The twilight had been long for April, as though the vivid sunset colors had fairly dazzled night, but now it was fading. Oliver Gilbert sat before his desk in the workshop. He was not looking at what was before him, but out of the window across road and fields to where a pearly mist, in which floated the crescent of the new moon, hung above Moosatuck. The rush of the river over the last dam that checked it above the mills was occasionally punctuated by the cry of a little screech-owl or the call of a robin shifting its perch, while the rhythmic chorus of peeping frogs insisted upon "sleep-sleep-sleep."

That Gilbert was tired was apparent in the deepened lines of his face and droop of his shoulders, but it was wholly fatigue of mind. The adoption which had for a month filled his waking and sleeping thoughts was a thing accomplished. A week before, when the matter hung in the balance, possession of the child had seemed the finality. To-night it appeared as merely an open gate through which stretched a vista beyond ken; across this many figures passed to and fro, but with faces in shadow or averted. A question asked by Satira Pegrim at supper had given birth to the entire throng.

"Don't you calkerlate, Gilbert, it'll be best to lead her up to calling us aunty and uncle? Then byme-by, when she comes to know, as know she must, there won't be such a mess o' unravellin' to do."

Gilbert had answered hotly, chided her unreasonably, ending by saying that the child called him Daddy already, and that it could do no harm as she grew up for the two white stones on the hillside to stand for Mother and little sister. Perhaps, God helping, she might not learn the truth until she was a woman and married. Then it need not hurt so much. Thus Gilbert drugged himself reckless with hope, after the manner of us all.

Darkness fell about him as he sat, his head fallen between his hands, the side rays of the post-office lamp only seeming to draw the shadows closer. Presently he pulled himself together, lighted the other lamps in office and workshop, talking to himself in an argumentative strain as he walked about. One man came in for a paper of tobacco and another for some stamps, but seeing that the postmaster was preoccupied, they did not linger.

"That's just what I'll do," he said, as though after arguing with some one he had suddenly achieved a conclusion. Again seating himself before the desk and selecting a particular key from the chain he continued the conversation with the opponent who, being speechless, could not contradict. "When I was a boy, I always was scheming to write a book some day that should be printed out like them in Squire Oldys's study. The printing won't be compassed, but I can write out all that happens from that night on concerning the child, and the village doings, so's it'll be there plain and no hearsay when she comes to read it and I'm not here perhaps. Yes, and I must not forget discretion in the doing of it. Mr. Esterbrook lent me some books of Mr. Pepys's, his remarks on his own and neighborhood doings. They were fine and edifying in parts, but lacked the discreetness and holding back I always find in Mr. Plutarch. I wonder anyhow, if in the beginning books weren't written just for the sake of talking to some one."

After searching in a cupboard under the desk, Gilbert drew out a large ledgerlike volume, bound in sheep. The cover was worn merely by lying for years side by side with its shelf mates. The pages within were of thick smooth paper, finely ruled. Gilbert tried several pens, quill and steel, and finally brought a new one from the office; then slowly and painfully he inscribed on the first page:—

As it was written—by Oliver G. Gilbert for Julia Poppea, beginning March 10, 1862. Next he took his two precious Lincoln letters from their drawer and fastened them between the first and second pages by corner strips of gummed paper. Then began the diary.

Two hours passed ere he had finished the first week, but as time went on, he would naturally grow more brief—the more action the fewer words.

By the first of May the reconstructed post-office household was accepted as a matter of course, Satira Pegrim having leased her farm for a three years' term to 'Lisha Potts, and stored her furnishings in the empty half hayloft of the post-office barn. When urged by Potts to sell her farm, she had answered: "No, Gilbert or I either one of us may feel called to marry, then what's to do? 'Cause I wouldn't be number four to Deacon Green with his white chin whiskers, and his 'it's all for the best' and other heartless sayings when number one, two, and three was took, or, I claim, clean froze to death, isn't to say I'm set against the institution. To camp 'longside of an ice pond isn't marriage. I never did like lizards, real or human, since brother Cotton Mather put one down my neck in Sunday-school the day sister Clarissy Harlow 'sperienced religion and I screeched so folks thought I had it too."

On May Day itself, Poppea emerged from the hands of Satira Pegrim clad in the first attempts for many a year of that good woman in fashioning clothes for a child. The result was a sunbonnet of brown-and-white-checked gingham, a sack-shaped slip of the same material, reenforced by the species of extension-legged underwear called pantalets, below which came a glimpse of sturdy ankles and feet shod in stout ties. This being the universal garb of children of her age and station all over Newfield County, the color of the gingham being diversified.

