f my sublime conduct. He sat, looking very glum behind his paper, and appeared not to notice me when I came in. Having finished reading his paper, he gnawed his moustache and gazed, still with glaring unconsciousness of my presence, out of the window. But as we neared Hartford, where I was to take the train for Boston, he came over to where I sat.

"I hope you'll enjoy yourself at Sandy Creek this winter," he said.

Now, I knew that John had designed this as sarcasm the most scathing, but he was himself conscious of failure, and the thought filled him with deeper gloom. He sought to reveal his baffled intentions in a scowl, which lent to his manly and intelligent features the darkness of spiritual night. And I replied, that "the recollection of his face, as it then appeared to me, would be in itself an inspiration through all the days to come."

There was silence for a space, and then John continued:—

"Have you found it on the map, yet?"

"What, please?"

"Kedarville!" with bitter emphasis.

"Oh! certainly not."

"It may be a little island out there somewhere, you know," delivered with the effect of a masterpiece.

"Yes; or a lighthouse, possibly."

I saw that John wished he had thought of that himself. He became dejected again. Then, presently, he threw oil the cloak of bitterness which sat so ill on him, and, resuming his usual kindliness and benignity of manner, succeeded in making himself unconsciously tantalizing.

"If you do find it," he said; "and if you—if you conclude to stay for any length of time, I think I will go down some time this winter and hunt you up."

"If you do, John Cable," I answered, with unaccountable warmth; "I'll never forgive you as long as I live—never."

At Hartford, John took the train for Boston, too. We were very old friends. Latterly, we had read Shakespeare together at the Newtown Literary Club. We concluded not to quarrel for the rest of the way. I had an influx of gay spirits, and John was almost without exception "nice."

There were several hours to wait in Boston before the train on the Old Colony road would go out. We had dinner (I little realized how long it would be before I should eat again), and John tamely suggested driving about to look at some of the places of interest. I assured him that there was nothing so dispiriting as looking at places of interest, and he answered, cheerfully, after some moments of thought, that we could "shut our eyes when we went by them, then."

I had reason to dread a decline of spirits. Mine were rapidly on the wane. By the time we stopped at the Old Colony dÉpÔt they were low, indeed. And the hardest of all was, that I would not, for my life, let my companion know. It was four o'clock in the afternoon, and already quite dark. The atmosphere was heavy and chill; the sky ominous with clouds. I had an unknown journey yet to take in search of an unknown destination. The car into which I got on the Cape-bound train was dismal and weird-seeming enough.

"I wish, if you must go, you would let me see you to the end of this," said John.

I answered, laughing, with an unnecessary tinge of defiance in my tone. It would have been so much easier to cry. I thought, "If John would only try to look cross again!" as he did in the morning—anything but that expression of grieved and compassionate disapproval with which he sat, talking so earnestly to me, for the last few moments in that dark car. I thought he was cruel. He was trying to make me think and I was trying so hard not to think! I felt a childish desire to scream out. Then, when the signal for starting rang, and John took my hand an instant, in parting, looking down at me with his kind, familiar eyes, the impulse swept up strong within me to beg him to take me out of that dreadful car and take me back home, and I would be good, oh, so good, and "prosy," yes, and "humdrum," and never ask to go on any more missions to forlorn pieces of land sticking out into the water.

So there must have been a wild extravagance in the airy recklessness of tone with which I bade John "good-bye." A sense of utter helplessness came over me as he turned and went out.

I observed, particularly, but two passengers in the car. One was a man, very much bandaged as to his head, who sat gazing into the coal-stove, which occupied the centre of the car, with weakly meditative, burnt-out eyes. The other was a girl, occupying the seat directly in front of me. She might have been nine years old, but she had a singularly faded and mature countenance. As the train started, she turned to me with some excitement:—

"There!" said she, pointing towards the window; "your beau's walking off! He's walking fast! He ain't looking back!"

"Thank you," said I, in a low, expressionless tone, not intended as an inducement to further conversation.

This girl had a parcel of confectionery, the contents of which she occasionally took out, and ranged in a row on the window ledge, selecting therefrom the smallest and least inviting fragment, and having eaten it with the hasty air of one who treats herself under protest to the luscious prerogatives of childhood, put the rest back in the paper-bag, carefully replacing the string every time. She selected and handed to me the very largest specimen in her collection, which I had the gracelessness to refuse, though without show of disgust. Afterwards she asked if she might come and sit in the seat with me. I thought she was very disagreeable. Besides, I was so miserable I wanted to commune apart with my own loneliness. However, I made room for her.

She proceeded to confide to me all of her past history. She was returning home from a visit to her aunt. Her mother had died a good many years ago, "when Johnnie was a mere baby." She "kept house for father, and took care of Johnnie." She "tried hard not to have father feel his loss. It was very hard," she added, gravely, "for a man to be left alone so." She had bought a little book for Johnnie, but she never had much time to read; besides she wasn't quick to learn. She could pick the words out, to be sure, but, somehow, it didn't make good sense, and would I read the book to her?

