Chapter III: Part 3

"I ain't had my bunnit off sence I come," announced Isabel, entering with some bustle, and taking her stand, until he should be seated, within the darkest corner of the hearth. "I've had to turn to an' clear up, or I shouldn't ha' found a spot as big as a hin's egg to sleep in to-night. Maybe you don't know it, but my niece Isabel's got no more faculty about a house'n I have for preachin'--not a mite."

The parson had seated himself by the stove, and was laboriously removing his arctics. Isabel's eyes danced behind her spectacles as she thought how large and ministerial they were. She could not see them, for the spectacles dazzled her, but she remembered exactly how they looked. Everything about him filled her with glee, now that she was safe, though within his reach. "'Now, infidel,'" she said noiselessly, "'I have thee on the hip!'"

The parson had settled himself in his accustomed attitude when making parochial calls. He put the tips of his fingers together, and opened conversation in his tone of mild goodwill:--

"I don't seem to be able to place you. A relative of Miss Isabel's, did you say?"

She laughed huskily. She was absorbed in putting more suet into her voice.

"You make me think of uncle Peter Nudd," she replied, "when he was took up into Bunker Hill Monument. Albert took him, one o' the boys that lived in Boston. Comin' down, they met a woman Albert knew, an' he bowed. Uncle Peter looked round arter her, an' then he says to Albert, 'I dunno's I rightly remember who that is!'"

The parson uncrossed his legs and crossed them the other way. The old lady began to seem to him a thought too discursive, if not hilarious.

"I know so many of the people in the various parishes"--he began, but he was interrupted without compunction.

"You never'd know me. I'm from out West. Isabel's father's brother married my uncle--no, I would say my step-niece. An' so I'm her aunt. By adoption, 't ennyrate. We al'ays call it so, leastways when we're writin' back an' forth. An' I've heard how Isabel was goin' on, an' so I ketched up my bunnit, an' put for Tiverton. 'If she ever needed her own aunt,' says I--'her aunt by adoption--she needs her now.'"

Once or twice, during the progress of this speech, the visitor had shifted his position, as if ill at ease. Now he bent forward, and peered at his hostess.

"Isabel is well?" he began tentatively.

"Well enough! But, my sakes! I'd ruther she'd be sick abed or paraletic than carry on as she does. Slack? My soul! I wisht you could see her sink closet! I wisht you could take one look over the dirty dishes she leaves round, not washed from one week's end to another!"

"But she's always neat. She looks like an--an angel!"

Isabel could not at once suppress the gratified note which crept of itself into her voice.

"That's the outside o' the cup an' platter," she said knowingly. "I thank my stars she ain't likely to marry. She'd turn any man's house upside down inside of a week."

The parson made a deprecating noise in his throat. He seemed about to say something, and thought better of it.

"It may be," he hesitated, after a moment,--"it may be her studies take up too much of her time. I have always thought these elocution lessons"--

"Oh, my land!" cried Isabel, in passionate haste. She leaned forward as if she would implore him. "That's her only salvation. That's the makin' of her. If you stop her off there, I dunno but she'd jine a circus or take to drink! Don't you dast to do it! I'm in the family, an' I know."

The parson tried vainly to struggle out of his bewilderment.

"But," said he, "may I ask how you heard these reports? Living in Illinois, as you do--did you say Illinois or Iowa?"

"Neither," answered Isabel desperately. "'Way out on the plains. It's the last house afore you come to the Rockies. 'Law! you can't tell how a story gits started, nor how fast it will travel. 'Tain't like a gale o' wind; the weather bureau ain't been invented that can cal'late it. I heard of a man once that told a lie in California, an' 'fore the week was out it broke up his engagement in New Hampshire. There's the 'tater-bug--think how that travels! So with this. The news broke out in Missouri, an' here I be."

"I hope you will be able to remain."

"Only to-night," she said in haste. More and more nervous, she was losing hold on the sequence of her facts. "I'm like mortal life, here to-day an' there to-morrer. In the mornin' I sha'n't be found." ("But Isabel will," she thought, from a remorse which had come too late, "and she'll have to lie, or run away. Or cut a hole in the ice and drown herself!")

"I'm sorry to have her lose so much of your visit," began the parson courteously, but still perplexing himself over the whimsies of an old lady who flew on from the West, and made nothing of flying back. "If I could do anything towards finding her"--

"I know where she is," said Isabel unhappily. "She's as well on't as she can be, under the circumstances. There's on'y one thing you could do. If you should be willin' to keep it dark t you've seen me, I should be real beholden to ye. You know there ain't no time to call in the neighborhood, an' such things make talk, an' all. An' if you don't speak out to Isabel, so much the better. Poor creatur', she's got enough to bear without that!" Her voice dropped meltingly in the keenness of her sympathy for the unfortunate girl who, embarrassed enough before, had deliberately set for herself another snare. "I feel for Isabel," she continued, in the hope of impressing him with the necessity for silence and inaction. "I do feel for her! Oh, gracious me! What's that?"

A decided rap had sounded at the front door. The parson rose also, amazed at her agitation.

"Somebody knocked," he said. "Shall I go to the door?"

"Oh, not yet, not yet!" cried Isabel, clasping her hands under her cashmere shawl. "Oh, what shall I do?"

