Then she looked up at me and her eyes were full of tears, and I could see the little-girl look in her face, as I remembered her at school, very strong, and I begun to think that maybe we had both been learning the same lessons in life in different ways.

The Stratton door shut and Hattie went up the road with the queue, the silk and the silver dollar. Her heart was so full of gratitude, repentance and Christmas joy, that her feet almost trembled into a dance. She never knew that she had not even thanked Miss Amelia Stratton and Miss Amelia never knew either.

“I ain't going to offer no bulbs to Lizy Green,” said she, quite aloud. “She's had all them lilies was worth.”

“Never mind the cards!” said Mrs. Polly.

They stood there together. The cows looked at them through the stanchions with their great mild eyes. Before them, through the wide doorway, could be seen the dark sky all full of stars.

Willis came at eight o'clock. Amanda let him in, and left him with Love in the sitting-room. She herself sat down at the kitchen window in the deepening dusk, and stared out over the shadowy fields. She could hear the voices of her sister and her lover, now fairly started upon that path of love which was as strange to this rigid-lived single woman as that of death, and whither she was far less able to follow. Amanda sat there, and wept patiently, leaning her head against the window casing.

In the meantime she is undoubtedly carrying on among us an eccentric, but none the less genuine mission. A home missionary is Amanda Todd, and we should recognize her as such in spite of her non-church-going proclivities. Weak in faith though she may be, she is, perchance, as strong in love as the best of us. At least I do not doubt that her poor little four-footed dependents would so give evidence if they could speak.

It became one of the village traditions: how Amarina Deering went to seek Thomas Hetherly, and how his bees swarmed on her bridal bouquet, and he hived them, she never getting one sting, and how he dressed himself in his best, while she went home to tell her aunt, who, it was said, never fairly understood until a week later; and then how Amarina and Thomas drove in the coach back to the Day house, and how hastily the other bride was dressed, and how there was a double wedding instead of a single one, as there will sometimes unexpectedly appear a double rose on a bush of single roses.

“It is yours now, dear,” said Jane.

“Nothing is there,” George whispered back. “The battle is over.”

“You may stop in Jane Baxter's, if you want to,” said old Mrs. Jennings, “and ask her mother if she can come over and spend the day with you to-morrow. And tell her I say she 'd better not bring her sewing, and she 'd better not wear her best dress, for you and she ain't goin' to sew any, and mebbe you 'll like to go berryin', and play outdoors.”

Ann Mary felt as if all her troubles would be followed by thanksgivings.

The splendid apple tree bloomed and sweetened, and the man and woman, in a certain sense, tasted and drank it until it became a part of themselves, and there was in the midst of the poverty and shiftlessness of the Maddox yard a great inflorescence of beauty for its redemption.

Every spring this woman, growing old as to her fair, faded face, went to see arethusa, coming upon her standing on the border of the marsh, clad in her green leaf, drooping delicately her beautiful purplish-pink head, with the same rapture as of old. This soul, bound fast to life with fleshly bonds, yet forever maiden, anomalous and rare among her kind, greeted the rare and anomalous flower with unending comfort and delight. It was to her as if she had come upon a fair rhyme to her little halting verse of life.

Then the man and woman walked on under the tender budding spring boughs lashing in the salt wind, and the woman was enveloped in graceful swirls, which at times took wing-like shapes, of the fairy web of flower and leaf and whorl. And she folded the lace, in spite of the wind, as she moved on, smiling happily.

“And — and,” went on Susan, “you know I had dear Aunt Lavinia's desk, and — I — looked — and there was the money — a little over $500; and it is enough to pay the back taxes and interest, and we can keep the house; and — and I am so thankful that dear Aunt Lavinia's last letter was lost until now!”

“I have found out that the only way to heaven for the children of men is through the earth,” said Christopher.

“Whatever I've ever had that I loved I've got,” said Martha Elder, “and whatever I've wanted I'm goin' to have.” Then she turned around and went out in the kitchen to help about breakfast, and the dazzle of the Christmas-tree was so great in her eyes that she was almost blinded to all the sordid conditions of her daily life.

It was a lovely clear morning. Abby Weaver, looking out of her window, saw William Barstow pass by on his way to the light-house to tell the old folks of his safety.

Betsey Somerset as she made the porridge saw no reflection of herself in her own thoughts. Her hand slipped as she poured out the boiling milk, and she burned it severely. She carried in the porridge before she bound it up that the sisters might not know. She even stood for a moment and watched the baby eat. Then she went back to the kitchen, bound an old linen rag around her hand, and got supper. The fiery smart of a martyr shot through her whole body from her hand, but the triumphant peace of a martyr was in her heart.

“Yes,” said Content, with a long breath. “My sister Solly is married.” Smiles broke all over her little face. She hid it in Molly's skirts, and a little peal of laughter like a bird-trill came from the soft muslin folds.

“As for that plum-colored silk, what is left of it,” said Billetta's grandmother, “I am going to make a sofa pillow out of it for a Christmas present to Emily.”

Neither she nor her young lover dreamed that the love in the hearts of the two old sisters struck, albeit free from all romance, a note which chorded with their own into a true harmony of thanksgiving.

Marcia realized that as well as art as she lay awake all that night until the sun of the New Year shone in her east window. All night she had lain awake and dreamed of the girl's future joys. Marcia was like a violinist with his first great violin; like a harpist with a harp of heaven; like an artist who sees for the first time upon the canvas the realization of his ideal; like a singer who flings out for the world a voice so sweet she knows it not for her own. Marcia, while the girl slept, composed symphonies of her future joys, and costumes befitting them. She planned wedding garments; she even went farther, and lay with the tiniest delicacies of apparel floating before her vision like shreds of harmonies. The girl slept while the woman whose inspiration she was painted, and sang, and composed, all wonderful combinations of beauty which her future might hold; and so great an artist was she, although but a humble wielder of needle and thread, she knew it all a part of herself, even when the sun of the New Year shone in her east window.

Poppy had his reward at once — that is, everything but the hand of the Princess Honey — and he and his father, and his little brothers and sisters, were very rich and happy, until he grew to be a man. Then the Princess Honey had grown to be a beautiful maiden, and he married her with great pomp, and the King gave them the Blue Robin's egg for a wedding-present.

“Ain't it wonderful!” said she.

“The head of Germania on a charger,” said old Zenas Lord.

At sunset Ann Lyman crept out to her front door-step and sat there in the full of the passing radiance. Beyond the gate bloomed the clump of bouncing-bet. Mrs. John Evarts looked across from her window and saw them both — the old woman and the flower, both with a strange unkemptness of late bloom, both fulfilling to the utmost their one law of obedience to their first conditions of life. And she also saw, without comprehension, two parallels, separated perhaps by the width of the eternity of the spirit, yet as perfect and undeviating as any on the terrestrial globe.

On account of the grief and confusion incident on Deacon Wales' death, she escaped with very little censure. She never made an attempt to run away again. Indeed she had no wish to, for after Deacon Wales' death, grandma was lonely and wanted her, and she lived, most of the time, with her. And, whether she was in reality treated any more kindly or not, she was certainly happier.

“Charles,” whispered she, huskily, “I want — to tell you — somethin'. I've made up my mind to — sell the place, an' — go to live with you an' Leviny — only — I want you to go out in the mornin' an' dig up a root of white vi'lets an' some brakes, so — I kin take 'em with me.”

“I guess my beau that died would be tickled too,” she responded. “When he was sick so long he used to worry about me, how I'd get along. He died with old-fashioned consumption. I guess he'd be tickled just the same as Emmy.”

The two outcasts, standing outside all homes of earth on Christmas night, received perhaps a crumb of the very sacrament of Christmas as they watched the poor brother whom they loved better than themselves eat his Christmas dinner.

And it has so happened, because Darius cut with his strong young hands more firmly and deeply his verse in the stone, that his has endured and can be read, while Ichabod's is all worn away by the rain-storms of the years, as it might have been by the tears of mortal life.

“Why, my own father, of course,” said Rose.

“Yes, I guess you had better live with me all the time now,” said B. F. There came another blue flash of blinding light, a tremendous jar of thunder, then the rain roared past the windows. “I've left my chamber windows open, and my new paper will be wet!” cried Vilola, as she ran. The teakettle on the stove boiled over with a furious sputter. B. F. rose and set it back. Then he stood staring absently out of the window at the flooding of the rain which was washing off some of the dust of the world.

“You jist lift in them lilies first, afore I git in,” said she, “an' be real keerful you don't break 'em. The stalks is tender.”

Finally he gave it up. He sat down beside the fire, for May in the mountains is cold; he held his empty pipe in his mouth, his rough forehead knitted, and he and the Cat looked at each other across that impassable barrier of silence which has been set between man and beast from the creation of the world.

Miles Wadsworth looked at Catherine's beautiful, laughing face, and thought no more than of how his life had been saved, since saved it was for so great happiness; but Catherine, with her head on her lover's shoulder, cast a mindful glance at the old carved chest in the corner which held the British flag.

The Gardener put on the crown and immediately became a very handsome King, the image of his sixteenth grandfather. He married the Princess Primrosa, who had gloves and stockings all the days of her life, and they were all very happy. The kingdom was the richest in the whole world, the King the most universally loved and admired, and as for the ex-King, he raised the most wonderful roses, and so enjoyed chasing chickens that he never grew old or stout.

Araminta laughed. “Sometimes it seems to me as if I was emptying all the baskets into my own heart, and didn't really give anything,” said she.

Maria took a peppermint and put it in her mouth; her face relaxed. Nancy looked again at the Christmas tree; and of all the children there, the happiest was this old child who was having Christmas for once.

It was suddenly borne in upon the consciousness of Jane White that love and kindness were not such strangers upon the earth as she had thought.

“There's Christmas Jenny's candle,” said the girl. And it was Christmas Jenny's candle, but it was also something more. Like all common things, it had, and was, its own poem, and that was — a Christmas star.

Josiah at the last had bestowed three very precious gifts. She had given back the bread which had been cast upon her sea of life; she had smoothed out the pathway of love for two hearts, and she had given to her own best beloved the image of love, inviolate and unscathed by time and sorrow and parting, for an enduring Christmas gift.

Violetta was married to the Cherry-man, and all the children came to the wedding, and strewed flowers in her path till her feet were quite hidden in them. The Costumer had mysteriously disappeared from the cherry-tree the night before, but he left, at the foot, some beautiful wedding presents for the bride — a silver service with a pattern of cherries engraved on it, and a set of china with cherries on it, in hand-painting, and a white satin robe, embroidered with cherries down the front.

As for the Prince, the courtiers were never tired of discussing and admiring his wonderful knowledge of physics which led to his adjusting the weight of the hamper of Christmas presents to his own so nicely that he could not fall. The Prince liked the talk and the admiration well enough, but he could not help, also, being a little glum; for he got no Christmas presents that year.

As for the Prince, the courtiers were never tired of discussing and admiring his wonderful knowledge of physics which led to his adjusting the weight of the hamper of Christmas presents to his own so nicely that he could not fall. The Prince liked the talk and the admiration well enough, but he could not help, also, being a little glum; for he got no Christmas presents that year.

Take it altogether, that Sing seemed to our village to bring much happiness, set, as it were, to sweet Christmas music.

Mrs. Gale had told her she should have some of her Christmas dinner, some turkey and plum-pudding. She called it to mind now with a thrill of delight. Her face grew momentarily more radiant. There was a certain beauty in it. A finer morning light than that which lit up the wintry earth seemed to shine over the furrows of her old face. “I'm goin' to have turkey an' plum-puddin' to-day,” said she; “it's Christmas.” Suddenly she started, and went into the meeting-house, straight up the gallery stairs. There in a clear space hung the bell-rope. Hetty grasped it. Never before had a Christmas bell been rung in this village; Hetty had probably never heard of Christmas bells. She was prompted by pure artless enthusiasm and grateful happiness. Her old arms pulled on the rope with a will, the bell sounded peal on peal. Down in the village, curtains rolled up, letting in the morning light, happy faces looked out of the windows. Hetty had awakened the whole village to Christmas Day.