Miss Emmy Felton had protested and begged to be allowed to keep the child in dainty nainsook and dimities, ribbons, and flowery hats, but Gilbert had stood firm that in clothing at least she must be like the neighborhood children, as he expressed it. Thus Poppea began life at Harley's Mills without pretence, having for guardian Mack, who was fast developing into a brown-and-white hound of medium size, a trace of setter blood showing in the grain of his hair, and having the forethought and human intelligence that is more often found in dogs of unknown parentage than in pampered thoroughbreds.

The parapet that made a barrier between the Angus garden and Gilbert's home acres was finished. A series of massive stone urns, filled with foliage plants that topped it, seemed in the half light of night and morning like seneschals in plumed helmets, keeping watch over the doings of those humbly encamped below, whom they suspected, but might not displace. Yet what does Nature care for such distinctions and boundaries? She does not even stop to snap her fingers at them, but simply keeps on surrounding, overlapping, or undermining all barriers that oppose her plans.

The wash of earth and water from Windy Hill was toward Gilbert's orchard, with its trees of mossed-branch crannies and knot holes, beloved of robins, bluebirds, and woodpeckers, where the ample red cow flavored her cud with apple blossoms, meadow mint, or nips of the sweet corn in the vegetable patch, according to season and the location and length of her tether.

Down through the ground gaps in the parapet, a combination of architectural design and necessity, came the spirit of that other garden that the roseleaf wife had created, tended, and left to outlive her. From the bank presently there sprang a bunch of tulips here, a crimson peony there, a musk rose-bush in the dÉbris put forth new branches reaching toward the light, then came the matted green of violets, tufts of velvet sweet william, a wand of madonna lilies. All through this season and others some deep-sleeping seed or bulb put forth, Johnny-jump-ups, prim quilled asters, and, with June, there swayed a flock of butterfly-winged poppies that in still other seasons would wander from their earth bank and alight among the plumes of orchard grass to colonize all the sunny spaces. This was the child's playground, where she first rolled among the daisies, while Mack, led by his nose, made quest of ground-hog and cottontail; there she sucked clover honey, was stung by jealous bees, solved the first mystery of the nest and eggs, told time by puff-ball clocks, and by and by, through playing make-believe, approached the real. Like the good fairy of a story who always comes to the christening to mend with her gift any evil that others have wrought, so at Poppea's naming, Nature the mother was the invisible sponsor, who gave her three gifts: love of the beautiful through eye and ear, love of the best through a warm heart, and the precious gift of the tears that cleanse the spirit.

As soon as the wind-flowers starred the lowlands and the red bells of the columbine swung from their many shrines in the rocky banks, Oliver Gilbert once more resumed his Sunday habit of taking a posy to Mary and Marygold in God's-acre on the hillside. When the afternoon was right, Poppea went with him, riding in the old chaise safe in the grasp of Daddy's left arm. It was on one of the first of these visits that Gilbert began to train the five-fingered woodbine, that, creeping through the half-wild grass, clung to the two white stones and would not be denied. Heretofore he had always pulled it away ruthlessly, but now he plucked a leaf here, a tendril there, coaxing it gently to make a living frame about the names and date of day and month, but praying it to overgrow the year that filled a sunken oval near the base of both the stones.

While he worked, he prattled unceasingly, as a child might, to the little one crawling in the mossy grass to gather the light-hued, short-stemmed violets and soft-pawed "pussy-toes." She neither paused nor seemed to heed, yet two sounds heard week after week lingered in her brain until her tongue should one day release them, and these words were "Mother" and "Ma'gold."

There was no Fourth of July celebration at Harley's Mills that year,—no picnics, no speeches. The depressing summer of McClellan's fruitless meanderings, as well as lack of money, forbade crackers or fireworks, so that the return of John Angus with his bride, the second week of the month, was an event that helped to relieve the general tension.

Mr. Binks, who saw Mrs. Angus on her arrival as she crossed the platform of the little station, reported:—

"She's good-lookin', middlin' young 'n' dark haired with pale skin. She's a high stepper 'at knows which way she wants to go, 'n' mark my words, if John Angus's goin' to foller like she 'spects him to, he'll have to act freer and more quick'n he ever did for t'other one."

