Chapter IV: Part 4

Adam, in describing that dramatic moment, always declared that nobody but Mary Dunbar could have engineered a feather-bed through the narrow passage, without sticking midway. He recalled an incident of his boyhood when, in the Titcomb fire, the whole family had spent every available instant before the falling of the roof, in trying to push the second-best bed through the attic window, only to leave it there to burn. But Mary Dunbar took her patient through the doorway as Napoleon marched over the Alps; she went with him down the road toward her own little house under the hill. Only then did Adam, still shuffling on behind, collect his intelligence sufficiently to shout after her,--

"Mary, what under the sun be you doin' of? What you want me to tell Mattie? S'pose she brings the selec'men, Mary Dunbar!"

She made no reply, even by a glance. She walked straight on, as if her burden lightened, and into her own cave-like house and her little neat bedroom.

"Lay him down jest as he is," she said to Jacob. "We won't try to shift him to-day. Let him get over this."

Jacob stretched himself, after his load, put his hands in his pockets, and made up his mouth into a soundless whistle.

"Yes! well!" said he. "Guess I better finish milkin'."

Mary put her patient "to-rights," and set some herb drink on the back of the stove. Presently the little room was filled with the steamy odor of a bitter healing, and she was on the battlefield where she loved to conquer. In spite of her heaven-born instinct, she knew very little about doctors and their ways of cure. Earth secrets were hers, some of them inherited and some guessed at, and luckily she had never been involved in those greater issues to be dealt with only by an exalted science. Later in her life, she was to get acquainted with the young doctor, down in Tiverton Street, and hear from him what things were doing in his world. She was to learn that a hospital is not a slaughter house incarnadined with writhing victims, as some of us had thought. She was even to witness the magic of a great surgeon; though that was in her old age, when her attitude toward medicine had become one of humble thankfulness that, in all her daring, she had done no harm. To-day, she thought she could set a bone or break up a fever; and there was no doubt in her mind that, if other deeds were demanded of her, she should be led in the one true way. So she sat down by her patient, and was watching there, hopeful of moisture on his palm, when Mattie broke into the front room, impetuous as the wind. Mary rose and stepped out to meet her, shutting the door as she went. Passing the window, she saw the selectmen, in the vehicle known as a long-reach, waiting at the gate.

"Hush, Mattie!" said she, "you'll wake him."

Mattie, in her ill-assorted respectabilities of dress, seemed to have been involved but recently in some bacchanalian orgie. Her shawl was dragged to one side, and her bonnet sat rakishly. She was intoxicated with her own surprise.

"Mary Dunbar!" cried she, "I'd like to know the meanin' of all this go-round!"

"There!" answered Mary, with a quietude like that of the sea at ebb, "I can't stop to talk. I'll settle it with the selec'men. You come, too."

Mattie's eyes were seeking the bedroom. Leave her alone, and her feet would follow. "You come along," repeated Mary, and Mattie came.

When the three selectmen saw Mary Dunbar stepping down the little slope, they gathered about them all their official dignity. Ebenezer Tolman sat a little straighter than usual, and uttered a portentous cough. Lothrop Wilson, mild by nature, and rather prone to whiffling in times of difficulty, frowned, with conscious effort; but that was only because he knew, in his own soul, how loyally he loved the under-dog, let justice go as it might. Then there was Eli Pike, occupying himself in pulling a rein from beneath the horse's tail. These two hated warfare, and were nervously conscious, that, should they fail in firmness, Ebenezer would deal with them. Mary went swiftly up to the wagon, and laid one hand upon the wheel.

"I've got John Veasey in my house," she began rapidly. "I can't stop to talk. He's pretty sick."

Ebenezer cleared his throat again.

"We understood his folks had put him on the town," said he.

Mattie made a little eager sound, and then stopped.

"He ain't on the town yet," said Mary. "He's in my bedroom. An' there he's goin' to stay. I've took this job." She turned away from them, erect in her decision, and went up the path. Eli Pike looked after her, with an understanding sympathy. He was the man who had walked two miles, one night, to shoot a fox, trapped, and left there helpless with a broken leg. Lothrop gazed straight ahead, and said nothing.

"Look here!" called Ebenezer. "Mary! Mary! you look here!"

Mary turned about at the door. She was magnificent in her height and dignity. Even Ebenezer felt almost ashamed of what he had to say; but still the public purse must be regarded.

"You can't bring in a bill for services," he announced. "If he's on the town, he'll have to go right into the Poorhouse with the rest."

Mary made no answer. She stood there a second, looking at him, and he remarked to Eli, "I guess you might drive on."

But Mattie, following Mary up to the house, to talk it over, tried the door in vain.

"My land!" she ejaculated, "if she ain't bolted it!" So the nurse and her patient were left to themselves.

As to the rest of the story, I tell it as we hear it still in Tiverton. At first, it was reckoned among the miracles; but when the new doctor came, he explained that it accorded quite honestly with the course of violated nature, and that, with some slight pruning here and there, the case might figure in his books. What science would say about it, I do not know; tradition was quite voluble.