Elsie Mills and William Havers were married at the bride's brother's. When the bridal couple went to their own home, they did not enter at the front door. They passed around to the side one, because the front yard was so full of cinnamon roses.

Doctor Hapgood auctioned off the forlorn stock of the store. People bid against one another as if they were fighting for the acquisition of rare bargains. They were a mean people, the people of Racebridge, but in the end their own meanness shocked them into a sense of it, and they were at that auction of the man whom they had all wronged, a grand people, with hearts of love and fire. There was a breaking up of human meanness and dishonesty greater than the breaking up of the ice in the great river.

“Yes, ma'am,” said Johnny. He walked out, carrying the great gold timepiece, bewildered, embarrassed, modest beneath his honors, but little cock of the walk, whether he would or no, for reasons entirely and forever beyond his ken.

“P. S. — I meant Jerome's $25,000 to be used as he used it. — J. L.”

The sitters in the pews watched Marcus wonderingly as he went up the aisle with Esther. He looked strange to them; he had almost the grand mien of a conqueror.

“You needn't look at him in that way,” she cried out. “I am going to marry him. Lawrence, come back.”

“Yes, I know, but I thought I would wear pink.”

Hayward watched the little man pass along the path to the shed door. Jim's back was slightly bent, but to his friend it seemed bent beneath a holy burden of love and pity for all humanity, and the inheritance of the meek seemed to crown that drooping old head. The door-mat, again spread freely for the trampling feet of all who got comfort thereby, became a blessed thing. The humble creature, despised and held in contempt like One greater than he, giving for the sake of the needs of others, went along the narrow footpath through the snow. The minister took off his hat and stood watching until the door was opened and closed and the little window gleamed with golden light.

The King and Queen used to visit Drusilla often; they gave her back her rick-rack dress, and grew very fond of her, though she would not be a Princess. Finally, however, they prevailed upon her to be made a countess. So she was called “Lady Drusilla,” and she had a coat of arms, with the gold-horned cow rampant on it, put up over the great gate of the castle.

When Selma was half-way across the street she turned and waved her hand, and her laugh rang out. Maria laughed, too. She waited until Selma had closed her door. Then she closed hers, but the echo of the laughter was in the hearts of both, like the refrain of a glad song of life which can never be silenced.

They say that luck is always sure to turn sooner or later. Perhaps later means not in this world; but if poor Cyrus Emmett's luck does turn in his lifetime there will be great rejoicing in this village.

Spring came that year with a riotous rush. Blossoms, leaves, birds, and flowers — all arrived pell-mell, fairly smothering the world with sweetness and music. In May, about the first of the month, there was an intensely hot day. It was as hot as midsummer. Old Daniel with little Dan'l went afield. It was, to both, as if they fairly saw the carnival-arrival of flowers, of green garlands upon tree-branches, of birds and butterflies. “Spring is right here!” said old Daniel. “Summer is right here! Pick them vi'lets in that holler, little Dan'l.” The old man sat on a stone in the meadowland, and watched the child in the blue-gleaming hollow gather up violets in her little hands as if they were jewels. The sun beat upon his head, the air was heavy with fragrance, laden with moisture. Old Daniel wiped his forehead. He was heated, but so happy that he was not aware of it. He saw wonderful new lights over everything. He had wielded love, the one invincible weapon of the whole earth, and had conquered his intangible and dreadful enemy. When, for the sake of that little beloved life, his own life had become as nothing, old Daniel found himself superior to it. He sat there in the tumultuous heat of the May day, watching the child picking violets and gathering strength with every breath of the young air of the year, and he realized that the fear of his whole life was overcome for ever. He realized that never again, though they might bring suffering, even death, would he dread the summers with their torrid winds and their burning lights, since, through love, he had become under-lord of all the conditions of his life upon earth.

Alice told me afterward that Maria had found her father in the garden before breakfast. She insinuated, in her way, all kinds of dreadful things about Harry Goward and Aunt Elizabeth, and there was a scene at the breakfast-table — and Peggy was taken so ill that they had to send for Dr. Denbigh. I don't know what will happen when Aunt Elizabeth comes home.

That day, with the gold beads by way of celebration, began a new era in Ann's life. There was no more secret animosity between her and Mrs. Dorcas. The doctor had come that night in the very nick of time. Thirsey was almost dying. Her mother was fully convinced that Ann had saved her life, and she never forgot it. She was a woman of strong feelings, who never did things by halves, and she not only treated Ann with kindness, but she seemed to smother her grudge against Grandma for robbing her of the southwest fire-room.

And they all stood gathered about her, rejoicing and fond of her, but she was the one lover among them all who had been capable of hurting them and hurting herself for love's sake.

Then she would sit down on an old chair before the picture, and remain there a long time, studying, as it were, the face of her rival.

“By and by.” Mrs. Rose smoothed the Dickey boy's hair; then she bent down and kissed him again. She had fairly made room for him in her stanch, narrow New England heart.

It was sunset when she went home the last time. It had stopped snowing, and there was a clear, yellow sky in the west. A flock of sparrows flew whistling around one of the maples. A sled loaded with Christmas greens was creaking down the road. One could hear children's voices in the distance. Lucy Glynn sped along. Whether wisely or not, she was full of all Christmas joy. She had given at last her Christmas gift, which she had been treasuring for twenty years.

There was a great clapping, and D. A. Hapgood went back to his seat, and he led D. J. with him, holding fast to his small hand with a grasp of love and protection. “Father 'll buy you a double runner to-morrow,” he whispered in his ear.

At last when the Horse was old he came into his first master's hands again. The Doctor had grown old, older than the Horse, and he did not know him at first, though he did say to his old wife that he looked something like that Horse which he had owned which ran away and nearly killed his niece. After he said that, nothing could induce the Doctor's wife to ride behind him; but the Doctor, even in his feeble old age, had no fear, and the sidelong fire in the old Horse's eye, and the proud cant of his neck, and haughty resentment at unfamiliar sights on the road, pleased him. He felt a confidence in his ability to tame this untamed thing, and the old man seemed to grow younger after he had bought the Horse. He had given up his practice after a severe illness, and a young man had taken it, but he began to have dreams of work again. But he never knew that he had bought his own old Horse until after he had owned him some weeks. He was driving him along the country road one day in October when the oaks were a ruddy blaze, and the sumacs like torches along the walls, and the air like wine with the smell of grapes and apples. Then suddenly, while the Doctor was sitting in the buggy with loose reins, speeding along the familiar road, the Horse stopped. And he stopped before the house where had used to dwell the man afflicted with old-fashioned consumption, and the window which had once framed his haggard, coughing visage reflected the western sunlight like a blank page of gold. There the Horse stood, his head and long neck bent in the old curve. He was ready to wait until the consumptive arose from his grave in the church-yard, if so ordered. The Doctor stared at him. Then he got out and went to the animal's head, and man and Horse recognized each other. The light of youth was again in the man's eyes as he looked at his own spiritual handiwork. He was once more the master, in the presence of that which he had mastered. But the Horse was expressed in body and spirit only by the lines of utter yielding and patience and submission. He was again the Doctor's Horse.

“Preach an old sermon to a new tune,” said the minister.

John put on his coat again, and walked home with Jane and carried the yeast. She did not allude to the Emersons again. When he returned, he paused at his own gate, and stood for a minute looking down the road. It was like a broad track of silver in the moonlight. It seemed to him as if all the Thanksgivings of his life would lie down the road to the Emersons.

The girl-voice came in reply, as inarticulate, but unmistakable in meaning as a bird's love-call. Ellen looked down, and all that the doctor said about a decline went to naught. A girl with a face like that, wild with the joy of life, demanding her sweets of the future, to be laid away in her grave-robe, under the flowers? No; it was the bridal garment, the feasting and festivities, for a girl with a face like that. Lily, who had crept out forlornly into the sweet air, had met her lover coming, and had taken a winged step from illness to health and life. But she had stepped on a bit of the shattered vase, and her slipper was thin, and her foot was slightly cut; for Harry Anston's handkerchief was reddened, and he was kneeling and nursing it tenderly. Lily was smiling down at him, and in a second all her mother's fears were gone, and she laughed as softly as she had wept. Knowledge, like a great chord of music, filled the soul of the simple woman; the knowledge that nothing quick, or made by the quick, ever passes entirely from this earth, which endures as to its times and seasons, by a Great Promise; the knowledge that love had not passed was in the soul of the woman, as the fragrance of the unforgetting and unforgotten lilies was in the room.

Margaret drew her cloak around her, and turned to go. Lawrence stood staring stupidly after her, with the Cards still in his hands. When the door closed he went to the window and watched her going down the street. All at once a resolution mightier than any which he had ever known awoke within him; he seemed to see his own better-self at Margaret's side, keeping pace with her love for him, and to see also in her strangely new yet familiar guise the ideal of his life.

Eglantina lived and died, and her long grave is in the graveyard of Litchfield Village, and at the head is a marble stone on which are cut the verses beginning — “Eglantina, tall and fair.”

They who read may well imagine that she who was buried there was fair beyond her compeers. And it is true that she who lies under the green sod whence has sprung a wild rose-bush, self-sown, was to one loving heart one of the greatest and most marvellous beauties who ever lived; and who shall deny that she was, indeed, “Queen of Beauty and of Grace”?

“Good-night, Liza,” says I. Then I waited, I didn't know for what. But all she did was to say, “Good-night, Caleb,” and walked into the house — and Liza Sam and I are going to get married before long, though we haven't told the neighbors.

“He means the elm-tree,” said Maria.

“I guess now we'll all be happy, and do our duty, and have our own way,” said Sam.

Emmy's small, plain face looked upon it all from her window. Her cheeks were dull and blue with the chilly air; there was no reflection of the splendid morning in her face. But beneath it, in the heart of this simple, humble young woman of the seaboard, with a monotone of life behind her and one stretching before, was love of the kind, in the world of eternity, that is better than marriage.

“I have bought a new doll for my sister which she is pleased to prefer to her old one,” said he. “She does not feel able to care for two such children and finish her black silk apron, and therefore I have come to beg Miss Eunice to accept the Doll-baby, of which she took such loving care during her mother's absence.”

Thomas Merriam and Evelina were married before the leaves fell in that same year, by the minister of the next village, who rode over in his chaise, and brought his wife, who was also a bride, and wore her wedding-dress of a pink and pearl shot silk. But young Evelina wore the blue bridal array which had been worn by old Squire Adams's bride, all remodelled daintily to suit the fashion of the times; and as she moved, the folds shook out the fragrance of roses and lavender of the old summers during which it had been laid away, like sweet memories.

And the members admitted that they “never did, really, although they had mistrusted it all along.”

Then Harry caught her in his arms. “You are the fair Lavinia,” said he. “You are forever until death do us part, and after if such be the will of God, my fair Lavinia.”

Well, Horace and Lily and the child stayed there that night. Finally the old lady went to live with them in the old Weaver house, but she had a lot done to it first, for it was out of repair, and she kept her son and his family with her until it was ready. She hung onto Job and his wife that Christmas night, though they were dreadful uneasy and kept saying they must go, but she wouldn't let them until after Horace and Lily had gone up-stairs for the night. She made them go early. She said they looked tired, and they surely did. Maria said tired and thin and half starved, for one good dinner could not undo the lack of so many. When they had gone she turned on Eliza and Job. Job faced her like a man, but Eliza, she looked scared. The old lady laughed. “I see through it all,” says she, “if you did think I was far enough in my second childhood to rig up a Christmas-tree for me. I can see through some things that younger folks think I can't, and, what is more, they never will; but you meant well, Eliza, and I have more to thank you for than you planned.” Then she looked at Far-Away Job, and she laughed again real lovingly. “Job,” says she, “I used to spank you when you were a little boy for being so absent-minded, and going one way when I sent you another, but I rather think now that you know which is the right way better than I do if you are left alone. Anyhow,” says she, “you have taken a side track to peace this day, and given your mother a happy Christmas in spite of herself.”

