," exclaimed Agnes, "where did you draw such secrets from woman's nature? God has blessed you with wisdom. I felt, myself, by some intuition of our sex, that it was sin, not virtue, that took such pains to upbraid me."

"I drew them from the old, old plant," answered Andrew Zane; "the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Yonder, where I skimmed the surface of a bad woman; here, where I am forgiven."

"If you felt remorse," said Agnes, "you were not given up."

"After we were engaged that woman cast her eyes on my widowed father and notified me that I must not stand in her way. 'If you embarrass me by one word,' she said to me in her pretty, timid way, but with the look of a lion out of her florid fringes, 'I will shatter your future hearthstone. You are not fit to marry a Christian woman like Agnes Wilt. I am good enough for your father—yes,' she finished, with terrible irony, 'and to be your mother!' Those words went with me around the world. Agnes, was I not punished?"

"To think that the son of so good a man should be bound to such a tyrant."

"Yes, she will make him steal for her, or worse. He will end by being her most degraded creature, leading and misleading to her. Theirs is an unreturning path. God keep us all faithful!"

Duff Salter became again mysterious. He sent for his trunks, and gave his address as the "Treaty House," on Beach Street, nearly opposite the monument, only a square back from the Zane house.

"Andrew," said Salter, when the young husband sought him there, "I concluded to move because there will be a nurse in that house before midsummer. If I was deaf as I once was, it would make no difference. But a very slight cry would certainly pierce my restored sensibilities now."

The Treaty House was a fine, old-fashioned brick, with a long saloon or double parlor containing many curiosities, such as pieces of old ships of war, weapons used in Polynesia and brought home by old sea captains, the jaws of whales and narwhals, figure-heads from perished vessels, harpoons, and points of various naval actions. In those days, before manufactures had extended up all the water streets, and when domestic war had not been known for a whole generation, the little low marble monument on the site of William Penn's treaty with the Indians attracted hundreds of strangers, who moistened their throats and cooled their foreheads in the great bar parlor of the Treaty House. It was still a secluded spot, shady and dewy with venerable trees, and the moisture they gave the old brown and black bricks in the contiguous houses, some of them still stylish, and all their windows topped with marble or sandstone, gray with the superincumbent weight of time or neglect. Large rear additions and sunless sideyards carried out the idea of a former gentry. Some buttonwood trees, now thinning out with annual age, conveyed by their speckled trunks the notion of a changing social standard, white and brown, native and foreign, while the lines of maples stood on blackened boles like old retired seamen, bronzed in many voyages and planted home forever. But despite the narrow, neglected, shady street, the slope of Shackamaxon went gently shelving to the edges of long sunny wharves, nearly as in the day when Penn selected this greensward to meet his Indian friends, and barter tools and promises for forest levels and long rich valleys, now open to the sky and murmurous with wheat and green potato vines.

Sitting before the inn door, on drowsy June afternoons, Duff Salter heard the adzes ring and hammers smite the thousand bolt-heads on lofty vessels, raised on mast-like scaffolds as if they meant to be launched into the air and go cleared for yonder faintly tinted spectral moon, which lingered so long by day, like the symbol of the Indian race, departed but lambent in thoughtful memories. Duff had grown superstitious; he came out of the inn door sidewise, that he might always see that moon over his right shoulder for good luck.

One morning Andrew Zane appeared at the Treaty House before Duff Salter had taken his julep, after the fashion of malarious Arkansas.

"Mr. Salter, it is all over. There is a baby at our house."

"Girl?"

"Just that!"

"I thought so," exclaimed Duff Salter. "It was truly mother's labor, and ought to have been like Agnes. We will give her a toast."

"In nothing but water," spoke Andrew soberly. "I hope I have sown my wild oats."

"I will imitate you," heartily responded Duff Salter; "for it occurred to me in Arkansas that people shot and butchered each other so often because they threw into empty stomachs a long tumbler of liquor and leaves. You are well started, Andrew. Your father's and his partner's estate will give you an income of $10,000. What will you do?"