Her natural voice had asserted itself, but, strangely enough, the parson did not comprehend. The entire scene was too bewildering. There came a second knock. He stepped toward the door, but Isabel darted in front of him. She forgot her back breadth, and even through that dim twilight the scarlet of her gown shone ruddily out. She placed herself before the door.

"Don't you go!" she entreated hoarsely. "Let me think what I can say."

Then the parson had his first inkling that the strange visitor must be mad. He wondered at himself for not thinking of it before, and the idea speedily coupled itself with Isabel's strange disappearance. He stepped forward and grasped her arm, trembling under the cashmere shawl.

"Woman," he demanded sternly, "what have you done with Isabel North?"

Isabel was thinking; but the question, twice repeated, brought her to herself. She began to laugh, peal on peal of hysterical mirth; and the parson, still holding her arm, grew compassionate.

"Poor soul!" said he soothingly. "Poor soul! sit down here by the stove and be calm--be calm!"

Isabel was overcome anew.

"Oh, it isn't so!" she gasped, finding breath. "I'm not crazy. Just let me be!"

She started under his detaining hand, for the knock had come again. Wrenching herself free, she stepped into the entry. "Who's there?" she called.

"It's your aunt Mary Ellen," came a voice from the darkness. "Open the door."

"O my soul!" whispered Isabel to herself. "Wait a minute!" she continued. "Only a minute!"

She thrust the parson back into the sitting-room, and shut the door. The act relieved her. If she could push a minister, and he could obey in such awkward fashion, he was no longer to be feared. He was even to be refused. Isabel felt equal to doing it.

"Now, look here," said she rapidly; "you stand right there while I take off these things. Don't you say a word. No, Mr. Bond, don't you speak!" Bonnet, false front, and spectacles were tossed in a tumultuous pile.

"Isabel!" gasped the parson.

"Keep still!" she commanded. "Here! fold this shawl!"

The parson folded it neatly, and meanwhile Isabel stepped out of the mutilated dress, and added that also to the heap. She opened the blue chest, and packed the articles hastily within. "Here!" said she; "toss me the shawl. Now if you say one word--Oh, parson, if you only will keep still, I'll tell you all about it! That is, I guess I can!" And leaving him standing in hopeless coma, she opened the door.

"Well," said aunt Mary Ellen, stepping in, "I'm afraid your hinges want greasing. How do you do, Isabel? How do you do?" She put up her face and kissed her niece. Aunt Mary Ellen was so pretty, so round, so small, that she always seemed timid, and did the commonest acts of life with a gentle grace. "I heard voices," she said, walking into the sitting-room. "Sadie here?"

The parson had stepped forward, more bent than usual, for he was peering down into her face.

"Mary Ellen!" he exclaimed.

The little woman looked up at him--very sadly, Isabel thought.

"Yes, William," she answered. But she was untying her bonnet, and she did not offer to shake hands.

Isabel stood by with downcast eyes, waiting to take her things, and aunt Mary Ellen looked searchingly up at her as she laid her mittens on the pile. The girl, without a word, went into the bedroom, and her aunt followed her.

"Isabel," said she rapidly, "I saw the chest. Have you burnt the things?"

"No," answered Isabel in wonder. "No."

"Then don't you! don't you touch 'em for the world." She went back into the sitting-room, and Isabel followed. The candle was guttering, and aunt Mary Ellen pushed it toward her. "I don't know where the snuffers are," she said. "Lamp smoke?"

Isabel did not answer, but she lighted the lamp. She had never seen her aunt so full of decision, so charged with an unfamiliar power. She felt as if strange things were about to happen. The parson was standing awkwardly. He wondered whether he ought to go; Aunt Mary Ellen smoothed her brown hair with both hands, sat down, and pointed to his chair.

"Sit a spell," she said. "I guess I shall have something to talk over with you."

The parson sat down. He tried to put his fingers together, but they trembled, and he clasped his hands instead.

"It's a long time since we've seen you in Tiverton," he began.

"It would have been longer," she answered, "but I felt as if my niece needed me."

Here Isabel, to her own surprise, gave a little sob, and then another. She began crying angrily into her handkerchief.

"Isabel," said her aunt, "is there a fire in the kitchen?"

"Yes," sobbed the girl.

"Well, you go out there and lie down on the lounge till you feel better. Cover you over and don't be cold. I'll call you when there's anything for you to do."

Tall Isabel rose and walked out, wiping her eyes. Her little aunt sat mistress of the field. For many minutes there was silence, and the clock ticked. The parson felt something rising in his throat. He blew his nose vigorously.

"Mary Ellen"--he began. "But I don't know as you want me to call you so!"

"You can call me anything you're a mind to," she answered calmly. She was nearsighted, and had always worn spectacles. She took them off and laid them on her knee. The parson moved involuntarily in his chair. He remembered how she had used to do that when they were talking intimately, so that his eager look might not embarrass her. "Nothing makes much difference when folks get to be as old as you and I are."

"I don't feel old," said the parson resentfully. "I do _not_! And you don't look so."

"Well, I am. We're past our youth. We've got to the point where the only way to renew it is to look out for the young ones."

The parson had always had with her a way of reading her thought and bursting out boyishly into betrayal of his own.