It proved a very long time before Johnnie grew better, and in all those days Mary Dunbar was a happy woman. She stepped about the house, setting it in order, watching her charge, and making delicate possets for him to take. When the "herb-man" came, she turned him away from the door with a regal courtesy. It was not so much that she despised his knowledge, as that he knew no more than she, and this was her patient. The young doctor in Tiverton told her afterwards that she had done a dangerous thing in not calling in some accredited wearer of the cloth; but Mary did not think of that. She went on her way of innocence, delightfully content. And all those days, Johnnie Veasey, as soon as he came out of his fever, lay there and watched her with eyes full of a listless wonder. He was still in that borderland of helplessness where the unusual seems only a part of the new condition of things. Neighbors called, and Mary refused them entrance, with a finality which admitted no appeal.

"I've got sickness here," she would say, standing in the doorway confronting them. "He's too weak to see anybody; I guess I won't ask you in."

But one day, the minister appeared, his fat gray horse climbing painfully up from the Gully Road. It was a warm afternoon; and as soon as Mary saw him, she went out of her house, and closed the door behind her. When he had tied his horse, he came toward her, brushing the dust of the road from his irreproachable black. He was a new minister, and very particular. Mary shook hands with him, and then seated herself on the step.

"Won't you set down here?" she asked. "I've got sickness, an' I can't have talkin' any nearer. I'm glad it's a warm day."

The minister looked at the step, and then at Mary. He felt as if his dignity had been mildly assaulted, and he preferred to stand.

"I should like to offer prayer for the young man," he said. "I had hoped to see him."

Mary smiled at him in that impersonal way of hers.

"I don't let anybody see him," said she. "I guess we shall all have to pray by ourselves."

The minister was somewhat nettled. He was young enough to feel the slight to his official position; and moreover, there were things which his rigid young wife, primed by the wonder of the town, had enjoined upon him to say. He flushed to the roots of his smooth brown hair.

"I suppose you know," said he, "that you're taking a very peculiar stand."

Mary turned her head, to listen. She thought she heard her patient breathing, and her mind was with him.

"You seem," said the minister, "to have taken in a man who has no claim on you, instead of letting him stay with his people. If you are going to marry him, let me advise you to do it now, and not wait for him to get well. The opinion of the world is, in a measure, to be respected,--though only in a measure."

Mary had risen to go in, but now she turned upon him.

"Married!" she repeated; and then again, in a hushed voice,--"married!"

"Yes," replied the minister testily, standing by his guns, "married."

Mary looked at him a moment, and then again she moved away. She glanced round at him, as she entered the door, and said very gently, "I guess you better go now. Good-day."

She closed the door, and the minister heard her bolt it. He told his wife briefly, on reaching home, that there wasn't much chance to talk with Mary, and perhaps the less there was said about it the better.

But as Mary sat down by her patient's bed, her face settled into sadness, because she was thinking about the world. It had not, heretofore, been one of her recognized planets; now that it had swung her way, she marveled at it.

The very next night, while she was eating her supper in the kitchen, the door opened, and Mattie walked in. Mattie had been washing late that afternoon. She always washed at odd times, and often in dull weather her undried clothes hung for days upon the line. She was "all beat out," for she had begun at three, and steamed through her work, to have an early supper at five.

"There, Mary Dunbar!" cried she; "I said I'd do it, an' I have. There ain't a neighbor got into this house for weeks, an' folks that want you to go nussin' have been turned away. I says to Adam, this very afternoon, 'I'll be whipped if I don't git in an' see what's goin' on!' There's some will have it Johnnie's got well, an' drove away without saying good-by to his own folks, an' some say he ain't likely to live, an' there he lays without a last word to his own brother! As for the childern, they've got an idea suthin' 's been done to uncle Johnnie, an' you can't mention him but they cry."

Mary rose calmly and began clearing her table. "I guess I wouldn't mention him, then," said she.

A muffled sound came from the bedroom. It might have been laughter. Then there was a little crack, and Mary involuntarily looked at the lamp chimney. She hurried into the bedroom, and stopped short at sight of her patient, lying there in the light of the flickering fire. His face had flushed, and his eyes were streaming.

"I laughed so," he said chokingly. "She always makes me. And something snapped into place in my neck. I don't know what it was,--but _I can move_!"

He held out his hand to her. Mary did not touch it; she only stood looking at him with a wonderful gaze of pride and recognition, and yet a strange timidity. She, too, flushed, and tears stood in her eyes.

"I'll go and tell Mattie," said she, turning toward the door. "You want to see her?"

"For God's sake, no! not till I'm on my feet." He was still laughing. "I guess I can get up to-morrow."

Mary went swiftly out, and shut the door behind her.

"I guess you better not see him to-night," she said. "You can come in to-morrer. I shouldn't wonder if he'd be up then."

"I told Adam"--began Mattie, but Mary put a hand on her thin little arm, and held it there.

"I'd rather talk to-morrer," said she gently. "Don't you come in before 'leven; but you come. Tell Adam to, if he wants. I guess your brother'll be gettin' away before long." She opened the outer door, and Mattie had no volition but to go. "It's a nice night, ain't it?" called Mary cheerfully, after her. "Seems as if there never was so many stars."