"I have no idea whatever. My mind is not ready for business. My serious experience has been followed by a sort of stupor—an inquiry, a detached relation to everything."

"Let it be so awhile," answered the strong, gray-eyed man. "Such rests are often medicine, as sleep is. The mind will find its true channel some day."

"Can I be of service to you, Mr. Salter? Money would be a small return of our obligations to you."

"No, I am independent. Too independent! I wish I had a wife."

"Ah! Agnes told me that besides seeing the baby when you came to the house, little Mary Byerly would be there. She is well enough to be out, and has lost her invalid brother."

"If you see me blush, Andrew," said Duff Salter, "you needn't tell of it. I am in love with little Podge, but it's all over. With no understanding of woman's sensibilities, I shook that fragile child in my rude grasp, and frightened her forever. What will you call your baby?"

"Agnes says it shall be Euphemia, meaning 'of good report.' You know it came near being a young lady of bad report."

"As for me, Andrew, I shall make the contract for the steeple and completion of the new church, and then take a foreign journey. Since I stopped sneezing I have no way to disguise my sensibilities, and am more an object of suspicion than ever."

Duff Salter peeped at the beautiful mother and hung a chain of gold around the baby's neck, and was about slipping out when Podge Byerly appeared. She made a low bow and shrank away.

"Follow her," whispered Andrew Zane. "If she is cool now she will be cold hereafter, unless you nurse her confidence."

With a sense of great youthfulness and demerit, Duff Salter entered the parlors and found Podge sitting in the shadows of that thrice notable room where death and grief had been so often carried and laid down. The little teacher was pale and thin, and her eyes wore a saddened light.

"I am very glad to see you again," said Duff Salter. "I wanted your forgiveness."

Striking the centre of sympathy by these few words, the late deaf man saw Podge's throat agitated.

"If you knew," he continued, "how often I accused myself since your illness, you would try to excuse me."

After a little silence Podge said,

"I don't remember just what happened, Mr. Salter. Was it you who sent me many beautiful and dainty things while I was sick? I thought it might be."

"You guessed me, then? At least I was not forgotten."

"I never forgot you, sir; but ever since my illness you seem to have been a part of the dread river and its dead. I have often tried to restore you as I once thought of you, but other things rise up and I cannot see you. My head was gone, I suppose."

"Alas, no! I drove away your heart. If that would come back, the wandering head would follow, little friend. Are you afraid of me?"

"Sometimes. One thing, I think, is your deafness. While you were deaf you seemed so natural that we talked freely before you, prattling out our fancies undisguised. We wouldn't have done it if we knew that you heard as well as we. That makes me afraid too. Oh! why did you deceive us so?"

"I only deceived myself. A foolish habit, formed in pique, of affecting not to hear, adhered to me long before we were acquainted. If you will let me drive you out into the country to-morrow I will tell you the whole of my silly story. The country roads are what you need, and I need your consideration as much."

The next day a buggy stopped at the door, and Podge, sitting at the window with her bonnet on, saw Duff Salter, hale and strong, holding the reins. She was helped into the buggy by Andrew Zane, and in a few minutes the two were in the open country pointing toward old Frankford. They rode up the long stony street of that old village, whose stone or rough-cast houses suggested the Swiss city of Basle whence the early settlers of Frankford came. Then turning through the factory dale called Little Britain, they sped out the lane, taking the general direction of Tacony Creek, and followed that creek up through different little villages and mill-seats until they came to nearly the highest mill-pond, in the stony region about the Old York road. A house of gray and reddish stones, in irregular forms, mortised in white plaster, sat broadside to the lawn before it, which was covered with venerable trees, and bordered at the roadside by a stone rampart, so that it looked like a hanging lawn. A gate at the lawn-side gave admission to a lane, behind which was the ancient mill-pond suspended in a dewy landscape, with a path in the grass leading up the mill-race, and on the pond a little scow floated in pond-lilies. All around were chestnut trees, their burrs full of fruit. Across the lane, only a few feet from the house, the ancient mill gave forth a snoring and drumming together as if the spirit of solitude was having a dance all to itself and only breathing hard. Then the crystal water, shooting the old black mill-wheel, fell off it like the beard from Duff Salter's face, and went away in pools and flakes across a meadow, under spontaneous willow trees which liked to stand in moisture and cover with their roots the harmless water-snakes. A few cottages peeped over the adjacent ridges upon the hidden dale.

