Sarah Maria was gone and baby Chance was thriving. There was bliss enough for any reasonable man, and Steve waxed almost light of heart. All this had come about with time, and other things might come, too, if time were not interfered with. The news of Sarah's rapid transit had hardly cost Nannie the lifting of an eyebrow. She was so absorbed in the baby that she could well afford to spare her amiable bovine.

Although it was quite late in the fall, Steve was actually contemplating the planting of another crop. Now that the main enemy had withdrawn her horns and heels from the garden, winter seemed a mere bagatelle in the way of opposition—an obstacle too small for reckoning.

But, as poets and prose writers have abundantly proven, Ill Fortune has an ugly habit of coming around a corner with a sudden demoniac swish when least expected and she certainly did this time. Steve was out in his garden drinking in the mellow stillness of an Indian summer twilight, and feeling not really happy perhaps—a man who has a home only in name can hardly be that—but rested and at peace at that particular moment, which is much more than could be asserted of his condition the next, for as he looked down the road he beheld Sarah Maria gamboling along, having in tow at the end of a rope a well-spent, perspiring darky.

“Dis yere yo' cow, massa?” asked the weary African as he came up.

Steve hesitated; he was sorely tempted to repudiate madam.

“Ain't yo's Massa Lubland?”

Steve nodded in a gloomy manner.

“Den I reckon dis yere b'longs to yo',” he said confidently, and he tugged and pulled the unruly beast within the boundary of the cow-yard, with no further damage to the place than the trampling of several choice plants and the breaking of a young apple tree.

“How much do I owe you?” asked Steve in a tone of subdued melancholy.

“Now, massa, I's gwine tell yo' my story, an' den I lebes it to yo' to do de right ting by me. Yo' see, dis yere cow come to me jes' 'bout tree months ago, an' my wife she 'lowed it was a giff, but I sez, 'No, sah, no giffs come a-droppin' out de sky dat a-way. Dis yere b'longs to some ob de quality folk, an' dey's a-gwine to want her some day, so we mus' keep her up right smart, an' dey'll pay us fer all our trubble.' So we fed her ob de fat ob de lan', but 'peared like she were de kin' dat keeps lean anyways; dat's why she look so kin' o' pulin' now.

“She was so contrairy to manage dat I got kin' o' skeered ob her, an' one day she tuk me in de pit ob de stomach an' h'isted me ober de fence, an' I hed mis'ry in de stomach an' mis'ry in de back, an' my wife 'lowed I was gwine ter die. It tuk de doctor an' a powerful lot o' medicine ter sot me up agin, an' I was kin' o' porely fer a long time. Bimeby we heerd de cow b'longed ter Massa Lubland, an' yo' libed out heah, an' jes' den a neighbor come 'long wid a load o' furn'ture an' I ax him:

“'Could yo' take de cow?'

“'Ef she'll hitch on I could,' he say. 'Is she peaceable or is she ornery?'

“'She's ornery heah,' I say, 'but she's gwine ter wawk 'long lak a lady when she's gwine home, 'case she's homesick.'

“Well, massa, he done tuk her, but when he come back from de city he tole me she jes' sot herself agin goin', an' she sot so hard de hosses couldn't pull nohow, an' when he got down to loose her she rared till she fetched some o' de furn'ture down on her haid, an' dar was a nice table broke ter kindlin' wood, an' I hed ter pay him five dollars fer it. An' jes' as I put de pocket book up agin—an' it was plum' empty—roun' de corner come de cow, wid her eyes on fire, an' she jes' strewed us bofe ober de groun' like we was dead chickens afore she runned inter de shed. An' massa, sho's yo's bawn, she hooked an' tossed me like a rubber bawl all de way up heah, till I hain't got a whole bone anywhares in my body. Lordy! but she's a turrible critter!”

“Do I owe you ten dollars?” asked Steve with grim resignation.

“I takes whatever yo' gives, massa, an' I doan complain; but I knows yo's hon'rable, an' yo's gwine ter 'member I was laid up from work a week an' hed ter pay de doctor an' de med'cines, an' I's fed her plum' full fer tree months.”

“Do I owe you fifteen dollars?” asked Steve.

The darky looked mournful.

“Do I owe you twenty?” asked Steve in a somewhat severe tone.

“Reckon yo' hain't gwine ter fergit I paid five fer de table,” murmured this meek son of Africa.

“Take twenty-five, then, and make an end of it,” said Steve.

“Tank yo', tank yo', massa. I hain't nebber gwine ter fergit yo' ner de cow. Gawd bress yo' bofe, massa.”

And grinning and bowing he disappeared, leaving Steve minus a fifth of his monthly salary and plus the beautiful Sarah Maria.

It was part of the procession of events that the butcher should heave in sight at that moment, and that Steve should hail him and take him in to look at the returned prodigal.

“She's so lean she wouldn't be good for much,” said the man. “If you'd fatten her up I'd——”

“No, I think not. I'd rather you'd take her now.”