"Mary Ellen," he cried, "I never should have explained it so, but Isabel looks like you!"

She smiled sadly. "I guess men make themselves think 'most anything they want to," she answered. "There may be a family look, but I can't see it. She's tall, too, and I was always a pint o' cider--so father said."

"She's got the same look in her eyes," pursued the parson hotly. "I've always thought so, ever since she was a little girl."

"If you begun to notice it then," she responded, with the same gentle calm, "you'd better by half ha' been thinking of your own wife and her eyes. I believe they were black."

"Mary Ellen, how hard you are on me! You didn't use to be. You never were hard on anybody. You wouldn't have hurt a fly."

Her face contracted slightly. "Perhaps I wouldn't! perhaps I wouldn't! But I've had a good deal to bear this afternoon, and maybe I do feel a little different towards you from what I ever have felt. I've been hearing a loose-tongued woman tell how my own niece has been made town-talk because a man old enough to know better was running after her. I said, years ago, I never would come into this place while you was in it; but when I heard that, I felt as if Providence had marked out the way. I knew I was the one to step into the breach. So I had Tim harness up and bring me over, and here I am. William, I don't want you should make a mistake at your time of life!"

The minister seemed already a younger man. A strong color had risen in his face. He felt in her presence a fine exhilaration denied him through all the years without her. Who could say whether it was the woman herself or the resurrected spirit of their youth? He did not feel like answering her. It was enough to hear her voice. He leaned forward, looking at her with something piteous in his air.

"Mary Ellen," he ventured, "you might as well say 'another mistake.' I did make one. You know it, and I know it."

She looked at him with a frank affection, entirely maternal. "Yes, William," she said, with the same gentle firmness in her voice, "we've passed so far beyond those things that we can speak out and feel no shame. You did make a mistake. I don't know as 'twould be called so to break with me, but it was to marry where you did. You never cared about her. You were good to her. You always would be, William; but 'twas a shame to put her there."

The parson had locked his hands upon his knees. He looked at them, and sad lines of recollection deepened in his face.

"I was desperate," he said at length, in a low tone. "I had lost you. Some men take to drink, but that never tempted me. Besides, I was a minister. I was just ordained. Mary Ellen, do you remember that day?" "Yes," she answered softly, "I remember." She had leaned back in her chair, and her eyes were fixed upon vacancy with the suffused look of tears forbidden to fall.

"You wore a white dress," went on the parson, "and a bunch of Provence roses. It was June. Your sister always thought you dressed too gay, but you said to her, 'I guess I can wear what I want, to, to-day of all times."

"We won't talk about her. Yes, I remember."

"And, as God is my witness, I couldn't feel solemn, I was so glad! I was a minister, and my girl--the girl that was going to marry me--sat down there where I could see her, dressed in white. I always thought of you afterwards with that white dress on. You've stayed with me all my life, just that way."

Mary Ellen put up her hand with a quick gesture to hide her middle-aged face. With a thought as quick, she folded it resolutely upon the other in her lap. "Yes, William," she said. "I was a girl then. I wore white a good deal."

But the parson hardly heeded her. He was far away. "Mary Ellen," he broke out suddenly, a smile running warmly over his face, and creasing his dry, hollow cheeks, "do you remember that other sermon, my trial one? I read it to you, and then I read it to Parson Sibley. And do you remember what he said?"

"Yes, I remember. I didn't suppose you did." Her cheeks were pink. The corners of her mouth grew exquisitely tender.

"You knew I did! 'Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves' eyes.' I took that text because I couldn't think of anything else all summer. I remember now it seemed to me as if I was in a garden--always in a garden. The moon was pretty bright, that summer. There were more flowers blooming than common. It must have been a good year. And I wrote my sermon lying out in the pine woods, down where you used to sit hemming on your things. And I thought it was the Church, but do all I could, it was a girl--or an angel!"

"No, no!" cried Mary Ellen, in bitterness of entreaty.

"And then I read the sermon to you under the pines, and you stopped sewing, and looked off into the trees; and you said 'twas beautiful. But I carried it to old Parson Sibley that night, and I can see just how he looked sitting there in his study, with his great spectacles pushed up on his forehead, and his hand drumming on a book. He had the dictionary put in a certain place on his table because he found he'd got used to drumming on the Bible, and he was a very particular man. And when I got through reading the sermon, his face wrinkled all up, though he didn't laugh out loud, and he came over to me and put his hand on my shoulder. 'William,' says he, 'you go home and write a doctrinal sermon, the stiffest you can. _This one's about a girl_. You might give it to Mary Ellen North for a wedding-present.'"

The parson had grown almost gay under the vivifying influence of memory. But Mary Ellen did not smile.

"Yes," she repeated softly, "I remember."

"And then I laughed a little, and got out of the study the best way I could, and ran over to you to tell you what he said. And I left the sermon in your work-basket. I've often wished, in the light of what came afterwards--I've often wished I'd kept it. Somehow 'twould have brought me nearer to you."

It seemed as if she were about to rise from her chair, but she quieted herself and dulled the responsive look upon her face.

"Mary Ellen," the parson burst forth, "I know how I took what came on us the very next week, but I never knew how you took it. Should you just as lieves tell me?"