"What a restful place!" exclaimed Podge Byerly. "I almost wish I might be spirit of a mill, or better still, that old boat yonder basking in the pond-lilies and holding up its shadow!"

"I am glad you like it," said Duff Salter. "Let us go in and see if the house is hospitable."

As Podge Byerly walked up the worn stone walk of the lawn she saw a familiar image at the door—her mother.

"You here, mother?" said Podge. "What is the meaning of it?"

"This is my house, my darling. There is our friend who gave it to us. You will need to teach no more. The mill and a little farm surrounding us will make us independent."

Podge turned to Duff Salter.

"How kind of you!" she said. "Yet it frightens me the more. These surprises, tender as they are, excite me. Everything about you is mysterious. You are not even deaf as you were. What silly things you may have heard us say."

"Dear girl," exclaimed Duff Salter, "nothing which I heard from your lips ever affected me except to love you. You cured me of years of suspicion, and I consented to hear again. The world grew candid to me; its sounds were melodious, its silence was sincere. It is you who are deaf. You cannot hear my heart."

"I hear no other's, at least," said Podge. "Tell me the story of your strange deceit."

They drew chairs upon the lawn. Podge took off her bonnet and looked very delicate as her color rose and faded alternately in the emotions of one wooed in earnest and uncertain of her fate.

"I have not come by money without hard labor," said the hale and handsome man. "This gray beard is not the creation of many years. It is the fruit of anxiety, toil, and danger. My years are not double yours."

"You have recovered at least one of your faculties since I knew you," said Podge slyly.

"You mean hearing. The sense of feeling too, perhaps—which you have lost. But this is my tale: After I went to Mexico, and became the superintendent of a mine, I found my nature growing hard and my manner imperious, not unlike those of my dead friend, William Zane. The hot climate of Mexico and confinement in the mines, hundreds of feet below the surface and in the salivating fumes of the cinnabar retorts, assisted to make me impetuous. I fought more than one duel, and, like all men who do desperate things, grew more desperate by experience until, upon one occasion, I was made deaf by an explosion in the bowels of the ground. For one year I could hear but little. In that year I was comparatively humble, and one day I heard a workman say, 'If the boss gets his hearing back there will be no peace about the mine.' This set me to thinking. 'How much of my suspicion and anger,' I said, 'is the result of my own speaking. I provoked the distemper of which I am afflicted. I start the inquiries which make me distrustful. I hear the echo of my own idle words, and impeach my fellow-man upon it. Until I find a strong reason for speech, I will remain deaf as I have been.' That strong reason never arrived, my little girl, until all reason ceased to be and love supplanted it."

"There is no reason, then, in your present passion," said Podge dryly.

"No. I am so absolutely in love that there is no resisting it. It is boyishness wholly."

"I think I should be afraid of a man," said Podge, "who could have so much will as to hold his tongue for seven years. Suppose you had a second attack, it might never come to an end. What were you thinking about all that time?"

"I thought how deaf, blind, and dumb was any one without love. I found the world far better than it had seemed when I was one of its chatterers. By my voluntary silence I had banished the disturbing element in Nature; for our enemy is always within us, not without. In that seven years, for most of which I heard everything and answered none, except by my pencil, I was prosperous, observant, sober, and considerate. The deceit of affecting not to hear has brought its penalty, however. You are afraid of me."