She lived so for nearly a year after her sister died. It was evident that she failed gradually and surely, though there was no apparent disease. It seemed to trouble her exceedingly that she never heard the music she listened for. She had an idea that she could not die unless she did, and her whole soul seemed filled with longing to join her beloved twin sister, and be assured of her forgiveness. This sister-love was all she had ever felt, besides her love of God, in any strong degree; all the passion of devotion of which this homely, commonplace woman was capable was centred in that, and the unsatisfied strength of it was killing her. The weaker she grew, the more earnestly she listened. She was too feeble to sit up, but she would not consent to lie in bed, and made them bolster her up with pillows in a rocking-chair by the window. At last she died, in the spring, a week or two before her sister had the year before. The season was a little more advanced this year, and the apple-trees were blossomed out further than they were then. She died about ten o'clock in the morning. The day before her niece had been called into the room by a shrill cry of rapture from her: “I've heard it! I've heard it!” she cried. “A faint sound o' music, like the dyin' away of a bell.”

“Oh,” said Elmer, “you will look like that when we are married. Rose, Rose!”

And I looked and there in Grandma's Bible pinned to the chapter of Proverbs, where it says that — “The heart of her husband can safely trust in her” — was the envelope of the old valentine directed to Flora.

And all the other girls echoed her.

Eli and Deborah gazed at each other with a look of awe. For a second it seemed to both of them that they saw the bush again in its full glory of bloom. Then both faces lit like lamps with tenderness, for they knew they saw the shining head of the child blooming for them in the place of the bush.

They shook hands then, and Amanda went into the house. When she was in her own room she took the pretty box out of the drawer and sat with it in her lap, thinking about Frank Ayres and her mother, and kept Christmas holy.

But Tommy and Loreny did not know what that meant until afterward. That night it was enough for Loreny to go to sleep, with her own beautiful doll in her arms, and for Tommy to sit up in bed fearlessly and play softly on his concertina his little Sunday school tune, which happened to be the tune of a Christmas hymn.

Then, smiling blissfully, all alone there in the moonlight, softly she repeated to herself the beginning of the stanza she had written in Elvira's album: “Friend of my heart —.” And that friend of her heart seemed standing before her, radiant, and blessing her.

“Pardon me, dear Maria,” I said, “but you have not got it quite right. You and Tom are going to escort Alice and Billy to Eastridge, with such diversions by the way as seem to you appropriate. Your father and mother are going to lunch with me at Delmonico's — but we don't want the whole family.”

There were tears in Matilda Jennings's black eyes, but she held them unwinkingly. “Thank ye,” she said, in a gruff voice, and stepped along over the piazza, down the steps. She reached Emily's flower garden. The peppery sweetness of the nasturtiums came up in her face; it was quite early in the day, and the portulacas were still out in a splendid field of crimson and yellow. Matilda turned about, her broad foot just cleared a yellow portulaca which had straggled into the path, but she did not notice it. The homely old figure pushed past the flowers and into the house again. She stood before Elizabeth and Emily. “Look here,” said she, with a fine light struggling out of her coarse old face, “I want to tell you — I see them fire-crackers a-sizzlin' before Em'ly stepped in 'em.”

On the day of the funeral the poor old woman's grave was found lined with fragrant herbs from Aurelia's garden — thyme and lavender and rosemary. She had cried when she picked them, because she could not help being glad, and they were all she could give for atonement.

General Newman had so many presents on the Sunday school tree the next evening that he was nearly overcome. He could not believe his eyes when he saw the jackknives, the tops, the sled and the books. Every one of the friends to whom he had presented his promissory note had been furnished with a present to hang on the tree for him, but he never dreamed why.

“That's what I'd got laid out to do when I see you at the winder, Lucy, an' I was a-goin' to do it.”

It was a beautiful Sunday. After they left the cemetery they strolled a little way down the road. The road lay between deep green meadows and cottage yards. It was not quite time for the roses, and the lilacs were turning gray. The buttercups in the meadows had blossomed out, but the dandelions had lost their yellow crowns, and their filmy skulls appeared. They stood like ghosts among crowds of golden buttercups; but none of the family thought of that; their ghosts were laid in peace.

She folded the shawl which she had put on more closely around her, for the room was rather chilly, and looked out at the Christmas moonlight on the Christmas snow. At first it seemed to her that she had fallen from an immense height into such loneliness and desolation as she had never known. Then suddenly an enormous delight and peace was over her. She realized that instead of falling she had climbed, had flown even. She seemed to see quite distinctly that red and gold book called “The Gift of Love,” and it became symbolic. She held in her heart what she had never held in any Christmas of her life before — the Gift of unselfish Love.

“Everybody in this world means to be pretty good to other folks,” she muttered to herself, “and when they ain't, it ain't always their fault; sometimes it's other folks'.”

The girl was ghastly white. She continued to gaze with a wild gaze of awful understanding at the old man sitting stark and dead on his fireless hearth, where he had sat so long with the great god Mammon, whom he had not dared command to his own needs lest he destroy him. She reflected how he had sat there and starved with his wealth glittering in his eyes, and she also reflected, considering the look on his dead face, that perhaps his earthly retribution had won his heavenly peace. But she shuddered convulsively, and the gold light reflected from the tops of the andirons seemed to wink at her like eyes of infernal understanding and mockery. She looked at the letter again, and called out its contents again in a voice shrill with hysteria: “The andirons, the fire-set, the handles on the high-boy, the handles on the desk, the trimmings of the clock, the pendulum, the trimmings on the best bed, the handles on the dresser, the key of the desk — Gold.”

“Lordamassey!” said Lottie.

I shall be sorry for Elizabeth Talbert if she has been making mischief.

And the man on the road below passed like the wind, and left the mountain and the dead tree behind.

Well, Benjamin sits in that car every day, dressed up in his fur coat, with his shakin' hand on the wheel, and now and then when he sees anything out on the road he toots the horn. And, though of course it 's a dreadful thing, because he ain't what he used to be, you can't seem to sense it, because, if ever there was a man happy in this world, it 's Benjamin Rice. He just seems to smile on livin', and you saw yourself how fat and rosy he is. There he sits in that car, that won't stir a peg till the day of judgment, and — he thinks he's goin' forty miles an hour!

The agent came and promised to put the new room they discovered into the hall bedroom and have everything new — papered and painted. He took away the picture; folks hinted there was something queer about that, I don't know what. It looked innocent enough, and I guess he burned it up. He said if I would stay he would arrange it with the owner, who everybody says is a very queer man, so I should not have to pay much if any rent. But I told him I couldn't stay if he was to give me the rent. That I wasn't afraid of anything myself, though I must say I wouldn't want to put anybody in that hall bedroom without telling him all about it; but my boarders would leave and I knew I couldn't get any more. I told him I would rather have had a regular ghost than what seemed to be a way of going out of the house to nowhere and never coming back again. I moved, and, as I said before, it remains to be seen whether my ill luck follows me to this house or not. Anyway, it has no hall bedroom.

The articles which made up the home-made village — the few houses which fire and vandals have not destroyed, the faithfully wrought furniture with which the rooms were fitted, the linen, the coverlets, the fine needlework — remain, and may seem to us to have outlived their makers, but the honest workers have survived, and will survive, their work, which is itself the proof of it.

Josephine gloated over a splendid court dress, foaming with lace, and glittering with silver over long lights of satin, in which her spirit would go clad, until earthly imaginations became a blank to her. The boy led home in triumph a toy-bear which walked and grunted, and the girl hugged close a flaxen-haired doll, who was a princess living in the French Palace of Diverse Industries. But it was the old grandmother who bore homeward the strangest treasure of all. She had paused, gaping and speechless, before a wonderful piece of embroidery by a patient artist of Japan. There she saw pictured gray, plumed geese, with long, curving necks, a-swim in a pool of satin needlework, and her imagination leapt to true life for the first time. The old woman had tended geese in her childhood, she fed and plucked them now, that being a labor suited to her later as well as her earlier years. Geese had always been for her the symbol of toil. Now she was able through that marvel of Japanese art to idealize her poor, common daily life. She sat on the deck of the river steamer, old and poor, dripping with rain which gleamed on her thin face like tears, but she looked out at the radiance which she had that day discovered over her life, and she laughed and chattered like a young girl out of the pure exuberance of her joy. And the others laughed and chattered with her, for the great inertia of happiness possessed them all.

“I am thorry I didn't alwath know he wath my folks,” said little Grace, “becauth there wathen't any need for me to take the stocking if he wath.”

“Well, dear, time and time again: when I had been making believe that you were there, some of the neighbors would come in and walk right through you, which was such a shock to me. So when the neighbors came in and did not walk through you, but stopped and shook hands, then I was sure I was not making believe. Don't you see, John?”

That night she and David sat up late. A great turkey was in the pantry all trussed and stuffed ready for roasting the next day, the house was full of the fragrance of spice and raisins and sweets, and in the girl's soul was the peace of satisfaction and thankfulness that she had come again to her own. For added to her joy in her home-coming was a new joy that she and David had found together.

“You don't say so! Well I'll be glad to do it; an' thar's one thing 'bout it, Mis' Peters — mebbe you'll think it queer for me to say so, but I'm kinder thankful it's rugs she wants. I'm kinder sick of bed-quilts somehow.”

“He certainly is,” said Sarah, “but if I had to live over again, I wouldn't try such a way of making him so, for my own sake.”

“Everybody has all they really need for the good of their own souls if they count up the past and future as well as the present,” Abby Armstrong said quite aloud, and in her voice was a true chord of thanksgiving.

Riding through the wilderness to Vermont on their wedding journey, Ann had confessed to her husband how she had secreted the thief who had tried to steal his Red Robin. She had been afraid to tell; but he had turned on the saddle, and smiled down in her face. “I am content that the man is safe,” said John Penniman. “Prithee, why should I wish him evil, whilst I am riding along with thee, on Red Robin, Ann?”

Aunt Lizy went over to Charlotte Ellen, and kissed the little wet, hot face on her mother's shoulder. “There, you poor child,” said she, “don't you think any more about it, but I'll tell you one thing for your future good. It doesn't pay to go too katty-cornered to the truth to save folks' feelings, especially if they think as much of you, as your Aunt Lizy.”

Aunt Maria was almost up to the store when they left it, and it was decided that she should remain and make a call upon Mrs. Rose while Mr. Lennox carried the others home, then he would return for her. Aunt Maria furled her green umbrella and sank down on the door-step, and Mrs. Rose brought her a palm-leaf fan and a glass of ginger water. “I 'ain't walked a mile before for ten year,” gasped Aunt Maria; “but I'm so thankful that child's safe that I can't think of anything else.” There were tears in her eyes as she watched the wagon-load disappearing under the green branches of the elm-trees. And Fidelia, in her mother's lap, rode along and sucked a stick of barley candy in silent bliss. Griefs in childhood soon turn to memories; straightway, as she sucked her barley candy, Fidelia's long and painful vigil at the store door became a thing of the past.

“Not at all,” said Maria, briskly and kindly. Then the woman went her way. She was the only one of the guests who had spoken to Maria, and she had been in the hotel two weeks. Nobody at all spoke to her during the remaining two weeks of her stay. Maria was, on the whole, more lonely than she had ever been in her life, and she did more thinking. She thought a good deal about Dexter Ray. She thought how if she had a husband with her like many of the other women she would not have felt so defenseless and isolated in her wrapper, which she had begun to regard as a matter of principle. She felt sure that Dexter would admire the wrapper. She could see just the kindly, worshipful expression that would come into his brown eyes at the sight of her in it. She recalled how Emma had believed in the wrapper. She began to reflect as she had never done on the pettiness and worthlessness of externals. She wished she could see Emma, and hear her talk in her bad English. She began to understand that the bad English might be very much like the wrapper, something beneath a loving soul to notice, if the heart of the speaker were right. She remembered how very plain Dexter Ray was, and how clumsy, and how he talked just as Emma did, and it all seemed to her like the wrapper and the cambric sacque, something for people who had not love and appreciation in their hearts to make fun of, but nothing of any consequence to those who could see what was underneath; the honesty, and the affection, and the faithfulness. Two days before Maria went home she wrote to Emma Ray, and told her when she was coming, and asked her and her brother to come in and spend the next evening with her. Maria was pale when she posted the letter in the little hotel office. She had never asked Dexter to spend the evening with her before, and she knew what it would mean. Emma Ray, when she got the letter the day before Maria's return, read it aloud to Dexter. When Emma read that Maria would like to have them both come in and spend the evening the brother and sister looked at each other. Dexter's homely, faithful face flushed, then turned very pale. Emma gazed at him with the sympathy of a mother, rather than of a sister. Nobody knew how she had pitied him, and how hard she had tried to help him. She smiled with the loveliest unselfishness, then she looked again at the letter in her hand. “Guess Maria has been eatin' humble pie,” she thought to herself, then she reflected how much she thought of Maria, and her brother, and how glad she was. “Well, I guess Maria thinks that the old friends that have always set store by her are the best after all,” she said, and a moral perfume, as of the sweetness of humility itself, seemed to come in her face from the letter.