Then she went back into the kitchen, and with the old thrift and exactitude prepared her patient's supper. He was sitting upright, bolstered against the head of the bed; and he looked like a great mischievous boy, who had, in some way, gained a long-desired prize.

"See here!" he called. "Tell me I can't get up to-morrow? Why, I could walk!"

They had a very merry time while he ate. Mary remembered that afterwards, with a bruised wonder that laughter comes so cheap. Johnnie talked incessantly, not any more of the wonders of the deep, but what he meant to do when he got into the world again.

"How'd I come here in your house, any way?" he asked. "Mattie and Adam put me here to get rid of me? Tell me all over again."

"I take care of folks, you know," answered Mary briefly. "I have, for more 'n two years. It's my business."

Johnnie looked at her a moment, crimsoning as he tried to speak.

"What you goin' to ask?"

Mary started. Then she answered steadily--

"That's all right. I don't ask much, anyway; but when folks don't have ready money, I never ask anything. There, you mustn't talk no more, even if you are well. I've got to wash these dishes."

She left him to his meditations, and only once more that evening did they speak together. When she came to the door, to say good-night, he was flat among his pillows, listening for her.

"Say!" he called, "you come in. No, you needn't unless you want to; but if ever I earn another cent of money, you'll see. And I ain't the only friend you've got. There's a girl down in Southport would do anything in the world for you, if she only knew."

Next morning, Johnnie walked weakly out of doors, despite his nurse's cautions; for, not knowing what had happened to him, she was in a wearying dark as to whether it might not happen again. After his breakfast, he got a ride with Jacob Pease, who was going down Sudleigh way, and Jacob came back without him. He bore a message, full of gratitude, to Mary. At Sudleigh, Johnnie had telegraphed, to find out whether the ship Firewing was still in port; and he had heard that he must lose no time in joining her. He should never forget what Mary had done for him. So Jacob said; but he was a man of tepid words, and perhaps he remembered the message too coldly.

When Mattie came over, that afternoon, to make her call, she found the house closed. Mary had gone on foot down into Tiverton, where old Mrs. Lamson, who was sick with a fever, lay still in need. It was many weeks before she came home again to Horn o' the Moon; and then Grandfather Sinclair had broken his leg, so that interest in her miracle became temporarily inactive.

Two years had gone when there came to her a little package, through the Tiverton mail. It was tied with the greatest caution, and directed in a straggling hand. Mary opened it just as she struck into the Gully Road, on her way home. Inside was a little purse, and three gold pieces. She paused there, under the branches, the purse in one hand, and the gold lying within her other palm. For a long time she stood looking at them, her face set in that patient sadness seen in those whose only holding is the past. It was all over and done, and yet it had never been at all. She thought a little about herself, and that was very rare, for Mary. She was not the poorer for what her soul desired; she was infinitely the richer, and she remembered the girl at Southport, not with the pang that once afflicted her heart, but with a warm, outrushing sense of womanly sympathy. If he had money, perhaps he could marry. Perhaps he was married now. Coming out of the Gully Road, she opened the purse again, and the sun struck richly upon the gold within. Mary smiled a little, wanly, but still with a sense of the good, human kinship in life.

"I won't ever spend 'em," she said to herself. "I'll keep 'em to bury me."

A STOLEN FESTIVAL

David Macy's house stood on the spur of a breezy upland at the end of a road. The faraway neighbors, who lived on the main highway and could see the passin', often thanked their stars that they had been called to no such isolation; you might, said they, as well be set down in the middle of pastur'. They wondered how David's Letty could stand it. She had been married 'most a year, and before that she was forever on the go. But there! if David Macy had told her the sun rose in the west, she'd ha' looked out for it there every identical mornin'.

The last proposition had some color in it; for Letty was very much in love. To an impartial view, David was a stalwart fellow with clear gray eyes and square shoulders, a prosperous yeoman of the fibre to which America owes her being. But according to Letty he was something superhuman in poise and charm. David had no conception of his heroic responsibilities; nothing could have puzzled him more than to guess how the ideal of him grew and strengthened in her maiden mind, and how her after-worship exalted it into something thrilling and passionate, not to be described even by a tongue more facile than hers. Letty had a vivid nature, capable of responding to those delicate influences which move to spiritual issues. There were throes of love within her, of aspiration, of an ineffable delight in being. She never tried to understand them, nor did she talk about them; but then, she never tried to paint the sky or copy the robin's song. Life was very mysterious; but one thing was quite as mysterious as another. She did sometimes brood for a moment over the troubled sense that, in some fashion, she spoke in another key from "other folks," who did not appear to know that joy is not altogether joy, but three-quarters pain, and who had never learned how it brings its own aching sense of incompleteness; but that only seemed to her a part of the general wonder of things. There had been one strange May morning in her life when she went with her husband into the woods, to hunt up a wild steer. She knew every foot of the place, and yet one turn of the path brought them into the heart of a picture thrillingly new with the unfamiliarity of pure and living beauty. The evergreens enfolded them in a palpable dusk; but entrancingly near, shimmering under a sunny gleam, stood a company of birches in their first spring wear. They were trembling, not so much under the breeze as from the hurrying rhythm of the year. Their green was vivid enough to lave the vision in light; and Letty looked beyond it to a brighter vista still. There, in an opening, lay a bank of violets, springing in the sun. Their blue was a challenge to the skyey blue above; it pierced the sight, awaking new longings and strange memories. It seemed to Letty as if some invisible finger touched her on the heart and made her pause. Then David turned, smiling kindly upon her, and she ran to him with a little cry, and put her arms about his neck.