She lifted her head until it held a noble pose. Her eyes shone brilliantly, though indeed they were doves' eyes.

"I'll tell you," said she "I couldn't have told you ten years ago,--no, nor five! but now it's an old woman talking to an old man. I was given to understand you were tired of me, and too honorable to say so. I don't know what tale was carried to you"--

"She said you'd say 'yes' to that rich fellow in Sudleigh, if I'd give you a chance!"

"I knew 'twas something as shallow as that. Well, I'll tell you how I took it. I put up my head and laughed. I said, 'When William Bond wants to break with me, he'll say so.' And the next day you did say so."

The parson wrung his hands in an involuntary gesture of appeal.

"Minnie! Minnie!" he cried, "why didn't you save me? What made you let me _be_ a fool?"

She met his gaze with a tenderness so great that the words lost all their sting.

"You always were, William," she said quietly. "Always rushing at things like Job's charger, and having to rush back again. Never once have I read that without thinking of you. That's why you fixed up an angel out of poor little Isabel."

The parson made a fine gesture of dissent. He had forgotten Isabel.

"Do you want to know what else I did?" Her voice grew hard and unfamiliar. "I'll tell you. I went to my sister Eliza, and I said: 'Some way or another, you've spoilt my life. I'll forgive you just as soon as I can--maybe before you die, maybe not. You come with me!' and I went up garret, where she kept the chest with things in it that belonged to them that had died. There it sets now. I stood over it with her. 'I'm going to put my dead things in here,' I said. If you touch a finger to 'em, I'll get up in meeting and tell what you've done. I'm going to put in everything left from what you've murdered; and every time you come here, you'll remember you were a murderer.' I frightened her. I'm glad I did. She's dead and gone, and I've forgiven her; but I'm glad now!"

The parson looked at her with amazement. She seemed on fire. All the smouldering embers of a life denied had blazed at last. She put on her glasses and walked over to the chest.

"Here!" she continued; "let's uncover the dead. I've tried to do it ever since she died, so the other things could be burned; but my courage failed me. Could you turn these screws, if I should get you a knife? They're in tight. I put 'em in myself, and she stood by."

The little lid of the till had been screwed fast. The two middle-aged people bent over it together, trying first the scissors and then the broken blade of the parson's old knife. The screws came slowly. When they were all out, he stood back a pace and gazed at her. Mary Ellen looked no longer alert and vivified. Her face was haggard.

"I shut it," she said, in a whisper. "You lift it up."

The parson lifted the lid. There they lay, her poor little relics,--a folded manuscript, an old-fashioned daguerreotype, and a tiny locket. The parson could not see. His hand shook as he took them solemnly out and gave them to her. She bent over the picture, and looked at it, as we search the faces of the dead. He followed her to the light, and, wiping his glasses, looked also.

"That was my picture," he said musingly. "I never've had one since. And that was mother's locket. It had"--He paused and looked at her.

"Yes," said Mary Ellen softly; "it's got it now." She opened the little trinket; a warm, thick lock of hair lay within, and she touched it gently with her finger. "Should you like the locket, because 'twas your mother's?"

She hesitated; and though the parson's tone halted also, he answered at once:--

"No, Mary Ellen, not if you'll keep it. I should rather think 'twas with you."

She put her two treasures in her pocket, and gave him the other.

"I guess that's your share," she said, smiling faintly. "Don't read it here. Just take it away with you."

The manuscript had been written in the cramped and awkward hand of his youth, and the ink upon the paper was faded after many years. He turned the pages, a smile coming now and then.

"'Thou hast doves' eyes,'" he read,--"'thou hast doves' eyes!'" He murmured a sentence here and there. "Mary Ellen," he said at last, shaking his head over the manuscript in a droll despair, "it isn't a sermon. Parson Sibley had the rights of it. It's a love-letter!" And the two old people looked in each other's wet eyes and smiled.

The woman was the first to turn away.

"There!" said she, closing the lid of the chest; "we've said enough. We've wiped out old scores. We've talked more about ourselves than we ever shall again; for if old age brings anything, it's thinking of other people--them that have got life before 'em. These your rubbers?"

The parson put them on, with a dazed obedience. His hand shook in buckling them. Mary Ellen passed him his coat, but he noticed that she did not offer to hold it for him. There was suddenly a fine remoteness in her presence, as if a frosty air had come between them. The parson put the sermon in his inner pocket, and buttoned his coat tightly over it. Then he pinned on his shawl. At the door he turned.

"Mary Ellen," said he pleadingly, "don't you ever want to see the sermon again? Shouldn't you like to read it over?"

She hesitated. It seemed for a moment as if she might not answer at all. Then she remembered that they were old folks, and need not veil the truth.

"I guess I know it 'most all by heart," she said quietly. "Besides, I took a copy before I put it in there. Good-night!"

"Good-night!" answered the parson joyously. He closed the door behind him and went crunching down the icy path. When he had unfastened the horse and sat tucking the buffalo-robe around him, the front door was opened in haste, and a dark figure came flying, down the walk.

"Mr. Bond!" thrilled a voice.

"Whoa!" called the parson excitedly. He was throwing back the robe to leap from the sleigh when the figure reached him. "Oh!" said he; "Isabel!"