Oh, to take counsel of my own despair! How dark and wild it was growing outside! Where was I going? whom should I meet there?

And so I read, at the foot of gorgeously-illuminated pages, how—

the range of characters swiftly widening as the narrative increased in power. To my surprise, the mature child listened to this nonsense with the utmost gravity and interest. No shadow of derision played on her attentive features. When I had finished—it was soon finished—she said:—

"Oh, that sounded so good; it made such good sense," and sighed, very wistfully.

"Do you want me to read it again?" I exclaimed, in despair.

Would I read it again? she asked.

I read it again.

After that she was silent and thoughtful for some time. Then she said, looking gravely into my face:—

"Do you love Jesus?"

"No, my dear," said I, surprised into much gentleness.

The faded blue eyes filled with tears. She had no notion of harassing me on the subject, but spoke quietly and at length of her own religious convictions.

The east wind crept in through the window, and once my little companion shivered. I noticed that she was rather thinly clad. I unstrapped my shawl and wrapped it around her. She let her head fall at my side, and went to sleep. Slowly, I was constrained to draw her up closer and put my arm around her as support. In so doing, I received from some source an unaccountable strength and calm of spirit.

At Braintree, which the child had told me was her home, I woke her up, and she got off.

I was to stop at West Wallen, the railway station least remote from Kedarville, and expected there to meet Mrs. Philander Keeler, or some member of that mysterious family, to convey me to Wallencamp.

It seemed as though the train had had time to travel the whole interminable length of the Cape, and plunge off into the ocean beyond, when, in fact, we were just entering upon that peculiar body of land at West Wallen.

There was no one there to meet me. The little dÉpÔt was held by a strange night brigade of boys and girls, playing "blind-man's buff." They shouted like cannibals, and bore down on all opposing objects with resistless force. I did not attempt an entrance. A rough, good-natured looking man stood on the platform outside.

I put on my glasses (I was sadly and unaffectedly near-sighted), and having further assured myself of his seeming honesty, inquired if there was such a place as Kedarville in the vicinity.

"Waal, no, miss, thar' ain't," said he, with a noonday smile, which informed me that there was yet something to hope for. "Thar's no Kedarville that I know on. Thar's a Wallencamp some miles up yender. We don't often tackle no Sunday go-to-meeting names on to it, but I reckon, maybe, it's the same you're a-lookin' for."

He had spoken with such startling indefiniteness of the distance that I asked him how far it was to Wallencamp.

"Waal, thar' you've got me," said he, beaming on me in a broadly complimentary way, as though I had actually circumvented him in some skilful play at words. "Fact is, thar' ain't never been no survey run down in that direction that I know on. We call it four miles, more or less. That's Cape Cod measure—means most anythin' lineal measure. Talkin' 'bout Cape Cod miles," he continued, with an irresistible air of raillery; "little Bachelder Lot lives up thar' to Wallencamp, and they don't have no church nor nothin' thar', so Bachelder and some on 'em they come up here, once in a while, ter Sunday-school. Deacon Lancy, he'd rather see the Old Boy comin' into Sunday-school class any time than Bachelder; for he's quiet, the little bachelder is, but dry as a herrin'. So the Deacon thought he'd stick him on distances. The Deacon is a great stickler on distances.

"'How fur, Bachelder,' says he, 'did Adam and Eve go when they was turned out of the garden of Eden?' says he.

"'Waal,' says Bachelder, coughing a little, so—that's Bachelder's way o' talking—'we have sufficient reason to eenfer, Deacon, that, in all probabeelity, they went a Ceape Cod mile.'"

My informant's delight at this reminiscence was huge. It yielded to a more subdued sense of the ludicrous when I asked him if there was any public conveyance to Wallencamp. He made a polite effort to restrain his mirth, but the muscles of his face twitched violently.

"Waal, no, miss," said he; "we don't run no reg'lar express up to Wallencamp; might be a very healthy oc'pation, but not as lukertive as some, I reckon—not as lukertive as pickin' 'tater-bugs: that's what they do, mostly, down thar'. Fact is, miss," he concluded, with considerable gravity; "we don't vary often go down to Wallencamp unless we're obliged to."

On my proposing to make it lucrative, he immediately called, in a loud voice, to one of the playful occupants of the dÉpÔt:

"Hi, thar!' 'Rasmus! 'Rasmus! Here's a lady wants to be conveyed down to Wallencamp; you run home and tackle, now! You be lively, now!"