"What is it?" he asked, stroking her hair with a gentle hand. "What is it, little child?"

"Oh, it's nothin'!'" said Letty chokingly. "It's only--I like you so!"

The halting thought had no purple wherein to clothe itself; but it meant as much as if she had read the poets until great words had become familiar, and she could say "love." He was the spring day, the sun, the blue of the sky, the quiver of leaves; and she felt it, and had a pain at her heart.

Now, on an autumn morning, David was standing within the great space in front of the barn, greasing the wheels preliminary to a drive to market; and Letty stood beside him, bareheaded, her breakfast dishes forgotten. She was a round thing, with quick movements not ordinarily belonging to one so plump; her black hair was short, and curled roughly, and there were freckles on her little snub nose. David looked up at her red cheeks and the merry shine of her eyes, and smiled upon her.

"You look pretty nice this mornin'," he remarked.

Letty gave a little dancing step and laughed. The sun was bright; there was a purple haze over the hills, and the nearer woods were yellow. The world was a jewel newly set for her.

"I _am_ nice!" said she. "David, do you know our anniversary's comin' on? It's 'most a year since we were married,--a year the fifteenth."

David loosened the last wheel, and rose to look at her.

"Sho!" said he, with great interest "Is that so? Well, 't was a good bargain. Best trade I ever made in _my_ life!"

"And we've got to celebrate," said Letty masterfully. "I'll tell you how. I've had it all planned for a month. We'll get up at four, have our breakfast, ride over to Star Pond, and picnic all day long. We'll take a boat and go out rowin', and we'll eat our dinner on the water!"

David smiled back at her, and then, with a sudden recollection, pursed his lips.

"I'm awful sorry, Letty," he said honestly, "but I've got to go over to Long Pastur' an' do that fencin', or I can't put the cattle in there before we turn 'em into the shack. You know that fence was all done up in the spring, but that cussed breachy cow o' Tolman's hooked it down; an' if I wait for him to do it--well, you know what he is!"

"Oh, you can put off your fencin'!" cried Letty. "Only one day! Oh, you can!"

"I could 'most any other time," said David, with reason, "but here it is 'most Saturday, an' next week the thrashin'-machine's comin'. I'm awful sorry, Letty. I am, honest!"

Letty turned half round like a troubled child, and began grinding one heel into the turf. She was conscious of an odd mortification. It was not, said her heart, that the thing itself was so dear to her; it was only that David ought to want immeasurably to do it. She always put great stress upon the visible signs of an invisible bond, and she would be long in getting over her demand for the unreason of love.

David threw down the monkey-wrench, and put an arm about her waist.

"Come, now, you don't care, do you?" he asked lovingly. "One day's the same as another, now ain't it?"

"Is it?" said Letty, a smile running over her face and into her wet eyes. "Well, then, le's have Fourth o' July fireworks next Sunday mornin'!"

David looked a little hurt; but that was only because he was puzzled. His sense of humor wore a different complexion from Letty's. He liked a joke, and he could tell a good story, but they must lie within the logic of fun. Letty could put her own interpretation on her griefs, and twist them into shapes calculated to send her into hysterical mirth.

"You see," said David soothingly, "we're goin' to be together as long as we live. It ain't as if we'd got to rake an' scrape an' plan to git a minute alone, as it used to be, now is it? An' after the fencin' 's done, an' the thrashin', an' we've got nothin' on our minds, we'll take both horses an' go to Star Pond. Come, now! Be a good girl!"

The world seemed very quiet because Letty was holding silence, and he looked anxiously down at the top of her head. Then she relented a little and turned her face up to his--her rebellious eyes and unsteady mouth. But meeting the loving honesty of his look, her heart gave a great bound of allegiance, and she laughed aloud.

"There!" she said. "Have it so. I won't say another word. _I_ don't care!"

These were David's unconscious victories, born, not of his strength or tyranny, but out of the woman's maternal comprehension, her lavish concession of all the small things of life to the one great code. She had taken him for granted, and thenceforth judged him by the intention and not the act.

David was bending to kiss her, but he stopped midway, and his arm fell.

"There's Debby Low," said he. "By jinks! I ain't more 'n half a man when she's round, she makes me feel so sheepish. I guess it's that eye o' her'n. It goes through ye like a needle."

Letty laughed light-heartedly, and looked down the path across the lot. Debby, a little, bent old woman, was toiling slowly along, a large carpet-bag swinging from one hand. Letty drew a long breath and tried to feel resigned.

"She's got on her black alpaca," said she. "She's comin' to spend the day!"

David answered her look with one of commiseration, and, gathering up his wrench and oil, "put for" the barn.

"I'd stay, if I could do any good," he said hastily, "but I can't. I might as well stan' from under."