Next day the village had a shock almost as great as if Lee had suddenly entered Washington. Mr. and Mrs. Angus appeared, walking in the village street, he holding her sunshade to the best advantage, while she let her flounced, fresh organdie gown brush the ground that she might clasp both her hands over her husband's arm, the white roses on her wide chip hat tickling his ear the while as she moved her head in talking.

In and out of the half dozen shops they went marketing (John Angus had habitually marketed in Bridgeton), she chatting gayly. Presently, as they reached the post-office, there was a pause. Then she was heard to say, by a loiterer who sat upon the steps:—

"Don't be tiresome, Jack; you mustn't expect me to help keep afloat senseless old grudges. Please open the door, it hurts my hand. Oh, what a lovely child!" For though Angus did not actually enter with her, he held the door back without further opposition.

"I will take box fifteen," she said to Gilbert with decision. "I see that it is vacant. Is that your little grandchild? No, your daughter? You must let your wife bring her up to see me some day. I'm devoted to little children."

"I thought that he looked red and was getting mad," the witness said, "but when she come out, she stuck a big yaller rose she was wearing in her belt right under his chin, and says she, 'Jack, do you love butter?' Oh, Lordy, I thought I'd die, her callin' John Angus Jack, and ticklin' of his chin!"

Quality Hill called immediately, both those who had previously known Mrs. Angus in New York as Miss Duane and those who had not. Meanwhile the stern mansion on Windy Hill relaxed and bade fair to become a factor in the town, drawing its social life westward.

There was much discussion among the village people as to Mrs. Angus's age; at one of the Feltons' piazza days at home, Miss Emmy, by a process of calculation all her own, said thirty-six, but Mr. Esterbrook gallantly declared that as looks should be the only way of reckoning such matters, the lady could be barely twenty-five.

When Mrs. Angus returned her calls, a trim footman in white tops seated by the coachman on the box of the barouche, the first ever brought to Harley's Mills, the good folks stared and raised their hands. When she took a pew at St. Luke's church, her husband escorting her to the door each Sunday, they lost their breaths completely. But when she invited all to a garden party to see a new lawn game called croquet that had been sent her direct from London by a married sister, they found their tongues again to wonder if the mastering of its fascinating mysteries would in any way impeach their loyalty to the Declaration of Independence; then straightway succumbed as to an epidemic, grace hoops, battledore and shuttlecock, and even archery having to yield it place.

If Marcia Angus handled her husband somewhat dramatically, his satisfaction seemed complete as it was deep. Only two in the place, Gilbert and Miss Emmy, ever whispered even to themselves that she was playing the sort of comedy that is only possible to a woman when some motive of ambition rather than her affections has sway. So that it was a relief to both when, on the Anguses' return from town late the next spring, the touch of nature that makes all women kin colored the village gossip, and it was known that at last there would be a child born in the great house on Windy Hill. Satira Pegrim, who chatted often with the gardener's wife, though her brother had never let her take Poppea for the oft-requested visit to the hill, repeated wild tales of the fineness of the cambric needlework and lace upon the little wardrobe; of the blue silk draperies of the south room now fitted for a nursery; of the gilt bassinet, with its pillow and spread of real lace, and bed, they said, of swan's-down.

Finally a new rumor was whispered and then took visible shape. Harley's Mills, with its staff of competent women, single and widowed, who were ready and willing to "accommodate," was overlooked; an English head nurse of the brand accustomed to rear an infant from its birth and chosen by Mrs. Angus's sister, who had sent croquet, appeared in the stalwart person of a Mrs. Shandy.

Then the village pursed its lips, folded its hands, and waited.

Some random extracts from Oliver Gilbert's book, 1863, Jan. 1.—Three million slaves were freed to-day according to the promise of September. It had to be, but now I'm wondering what will become of them. Poppea may see the working out of this, though I shall not. Having her, there's somebody ahead to hand out hopes and fears to. Without somebody ahead to keep up with, old feet must stumble and get tired on the march.

July the 3.—Meade is in command and they're at it again hot and heavy around Gettysburg. Morse's boy is there and his grandson, or they were when it began. We've all been living around the station for the last three days, just gasping for news like stranded fish for water, but half the time the operator can't get the wire, and then it's only that they're at it still, with Lee to the better last night.

My head is on fire and seem's as if my hands can't feel. What if they should win—but they can't while Lincoln's above ground.