“Oh, Jake, my blue silk dress an' the white bonnet is in the trunk in the cart jest the same, an' I can git 'em out, an' put 'em on under the trees thar, an' wear em to be merried in!”

Sarah did not exactly know when the lady left and when Hyacinthus came, but after a while they were sitting side by side on the door-step, and the moon was rising over the mountain, and the wonderful shadows were gathering about them like a company of wedding-guests.

And Mary Ann, leaning over the desk, wrote with a tremulous hand in the Idle Minute Book: “On this day did Angeline Littlefield do the greatest stent of work which has ever been done in this house, and ever will be, for the body is more than raiment, and life is more than food. And this is the end of the Idle Minute Book.”

“Oh, well,” she said at last, “if I must!”

“I've got one now you caught forty year ago.”

Standing at the well, looking up at the windows, she chuckled softly to herself. “It's all settled right,” said she, “an' there don't none of 'em suspect that I'm a-carryin' out my p'int, arter all.”

After supper that evening Lucinda moved the things on the table back, and spread out the cards. She bent over them, and her face took on a wise and important expression. “Well,” said she finally, in a meditative voice, “there's a light-complected man right close to you, Charlotte, an' a weddin'-ring, for the first thing —”

“Thank God, he does not know he did it!” he whispered, and a good smile came over his great blond face.

The Jamesons are still with us every summer — even Grandma Cobb, who does not seem to grow feeble at all. Sarah is growing to be quite a pretty girl, and there is a rumor that Charlie White is attentive to her, though they are both almost too young to think of such things. Cobb is a very nice boy, and people say they had as soon have him come in and sit a while and talk, as a girl. As for Mrs. Jameson, she still tries to improve us at times, not always with our full concurrence, and her ways are still not altogether our ways, provoking mirth, or calling for charity. Yet I must say we have nowadays a better understanding of her good motives, having had possibly our spheres enlarged a little by her, after all, and having gained broader views from the points of view of people outside our narrow lives. I think we most of us are really fond of Mrs. H. Boardman Jameson, and are very glad that the Jamesons came to our village.

Lois laughed. Jonathan's laugh rang out. “It is a duet,” he cried gaily, and they laughed again.

But neither Aunt Hannah nor Betsey ever knew that the quilt and the doll were Jimmy Scarecrow's Christmas presents to them.

“It's jest what Mary would have done,” said Mrs. Lawton. “I never see such a truthful girl as she was. I don't believe you could have made her tell a lie. Johanna's behaved jest the way Mary would.”

It was ascertained beyond doubt that Jim Mills did keep the presents, and it was reported that all John Henry's father said to him was that in future he mustn't lay his plans to do anything like that without telling his folks about it. As for John Henry's mother, she and his grandmother Atkins bought him a little silver watch for a New-Year's present, because they felt uneasy about letting him sacrifice quite so much. His grandmother, who was superstitious, said that John Henry had always been delicate, and she was afraid it was a bad sign.

Johnny gathered up the two forlorn kittens and sat down in a kitchen chair, with one on each shoulder, hard, boyish cheeks pressed against furry, purring sides, and the little fighting Cock of the Walk felt his heart glad and tender with the love of the strong for the weak.

“Real bright,” assented Caleb. Then neither spoke again all the way home.

That night the storm cleared away. It was arranged that the next morning they were to drive down to Lowe and be married. After all was still in Grace's side of the house, William sat at a window in his kitchen gazing out at the sky in which the stars blazed with a wonderful nearness and surprise of reality. He thought of the sleeping woman on the other side who was to be his wife, with a tenderness which was akin to pain, and then a solitariness of joy was over him.

“Then we are engaged,” said the Boy. Emmeline nodded. She looked at him, and her face of love, and ignorance of love, was fairly dazzling. The Boy kissed her again. Then they sat still. The Boy's arm was around the girl and her head on his shoulder. Both tasted the uttermost joy of the present. Happiness stood still in their heaven.

The other woman reflected and counted on her fingers. “Let me see. They had the Thanksgiving the year I had my marten tippet, that's one; then the one I had my bonnet with the pansies on it, that's two; then the one when my son Frank got married, that's three; then one the year I had a new set of china, that's four. They had four Thanksgiving dinners together. Then Julia died, when she was eighty-two; and six months after Elsie; and Henry only lived a year after that; and I suppose now they are playing their Thanksgiving harps and singing Thanksgiving songs in heaven instead of eating turkey on earth, if we believe what we should.”

Juliza smiled. She had the same proud lift to her head, that she had had when reciting. “It's all right,” said she, “don't you worry.”

While the happy bridal pair rode away through the October night, and the wedding guests chattered merrily in the parlor and flocked gayly down the street, the kitchen colonel fought faithfully in his humble field, where maybe he would some day win a homely glory all his own.

And although it was many years ago, the tale still lives there.

The snow had begun to fall as Robinson Carnes took his way out of Sanderson on the road to Elmville, but the earth had come into a sort of celestial atmosphere which obliterated the storm for human hearts. All around were innocent happiness and festivity, and the display of love by loving gifts. The poor minister was alone on a stormy road on Christmas eve. He had no presentiment of anything bright in his future: he did not know that he was to find an asylum and a friend for life in the clergyman in the town toward which his face was set. He travelled on, bending his shoulders before the sleety wind. His heart was heavier and heavier before the sense of his own guilt. He felt to the full that he had done a great wrong. He had stolen, and stolen from his benefactor. He had taken off the minister's coat and laid it gently over the back of a settee in the vestry before he left, but that made no difference. If only he had not stolen from the man who had given him his coat. And yet he always had, along with the remorse, that light of great joy which could not be wholly darkened by any thought of self, when he reflected upon the poor family who were happy. He thought that possibly the minister had in reality been glad, although he condemned him. He began to love him and thank him for his generosity. He pulled his thin coat closely around him and went on. He had given the last gift which he had to give — his own honesty.

“That is all … Go.”

They never found out where that great pot of lilies came from. Edward tried to keep the plant, but it died before the next Easter. He questioned all the florists for miles about; but none of them knew anything about it. No one knew, and no one ever will know. We can surmise and question, but we shall never know; but there is no doubt that those lilies have sweetened Lauretta's whole life, for she would never have married Edward Adams had not someone set them on her table.

Luke Gleason looked steadily and lovingly at the young man. “You are going to make the stories true, my son,” said he. “There are more reasons than one for going to war.”

Luella also flushed a little, but her voice was resolute. “I 'ain't got much to say about it, Mis' Alden,” said she, “but I'm goin' to say this much — it ain't no more'n right I should, though I don't believe in a lot of palaver about things like this — I've made up my mind that I'm goin' to believe in Jesus Christ. I 'ain't never, but I'm goin' to now, for” — Luella's voice turned shrill with passion — “I don't see any other way out of it for John Gleason!”

In the east was faintly visible a filmy arc of new moon. A great star was slowly gathering light near the moon. Emmeline danced along, holding to Mr. John Adams's hand. Her head was up. Her whole face laughed. The little dog raced ahead; he ran back; he leapt and barked short joyous barks. They were all conquerors, by that might of spiritual panoply of love with which they had been born equipped. There was the dog, in whom love had conquered brute spite and maliciousness; the man in whom love had conquered self-will. But the child was the greatest conqueror of the three, for in her love had conquered fear, which is in all creation its greatest foe, being love's own antithesis.

Letitia untied the green ribbon and unfolded the paper, and there was the little silver snuff-box, which had been the treasure of her great-great-grandmother, Letitia Hopkins. She raised the lid, and there was also the little glass bottle.

Sally kissed her and laughed. Then she reached down a fond hand and patted her boy's head. “Never mind, Jim,” said Sally. “Mothers have to come first.”

The cavalcade passed the Proctor house, but Goodwife Ann Bayley's sweet face was turned backward until it was out of sight, towards the little maid in the door.

Little Marg'ret is the one lively and utterly incorrigible thing in our dull little village. There are other children, but she is that one all-pervading spirit of childhood which keeps us all fretting but powerless under its tyranny, and yet, if the truth must be told, ready enough to cut for it the sweet cake, which it loves, when it runs away into our hearts.

Miss Kent was rocking gently to and fro, with tears in her bright, eager eyes, and the light from the windows of the Whitlow sitting-room shone dimly on both their faces.

The next Sunday Mirandy went up the aisle clattering bravely in little Ezra Moseby's shoes, and she could not help looking often at them during the sermon.

The princess was going closer to embrace Dorothy, but the ladies became alarmed; they thought that their beautiful cat was going to steal out of the house. So they called, and a maid with a white cap ran and caught the Persian princess, and carried her back to the drawing-room. The ladies thought she mewed, as she was being carried in, but in reality she was calling back merrily, “Good-bye, and live happily ever after, dear Dorothy!”

Then they went their ways. Sarah, when she reached home, paused at the front gate, and stood gazing up at the poplar. Then she nodded affirmatively and entered the house, and the door closed after her in her red silk dress. And the Lombardy poplar-tree stood in his green majesty before the house, and his shadow lengthened athwart the yard to the very walls.

A month later. I have just heard that Phœbe Dole has died in prison. This is my last entry. May God help all other innocent women in hard straights as He has helped me!

But after the man was dead, and laid away in his tomb, the door thereof closed, and the willow branches sprung back over it, and the violets blooming on the sods of the roof, some one passing late at night by the house where he had dwelt, saw a bright light in a window, and wondered because nobody was living therein. Then he called another neighbor, and together they entered, and behold, the lost Book lay on the dead man's table, and upon the open page was painted, as with colors of flame and light, the passing and the stumbling and the faltering of the dead man along his road of life, and the shining of the picture was greater than all the written wisdom of the Book.

But the dog followed him, faithful not only to his old master, but to a nobler thing, the faithfulness which was in himself — and maybe by so doing gained another level in the spiritual evolution of his race.

“No,” replied Mrs. Meserve, “that child was never seen again after she went out of the yard with Mrs. Bird.”

The house was quite near the road. Some one passed — a man carrying a basket. Louisa glanced at him, and recognized Jonathan Nye by his gait. He kept on down the road toward the Moselys', and Louisa turned again from him to her sweet mysterious girlish dreams.

September 30. — My daughter is wedded to the man of her choice. The letter of my vow I kept, yet broke it undeniably in the spirit. I humbly confess to my Maker my joy and exceeding happiness that the vow be not fulfilled, sinful though it may be. In spite of my backsliding, my lack of steadfastness, and my weakness of the flesh, I have upon me a deep peace and certainty of good to come which will not be gainsaid by any self-blame. I marvel greatly if I perchance have rightfully estimated the love of God toward us, which may — an I be not led astray by my evil imagination — acknowledge as its own offspring all the natural affections of the human heart, and the human weakness therefrom be thus forgiven by the divine love.

“They've gone to a weddin', deary,” said Silas.

The sun shone broadly in athwart the yellow-painted floor; old Lysander and little Lucy, the good old man and the good child, at the close and beginning of innocent and peaceful lives, sat in the same beam of Christmas sunshine.

The next night there was a red gleam of fire athwart the moonlight and the old house of Luella Miller was burned to the ground. Nothing is now left of it except a few old cellar stones, and a lilac bush, and in summer a helpless trail of morning glories among the weeds, which might be considered emblematic of Luella herself.

Aunt Nabby went scuttling down the road. Freelove and Lydia remounted, and went back at a canter. Freelove pulled a conch shell from his pocket, and blew as lustily as a herald. Folks ran to the windows, and Lydia hid her blushing face against her husband's shoulder.