She was breathing hard with excitement and the determination grown up in her mind during that last half hour of her exile in the kitchen.

"Parson,"--forgetting a more formal address, and laying her hand on his knee,--"I've got to say it! Won't you please forgive me? Won't you, please? I can't explain it"--

"Bless your heart, child!" answered the parson cordially; "you needn't try to. I guess I made you nervous."

"Yes," agreed Isabel, with a sigh of relief, "I guess you did." And the parson drove away.

Isabel ran, light of heart and foot, back into the warm sitting-room, where aunt Mary Ellen was standing just where he had left her. She had her glasses off, and she looked at Isabel with a smile so vivid that the girl caught her breath, and wondered within herself how aunt Mary Ellen had looked when she was young.

"Isabel," said she, "you come here and give me a corner of your apron to wipe my glasses. I guess it's drier'n my handkerchief."

HORN O' THE MOON

If you drive along Tiverton Street, and then turn to the left, down the Gully Road, you journey, for the space of a mile or so, through a bewildering succession of damp greenery, with noisy brooks singing songs below you, on either side, and the treetops on the level with your horse's feet. Few among the older inhabitants ever take this drive, save from necessity, because it is conceded that the dampness there is enough, even in summer, to "give you your death o' cold;" and as for the young, to them the place wears an eerie look, with its miniature suggestion of impassable gulfs and roaring torrents. Yet no youth reaches his majority without exploring the Gully. He who goes alone is the more a hero; but even he had best leave two or three trusty comrades reasonably near, not only to listen, should he call, but to stand his witnesses when he afterwards declares where he has been. It is a fearsome thing to explore that lower stratum of this round world, so close to the rushing brook that it drowns your thoughts, though not your apprehensions, and to go slipping about over wet boulders and among dripping ferns; but your fears are fears of the spirit. They are inherited qualms. You shiver because your grandfathers and fathers and uncles have shivered there before you. If you are very brave indeed, and naught but the topmost round of destiny will content you, possibly you penetrate still further into green abysses, and come upon the pool where, tradition says, an ancient trout has his impregnable habitation. Apparently, nobody questions that the life of a trout may be indefinitely prolonged, under the proper conditions of a retired dusk; and the same fish that served our grandfathers for a legend now enlivens our childish days. When you meet a youngster, ostentatiously setting forth for the Gully Road, with bait-box and pole, you need not ask where he is going; though if you have any human sympathy in the pride of life, you will not deny him his answer:--

"Down to have a try for the old trout!"

The pool has been still for many years. Not within the memory of aged men has the trout turned fin or flashed a speckled side; but he is to this day an historical present. He has lived, and therefore he lives always.

Those who do not pause upon the Gully Road, but keep straight on into the open, will come into the old highway leading up and up to Horn o' the Moon. It is an unshaded, gravelly track, pointing duly up-hill for three long miles; and it has become a sober way to most of us, in this generation: for we never take it unless we go on the solemn errand of getting Mary Dunbar, that famous nurse, to care for our sick or dead. There is a tradition that a summer visitor once hired a "shay," and drove, all by herself, up to Horn o' the Moon, drawn on by the elusive splendor of its name. But she met such a dissuading flood of comment by the way as to startle her into the state of mind commonly associated with the Gully Road. Farmers, haying in the field, came forward, to lean on the fence, and call excitedly,--

"Where ye goin'?"

"Horn o' the Moon," replied she, having learned in Tiverton the value of succinct replies.

"Who's sick?"

"Nobody."

"Got any folks up there?"

"No. Going to see the place."

The effect of this varied. Some looked in amazement; one ventured to say, "Well, that's the beater!" and another dropped into the cabalistic remark which cannot be defined, but which has its due significance, "Well, you _must_ be sent for!" The result of all this running commentary was such that, when the visitor reached the top of the hill where Horn o' the Moon lies, encircled by other lesser heights, she was stricken by its exceeding desolation, and had no heart to cast more than a glance at the noble view below. She turned her horse, and trotted, recklessly and with many stumblings, down again into friendly Tiverton.

Horn o' the Moon is unique in its melancholy. It has so few trees, and those of so meagre and wind-swept a nature, that it might as well be entirely bald. No apples grow there; and in the autumn, the inhabitants make a concerted sally down into Tiverton Street, to purchase their winter stock, such of them as can afford it. The poorer folk--and they are all poor enough--buy windfalls, and string them to dry; and so common is dried-apple-pie among them that, when a Tivertonian finds this makeshift appearing too frequently on his table, he has only to remark, "I should think this was Horn o' the Moon!" and it disappears, to return no more until the slur is somewhat outworn.

There is very little grass at the top of the lonely height, and that of a husky, whispering sort, in thin ribbons that flutter low little songs in the breeze. They never cease; for, at Horn o' the Moon, there is always a wind blowing, differing in quality with the season. Sometimes it is a sighing wind from other heights, happier in that they are sweet with firs. Sometimes it is exasperating enough to make the March breezes below seem tender; then it tosses about in snatching gusts, buffeting, and slapping, and excoriating him who stands in its way. Somehow, all the peculiarities of Horn o' the Moon seem referable, in a mysterious fashion, to the wind. The people speak in high, strenuous voices, striving to hold their own against its wicked strength. Most of them are deaf. Is that because the air beats ceaselessly against the porches of their ears? They are a stunted race; for they have grown into the habit of holding the head low, and plunging forward against that battling element. Even the fowl at Horn o' the Moon are not of the ordinary sort. Their feathers grow the wrong way, standing up in a ragged and disorderly fashion; and they, too, have the effect of having been blown about and disarranged, until nature yielded, and agreed to their permanent roughness.