Debby threw her empty carpet-bag over the stone wall, and followed it, clambering slowly and painfully. Her large feet were clad in congress boots; and when she had alighted, she regarded them with deep affection, and slowly wiped them upon either ankle, a stork-like process at which David, safe in the barn, could afford to smile.

"If it don't rain soon," she called fretfully, "I guess you'll find yourselves alone an' forsaken, like pelicans in the wilderness. Anybody must want to see ye to traipse up through that lot as I've been doin', an' git their best clo'es all over dirt."

"You could ha' come in the road," said Letty, smiling. Letty had a very sweet temper, and she had early learned that it takes all sorts o' folks to make a world. It was a part of her leisurely and generous scheme of life to live and let live.

"Ain't the road dustier 'n the path?" inquired Debby contradictorily. "My stars! I guess 't is. Well, now, what do you s'pose brought me up here this mornin'?"

Letty's eyes involuntarily sought the bag, whose concave sides flapped hungrily together; but she told her lie with cheerfulness. "I don't know."

"I guess ye don't. No, I ain't comin' in. I'm goin' over to Mis' Tolman's, to spend the day. I'm in hopes she's got b'iled dish. You look here!" She opened the bag, and searched portentously, the while Letty, in some unworthy interest, regarded the smooth, thick hair under her large poke-bonnet. Debby had an original fashion of coloring it; and this no one had suspected until her little grandson innocently revealed the secret. She rubbed it with a candle, in unconscious imitation of an actor's make-up, and then powdered it with soot from the kettle. "I believe to my soul she does!" said Letty to herself.

But Debby, breathing hard, had taken something from the bag, and was holding it out on the end of a knotted finger.

"There!" she said, "ain't that your'n? Vianna said 't was your engagement ring."

Letty flushed scarlet, and snatched the ring tremblingly. She gave an involuntary look at the barn, where David was whistling a merry stave.

"Oh, my!" she breathed. "Where'd you find it?"

"Well, that's the question!" returned Debby triumphantly, "Where'd ye lose it?"

But Letty had no mind to tell. She slipped the ring on her finger, and looked obstinate.

"Can't I get you somethin' to put in your bag?" she asked cannily. Debby was diverted, though only for the moment.

"I should like a mite o' pork," she answered, lowering her voice and giving a glance, in her turn, at the barn. "I s'pose ye don't want _him_ to know of it?"

"I should like to be told why!" flamed Letty, in an indignation disproportioned to its cause. Debby had unconsciously hit the raw. "Do you s'pose I'd do anything David can't hear?"

"Law, I didn't know," said Debby, as if the matter were of very little consequence. "Mis' Peleg Chase, she gi'n me a beef-bone, t'other day, an' she says, 'Don't ye tell _him_!' An' Mis' Squire Hill gi'n me a pail o' lard; but she hid it underneath the fence, an' made me come for 't after dark. I dunno how you're goin' to git along with men-folks, if ye offer 'em the whip-hand. They'll take it, anyways. Well, don't you want to know where I come on this ring?"

Letty had taken a few hasty steps toward the house. "Yes, I do," owned she, turning about. "Where was it?"

"Well, Sammy was in swimmin', an' he dove into the Old Hole, to see 'f 't had any bottom to 't. Vianna made him vow he wouldn't go in whilst he had that rash; but he come home with his shirt wrong side out, an' she made him own up. But he'd ha' told anyway, he was so possessed to show that ring. He see suthin' gleamin' on a willer root nigh the bank, an' he dove, an' there 't was. I told Sammy mebbe you'd give him suthin' for 't, an' he said there wa'n't nothin' in the world he wanted but a mite o' David's solder, out in the shed-chamber."

"He shall have it," said Letty hastily. "I'll get it now. Don't you say anything!" And then she knew she had used the formula she detested, and that she was no better than Mrs. Peleg Chase, or the wife of Squire Hill.

She ran frowning into the house, and down and up from kitchen to cellar. Presently she reappeared, panting, with a great tin pan borne before her like a laden salver. She set it down at Debby's feet, and began packing its contents into the yawning bag.

"There!" she said, working with haste. "There's the solder, all of it. And here's some of our sweet corn. We planted late."

Debby took an ear from the pan, and, tearing open the husk, tried a kernel with a critical thumb.

"Tough, ain't it?" she remarked, disparagingly. "Likely to be, this time o' year. Is that the pork?"

It was a generous cube, swathed in a fresh white cloth.

"Yes, it is," said Letty breathlessly, thrusting it in and shutting the bag. "There!"

"Streak o' fat an' streak o' lean?" inquired Debby remorselessly.

"It's the best we've got; that's all I can say. Now I've got to speak to David before he harnesses. Good-by!"

In a fever of impatience, she fled away to the barn.

"Well, if ever!" ejaculated Debby, lifting the bag and turning slowly about, to take her homeward path. "Great doin's _I_ say!" And she made no reply when Letty, prompted by a tardy conscience, stopped in the barn doorway and called to her, "Tell Sammy I'm much obliged. Tell him I shall make turnovers to-morrow." Debby was thinking of the pork, and the likelihood of its being properly diversified.

Letty swept into the barn like a hurrying wind. The horses backed, and laid their ears flat, and David, grooming one of them, gentled him and inquired of him confidentially what was the matter.