We look across the meeting-house on a Sunday and see Lydia sitting listening to the sermon, her plain face uplifted with the expression of a saint, under that bonnet which we avoid glancing at for love of her, and our hearts are full of gratitude for this good woman in our village.

I hovered there — I couldn't help it, a bit gloatingly — before I pounced; and yet even when he became aware of me, as he did in a minute, he didn't shift his position by an inch, but only took me and my dreadful meaning, with his wan stare, as a part of the strange burden of his fate. He didn't seem even surprised to speak of; he had waked up — premising his brief, bewildered delirium — to the sense that something natural must happen, and even to the fond hope that something natural would; and I was simply the form in which it was happening. I came nearer, I stood before him; and he kept up at me the oddest stare — which was plainly but the dumb yearning that I would explain, explain! He wanted everything told him — but every single thing; as if, after a tremendous fall, or some wild parabola through the air, the effect of a violent explosion under his feet, he had landed at a vast distance from his starting-point and required to know where he was. Well, the charming thing was that this affected me as giving the very sharpest point to the idea that, in asking myself how I should deal with him, I had already so vividly entertained.

Janet wiped her eyes. She glanced at the stool at her feet; she had not yet knelt. Janet, on her mother's side, was not many generations from England. She had always been a church woman; she had always observed faithfully all the ceremonies of the Church. She looked at the stool. Suddenly it was as if the ancient strife had ended for both in a better Church than either had ever known. Janet folded her hands peacefully, and they sat straight and still through the Easter service, the old Church of England woman and the old Congregationalist, side by side.

“No, you 're not,” said Hannah Maria.

“I found her here waiting for me,” the minister said.

“Then, I came and appropriated my own present before it was given to me,” said the minister. And he laughed so heartily then, that Martha was not afraid to give vent to her suppressed fun, and Louisa, standing in the parlor doorway, though unseen was not unheard.

And nothing more was ever said about it, but Miss Felicia never wore the green feathers to church again, and somehow she got into the habit of bringing a caraway cooky every Sunday for Amelia, and Amelia became very fond of Miss Felicia. She used sometimes to take her patchwork and make her a call, and Sundays she used to slip the caraway cooky into the pocket of her best dress and take it home and eat it thoughtfully. Nervous little girl, with a strong sense of humor, that she was, she was quite cured of laughing at her neighbors in church, for all through her life it was as if a poor bonnet, with a nodding tuft of green feathers, slipped suddenly over and smothered untimely and indecorous mirth.

“Oh Lord, Harriét,” sobbed Charlotte, “thar is so many chinks that they air all runnin' together!”

“Oh, mother! mother! mother!” she sobbed. “I love you best! I do love you best! I always will! I never will love him as much as I did you. I promise you.”

The Bird-Fancier watched him going down the street, and turned to his wife, who was stroking the Angora cat, and the cousin, who was feeding a canary which had just arrived. The Boy, going down the street, had his face bent over the Monkey, and the two were mouthing at each other. “I am right, you may depend upon it,” he said. “There goes one Monkey carrying another.”

“Love me all you can, Ada,” she said. “I want — something.”

Every year the morning-glories came again and sent forth their great silent chorus of youth and victory from their hundred trumpet mouths. Then at noon they closed and slept, and remained asleep until the next morning, when they awoke again to their chorus of victory, and Alexander passed beneath them, still old, and wrecked, and defeated. But the day of a man is longer than that of a flower.

“My Lord!” She said it reverently, and she looked at the young man as if he were her own lover. Her face at that moment was wonderfully like Ann's, and a charming prophecy of her daughter's own future loveworthiness.

The train is just pulling in. Charles is there and Maria, each standing on one side of the car-steps. Now I see them. That looks like Peggy's suit-case the porter's carrying down. Yes, it is. There — there they are, coming down the steps behind him, Cyrus and my dear girl — how well they look! Oh, how I hope everything will come right for them!

Between those great bushes, resplendent with their white and rosy stars and evergreen leaves, sat the poor poet and lover, who had fed all his life upon the honey in his own soul in lieu of any other, and perhaps nourished himself to his own waste, but to his own happiness. No happier soul was there in the valley below, no happier soul ever came Maying up the mountain-side. Sitting there beneath the shade of his splendid symbolic flowers, with his fadeless ideal to wife, and his consciousness of an artist soul invincible by any poverty of art, he was one of the happiest crowned heads in the world.

She and her mother were on the sidewalk when Henry Allston overtook them. Mrs. Sackett stepped back to speak to another woman, and Allston walked beside Viola until they reached the street on which he lived. When they parted, he had asked if she were to be at home that evening, and if he might call, and he had looked at her, and Viola had recognized what the look meant. Suddenly Henry Allston had realized that he loved her, and the cherry-trimmed hat had forced the knowledge. It had also forced the knowledge upon Mrs. Sackett that her daughter had her own sacred claim to life, and that her own place was back of that claim. It had also forced the knowledge that her own place was back of even humbler claims. It seemed absurd, but every great harmony must have its keynote, and in this case a little frivolous feminine gaud of an Easter hat had precipitated into their perfect harmony unselfishness and love, and been the keynote of beauty and happiness worthy of Easter itself.

With such evidence before us as Miss Lewsome's confession, it was, of course, impossible to charge Mr. Charles Jex with any part in this murder; but, remembering all the circumstances since, I have sometimes asked myself, was the girl alone guilty, or was she a tool in the hand of a scheming villain, or was she perhaps only a victim and entirely innocent?

They could not find Miss Amidon anywhere; they never found her. They never fairly knew the true solution of the mystery. The village lawyer held in trust a sum of money and a deed of the old Blake house, whereby it was given to the village for a home for poor children and old people. He declared that old Eliza and Miss Amidon were one; but he was a practical, unimaginative kind of man. There were those who never believed that old Eliza was Miss Amidon, but clung all their lives to their faith in their glimpses of her angel face and golden hair in the window, and there were others still who claimed that they saw not old Eliza, the harsh-faced servant woman, lying dead on Christmas morning, but that other woman who had become real to their grateful imaginations, with her face of a young angel, and that smile of eternal Christmas peace on her lips.

Nanny Pepperill ate her Christmas dinner, glancing, when the attention of the company seemed elsewhere, with tender shyness at Lieutenant Harry Jennings, and always when she did so Martha looked at her, and over her heart and her sweet face shone a light which was the very reflection of her sister's happiness through unselfish love.

“She is dead, dear; she and her husband both. And — Annie and I are bringing up her little orphan daughter.”

“No,” said he; “I couldn't think of none to make, so I made a resolution not to tell that I hadn't made any.”

Now the tall weeds and grasses might cluster around Cæsar's little hermit hut, the snow might fall on its roof year in and year out, but he never would go on a rampage through the unguarded village. Now the little canary might turn itself into a peaceful yellow ball night after night, and have no need to wake and flutter with wild terror against its bars. Louisa could sew linen seams, and distil roses, and dust and polish and fold away in lavender, as long as she listed. That afternoon she sat with her needle-work at the window, and felt fairly steeped in peace. Lily Dyer, tall and erect and blooming, went past; but she felt no qualm. If Louisa Ellis had sold her birthright she did not know it, the taste of the pottage was so delicious, and had been her sole satisfaction for so long. Serenity and placid narrowness had become to her as the birthright itself. She gazed ahead through a long reach of future days strung together like pearls in a rosary, every one like the others, and all smooth and flawless and innocent, and her heart went up in gentle thankfulness. Outside was the fervid summer afternoon; the air was filled with the sounds of the busy harvest of men and birds and bees; there were halloos, metallic clatterings, sweet calls, and long hummings. Louisa sat, prayerfully numbering her days, like an uncloistered nun.

The morning sunlight shone broadly into the room over them all, but Solomon Lennox did not seem to heed that or anything that was around him, sitting sadly within himself: a prophet brooding over the ashes of his own prophetic fire.

Always as he sat on his three chairs, immense, grotesque — the more grotesque for his splendid dignity of bearing — there was in his soul of a gallant gentleman the consciousness of that other, whom he was shielding from a similar ordeal. Compassion and generosity, so great that they comprehended love itself and excelled its highest type, irradiated the whole being of the fat man exposed to the gaze of his inferiors. Chivalry, which rendered him almost godlike, strengthened him for his task. Sydney thought always of Margaret as distinct from her physical self, a sort of crystalline, angelic soul, with no encumbrance of earth. He achieved a purely spiritual conception of her. And Margaret, living again her gentle lady life, was likewise ennobled by a gratitude which transformed her. Always a clear and beautiful soul, she gave out new lights of character like a jewel in the sun. And she also thought of Sydney as distinct from his physical self. The consciousness of the two human beings, one of the other, was a consciousness as of two wonderful lines of good and beauty, moving for ever parallel, separate, and inseparable in an eternal harmony of spirit.

“The cat has come back,” said Ann.

It looked like the most melodramatic Sunday personal ever invented. It might have meant burglary or murder or a snare for innocence, but I sent it. Now I have written. My letter went in the same mail as poor Peggy's, but what will be the outcome of it all I cannot say. Sometimes I catch Peggy looking at me with a curious awakened expression, and then I wonder if she has begun to suspect. I cannot tell how it will end.

“Yes, Letty's come, and — I've got that sum, you gave me, done.”

Nancy watched them as they went down the path. “I wonder,” said she, “if they are any happier thinkin' about gettin' married than I am thinkin' about gettin' buried.”

Old Lucy went into the house with her Christmas dinner. She was the poorest soul in the whole village, but she had, all unknowingly, given the most royal Christmas gift of any.

Margy bent down, and her lips touched the cold white forehead of the old man, and he smiled. He thought then that he had broken the blooming branch and given it to her. He passed, thinking so. The old man whose best life had been in the simple wilds of the countryside, whose despicable life had been in the squalid travesty on civilization, now burned away from him and the earth, lay white and silent in his fitting resting-place. The Old Man of the Field lay dead in the field, and he had died with the belief that he had broken and given that blooming branch of spring which tossed above him against the radiant sky, giving out fragrance like a triumphal song, to the child who had looked alike at him and it, and he had not died intestate of all beauty and wealth, after all.

“Too bad they're dead! no it ain't too bad neither! I guess it would be too bad if they was alive. They'd be over a hundred and most like stun blind and deaf, and cripples. What do ye expect? This is a dyin' world! They was real happy and pleasant together, and then they died, when they'd lived to a good old age, within a year of each other, too, and now I s'pose they're singin' psalms together in the New Jerusalem. I don't see nothin' bad about that. I call it about as good an endin' up as there could be!”

Lily died that night. There was quite a commotion in Barry's Ford until after the funeral, it was all so sudden, and then everything went on as usual. Old Woman Magoun continued to live as she had done before. She supported herself by the produce of her tiny farm; she was very industrious, but people said that she was a trifle touched, since every time she went over the log bridge with her eggs or her garden vegetables to sell in Greenham, she carried with her, as one might have carried an infant, Lily's old rag doll.

Narcissa in her blue robes went over to him, and put, for the first time of her own accord, an arm around his faithful neck. “I wouldn't go out again if the bars were down,” said she.

Then the horse turned cautiously around the corner, and stopped willingly before the house.

There was a responsive mew, and the great cat, arching his splendid, striped back, lashing his tail, and making an anti-climax, came in.

They looked in each other's faces again; then suddenly they moved closer, and kissed each other.

Mrs. Willard saw the look, and did not understand. How could she? It was inconceiveable that these two people should own the outside of her home to such an extent that their tenure became well-nigh immortal.

And after the minister and his bride had gone, Martha looked at her parrot, and his golden eyes met hers, and she recognized in the fierce bird a comradeship and an equality, for he had given vent to an emotion of her own nature, and she knew for evermore that the parrot had a soul.