July 4.—We've won Gettysburg; but now the fight's over, the fields yonder are just seeded down with bodies, blue and gray together. The Union's safe, and all the town boys, big and little, are firing cannons and muskets, there not being a store that's charging for powder! There's been hallelujahs in the meeting-house, bell-ringings and speeches on the green. I've run up both the flags, one atop of t'other, and yet now it's night and I've come in out of the crowd, it seems like I must put a bit of black out somewhere for those others! The picture of them in the glass looks darkly, but byme-by, when Poppea comes to read this, mebbe it'll shine up clear and be seen face to face. Joy and sorrow, there's always the two around; the matter is which of us gets which.

July 5.—It's just come in by 'Lisha Potts that plucky Grant, who's been meandering down-stream and in the marshes this long time, got safe down the river past the fort and in back of Pemberton's men, and through battering and starving, Vicksburg has given in! Hallelujah for victory! say I with the rest, yet I can't get the thought out of my head of those famished women and children living in ground-holes and caves to keep out of shot range. Maybe when Poppea is grown, there'll be some way of keeping peace and right without this murder. Perhaps it might come about even through women themselves! Who knows?

July 7.—Joy and sorrow! Both amongst us in this village. John Angus's wife has borne him his long-wished-for son, but she is dead!

Oh, God! what has he done to be so dealt with? He bent his will considerable through love of her, or maybe it was pride. Must it be altogether broke? Or is it because he withered little Roseleaf? I hauled my victory flags down just so soon as Dr. Morewood told me. Then I run the little one back, halfway up. I wouldn't want Angus to think that I bear malice or was aught but sorry; though if I told him so, he'd likely read it as a taunt. Mrs. Angus was pleasant spoken to the child and me; mebbe some day Poppea can pass those kind words back to the little boy.

July 10.—To-day they buried her up in God's-acre on the hill. The flowers and singing were beautiful,—'specially the little boys from Mr. Latimer's church that he teaches music. Hughey Oldys sang one piece all alone about flying away on the wings of a dove to find rest. It took me straight up after it and set me down far away, wondering where little Roseleaf lies and if any bedded her with flowers and singing.

The women folks brought home satisfaction from the funeral anyhow, for there on a graven silver plate was the age out plain—"In her thirty-seventh year."

1864, July 13.—Early tried to get into Washington yesterday, but he didn't. What a terrible year it's been so far, and only half over. Blood it seems everywhere, in earth and sky and sea. Our boys dropping down at more'n a thousand a day, week in and week out. Can we hold out? Yes, to the end, with patience; for Lincoln says, "Victory will come, but it comes slowly."

There's nobody else left to go soldiering from this town. 'Lisha Potts was the last likely one and went yesterday. His mother has come down to widow Baker's and they've sold most of their stock,—fodder and labor both being so high. Three dollars a day for a man at haying. Tough bull beef at thirty cents the pound; sack flour taken over from the Mills is at the rate of seventeen dollars a barrel, and taxes up to eight mills from five, they say, to help pay the war debt; things look pretty blue in my purse. Did I do wrong in keeping the child from those who could do better by her?

Sister Satira is all shook up by 'Lisha's going. I never suspicioned before that they were courting. But she claims ever since he hired her farm it sort of seems as if she belonged with it, and he claims ever since she left and shut the door more'n half the place is missing. Satira isn't in any hurry, even if 'Lisha hadn't enlisted, for she says she had less than a month's courting before and poor quality at that, so now she means to make it last.

I pray she does. What would become of us?

Nov. 12.—The Union is safe for Lincoln is reËlected!

1865, Feb. 10.—Lincoln wanted to pay the owners something for the slaves set free, but the cabinet would not let him! Others wanted to hang the chief Rebel leaders, but he would not let them. So it goes. I want the child by and by to think of this every time she sees those letters that he wrote her Daddy, so's she'll remember what times and doings she came into to make her loyal to the land and the folks that stand next her.

This month the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution was passed that cuts out slavery from every State and Territory. So help us, God! that every soul of us on this soil may be free forever more, black or white, man, woman, or child. Keep us from bondage to ourselves, for slavery isn't only the body being bought and sold.

March 5.—Yesterday, Lincoln took oath again.

March 12.—'Lisha Potts came home to-day, honorably discharged and wounded some, but not past mending. He's been in three battles, and looks old enough to count out those four years that he's younger than Satira. Dave Morse came with him, but little Davy lies at Gettysburg. It seems as if we ones behind can't keep our hands from touching and feeling of the flesh of them that was there, or our eyes from searching the eyes of them that have seen!