"Oh, David, come out here! please come out!" called Letty breathlessly. "I've got to see you."

David appeared, with some wonderment on his face, and Letty precipitated herself upon him, mindless of curry-comb and horse-hairs and the fact that she was presently to do butter. "David," she cried, "I can't stand it. I've got to tell you. You know this ring?"

David looked at it, interested and yet perplexed.

"Seems if I'd seen you wear it," said he.

Letty gave way, and laughed hysterically.

"Seems if you had!" she repeated. "I've wore it over a year. There ain't a girl in town but knows it. I showed it to 'em all. I told 'em 'twas my engagement ring."

David looked at it, and then at her. She seemed to him a little mad. He could quiet the horses, but not a woman, in so vague an exigency.

"What made you tell 'em that?" he asked, at a venture.

"Don't you see? There wasn't one of 'em that was engaged but had a ring--and presents, David--and they knew I never had anything, or I'd have showed 'em."

David was not a dull man; he had very sound views on the tariff, and, though social questions might thrive outside his world, the town blessed him for an able citizen. But he felt troubled; he was condemned, and it was the world's voice which had condemned him.

"I don't know's I ever did give you anything, Letty," he said, with a new pain stirring in his face. "I don't b'lieve I ever thought of it. It wasn't that I begrudged anything."

"Oh, my soul, no!" cried Letty, in an agony of her own. "I knew how 't was. It wa'n't your way, but they didn't know that. And I couldn't have 'em thinkin' what they did think, now could I? So I bought me--David, I bought me that high comb I used to wear, and--and a blue handkerchief--and a thimble--and--and--this ring. And I said you give 'em to me. And I trusted to chance for your never findin' it out. But I always hated the things; and as soon as we were married, I broke the comb, and burnt up the handkerchief, and hammered the thimble into a little wad, and buried it. But I didn't dare to stop wearin' the ring, for fear folks would notice. Then t'other day I felt so about it I knew the time had come, and I went down to the Old Hole and threw it in. And now that hateful Sammy's found it and brought it back, and I've sent him your solder, and Debby's promised me she wouldn't tell you about the pork, and I--I'm no better than the rest of 'em that lie and lie and don't let their men-folks know!" Letty was sobbing bitterly, and David drew her into his arms and laid his cheek down on her hair. His heart was aching too. They had all the passionate sorrow of children over some grief not understood.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked at length.

"When?" said Letty chokingly.

"Then--when folks expected things--before we were married."

"Oh, David, I couldn't!"

"No," said David sadly, "I s'pose you couldn't."

Letty had been holding one hand very tightly clenched. It was a plump hand, with deep dimples and firm, short fingers. She unclasped it, and stretched out toward him a wet, pink palm.

"There!" she said despairingly. "There's the ring."

Again David felt his inadequacy to the situation. "Don't you want to wear it?" he hesitated. "It's real pretty. What's that red stone?"

"I hate it!" cried Letty viciously. "It's a garnet. Oh, David, don't you ever let me set eyes on it again!"

David took it slowly from her hand. He drew out his pocket-book, opened it, and dropped the ring inside. "There!" he said, "I guess't won't do me no hurt to come acrost it once in a while." Then they kissed each other again, like two children; Letty's tears wet his face, and he felt them bitterer than if they had been his own.

But for Letty the air had cleared. Now, she felt, there was no trouble in her path. She had all the irresponsible joy of one who has had a secret, and feels the burden roll away. She was like Christian without his pack. She put her hands on David's shoulders, and looked at him radiantly.

"Oh, I'm so glad!" she cried. "I'm just as wicked as I was before; but it don't seem to make any difference, now you know it!"

Though David also smiled, he was regarding her with a troubled wonder. He never expected to follow these varying moods. They were like swallow-flights, and he was content to see the sun upon their wings. So he drove thoughtfully off, and Letty went back to her work with a singing heart. She was not quite sure that it was right to be happy again, all at once, but she could not still her blood. To be forgiven, to find herself free from the haunting consciousness that she could deceive the creature to whom she held such passionate allegiance--this was enough to shape a new heaven and a new earth. Her simple household duties took on the significance of noble ceremonies. She sang as she went about them, and the words were those of a joyous hymn. She seemed to be serving in a temple, making it clean and fragrant in the name of love.

Saturday was a day born of heavenly intentions. Letty ran out behind the house, where the ground rose abruptly, and looked off, entranced, into the blue distance. It was the stillest day of all the fall. Not a breath stirred about her; but in the maple grove at the side of the house, where the trees had turned early under the chill of an unseasonable night, yellow leaves were sifting down without a sound. Goldenrod was growing dull, clematis had ripened into feathery spray, and she knew how the closed gentians were painting great purple dashes by the side of the road. "Oh!" she cried aloud, in rapture. It was her wedding day; a year ago the sun had shone as warmly and benignantly as he was shining now, and the same haze had risen, like an exhalation, from the hills. She saw a special omen in it, and felt herself the child of happy fortune, to be so mothered by the great blue sky. Then she ran in to give David his breakfast, and tell him, as they sat down, that it was their wedding morning. As she went, she tore a spray of blood-red woodbine from the wall, and bound it round her waist.