When Ruth came home from school she found an immense kettle of parsnip stew, her father and her uncles Silas and Caleb again forming a pleasant expectant semicircle before the fire, but no Wigginses. To-day the stew was seasoned daintily, and salt had taken the place of saleratus. There was no stint as to quantity, but there were not enough partakers. Mrs. Whitman filled a great bowl for Lucy Ann; she sent a dish over to the Whites; father and Caleb and Silas ate manfully, and passed their plates again and again; Serena and Ruth and their mother ate all they could, and the cat had her fill; but the Whitmans, with all their allies, could not eat their own share and that of the Wigginses. But the stew was delicious, and as the family ate, their simple homely little feud was healed, and the parsnip stew smoked in their midst like a pipe of peace.

The Mayor had filled one stocking himself with bon-bons, and Julia picked out all the peppermints amongst them for his Grandmothers. They were very fond of peppermints. Then he went to work to find their spectacles, which had been lost ever since he had been away.

But Fidelia did not seem to notice it. She went on talking. “Ansel Lennox — promised he'd write when he went away, an' he said he'd come again. It's time for the evenin' mail. You'd better hurry, or you'll be late. He — promised he'd write, an'” — she looked up at Lily suddenly; a look of triumphant resolution came into her poor face — “I ain't goin' to give it up yet.”

“Oh, Aunt — Aunt Lily!” I called. “Stop! I want to speak to you.” I ran after her. “I'm going to have a profession, too,” I said. “I'm going to devote my life to it, and I am just as glad as I can be.” I put my arms round her and kissed her on her soft, pink cheeks, and we both cried a little. Then she went away.

She sat there filling up the doorway with her vast bulk, overspread with waves of purple-barred muslin, a woman with no fine development of imagination or intellect, a woman whose whole scheme of existence was on lines so simple that they were fairly coarse, like those of the peony beside the gate, in which the mystery of the rose was lost in the grossness of utter revelation. She only knew enough to bloom like the flower, whether to her own grace or glory, it mattered not, so long as it was to her farthest compass, and to yield unstintingly all her largess of life to whomsoever crossed her path with a heart or hand of need for it.

She is a credit to our village, and yet it is possible that one such credit is sufficient. If there were another like her the village might become so clean that we should all have to take to the fields and survey its beautiful tidiness over pasture-bars.

Ellen stared, then she laughed, but Honora in her pink shawl did not seem amused at all. There was the faintest murmur of voices from the parlor. Honora had never had any love-affair of her own, but as she listened to that low murmur of Annette and her lover, her face took on the expression which it might have worn had she been in Annettes' place. And the pink shawl cast a rosy glow over her silvery hair of age all like the joy of the giver upon beholding the joy over the gift.

Innocence and truth can feel the shadow of unjust suspicion when others can no longer see it.

“I'll be much obliged,” said Betsey, as if the sense of grateful obligation was immortal like herself. She smiled, and the sweetness of the smile was as evident through the drawn lines of her mouth as the old red in the leaves of a withered rose. The sun was setting; a red beam flashed softly over the top of the hedge and lay along the opposite wall; then the bird in his cage began to chirp. He chirped faster and faster until he trilled into a triumphant song.

But, after all, do you know, I think her father was mistaken, and that she had.

After he had gone up-stairs she went out into the kitchen to mix bread. “I guess I'll have some riz biscuit for breakfast,” she said to Elvira. “He didn't eat none of them others, but I s'pose he'll eat these fast 'nough. It beats me, but I s'pose it's — love.” She tried to say “love” as if it were a clod of mud, but in spite of herself she said it as if it were a jewel.

“I — can't help it. Oh, Rufus! here you've been away off there all this time, and you had to mortgage your house to go! It's dreadful! I'll do everything I can to make up — everything! I'll work my fingers to the bone. Rufus, if you say so, we'll have the cow sold, or — we'll kill her, and eat her!”

The garden at the right of the Holding house grew old, unplanted, and untended, but the prince's-feather never failed to come to the front, proudly waving in all its first splendor above the disordered hosts of flowers and weeds. And always to the front in the unfailing spring of all his winters of defeat pressed the man, raising aloft his shining head which never grew bald nor gray, nor wise, as many believed, perhaps justly, having that inconsequence which is fatal to success, yet blessed with that fairy gift held by few, the power of keeping unbroken, with all its rainbow hues intact, the bubble of his own life.

And when Rosetta went across the river to live, the King, her father, gave her some bee-hives for a wedding present, and the bees thrived equally in both countries. All the difference in the honey was this: in Romalia the bees fed more on clover, and the honey tasted of clover; and in the country across the river on peppermint, and that honey tasted of peppermint. They always had both kinds at their Bee Festivals.

Sometimes Diantha, looking from a western window, used to see the pond across the field, reflecting the light of the setting sun, and looking like an eye of revelation of the earth; and she would remember that key of a lost radiance and a lost belief of her own life, which was buried beside it. Then she would go happily and prepare her husband's supper.

“They think I didn't kill anything last night. There's where they're dead wrong. I did, I did! I killed a damned coward, and there's one more man to fight for the United States of America. I'm all right now. Go home, dear old chap; let mother nurse you up, and you look after her, and tell her her son is a soldier and loves his country better than he loves her.”

Jenny went to church only half the day, she had hardly regained her strength. But she sat there in her pink bonnet and looked lovingly over at Ida in her blue bonnet with a great deal of thankfulness in her heart. For she had a great deal for which to be thankful, a girl could not live many days upon three or four cloves, one peppermint, a sprig of caraway and a handful of crumbs, and her pitiful imaginings might have been realized.

Lucinda approached. Suddenly the power of her dreadful nervous malady asserted itself, and she made a grotesque run at her old lover. He started back, and she passed, staggering. Then George and Esther went on soberly through the sweet spring twilight.

As the Wilder boy drew near Sophia's house he could smell spice and roasting turkey, and onions, and stewing fruit; a special atmosphere of love and plenty seemed to surround it. It was a very clear cold morning, the snow glittered like a crust of diamonds, the sky was like a concave of sapphire, the gold of the great pumpkin blazed in the boy's eyes. Somehow, carrying it, and being himself just twisted aside in his own growth to another course, as the vine which had borne the pumpkin might have been, he began to look over the great golden sphere which he was bearing so painfully, as if he were looking above all the golden dross of earth.

The inscription is said to remain to this day; if you were to go there you would probably see it.

Lottie Green lives nearly a mile out of his way, in one direction, Lurinda half a mile in another. When the quilting bee disbanded Lottie, after lingering and looking back with sweetly-pleading eyes from under her pretty white rigolette, went down the road with Lydia Wheelock's husband; Lurinda slipped forlornly up the road in the wake of a fond young couple, keeping close behind them for protection against the dangers of the night, and Mr. Lucius Downey went home by himself.

But Anne, riding along on the pillion behind her father, with the note of the Sabbath conch-shell ringing in her ears, past the gorgeous laurel-bushes and the flowering fruit-trees, was much more in accord with them and all beauty of youth and spring than she had been before, for the true spirit of obedience to love, as a reason for bloom and beauty, was in her soul.

The two sisters continued sewing on the doll's clothes while the light lasted, their heads bent close together with loving accord, and the doll was between them, smiling with inscrutable inanity.

“Well, there's one thing about it,” said Mrs. Kemp, brokenly, “there sha'n't one Decoration day go by as long as I live, without Sylvester's grave being trimmed as handsome as if his mother was alive!”

Then they rode on until they reached the country where the prince lived and where primroses would not grow. Then they crossed the border and were safe. Even had the spring giant come up with them he could not have changed My Lady Primrose into a flower. She shed tears of joy as they rode along to the king's palace. “I am so happy,” said she. “It would have been so sad to have been a primrose instead of a princess with your true heart to keep all my life.”

“I wanted to make sure that my son had come back,” said she. Then she turned to Minnie. “I opened the windows in your brother John's room this morning,” said she. “Now I think you had better go and make up the bed.”

For it is true, that in the mind of one who sees clearly the Face of his own Country, for whom he has held himself as naught, the Composite of his own Race, of its ties of joy and earthly sorrow, and its hopes for the Hereafter, there can exist the full comprehension of no other love in life.

Adoniram was like a fortress whose walls had no active resistance, and went down the instant the right besieging tools were used. “Why, mother,” he said, hoarsely, “I hadn't no idee you was so set on't as all this comes to.”

“Everybody in this world means to be pretty good to other folks,” she muttered to herself, “and when they ain't, it ain't always their fault; sometimes it's other folks'.”

It came to be a sort of a by-word in the Agnew family after that. Whenever any dispute arose among the girls, one of them was sure to say: “I guess we had better drink some tea out of Polly's pink cups.” And it acted like a talisman in restoring good nature.

“Put away your poor mother's stone very carefully,” said Ruth, with tears in her eyes. “It seems to me that her love and suffering and death have made it a real emerald, after all, and made it true that your father gave it to her. Put away your poor mother's emerald very carefully, Jim dear, just as she kept it.”

Then her father called up the stairs: “Lois! Lois! John's begun work on the new house again!”

Six months later Miss Willis was found one morning dead in her bed. She had died peacefully in her sleep. When her personal effects were administered there was noticed on the mantelpiece in her sitting-room a mounted tintype, on the paper back of which were two inscriptions. Of these the upper, in faded ink, contained a date forty years prior, and the legend “From Jimmy.” The other, recent and written with the pen of an elderly person, ran as follows, “Portrait of the President of the United States as a school-boy.”

“Why, the poor old thing!” she said. “She never opened the box of candy I sent her on Christmas.” She did not understand, as she looked at the white package with its unviolated blue ribbon, that it was a precious casket full of little saved-up Christmas joy of a human life. Rosemary had found the true essence of Christmas in the gift she never saw.

Sylvia felt rather ashamed to tell her grandmother, but she did, and old Mrs. Renfrew colored up and looked pleased; still she spoke quite decidedly in reply. “Compliments are all very well,” said she, “but it's just as well for little girls not to set much story by them. Now, if you want to sit out on the door-step you can, and you may call those three little girls in when they go by and give them two roses apiece.”

When they passed Jerome's house they did not see him, but he was peering at them from behind a curtain. An unhappy man, who held ever his ear to life as if it were a shell, and heard in its mighty and universal murmur only allusions to himself. Jerome, miserable, possessed with his gigantic demon of vanity, peered at the young pair passing smilingly down the street; but they did not know it, and over them on the right, hung the silvery crescent of the new moon.

“I declared,” said Uncle Thomas Barlow, to the committeeman nearest his own age, who was a crony of his, as they were going home after the call was ended, “I don't know but every-one of those little fellows ought to be given a sound whipping, but I know one thing — that boy of John's a smart fellow, yes, he is, holding his tongue rather than have the little one blamed. He ought to have been pummelled for making his father and mother all that trouble, he ought. But he's a smart fellow, and so is the Dickinson boy, though I guess Thomas is the leading spirit. And I know one thing, those boys are going to have those jack-knives, and that little Chase boy isn't going to be let to grow up like the rest of the Chases if I can help it.”

“Better,” said Laura.

They looked into each other's loving faces, dim in the soft dusk, yet with the love plainly visible. Katydids were calling from the wayside bushes; the meadows were as a firmament with fireflies; little sighs of flower-sweet wind saluted them. There was still a soft sunset glow. The sky was a dapple of light clouds which the rising moon was beginning to gild. Both were very happy, but their happiness was as nothing to that of the old man's walking ahead, who had at last triumphed meekly over all his deeds of life.

“I don't know but I shall go to filling up jars with them, like Clarissa,” said Anne.

But what's the use of writing that? Lorraine is on to all that. But, my pickles! won't there be a circus when Alice finds out that I've known things she didn't! Won't Alice be hopping — gee.

When I got into the house the first thing I saw was Billy sneaking out of the back door. I had meant to have a long and earnest talk with Billy the minute he got home, and point out some of his serious faults, but when I looked at him I saw that mamma or grandma had just done it. He looked red eyed and miserable, and the minute he saw me he began to whistle. Billy never whistles except just before or just after a whipping, so my heart sank, and I was dreadfully sorry for him. I started after him to tell him so, but he made a face at me and ran; and just then Aunt Elizabeth came along the hall and dragged me up to her room and began to ask me all over again about Mr. Goward and all that he said — whether I was perfectly sure he didn't mention any name. She looked worried and unhappy. Then she asked about Lorraine, but in an indifferent voice, as if she was really thinking about something else. I told her all I knew, but she didn't say a word or pay much attention until I mentioned that the man in the photograph was Mr. Lyman Wilde. Then — well, I wish you had seen Aunt Elizabeth! She made me promise afterwards that I'd never tell a single soul what happened, and I won't. But I do wish sometimes that Billy and I lived on a desert island, where there wasn't anybody else. I just can't bear being home when everybody is so unhappy, and when not a single thing I do helps the least little bit!