Moreover, all the people are old or middle-aged; and possibly that is why, again, the settlement is so desolate. It is a disgrace for us below to marry with Horn o' the Mooners, though they are a sober folk; and now it happens that everybody up there is the cousin of everybody else. The race is dying out, we say, as if we considered it a distinct species; and we agree that it would have been wiped away long ago, by weight of its own eccentricity, had not Mary Dunbar been the making of it. She is the one righteous among many. She is the good nurse whom we all go to seek, in our times of trouble, and she perpetually saves her city from the odium of the world.

Mary was born in Tiverton Street. We are glad to remember that, we who condemn by the wholesale, and are assured that no good can come out of Nazareth. When she was a girl of eighteen, her father and mother died; and she fell into a state of spiritual exaltation, wherein she dreamed dreams, and had periods of retirement within her house, communing with other intelligences. We said Mary had lost her mind; but that was difficult to believe, since no more wholesome type of womanhood had ever walked our streets. She was very tall, built on the lines of a beauty transcending our meagre strain. Nobody approved of those broad shoulders and magnificent arms. We said it was a shame for any girl to be so overgrown; yet our eyes followed her, delighted by the harmony of line and action. Then we whispered that she was as big as a moose, and that, if we had such arms, we never'd go out without a shawl. Her "mittins" must be wide enough for any man!

Mary did everything perfectly. She walked as if she went to meet the morning, and must salute it worthily. She carried a weight as a goddess might bear the infant Bacchus; and her small head, poised upon that round throat, wore the crown of simplicity, and not of pride. But we only told how strong she was, and how much she could lift. We loved Mary, but sensibility had to shrink from those great proportions and that elemental strength.

One snowy morning, Mary's spiritual vision called her out of our midst, to which she never came back save as we needed her. The world was very white that day, when she rose, in her still house, dressed herself hastily, and roused a neighbor, begging him to harness, and drive her up to Horn o' the Moon. Folks were sick there, with nobody to take care of them. The neighbor reasoned, and then refused, as one might deny a person, however beloved, who lives by the intuitions of an unseen world. Mary went home again, and, as he believed, to stay. But she had not hesitated in her allegiance to the heavenly voice. Somehow, through the blinding snow and unbroken road, she ploughed her way up to Horn o' the Moon, where she found an epidemic of diphtheria; and there she stayed. We marveled over her guessing how keenly she was needed; but since she never explained, it began to be noised abroad that some wandering peddler told her. That accounted for everything; and Mary had no time for talk. She was too busy, watching with the sick, and going about from house to house, cooking delicate gruels and broiling chicken for those who were getting well. It is said that she even did the barn work, and milked the cows, during that tragic time. We were not surprised. Mary was a great worker, and she was fond of "creatur's."

Whether she came to care for these stolid people on the height, or whether the vision counseled her, Mary gave up her house in the village, and bought a little old dwelling under an overhanging hillside, at Horn o' the Moon. It was a nest built into the rock, its back sitting snugly there. The dark came down upon it quickly. In winter, the sun was gone from the little parlor as early as three o'clock; but Mary did not mind. That house was her temporary shell; she only slept in it in the intervals of hurrying away, with blessed feet, to tend the sick, and hold the dying in untiring arms. I shall never forget how, one morning, I saw her come out of the door, and stand silent, looking toward the rosy east. There was the dawn, and there was she, its priestess, while all around her slept. I should not have been surprised had her lips, parted already in a mysterious smile, opened still further in a prophetic chanting to the sun. But Mary saw me, and the alert, answering look of one who is a messenger flashed swiftly over her face. She advanced like the leader of a triumphal procession.

"Anybody want me?" she called. "I'll get my bunnit."

It was when she was twenty, and not more than settled in the little house at Horn o' the Moon, that her story came to her. The Veaseys were her neighbors, perhaps five doors away; and one summer morning, Johnnie Veasey came home from sea. He brought no money, no coral from foreign parts, nor news of grapes in Eshcol. He simply came empty-handed, as he always did, bearing only, to vouch for his wanderings, a tanned face, and the bright, red-brown eyes that had surely looked on things we never saw. Adam Veasey, his brother; had been paralyzed for years. He sat all day in the chimney corner, looking at his shaking hands, and telling how wide a swathe he could cut before he was afflicted. Mattie, Adam's wife, had long dealt with the problem of an unsupported existence. She had turned into a flitting little creature with eager eyes, who made it her business to prey upon a more prosperous world. Mattie never went about without a large extra pocket attached to her waist; into this, she could slip a few carrots, a couple of doughnuts, or even a loaf of bread. She laid a lenient tax upon the neighbors and the town below. Was there a frying of doughnuts at Horn o' the Moon? No sooner had the odor risen upon the air, than Mattie stood on the spot, dumbly insistent on her toll. Her very clothes smelled of food; and it was said that, in fly-time, it was a sight to see her walk abroad, because of the hordes of insects settling here and there on her odoriferous gown. When Johnnie Veasey appeared, Mattie's soul rose in arms. Their golden chance had come at last.