'Rasmus was lively. In a very few moments something of an unusual and ghostly appearance—so much only I could discover of what afterwards became a very familiar sort of vehicle—was waiting for me alongside the platform. The only means of getting into it was through an opening directly in front. Towards this I was encouraged to climb over the thills, but met with an obstacle, in the form of my trunk, which seemed effectually to block up the entrance.

"Thar', now! I told ye so," exclaimed one of the bystanders, a large number of whom had mysteriously gathered about the scene. "You'd orter got her in first."

A disconsolate silence prevailed. The trunk had been elevated to its present position through the most painful exertions.

"Perhaps I can climb over it," I said, and bravely made the attempt.

No one knew, in the voiceless darkness, of the suddenly helpless and collapsed condition in which I landed on the other side. I groped about for a seat, and finally succeeded in finding one at the extreme rear of the vehicle.

'Rasmus drove. He was situated somewhere, somehow—I could not tell where nor how—in the realm of vacancy on the other side of the trunk; I only know that he seemed a long way off. Under these circumstances conversation was rendered extremely difficult. I learned that Mr. Philander Keeler was away at sea; that Mrs. Philander Keeler lived at the Ark, with Cap'n and Grandma Keeler, and the two little Keelers.

'Rasmus was the unmistakable son of his father.

"And it ain't no got-up ark, neither!" he yelled at me, in a tone which pierced through the distance and the darkness, and every intervening obstacle. "It's the reg'lar old Ark! It's what Noer, and the elephant, and them fellows come over in!"

I did not wonder, as we journeyed on, that my informant of the dÉpÔt platform had used his "ups" and "downs" indiscriminately in indicating the direction of Wallencamp. In the inky blackness by which I was surrounded I was conscious, clearly, of but one sensation—that of going up and down. The rumbling of the wheels reached me as something far off and indefinably dreadful.

Then we stopped, and I crawled out like one in a dream. There was no light at the Ark to make it a distinguishable feature of the gloom. 'Rasmus found the door and knocked loudly. I became dimly conscious of the knocking, and followed 'Rasmus.

"I reckon they're to bed," said he, and knocked louder.

Pretty soon a clear, feminine voice, startled into musical sharpness, issued from a room quite near, with—"Who's there?" and was followed by two small, squealing voices, in unison,—"Who's there?"

Then other sounds arose—sounds from some quarter mysterious and remote—low, mumbling, comfortable refrain, and ominous snatches of an uneasy grumble; then a roar that shook the Ark to its foundations:—

"Who the devil's making such a rumpus out there at this time in the mornin'?" (It was nine o'clock P.M.) 'Rasmus sent back an intrepid yell:—

"It's the tea-cher! It's pretty late," he said, aside, to me. "I guess I won't go in. I reckon they won't have much style on. I seen ye pay father; that's all right. I'll tip yer trunk up under the shed, and the old Cap'n 'll see to gettin' it in in the mornin'. Here's a letter the postmaster sent down to the Cap'n's folks. Good night."

'Rasmus, my only hope! I made a convulsive grasp for him in the darkness, but he was gone.

It was she of the soothing, comfortable voice who took me in; and Grandma Keeler's taking in I understand always in the divinest and fullest sense of the term.

Further than that, I was conscious that there were white-robed and nightcapped figures moving about the room. So unearthly was their appearance that I had, at last, a confused notion of having become disengaged from the entanglements of the flesh, and fallen in with a small planetary system in the course of my wanderings through space. The centre of attraction seemed to be a table, to which the figures were constantly bringing more pies.

The letter which 'Rasmus had directed me to hand to the "folks" was read with interest, being the one I had dispatched from Newtown, a week or two before, informing them as to the time of my arrival.

Madeline rendered the brief and business-like epistle with the full effect of her peculiarly thrilling intonation, and Grandma listened with rapt attention; but, meanwhile, Grandpa Keeler and the two little Keelers found time surreptitiously to dispose of nearly a whole pie, with the serious aspect of those who will not allow a mere fleeting diversion to hinder them in the improvement of a rare opportunity.

Having declined to partake of pie, through Grandma Keeler's kind interposition, I was not further urged.

"Thar', poor darlin'," said she; "fix her up a good cup o' your golden seal, pa, and she shall go to bed right in the parlor to-night, seem' as we didn't get the letter, and hain't got her room fixed upstairs. It's all nice and warm, and thar', darlin', thar', we're r'al good for nussin' folks up."

In the parlor, I saw only one great, delicious object—a bed. My weary brain hardly exaggerated its dimensions, which could not have failed to strike with astonishment even the most indifferent observer. It was long; it was broad; it was deep; and, alas! it was high, I disrobed as best I might, and stood before it, gazing despairingly up at its snowy summit.

Then, remembering my experience with the trunk, I approached at one extreme, scaled the headboard, fell over into an absorbing sea of feathers, and, at that very instant it seemed, the perplexing nature of mortal affairs ceased to burden my mind.

---