Every morning, while Sarah lay ill, the neighbors used to go to her door and inquire in whispers how she fared of the woman who had watched. Every day they used to look often at the single diagonal sweep of the white tassel-fringed curtain across the east chamber window. One afternoon when the children were coming home from school they looked, and the curtain was down.

After he had done that, he opened the door, and a puff of that same strange odor which I had noticed about the child, came in my face. He took the lantern and stepped down and into the tomb, and I after him. All of a sudden he stopped short, and caught hold of my arm. There, on the floor of the tomb, in the lantern-light, right before us, lay the doll, and the primer.

Catherine and John were married on the 5th of April, and went to live in the new house. People speculated as to what the quarrel between them had been about and how they happened to become reconciled. They prophesied that they would not be happy. “Both of them are too set and too close to ever get along,” said they. But they became as a model of married happiness. They were radiant in love for and utterly content in each other. And John Greason, living with his wife as the years passed and her beauty dimmed and wontedness dulled somewhat the first color of existence for both of them, realized that the little secret of hers which he had never known, that one bit of her own individuality which was outside his ken, caused her to always retain for his lifelong charm her virgin mystery; and her lined but sweet forehead between her silvering folds of hair was always haloed by that thought behind it which he had never known and never would know.

As I have already said, the prince is dead, and Le Grand is dead; I alone remain of those who were mixed up in the affair, and I am glad to have this opportunity of clearing up one of the most curious episodes in modern history.

“I am better,” said she; “I am going to get well now. I have lain here long enough.”

Serena Ann herself was so tired and sleepy that she could not fairly realize anything. It seemed to her like a dream: the chorus of surprise and delight, Mr. Solomon's and Miss Pamela's coming into the house and getting warm, and eating supper, and borrowing a foot-stove, before they started on their homeward journey, and everything. She scarcely even grasped in its full measure of delight the fact that Miss Pamela presented her with the rosewood workbox and the doll when she kissed her good-by, but Serena Ann had gotten one of the pleasantest memories of her life, and had her first Christmas-keeping.

At all events, Serena Ann had her valentine, her first one. And she never had any doubt as to who had given it to her: it was Johnny Starr, and he had bought it with his huckleberry money, which he had shaken out of his iron bank.

“Yes, sir,” said Benjamin, and he got down on his knees and hugged Seventoes.

However, when he went home that Sunday night, and told the story of Lydia's walking barefooted to save her shoes, and pleaded his cause, his mother relented, and Lydia wore the red morocco shoes, five years old at that date, but as good as new, to her wedding, and walked in them, so to speak, out of her girlhood.

Caroline and her sister Emma entered the study. Caroline set the lamp on the table. They looked at the wall, and there were two shadows. The sisters stood clutching each other, staring at the awful things on the wall. Then Rebecca came in, staggering, with a telegram in her hand. “Here is — a telegram,” she gasped. “Henry is — dead.”

The old woman said nothing. She sat in her chair and watched everybody passing by the house to church. She watched her nieces and her grandniece go out of the yard and down the street with their Easter headgear. Then the church bell stopped tolling and the clock began to tick. She had her Bible in her lap, as always on a Sunday. She felt it to be a matter of conscience, although she was not very much interested in the Bible. Now she did not look in it at all. Instead she thought of Hannah Anderson in the violet-trimmed hat, and being so old, she became again confused. It was to her as if she herself, wearing the hat, were sitting in the pew in church and her beautiful young face was looking out from under it at the minister, and the choir singing behind a row of Easter lilies in pots. And she felt the hat upon her old gray head, which had never in life known such an innocent feminine decoration, as warm and light as a halo, and a brightness seemed cast from it down into her eyes and her very soul.

The trees arched like arbors with the weight of the wild grapes, which made the air sweet; the night insects called from the bushes; Deerfield village and the whole valley lay in the moonlight like a landscape of silver. The lovers stood in each other's arms, motionless, and seemingly fixed as the New England flora around them, as if they too might reappear hundreds of spring-times hence, with their loves as fairly in blossom.

Then all the scholars cried out with delight, the Christmas-bells in the village began to ring, the silver hen flew up on the fence and crowed, the sun shone broadly out, and it was a merry Christmas-day.

“No, you weren't silly one bit, Edith. See here, I'm going to make you a promise: I'll never tease you again, as long as I live, and I will always tell you things right square out. When anybody takes every thing earnest like you, it isn't right not to talk every thing earnest to them. I've brought you over some beautiful jelly, Edith.”

“I — want to tell you — somethin',” Polly repeated. “I s'pose I've been dretful wicked, but I 'ain't never had nothin' in my whole life. I — s'pose the Lord orter have been enough, but it's dretful hard sometimes to keep holt of Him, an' not look anywheres else, when you see other folks a-clawin' an' gettin' other things, an' actin' as if they was wuth havin'. I 'ain't never had nothin' as fur as them other things go; I don't want nothin' else now. I've — got past 'em. I see I don't want nothin' but the Lord. But I used to feel dretful bad an' wicked when I heerd you all talkin' 'bout things you'd had, an' I hadn't never had nothin', so —” Polly Moss stopped talking, and coughed. The matron supported her. The old women nudged each other; their awed, sympathetic, yet sharply inquiring eyes never left her face. The children were peeping in at the open door; old Sally trotted past — she had just torn her bed to pieces. As soon as she got breath enough, Polly Moss finished what she had to say. “I — s'pose I — was dretful wicked,” she whispered; “but — I never had any sister Liddy.”

“No.”

But he still had the sense of blessing which had come to him from his wrestling with that which was the holiest and best of earth and humanity, but which had come between himself and the best of himself.

After dinner Henry attacked his work with his old magnificent energy. Some souls are truly themselves and truly at home only on the battle-fields, great or petty, of their lives. Henry was one of them. Steeled to meet disaster, he had a strange weakness, which might in time have tended to deterioration before ease and happiness. He harked eagerly back to the fight, which was, after all, the love of his life.

Nicholas opened the door; he was going down to the spring for more water; he saw a flock of sparrows in the bushes across the road, and stopped; then he set his pail down noiselessly and went back for a piece of bread. He broke it and scattered the crumbs before the door, then went off a little way and stood watching. When the sparrows settled down upon the crumbs, he laughed softly, and went on toward the spring over the shining crust of snow.

“Yes, sorrows pass,” came fugue-wise, like a song of the night wind.

“She went to New York,” said my mother-in-law, “on the 5.40 train.”

Daniel asked no more questions. Presently the child fell asleep in his arms; and he sat there for a long time, holding him, and looking straight ahead, with an expression as if he saw a bright future.

Nelly emerged from the front door. At the same time the door in the next house opened, and Julius, pale and trembling and smiling, came out. Nelly moved to meet him under the apple branches, tall and stately and beautiful, shimmering in her white-satin wedding gown, her golden head gleaming, her face full of love.

“Never as long as I live will I tell you what I thought you would see, and you must never ask me,” said she. “I am going to sell this house.”

Emmeline got off the bed; with her letter in her hand she went over to her mother, and kissed her shyly on her soft old cheek. “I'm real sorry I spoke so, mother.”

It was a month later when Sarah came home from Florence's one evening — she had been there to tea. She entered the room and stood smiling at her mother a minute. Her eyes were shining, her cheeks were almost as rosy as Florence's. “Mother,” she said, “I've got the Elliot School.”

That night she tied in the palm-leaf strand again, and she put the sixpence in her Geography-book, and she kept it so safely all her life that her great-grandchildren have seen it.

But the Squirrel and his mate, whose ancestors had held the whole land, and the fruit thereof, in feudal tenure to the Creator of it all, since the beginning of things, had different views. They were in the woods champing their supper of shagbarks, and often finding a wormy one, and they considered that the Farmer had stolen their nuts.

After she had gone, William, sitting alone, realized that out of the pain of pity had blossomed love. He smelled the spicy, pungent odor of the Christmas greens. The holly berries gleamed out like jewels. The fir boughs became emblematic of the eternal healing of all earthly need and sorrow, and of the everlasting endurance of youth through winter and age. He was not a young man. He had lived peacefully, but not entirely. Even now the sun might not shine for him with morning splendor, nor the moon with its meaning of young romance, but there was still much left. The star of Christmas seemed to shine out for his following, and be sufficient to light his whole path. He was inexpressibly happy.

Above the tree tops showed in a clear sharp triangle Seth Snow's church steeple. Presently there pealed out in a dissonant jangle his cracked bell. But since all discords may become harmonious under some circumstances, that old Sabbath bell rang out for the two lovers a chime of prophecy of endless happiness.

We went home that night feeling sure, and we have felt sure ever since, that we had never in our lives eaten, nor ever should eat, such a supper as the one we missed at the Stockwells' apple-paring bee.

“I mean you 'ain't been stealing as much as you thought you had,” said Mr. White. “You just took your own bundle.”

“A year ago,” Seth sobbed out, “I — went to Powell to — buy a hat.” Seth reached down, took his hat from under the seat, and extended it. “It was — too big for me, as — this one is.” Seth put on the hat with trembling hands, and it slipped well down over his ears; he kept it on in his forgetful excitement, and continued: “I — bought the hat at — C. F. Lamson's store, and — I — started for home on the railroad train. I had my ticket all bought, and had paid a quarter for it. I wasn't intendin' to do wrong. But the conductor — he — never come near me. I had the ticket ready, but he never come near me; and when I got home, I had that ticket, not punched nor nothin', and jest as good as ever 'twas. And — the hat was too big — it seemed as if the tempter was fairly crowdin' at my heels — and my wife said I'd have to take it back to Powell and — change; and she was at me till I did. I went over there in about a week; and I took the hat to C. F. Lamson's store, and changed it, and got this hat that's jest as big.” (Suddenly Seth remembered, and caught the hat from his head.) “But that ain't any matter. The matter is — that — when I come home from Powell that night, I come home on that ticket the conductor had forgot to take before, and I'd given in to the tempter.” Again Seth gave that curious backward glance over his shoulder, and the eyes of the people followed his. Then he made a strong backward sweep with his right arm, as if he were thrusting with some unseen and mighty sword of the spirit. His old voice rang out like a trumpet. “But I've got the better of him now,” he shouted. “He's been doggin' me my whole life to make me sin my besettin' sin, and at last he did it. But now I've got the better of him. Let us pray.”

It seemed to her that she was on a pinnacle of thanksgiving for the present. She scarcely, for a moment, remembered the past, and she certainly had no prevision of the future, in which she was to live with her children in the old MacFarland house, she taking the place of Mrs. Maria Gore as caretaker, while Maria was pensioned and sent West to live with a niece. She watched her children eat, and she ate also, but as for herself, she realized no savor except that of a universal love and kindness which she had not thought existed, and an enormous thankfulness to God, and a comradeship with all who partook of his bounty.

Mrs. Jefferson with trembling fingers unrolled rag after rag. At last came a clean white one. Then she saw a pair of little vases and a slip of paper. On this was written, “Fur Mis' Jeffson to set on her parler shelf.” In the same white cloth, wrapped separately in tissue-paper, was something else. Mrs. Jefferson could hardly see that for the tears. It was a delicate little Parian flower girl. On its slip of paper was written, “Fur Him.”

She always wondered if she did right, and if she should not have reproved, rather than kissed her, — but she had not detracted from her merry Christmas.

Some people in Fairville sent hot-house flowers — crosses and wreaths of roses and carnations; but we in Susanville cut off all the blossoms on our house plants — geraniums and calla-lilies and oleanders; there was not a flower to be seen in a window in Susanville. Histories are written about great queens when they are dead, but no one will ever write a history about Susan of Susanville, so I am writing this, because I lived next door to her for thirty years, and I know it is all true.

“No,” said I, “I never did.”