"You got paid off?" she asked him, three minutes after his arrival, and Johnnie owned, with the cheerfulness of those rich only in hope, that he did get paid, and lost it all, the first night on shore. He got into the wrong boarding-house, he said. It was the old number, but new folks.

Mattie acquiesced, with a sigh. He would make his visit and go again, and, that time, perhaps fortune might attend him.. So she went over to old Mrs. Hardy's, to borrow a "riz loaf," and the wanderer was feasted, according to her little best.

Johnnie stayed, and Horn o' the Moon roused itself, finding that he had brought the antipodes with him. He was the teller of tales. He described what he had seen, and then, by easy transitions, what others had known and he had only heard, until the intelligence of these stunted, wind-blown creatures, on their island hill, took fire; and every man vowed he wished he had gone to sea, before it was too late, or even to California, when the gold craze was on. Johnnie had the tongue of the improvisator, and he loved a listener. He liked to sit out on a log, in the sparse shadow of the one little grove the hill possessed, and, with the whispering leaves above him tattling uncomprehended sayings brought them by the wind, gather the old men about him, and talk them blind. As he sat there, Mary came walking swiftly by, a basket in her hand. Johnnie came bolt upright, and took off his cap. He looked amazingly young and fine, and Mary blushed as she went by.

"Who's that?" asked Johnnie of the village fathers.

"That's only Mary Dunbar. Guess you ain't been here sence she moved up."

Johnnie watched her walking away, for the rhythm of her motion attracted him. He did not think her pretty; no one ever thought that.

It happened, then, that he spent two or three evenings at the Hardys', where Mary went, every night, to rub grandmother and put her to bed; and while she sat there in the darkened room, soothing the old woman for her dreary vigil, she heard his golden tales of people in strange lands. It seemed very wonderful to Mary. She had not dreamed there were such lands in all the world; and when she hurried home, it was to hunt out her old geography, and read it until after midnight. She followed rivers to their sources, and dwelt upon mountains with amazing names. She was seeing the earth and its fullness, and her heart beat fast.

Next day she went away for a long case, giving only one little sigh in the going, to the certainty that, when she came back, Johnnie Veasey would be off on another voyage to lands beyond the sea. Mary was not of the sort who cry for the moon just because they have seen it. She had simply begun to read a fairy tale, and somebody had taken it away from her and put it high on the shelf. But on the very first morning after her return, when she rose early, longing for the blissful air of her own bleak solitude, Mattie Veasey stood there at her door. Mary had but one first question for every comer:--

"Anybody sick?"

"You let me step in," answered Mattie, a determined foot on the sill. "I want to tell you how things stand."

It was evident that Mattie was going on a journey. She was an exposition of the domestic resources of Horn o' the Moon. Her dress came to the tops of her boots. It was the plaid belonging to Stella Hardy, who had died in her teens. It hooked behind; but that was no matter, for the enveloping shawl, belonging to old Mrs. Titcomb, concealed that youthful eccentricity. Her shoes--congress, with world-weary elastics at the side--were her own, inherited from an aunt; and her bonnet was a rusty black, with a mourning veil. There was, at that time, but one new bonnet at Horn o' the Moon, and its owner had sighed, when Mattie proposed for it, brazenly saying that she guessed nobody'd want anything that set so fur back. Whereupon the suppliant sought out Mrs. Pillsbury, whose mourning headgear, bought in a brief season of prosperity, nine years before, had become, in a manner, village property. It was as duly in public requisition as the hearse; and its owner cherished a melancholy pride in this official state. She never felt as if she owned it,--only that she was the keeper of a sacred trust; and Mattie, in asking for it, knew that she demanded no more than her due, as a citizen should. It was an impersonal matter between her and the bonnet; and though she should wear it on a secular errand, the veil did not signify. She knew everybody else knew whose bonnet it was; and that if anybody supposed she had met with a loss, they had only to ask, and she to answer. So, in the consciousness of an armor calculated to meet the world, she skillfully brought her congress boots into Mary's kitchen, and sat down, her worn little hands clasped under the shawl.

"You've just got home," said she. "I s'pose you ain't heard what's happened to Johnnie?"

Mary rose, a hand upon her chair.

"No! no! He don't want no nussin'. You set down. I can't talk so--ready to jump an' run. My! how good that tea does smell!"

Mary brought a cup, and placed it at her hand, with the deft manner of those who have learned to serve. Mattie sugared it, and tasted, and sugared again.

"My! how good that is!" she repeated. "You don't steep it to rags, as some folks do. I have to, we're so nigh the wind. Well, you hadn't been gone long before Johnnie had a kind of a fall. 'T wa'n't much of a one, neither,--down the ledge. I dunno how he done it--he climbs like a cat--seems as if the Old Boy was in it--but half his body he can't move. Palsy, I s'pose; numb, not shakin', like Adam's."

Mary listened gravely; her hands on her knees.

"How long's he been so?"

"Nigh on to five weeks."

"Had the doctor?"