But David was not ready for breakfast; he was talking with a man at the barn, and half an hour later came hurrying in to his retarded meal.

"I've got to eat an' run," said he; "Job Fisher kep' me. It's about that ma'sh. But the time wa'n't wasted. He'll sell ten acres for twenty dollars less'n he said last week. Too bad to keep you waitin'! You'd ought to eat yours while't was hot."

Letty, with a little smile all to herself, sat demurely down and poured coffee; this was no time to talk of anniversaries. David ate in haste, and said good-by.

"I'm goin' down the lot to get my withes," said he. "Whilst I'm gone, you put me up a mite o' luncheon, I sha'n't lay off to come home till night."

"Oh, David!" said Letty, with a little cry. Then the same knowing smile crept over her face. "No, I sha'n't," added she willfully. "I'm goin' to bring it to you."

"Fetch me my dinner? Why, it's a mile and a half 'cross lots! I guess you won't!"

"You go right along, David," said Letty decisively. "I don't want to hear another word. I ain't seen the Long Pastur' this summer, and I'm comin'. Good-by!" She disappeared down the cellar stairs with the butter-plate poised on a pyramid of dishes, and David, having no time to argue, went off to his work.

About ten o'clock Letty took her way down to the Long Pasture; she was a very happy woman, and she could hold her happiness before her face, regarding it frankly and with a full delight. The material joys of life might seem to escape her; but she could have them, after all. The great universe, warm with sun and warm with love, was on her side. Even the day seemed something tangible in gracious being; and as Letty trudged along, her basket on her arm, she reasoned upon her own riches and owned she had enough. David was not like anybody else; but he was better than anybody else, and he was hers. Even his faults were dearer than other men's virtues. She heard the sound of his axe upon the stakes, breaking the lovely stillness with a significance lovelier still.

"David!" she called, long before reaching the little brook that runs beneath the bank, and he leaped the fence and came to meet her. "David!" she repeated, and looked up in his face with eyes so solemn and so full of light that he held her still a moment to look at her.

"Letty," he said, "you're real pretty!" And then they both laughed, and walked on together through the shade.

The day knit up its sweet, long minutes full of the serious beauty of the woods. David worked hard, and for a time Letty lingered near him; then she strayed away, and came back to him, from moment to moment, with wonderful treasures. Now it was cress from the spring, now a palm-full of partridge berries, or a cluster of checkerberry leaves for a "cud," or a bit of wood-sorrel. By and by the fall stillness gave out a breath of heat, and the sun stood high overhead. Letty spread out her dinner, and David made her a fire among the rocks. The smoke rose in a blue efflorescence; and with the sweet tang of burning wood yet in the air, they sat down side by side, drinking from one cup, and smiling over the foolish nothings of familiar talk. At the end of the meal, Letty took a parcel from the basket, something wrapped in a very fine white napkin. She flushed a little, unrolling it, and her eyes deepened.

"What's all this?" asked David, sniffing the air. "Fruit-cake?"

Letty nodded without looking at him; there was a telltale quivering in her face. She divided the cake carefully, and gave her husband half. David had lain back on a piny bank; and as he ate, his eyes followed the treetops, swaying a little now in a rhythmic wind. But Letty ate her piece as if it were sacramental bread. She put out her hand to him, and he stroked the short, faithful fingers, and then held them close. He smiled at her; and for a moment he mused again over that starry light in her eyes. Then his lids fell, and he had a little nap, while Letty sat and dreamed back over the hours, a year and more ago, when her mother's house smelled of spices, and this cake was baked for her wedding day.

When they went home again, side by side, the fencing was all done, and David had an after-consciousness of happy playtime. He carried the basket, with his axe, and Letty, like an untired little dog, took brief excursions of discovery here and there, and came back to his side with her weedy treasures. Once--was it something in the air?--he called to her:--

"Say, Letty, wa'n't it about this kind o' weather the day we were married?"

But Letty gave a little cry, and pointed out a frail white butterfly on a mullein leaf. "See there, David! how cold he looks! I'd like to take him along. He'll freeze to-night." David forgot his question, and she was glad. Some inner voice was at her heart, warning her to leave the day unspoiled. Her joy lay in remembering; it seemed a small thing to her that he should forget.

"We've had a real good time," he said, as he gave her the basket at the kitchen door. "Now, as soon as thrashin' 's done, we'll go to Star Pond."

After supper they covered up the squashes, for fear of a frost; and then they stood for a moment in the field, and looked at the harvest moon, risen in a great effrontery of splendor.

"Letty," asked David suddenly, "shouldn't you like to put on your little ring? It's right here in my pocket."

"No! no!" said Letty hastily. "I never want to set eyes on it again."

"I guess I'll get you another one 't you could wear. I looked t'other day when I went to market; but there was so many I didn't das't to make a choice unless you was with me."

Letty clung to him passionately. "Oh, David," she cried, with a break in her voice, "I don't want any rings. I want just you."

David put out one hand and softly touched the little blue kerchief about her head. "Anyway," he said, "we won't have any more secrets from one another, will we?"

Letty gave a little start, and she caught her breath before answering:--

"No, we won't--not unless they're nice ones!"