She visited Selma again rather often, spending week-ends. They were closer friends than they had ever been, and Clara never knew the explanation of what she had unwittingly seen and heard. It suited her obvious mind better to believe that a niece of Selma's had really been in the house and had a love-affair, and for some unexplainable reason had been concealed from her. She had not the imagination to conceive of the other possibility — that some characters, like some flowers, may have within themselves the power of perennial bloom, if only for an hour or a day, and may revisit, with such rapture of tenderness that it hardly belongs to earth, their own youth and springtime, in the never-dying garden of love and sweet romance.

“Thank you,” said Nancy, in a sober voice, but the dark depths of the Shaker bonnet seemed fairly illumined with smiles.

But when the wind had gone down, and the sun was bright, and he lay in a drunken sleep, Miranda came out in her garden, and tied up tenderly her sweet-williams that had been beaten down by the storm.

“Miss Munson died last winter,” said Mrs. Leonard, looking reflectively across the street. “She was laid out in a lilac-colored cashmere gown; it was her request. She always wore lilac, you know. Well” (with a sigh) “I do believe that Caroline Munson, if she is an angel — and I suppose she is — doesn't look much more different from what she did before than those lilacs over there do from last year's ones.”

There was a leap of bare feet over the bridge, and Jane came out from the swarm of flower butterflies, with undefined conviction that brought comfort in her childish heart, that, however tall she grew, although she might outgrow all her dresses, she would never outgrow love.

“You would be, ef you was her mother,” said her sister, simply.

The pleasant patience in Inez's face was more pathetic than tears. “I guess there's a good many folks find it the same way with their honey in this world,” said she. “To-morrow, if it's pleasant, we'll drive to Boston, and get you a new dress, mother.”

Submit looked across a second in speechless radiance. Then the faces vanished from the two little windows, and Submit and Sarah went down to their Thanksgiving dinners.

“If Phebe's nephews and nieces send her as much this Thanksgiving as they did last, and she says they're sure to — they're so rich they're worried about their souls' salvation — we're going to ask the Slossons over again. And there's going to be a Thanksgiving again this year for somebody else besides hens.”

Well, Mrs. Todd's special Thanksgiving has divided our sewing circle. Half side with her, and half believe she told a wicked lie, and it not fit to associate with us in mission work. To this day nobody knows whether she really had that special Thanksgiving, when she was seven years old or not; but the sewing circle is divided, and this week, before Thanksgiving, one part meets with Mrs. Henry Mixter, and the other part meets with ME.

Mrs. Packer henceforth cooked her dinner with one eye on the window. First she saw Sophia return hurriedly; then, when it was almost time for meeting to be out, Sam Brightman and his wife, his daughter, and the three little white-headed children, all keeping step as if to some gladness in their hearts, like a little gala procession, and they all went in Sophia Hurd's front gate.

The old Bride passed up the aisle with her old Bridegroom, and a smile of youth that triumphed over age and memory shone on her old face through her white veil, and no one ever knew whether she wore her own or her sister's wedding-gown, or had wedded her own or her sister's old Beau.

If this sage did not live in our village what should we all be? Should we ever go anywhere without spoiling our best bonnets? Should we have any wisdom at all unless we paid the highest market price for it? And we could not do that, because we are all poor. What shall we do when our wise man is gathered to his fathers? We dare not contemplate that.

“Thank you, uncle Jack,” said Letitia gravely. Then she got her square of patchwork off the table and sat down and finished sewing it over and over.

But Charlotte smiled. At the last she had learned her little lesson of obedience and thrift against all her instincts, and all her waste of life was over.

Cornelia wondered, standing under the tree, clad still in the dress of splendid brocade which she had worn at Annie's wedding: there were gold and silver threads in it. The sun sank, and the orange light on the tree paled. Cornelia gazed down the darkening curve of road. Annie was wedded and gone, all her own romance was dead, and she was left alone; yet her peace did not fail her, nor her anticipation of joy to come, for she had thrust herself and her own needs and sorrows so far behind her trimmed and burning lamp of love that she had become, as it were, a wedding-guest of all life.

“Sleepy-dear, sleepy-dear, husher-bye!” she crooned softly to the music in her happy heart.

That was the last time they ever saw her. The next morning Mrs. Childs, going to call her, found her room vacant. There was a great alarm. When they did not find her in the house nor the neighborhood, people were aroused, and there was a search instigated. It was prosecuted eagerly, but to no purpose. Then advertisements were sent to the papers; every effort was made to find her. But when Christine stood in the sitting-room door and said good-night, her friends had their last sight of her and sound of her. Their Twelfth Guest had departed from their hospitality forever.

“You know the French saying, father,” added Paul, “‘In the realm of the blind the one-eyed man is king.’”

The two old sisters lay listening to the soft, unintelligible murmur of love from below, and their room was quite full of cigar-smoke, so full that they could not sleep.

“Sarah,” said Abby, “I wouldn't have had John Marshall if he'd come on his knees after me all the way from Mexico!”

He looked up at her with a strange wonder in his glazing eyes. “Maria” — a thin, husky voice, that was more like a wind through dry corn stalks, said — “Maria, I'm — dyin', an' — I allers meant to — have asked you — to — marry me.”

They lived together afterward in the little house in the woods, and were happy with a strange crystallized happiness at which they would have mocked in their youth, but which they now recognized as the essential of all happiness upon earth. And always the woman knew what she knew about her husband, and the man knew about his wife, and each recognized the other as old lover and sweetheart come together at last, but always each kept the knowledge from the other with an infinite tenderness of delicacy which was as a perfumed garment veiling the innermost sacredness of love.

Uncle Davy looked up at her suddenly, his honest face gleaming out of the folds of the blanket. “You mustn't feel so bad, Sarah,” said he. “I untied Car'line.”

Rose said no more. She sat beside the window. It was a wonderfully bright moonlight night, and they had not lit the lamps. The field across the road from the house stretched in vast levels of silver light. It seemed to Rose that she could see the underling coming across the field with a glory of his good motives around his head, and bent no longer beneath the burden of his earthly deeds, and she felt like his bride.

Mrs. Mead drew a long breath. “Well,” said she, “there can't anybody say that that unlucky Christmas didn't end in happy marriages.”

“I rather guess I know when I see 'em.”

Maria Primrose entered her old home to pass the remainder of her life in lonely and unavailing regret and a dulness which was not peace; the two curious old women hustled guiltily out of the kitchen window; Abel Rice went his solemn and miserable way; and the young lovers passed happily forth, starting up before her like doves. There had been a wreck, and the sight of it had prevented another.

Meantime, in spite of the minister and the committeemen and the scruples of the community as to the deception, there was in some degree truth in the myth of Santa Claus for that night, at least in the school house of District No. 2, for the poor little school teacher, who thought he had passed her by for her whole life.

He did not tell the agent nor any of his family what had caused him to start when told the name of the former owners of the lot. He remembered all at once the story of a ghastly murder which had taken place in the Blue Leopard. The victim's name was Gaston and the murderer had never been discovered.

“She wore it,” said Dora.

Sarah looked, and she saw only the meadow covered with a short waving crop of golden-rod, and over it the splendid blue of the September sky.

Candace lay and listened. Her face had a holy and radiant expression. When Alma stopped singing it did not disappear, but she looked up and spoke, and it was like a secondary glimpse of the old shape of a forest tree through the smoke and flame of the transfiguring fire the instant before it falls. “You flatted a little on — soul,” said Candace.

“Then eat your supper, and keep still.”

“I also,” said Arthur, advancing with extended hand. Marion rose and shook hands. Both brothers kissed Adeline upon the pure triangle of white forehead between her fair waves of hair. Then they went out, and the lovers were alone with the clock, whose tick sounded in their ears like the oldest love song of time, to be repeated forever while the world endures.

“When the sick folks get well, the doctor goes,” he said to himself.

The next Sunday, Caroline Mann wore the first new dress of her life to meeting. She tried not to be proud, and to think more of the day and the needs of her soul, than fine apparel, but the dress was so pretty, the very dress of her dream — pink French calico, with crossbars of white inclosing rosebuds — that it seemed to cast a radiance over her very thoughts. She could not help smiling, though she tried to look sober as befitted the day, and her grandmother kept glancing at her with a proud and satisfied expression, though she had charged her seriously to remember that — “Pretty is that pretty does.”

“I declare,” said the neighbor, finally, “she's got a pretty voice, ain't she? All I kin think of is a bluebird singin', when he first comes back in the spring.”

In the meantime the present Sarah keeps her great-grandmother's desk in her parlor, but she does not write letters.

His prediction came true, for Sereny Maria married Nathan Goodnow, after a year at a private school, wherein she obtained some knowledge of botany, philosophy and astronomy, and became a pattern housewife of her native village.

Years afterward, when Joe was practising law in the city, and came home for a visit, and Sarah Jane was so grown up that she wore a white muslin hat with rosebuds, and a black silk mantilla, to church, she knew the whole story, and they had a laugh over it.

They did not stop for this now. They shouted to Jenny to “come in, quick!” They pulled her with soft violence into the room where they had been at work. Then the child stood with her hands clasped, staring at the Christmas-tree. All too far away had she been searching for it. The Christmas-tree grew not on the wild mountain-side, in the lonely woods, but at home, close to warm, loving hearts; and that was where she found it.

He sat a long time leaning against the white birch-tree through whose boughs a soft wind came at intervals, and made a gentle musical rustle of twinkling leaves, and the tree did not fairly know that the wind was not stirring the leaves of her lost sisters, and the man's love and sense of primeval comfort were so great that he was still filled with the peace of possession.

“I too,” said Sloane.

All the bells in the steeples rang for Christmas, and for joy, because the epidemic of discontent was over. The White Witch shut the storehouse door and went into her own house. She sat down beside her own hearth and knitted on the architectural lace, while the twelve white robins sat on their silver perch and sang a Christmas carol.

Mistress Hapgood had baked a fresh sheet of Johnny-cake that was thinner and browner than the others had been; she had skimmed more cream, and dealt out a liberal dish of sauce. Priscilla sat up and partook. The taste of the food was very pleasant; her shoulders still tingled from the birch rod, and the distinction between the right and wrong of a doubtful action was quite plain to her mind.

They had probably not realized it in the least, but the monotony of their lives had told upon them as well as upon their niece. They had become wearily stagnated. Now all was changed. In spite of their natural grief, when Adeline had married Elias Farwell and gone away to live, they seemed to acquire an after-bloom in their old age. It was all due to the willow-ware. “It would be fairly cruel to tell them,” said Elias to Adeline, when her conscience smote her, and he was right. Not a day but had its savor of mystery and excitement — because — who could tell if the willow-ware would be on its accustomed shelves when the china-closet door was opened or not? It was a shock of happiness which acted like some subtle stimulant for their spirits when they found the china intact. The ever-present wonder if they might not find it was another. Even Dr. Akers wrote new sermons under this strange influence. He went home in those days from the Weaver mansion feeling an odd mental strengthening after a discussion about the willow-ware. Right or wrong, they had all gotten a jolt towards happiness out of their ruts of life, which had been wearing their very souls bare of youth and hope.

“Thomas Amblecrom.”

Adeline said nothing. She gazed soberly at the bowl, but the sunlight reflected from its sides cast over her face a rosy glow, as of the joy which comes after sinning and repentance.

Old Elma stood watching them with her face of pure joy, and all the fierceness and the bitter grief of injury received from those whom she had not injured faded from her heart. She forgot the strange book which she had studied, she forgot her power of strange deeds, she forgot herself, and remembered nothing, nothing save her daughter and her love, and such bliss possessed her that she could stand no longer upon the silver shield of the meadow. She sank down slowly as a flower sinks when its time has come before the sun and the wind which have given it life, and she lay still at the feet of her daughter and the youth, and they stooped over her and they knew that she had been no witch, but a great lover.

“I know that,” said Flora, “but I'm going to keep things right side out after this. I got up this morning at 4 o'clock and turned the parlor carpet. I had my way yesterday, but this morning I've given it to him for a Christmas present.”

“I know one thing,” said Abby Simson. “It must be a boy baby, it hollers so.”

Young Lucretia's eyes shone more than ever, and she smiled out of her corner like a little star.