"Yes, we called in that herb-man over to Saltash, an' he says there ain't no chance for him. He's goin' to be like Adam, only wuss. An' I've been down to the Poor Farm, to tell 'em they've got to take him in." Her little hands worked; her eager eyes ate their way into the heart. Mary could see exactly how she had had her way with the selectmen. "I told 'em they'd got to," she repeated. "He ain't got no money, an' we ain't got nuthin', an' have two paraletics on my hands I can't. So they told me they'd give me word to-day; an' I'm goin' down to settle it. I'm in hopes they'll bring me back, an' take him along down."

"Yes," answered Mary gravely. "Yes."

"Well, now I've come to the beginnin' o' my story." Mattie took that last delicious sip of tea at the bottom of the cup. "He's layin' in bed, an' Adam's settin' by the stove; an' I wanted to know if you wouldn't run in, long towards noon, an' warm up suthin' for 'em."

"Yes, indeed," said Mary Dunbar. "I'll be there."

She rose, and Mattie, albeit she dearly loved to gossip, felt that she must rise, too, and be on her way. She tried to amplify on what she had already said, but Mary did not seem to be listening; so, treading carefully, lest the dust and dew beset her precious shoes, she took her way down the hill, like a busy little ant, born to scurry and gather.

Mary looked hastily about the room, to see if its perfect order needed a farewell touch; and then she drank her cup of tea, and stepped out into the morning. The air was fresh and sweet. She wore no shawl, and the wind lifted the little brown rings on her forehead, and curled them closer. Mary held a hand upon them, and hurried on. She had no more thought of appearances than a woman in a desert land, or in the desert made by lack of praise; for she knew no one looked at her. To be clean and swift was all her life demanded.

Adam sat by the stove, where the ashes were still warm. It was not a day for fires, but he loved his accustomed corner. He was a middle-aged man, old with the suffering which is not of years, and the pathos of his stricken state hung about him, from his unkempt beard to the dusty black clothing which had been the Tiverton minister's outworn suit. One would have said he belonged to the generation before his brother.

"That you, Mary?" he asked, in his shaking voice. "Now, ain't that good? Come to set a spell?"

"Where is he?" responded Mary, in a swift breathlessness quite new to her.

"In there. We put up a bed in the clock-room."

It was the unfinished part of the house. The Veaseys had always meant to plaster, but that consummation was still afar. The laths showed meagrely; it was a skeleton of a room,--and, sunken in the high feather-bed between the two windows, lay Johnnie Veasey, his buoyancy all gone, his face quite piteous to see, now that its tan had faded. Mary went up to the bedside, and laid one cool, strong hand upon his wrist. His eyes sought her with a wild entreaty; but she knew, although he seemed to suffer, that this was the misery of delirium, and not the conscious mind. Adam had come trembling to the door, and stood there, one hand beating its perpetual tattoo upon the wall. Mary looked up at him with that abstracted gaze with which we weigh and judge.

"He's feverish," said she. "Mattie didn't tell me that. How long's he been so?"

"I dunno. I guess a matter o' two days."

"Two days?"

"Well, it might be off an' on ever sence he fell." Adam was helpless. He depended upon Mattie, and Mattie was not there.

"What did the doctor leave?"

Adam looked about him. "'T was the Herb doctor," he said. "He had her steep some trade in a bowl."

Mary Dunbar drew her hand away, and walked two or three times up and down the bare, bleak room. The seeking eyes were following her. She knew how little their distended agony might mean; but nevertheless they carried an entreaty. They leaned upon her, as the world, her sick world, was wont to lean. Mary was, in many things, a child; but her attitude had grown to be maternal. Suddenly she turned to Adam, where he stood, shaking and hesitating, in the doorway.

"You goin' to send him off?"

"Pears as if that's the only way," shuffled Adam.

"To-day?"

"Well, I dunno 's they'll come"--

Mary walked past him, her mind assured.

"There, that'll do," said she. "You set down in your corner. I'll be back byme-by."

She hurried out into the bleak world which was her home, and, at that moment, it looked very fair and new. The birds were singing, loudly as they ever sang up here where there were few leaves to nest in. Mary stopped an instant to listen, and lifted her face wordlessly to the clear blue sky. It seemed as if she had been given a gift. There, before one of the houses, she called aloud, with a long, lingering note, "Jacob!" and Jacob Pease rose from; his milking-stool, and came forward. Jacob was tall and snuff-colored, a widower of three years' standing. There was a theory that he wanted Mary, and lacked the courage to ask her.

"That you, Mary Dunbar?" said he. "Anything on hand?"

"I want you to come and help me lift," answered Mary.

Jacob set down his milk pail, and followed her into the Veaseys' kitchen. She drew out the tin basin, and filled it at the sink.

"Wash your hands," said she. "Adam, you set where you generally do. You'll be in the way."

Jacob followed her into the sick-room, and Adam weakly shuffled in behind.

"For the land's sake!" he began, but Mary was at the head of the bed, and Jacob at the foot.

"I'll carry his shoulders," she said, in the voice that admits no demur. "You take his feet and legs. Sort o' fold the feather-bed up round him, or we never shall get him through the door."

"Which way?" asked Jacob, still entirely at rest on a greater mind.

"Out!" commanded Mary,--"out the front door."