"Were you ever in love before?"

"I fear I will surprise you again by my answer," said Duff Salter. "I once proposed marriage to a young girl on this very lawn. It was in the springtime of my life. We met at a picnic in a grove not far distant. She was a coquette, and forgot me."

Podge said she must have time to know her heart. Every day they made a new excursion, now into the country of the Neshaminy, and beyond it to the vales of the Tohicken and Perkiomen. They descended the lanes along the Pennypack and Poqessing, and followed the Wissahickon to its sources. Podge rapidly grew in form and spirits, and Agnes and Andrew Zane came out to spend a Saturday with them.

Mean time Andrew Zane was in a mystic condition—uncertain of purpose, serious, and studious, and he called one night at the Treaty tavern to see Duff Salter. Duff had gone, however, up the Tacony, and in a listless way Andrew sauntered over to the little monument erected on the alleged site of the Indian treaty. He read the inscription aloud:

"Treaty Ground of William Penn and the Indian Nations, 1682. Unbroken Faith! Pennsylvania, founded by deeds of Peace!"

As Andrew ceased he looked up and beheld a man of rather portly figure, with the plain clothes of a Quaker, a broad-brimmed hat, knee-breeches, and buckled shoes. Something in his countenance was familiar. Andrew looked again, and wondered where he had seen that face. It then occurred to him that it was the exact likeness of William Penn. The man locked at Andrew and said,

"Thee is called to preach!"

"Sir?" exclaimed Andrew.

In the same tone of voice the man exclaimed,

"Thee is called to preach!"

Andrew looked with some slight superstition at the peculiar man, with such a tone of authority, and said again, but respectfully:

"Do I understand you as speaking to me, sir?"

"Thee is called to preach!" said the object, in precisely the same tone of voice, and vanished.

Andrew Zane walked across to the hotel and saw Duff Salter, freshly arrived, looking at him intently.

"Did you see a person in Quaker dress standing by the monument an instant past?"

"I saw nobody but yourself," said Duff heartily. "I have been looking at you some moments."

"As truly as I live, a man in Quaker dress spoke to me at the monument's side."

"What did he say?"

"He said three times, deliberately, 'Thee is called to preach!'"

"That's queer," said Duff, looking curiously at Andrew. "My friend, that man spoke from within you. Do you know that it is the earnest desire of your wife, and a subject of her prayers, that you may become a minister?"

"I didn't know it," said Andrew. "But there is something startling in this apparition. I shall never be able to forget it."

To the joy of Agnes, now a happy wife and mother, her husband went seriously into the church, and the moment his intention was announced of entering the ministry, there arose a spontaneous and united wish that he would take the pulpit in his native suburb.

"Agnes," said the young man, "the dangers I have passed, the tragedy of my family, your piety and my feelings, all concur in this step. I feel a new life within me, now that I have settled upon this design."

"I would rather see you a good minister than President," exclaimed Agnes. "The desires of my heart are fully answered now. When you saw the image standing by the Treaty tree at that instant I was upon my knees asking God to turn your heart toward the ministry."

"Here in Kensington," spoke Andrew, "we will live down all imputation and renew our family name. Here, where we made our one mistake, we will labor for others who err and suffer. Such an escape as ours can be celebrated by nothing less than religion."

Duff Salter went to Tacony for the last time on the Sunday Andrew Zane entered the church. He did not speak a word, but at the appearance of Podge Byerly drew out the ancient ivory tablets and wrote:

"I'll never speak again until you accept or refuse me."

She answered, "What are you going to do if I say no?"

"I have bought two tickets for Europe," wrote Duff Salter. "One is for you, if you will accept it. If not I shall go alone and be deaf for the remainder of my days."

Podge answered by reaching out her lips and kissing Duff Salter plumply.

"There," she said, "I've done it!"

Duff Salter threw the tablets away, and standing up in a glow of excitement, gave with great unction his last articulate sneeze:

"Jericho! Jericho!"