April 5.—Yesterday, Lee surrendered and Richmond fell. This ends the war. Yet woe is still upon the land. What martyrs' blood must be shed to cleanse it?

April 15.—He is dead! Assassinated! None else would suffice!

April 24.—To-morrow we are going to see them take him home, the child and I. The Fennimans have made me free of their front porch; they have a house on Union Square, New York. He will pass that way. The neighbors think I'm crazy to take a child of four or five. She may not understand, but she will see, and byme-by, some day, it will come back to her, and she'll be glad that Daddy took her with him.

April 25.—We left at daybreak. As it was raw and threatening, the child wore a little blue cloak and cap like a soldier's that Satira made to please her last winter. It being eight years since I've seen the city, I was forced to ask my way, but Mr. Esterbrook being at the station to meet some friends, he counselled me. Carrying Poppea, for the streets were thronged, I went out to Madison Square and so down to Fifth Avenue. Black on every side, hanging from roof to street, black-banded flags, black bands on people's arms, the great clock shrouded in black. There were no public stages on the streets that I could see, so I walked down Fifth Avenue to Seventeenth Street, then eastward to Union Square, and so down to Fourteenth Street.

One large building in particular was covered with black from the dormers down to the street, with all the windows hid by black-trimmed flags. I asked a passer-by whose house it was, and he told me that it was the home of a society called the Union League, formed by the best men of this city for the upholding of the Union.

We got to the house at half after one o'clock. I don't know how long we waited, bells tolling. A groan ran up and down the street, and then a great silence. From where I stood out by the fence, the porch and verandy being crowded, I could see the black-covered horses swinging round the corner from Broadway, and after them the car. Down the street it came, from the corner seemed an hour. I lifted Poppea to the iron fence post by the walk. The groan rose once more, and then silence, with all hats off. When the car passed, it seemed as though the world was dead, and that after the minute guns would follow the last trump!

Gazing before her at the car, the child pulled her little soldier cap off, then whispered to me, drawing my head down, "I don't see him, Daddy. Is he going to heaven in that bed asleep?" "Yes, yes," I said. "'N' when he wakes up, will he see muvver and Ma'gold and tell 'em we was here?"

A band struck up a dirge, so I didn't have to answer. I can't but think perhaps he'll find her mother, and tell her that there's an old fellow who couldn't fight, that just lives to right her wrongs.

After the car a stream of faces followed, men and more men of high-up societies and committees. I was looking at them without seeing, until one man passed and looked back as he went, at us I thought. It was John Angus! My suz, but he's aged or something. His face was drawn as if by pain or anger, I can't judge which.

Poppea saw him too, and as he passed she waved her hand, she's such an eye for faces. Then she turned her mind to some cakes the ladies gave her, with pink tops. It's wonderful how nature eases things for children.

May 10.—The Anguses are back, and folks say that Philip is not well, does not keep his footing as a boy should who is turning three. Satira saw him yesterday, sitting in his little coach behind the parapet, and she says he looks old and tired across the eyes.

Some doctors are coming from New York to-night to see him. Morewood only shakes his head when asked, as much as saying, I know, but he will not believe me.

May 12.—Mrs. Shandy came down to Satira last evening crying, and blurted out that Philip has a twist or something in his backbone,—Pott's disease they call it. He will be a hunchback. "An' when he looks at me so lovin' with those big gray eyes of his, it seems that I can't bear it," she sobbed right on Satira's shoulder.

"What did his father say?" asked she.

"Mr. Angus? Well he was hard struck and stayed above stairs all yesterday. But this morning he came down and says to us help standing by, 'Do all the doctors say, but never mention to my son or to me that he is different from other boys. Who breaks my order—goes.' Ah! Mrs. Pegrim, but he's got an awful pride and will; I have my doubts if God himself could break it."

1867, May. Poppea is past six now and the Misses Felton think she should have lessons. She knows her letters from her blocks, and Hughey Oldys reads fairy books to her, but it's the hill-country speech that worries me, and also the Felton ladies. When I talk, I talk like those I live among, but when I put pen to paper, I do better, and write more like those I've met in reading.

Miss Emmy wants to learn her every day so when she's eight she can go to the Academy, and being a lady baby as she was, not shame her breeding. For manners, she's catching them already, and Stephen Latimer says she has a great ear for music, and can sing anything she hears Hugh sing in Sunday-school; not out loud, of course, but soft and strange, like a young bird that's trying.