“I couldn't give you but ten dollars for her this way.”

“Take her,” said Steve.

And the bargain was concluded. Shortly after this Bridget was ill with cramps for a few days.

“What has upset you?” asked Nannie.

“I couldn't tell at fust,” groaned Bridget, “but I mind now—it's thet Sarah Meriah.”

“Why, she's gone! What can she have to do with you now?”

“Shure she was in that last beefsteak I ate. I recognized her the minnit she passed me lips. 'Are ye back agin?' sez I, 'bad cess ter yez!' 'Thrue fer yez,' sez she, 'an' I'll be ther upsettin' of yez yit.' An' faith she is, fer it's feel her I do this blissed minnit, hookin' me in'ards an' kickin' me vitals, an' behavin' in a most disgraceful and unleddylike fashion throughout.”

Possibly Nannie found herself more at leisure, now her bovine charge was off her hands, and wanted occupation, or—and this is more likely—the beauty and comfort of Randolph's and Constance's home had stolen to her heart and stirred new impulses there. Other influences had been at work on this neglected region as well, but to these Nannie did not as yet yield their meed of credit. It is a sad but well-known fact that the home agencies for regeneration are the last to receive recognition and gratitude. So it was that while Nannie was dimly conscious that she owed something to Constance's womanliness, she refused to dwell upon the beauty and tenderness of Steve's conduct toward her. His uniform courtesy, gentleness, and forbearance, though the most powerful factors in her dissatisfaction with self and embryonic yearnings toward a more conscientious, nobler life, were as yet utterly ignored by her in actual thought, and had her attention been called to them, she would probably have denied that she owed aught of good to their influence. This was discouraging, to be sure, but one must wait long and patiently for full results. It was enough, perhaps, for the present that Nannie went about her home trying, in a blundering way, to bring to pass some changes for the better. With a deeper insight than she recognized she looked to her table, first of all. Bridget was not a first-class cook, and her limited repertory rendered the bill of fare wearisome and monotonous.

Several dishes that Nannie had seen on Constance's table had caught her eye. A tempting salad was one, and having learned how to make it, she gave her own table the benefit of this knowledge one evening.

Steve's face lighted with surprise and pleasure the moment the new and very attractive dish was brought on. He knew it was none of Bridget's making.

“This must be yours, my dear,” he said with a gentle, winning smile.

Now, poor Nannie was terribly awkward about anything that involved a show of feeling, so instead of taking this as she should have done, she merely said brusquely:

“I made it.”

Then she colored violently, then immediately looked defiant.

But her color and her defiance were both of them so pretty and engaging that Steve was moved by a rare impulse to go round to her and kiss her.

Shocking as it may seem, Nannie caught him by the nose with a sudden fierce motion and held on with grim, unrelenting grasp.

The whole scene occurred in a flash, as it were, and Steve was utterly unprepared for his own act, and still more so for its consequence. Impulsiveness with him, however, was unusual and short-lived, and even under these untoward circumstances he soon recovered his gentle gravity.

“When are you going to release my nose, Nannie?” he said in his accustomed quiet tone.

“Goodness knows!” she replied brusquely—possibly without intent to pun—but she let go.

Steve retreated a step or two and seemed undecided as to what course to pursue. A certain air of dignity and reserve enveloped him at all times, and up to the present moment this had never failed to be respected by those with whom he had come in contact. It was hardly possible, then, to pass by so flagrant an outrage as this in silence.

“I hardly think,” he said gently, “you mean all the things you do.”

“I mean every one!” snapped Nannie, whose resentment was stirred, all the more so because she was ashamed of herself.

“If that is the case,” Steve replied, and as he spoke, quietly and without anger, he was conscious of a dull dread of her reply—“if that is the case, it can't be that you feel either love or respect for me.”

“I guess I don't, then,” said Nannie rudely, and she rose from the table and went out into the garden.

Steve stood irresolute for a time; then he took his hat and left the house. Never in all his life before had he felt as miserable and as helpless. At that moment the beauty died not only out of his own life, but out of nature as well. There was no longer a balm in Gilead. He walked on, instinctively taking one of his old paths, from which he had heretofore received so much of comfort and inspiration, but which to-night gave him absolutely nothing of either. It would seem that nature had shared the blow he had received and had been deadened by it. Poor Mother Nature, she was just the same, but her child was out of gear and she could do nothing but wait. By-and-by a change came, not in the way of happiness, perhaps, but in a lightening of that deadness which is of necessity the most hopeless of all conditions.

Awaking from his torpor to a certain extent, Steve found himself engaged in some practical thoughts. He had lately been balancing his books, and the result was not encouraging. He was now reviewing this with a certain grim despondency and also a certain grim humor.

“We've spent eighteen hundred dollars in one year. I earn fifteen hundred a year and there's six hundred in the bank. We've just one year and two months to live. We'd better begin to repent,” he said to himself.