A LAST ASSEMBLING

This happened in what Dilly Joyce, in deference to a form of speech, was accustomed to call her young days; though really her spirit seemed to renew itself with every step, and her body was to the last a willing instrument. She lived in a happy completeness which allowed her to carry on the joys of youth into the maturity of years. But things did happen to her from twenty to thirty-five which could never happen again. When Dilly was a girl, she fell in love, and was very heartily and honestly loved back again. She had been born into such willing harmony with natural laws, that this in itself seemed to belong to her life. It partook rather of the faithfulness of the seasons than of human tragedy or strenuous overthrow. Even so early she felt great delight in natural things; and when her heart turned to Jethro Moore, she had no doubt whatever of the straightness of its path. She trusted all the primal instincts without knowing she trusted them. She was thirsty; here was water, and she drank. Jethro was a little older than she, the son of a minister in a neighboring town. His father had marked out his plan of life; but Jethro had had enough to do with the church on hot summer Sundays, when "fourthly" and "sixthly" lulled him into a pleasing coma, and when even the shimmer of Mrs. Chase's shot silk failed to awaken his deep eyes to their accustomed delight in fabric and color. To him, the church was a concrete and very dull institution: to his father, it was a city set on a hill, whence a shining path led direct to God's New Jerusalem. Therefore it was easy enough for the boy to say he preferred business, and that he wanted uncle Silas to take him into his upholstery shop; and he never, so long as he lived, understood his father's tragic silence over the choice. He had broken the succession in a line of priests; but it seemed to him that he had simply told what he wanted to do for a living. So he went away to the city, and news came flying back of his wonderful fitness for the trade. He understood colors, fabrics, design; he had been sent abroad for ideas, and finally he was dispatched to the Chicago house, to oversee the business there. Thus it was many years before Dilly met him again; but they remained honestly faithful, each from a lovely simplicity of nature, but a simplicity quite different in kind. Jethro did not grow rich very fast (uncle Silas saw to that), but he did prosper; and he was ready to marry his girl long before she owned herself ready to marry him. She took care of a succession of aged relatives, all afflicted by a strange and interesting diversity of trying diseases; and then, after the last death, she settled down, quite poor, in a little house on the Tiverton Road, and "went out nussin'," the profession for which her previous life had fitted her. With a careless generosity, she made over to her brother the old farmhouse where they were born, because he had a family and needed it. But he died, and was soon followed by his wife and child; and now Dilly was quite alone with the house and the family debts. The time had come, wrote Jethro, for them to marry. She was free, at last, and he had enough. Would she take him, now? Dilly answered quite frankly and from a serenity born of faith in the path before her and a certainty that no feet need slip. She was ready, she wrote. She hoped he was willing she should sell the old place, to pay Tom's debts. That would leave her without a cent; but since he was coming for her, and she needn't go to Chicago alone, she didn't know that there was anything to worry about. He would buy her ticket. There was an ineffable simplicity about Dilly. She had no respect whatever for money, save as a puzzling means to a few necessary ends. And now the place had been sold, and Jethro was coming in a month. Meanwhile Dilly was to pack up the few family effects she could afford to keep, and the rest would go by auction.

Little as she was accustomed to dread experiences which came in the inevitable order of nature, she did think of the last day and night in the old house as something of an ordeal. People felt that the human meant very little to Dilly; but that was not true. It was only true that she held herself remote from personal intimacies; but all the fine, invisible bonds of race and family took hold of her like irresistible factors, and welded her to the universe anew.

As she started out from her little house, this summer morning, and began her three-mile walk to the old homestead, she felt as if some solemn event in her life were about to happen; her heart beat higher, and brought about the suffocating feeling of a hand laid upon the throat. She was a slight creature, with a delicate face and fine black hair. Her slender body seemed all made for action, and the poise of an assured motion dwelt in it and wrapped about its angularity like a gracious charm. She was walking down a lane, her short skirts brushed by the morning dew. She chose to go 'cross lots, not because in this case it was nearer than the road, but because it seemed impossible to go another way. Yet never in her life had she seen less of the outward garment of things than she was seeing this morning. A flouting bobolink flew from stake to stake in front of her, and bubbled out in melody. She heard a scythe swishing in a neighboring field, and the musical call of the mowing-machine afar, and she did not look up. Dumb to the beautiful outer world, she was broad awake to human souls: the souls of the Joyces, alive so long before her and stretching back into an unknown past. They had lived, one after another, in the old house, since colonial times; and now, after this quiet act of a concluding drama, Dilly was going to lower the curtain, and sweep them from the stage.

Her mind was peopled with figures. She thought of Jethro, too. He seemed to be coming ever nearer and nearer. She could hear his tread marching into her life, and could see his face. It was very moving, as she remembered it. A long line of scholarly forbears had dowered him with a refinement and grace quite startling in this unornamented spot, and some old Acadian ancestor had lent him beauty. His eyes were dark, and they held an unfathomable melancholy. The line of his forehead and nose ran haughtily and yet delicate; and even after years of absence, Dilly sometimes caught her breath when she thought of the way his head was set upon his shoulders. She had never in her life seen a man or woman who was entirely beautiful, and he saturated her longing like a prodigal stream.