Then presently he began to wonder what the use of it all was. He had given Nannie shelter and protection—that was all there was to it. They were no more to each other than strangers. He had done his utmost, and she was as far away from him as ever; that made an end of hope; he might as well give it up. At that moment there was nothing he would have liked better. What with the care and perplexity he had endured over women, cows, and hens, he was more than ready to wash his hands of the entire lot.

But Steve was unaccustomed to following inclination when duty pointed in another direction, so although he was apparently doing that now, yet he had no other thought than of returning to his post by-and-by.

He walked on in an aimless sort of fashion, merely because he did not know what else to do just then, and soon found himself near the cottage whose glorified windows attracted him on his tramp some time ago. It was dull enough now, for the departing sunlight streamed in another direction, leaving the little house in shadow. Steve would have passed it without a thought had not a woman's cry caught his ear—a bitter, wailing cry, on which came words as bitter:

“Oh, I'm sick of it all! Would God that I were dead!”

Without meaning to intrude on private grief, Steve stood stock-still. There was something so horrible in the contrast between a cry of such lawless despair and the idea of the contentment and happiness for which that little house should stand that it fairly paralyzed the man's steps, just as the motion of the heart is arrested by a shock.

The cottage stood on the edge of the woods. Just now these were bare and gaunt, and the steep-sided ravine to the left seemed to-day a barren crack in a gloomy landscape.

It was all of it unbearable, unendurable. Anything was better than this, and Steve turned with relief in the direction of a familiar train whistle, hurried to the station, and soon was speeding toward his former bachelor quarters.

How desolate the old building looked when he reached it! The sun had sunk below the tall chimney tops, and the narrow street lay in gloomy shadow. Nothing daunted, however, Steve entered, and forgetful of the custom of the building, he stepped to the elevator shaft. It was dark, but looking far up he thought he could discern a faint glimmer of the sunset. Some lines he once read came to him:

They were passing and repassing him—these winds. A sigh, a certain coolness, a faint whisper—that was all as they entered the shaft and sped upward like ghosts of a busy world.

Steve turned and ran rapidly up the stairs. He could hardly fit his key, he was in such haste to escape from that lonesome hallway. Day was passing out by the western gate when he entered his room, and it would seem that heaven, in all its untold beauty, had come forth to greet her. Such a sky! It fairly overwhelmed him, and he turned to the east, as one seeks shelter in the shadow from a too brilliant light. Even the east was whispering the story, but gently and in cadences fit for weak human senses, just as winds in the tall tree-tops faintly repeat the harmonies of heaven.

To and fro Steve walked in the spacious lonesome apartments. Was his present solitude an earnest of his future? Was he forever to be denied the warm human clasp of another's hand? Was he doomed evermore to see the oncoming of the night from out some deserted room?

The west was fading now. Day had passed and carried light and sunshine with her. The clouds were moving hither and yonder restlessly, and in their ghostly passage they took on weird shapes.

Steve watched them with a strange interest—an interest just tinged with superstition, half rejecting, half receiving their import, something as one watches the shifting of cards in the hands of a wizard.

He looked out over the waters of the lake, but the east was leaden now; her lips were sealed; she had passed silently into the night. Even in the west there was but a fitful glowing, and the clouds came and went.

The room had grown black—insupportable! Steve could not endure it—he must light it in some way. A lamp would not do. It was a warm evening, wonderfully warm for that season, but he must have firelight.

He looked about him and soon found kindling and fuel, for he had as yet disturbed none of the room's furnishings. His lease was not spent; he could use the place for storage for quite a time yet.

The warmth of the cheery flame was welcome to him, for despite the heat of the evening he felt a chilliness which he did not know meant fever. It was not among possibilities that a man of Steve's fine sensitive fiber could do violence to his idea of right without disaster to his physical being. He had fled from his post of duty, he felt himself to be a deserter, and this deflection was necessarily accompanied by physical disturbance.

As he sat beside the bright blaze he heard Randolph telling of his successful wooing and saw him tilted back in his chair against the opposite wall of the chimney. Then he stepped from out the ingle-nook and stood in a little old cemetery. They were putting mother and Mary into the same grave, and he thought the gravediggers cruel because they hurled the clods of earth so heavily upon them.

The cemetery was growing colder now, and he wakened, oppressed with the dreariness of it all. He replenished his failing fire and then sat down to dream again, but this time he was not alone, for Nannie sat by the cheery little blaze—not across the way, but close by his side. She had all her brilliant beauty, all her tantalizing, bewitching ways, but he no longer feared to touch her; no longer feared to smooth back the tangled curls and kiss the dear, piquant face, for the drawbridge was down, the gates were flung open, and Castle Delight was his at last.

It was a great moment for Steve. Now he had life and had it abundantly; now he had wife and hearthstone.

He wakened again in a cold, dark room, and he saw gleaming through the blackness a tearful, wistful face which he knew was Nannie's. She was in trouble—she wanted something, she was calling him in weird, spirit fashion, and he must go!