MARGRET HOWTH. 

A STORY OF TO-DAY

by

Rebecca Harding Davis

"My matter hath no voice to alien ears. "

TO MY MOTHER. 

CHAPTER I. 

Let me tell you a story of To-Day, --very homely and narrow in its scopeand aim. Not of the To-Day whose significance in the history ofhumanity only those shall read who will live when you and I are dead. We can bear the pain in silence, if our hearts are strong enough, whilethe nations of the earth stand afar off. I have no word of this To-Dayto speak. I write from the border of the battlefield, and I find in itno theme for shallow argument or flimsy rhymes. The shadow of deathhas fallen on us; it chills the very heaven. No child laughs in myface as I pass down the street. Men have forgotten to hope, forgottento pray; only in the bitterness of endurance, they say "in the morning, 'Would God it were even!' and in the evening, 'Would God it weremorning!'" Neither I nor you have the prophet's vision to see the ageas its meaning stands written before God. Those who shall live when weare dead may tell their children, perhaps, how, out of anguish anddarkness such as the world seldom has borne, the enduring morningevolved of the true world and the true man. It is not clear to us. Hands wet with a brother's blood for the Right, a slavery ofintolerance, the hackneyed cant of men, or the blood-thirstiness ofwomen, utter no prophecy to us of the great To-Morrow of content andright that holds the world. Yet the To-Morrow is there; if God lives, it is there. The voice of the meek Nazarene, which we have deafeneddown as ill-timed, unfit to teach the watchword of the hour, renews thequiet promise of its coming in simple, humble things. Let us go downand look for it. There is no need that we should feebly vaunt andmadden ourselves over our self-seen rights, whatever they may be, forgetting what broken shadows they are of eternal truths in that calmwhere He sits and with His quiet hand controls us. 

Patriotism and Chivalry are powers in the tranquil, unlimited lives tocome, as well as here, I know; but there are less partial truths, higher hierarchies who serve the God-man, that do not speak to us inbayonets and victories, --Mercy and Love. Let us not quite neglectthem, unpopular angels though they be. Very humble their voices are, just now: yet not altogether dead, I think. Why, the very low glow ofthe fire upon the hearth tells me something of recompense coming in thehereafter, --Christmas-days, and heartsome warmth; in these bare hillstrampled down by armed men, the yellow clay is quick with pulsingfibres, hints of the great heart of life and love throbbing within;slanted sunlight would show me, in these sullen smoke-clouds from thecamp, walls of amethyst and jasper, outer ramparts of the PromisedLand. Do not call us traitors, then, who choose to be cool and silentthrough the fever of the hour, --who choose to search in common thingsfor auguries of the hopeful, helpful calm to come, finding even inthese poor sweet-peas, thrusting their tendrils through the brownmould; a deeper, more healthful lesson for the eye and soul thanwarring truths. Do not call me a traitor, if I dare weakly to hintthat there are yet other characters besides that of Patriot in which aman may appear creditably in the great masquerade, and not blush whenit is over; or if I tell you a story of To-Day, in which there shall beno bloody glare, --only those homelier, subtiler lights which we haveoverlooked. If it prove to you that the sun of old times still shines, and the God of old times still lives, is not that enough?

My story is very crude and homely, as I said, --only a rough sketch ofone or two of those people whom you see every day, and call "dregs, "sometimes, --a dull, plain bit of prose, such as you might pick foryourself out of any of these warehouses or back-streets. I expect youto call it stale and plebeian, for I know the glimpses of life itpleases you best to find; idyls delicately tinted; passion-veinedhearts, cut bare for curious eyes; prophetic utterances, concrete andclear; or some word of pathos or fun from the old friends who haveendenizened themselves in everybody's home. You want something, infact, to lift you out of this crowded, tobacco-stained commonplace, tokindle and chafe and glow in you. I want you to dig into thiscommonplace, this vulgar American life, and see what is in it. Sometimes I think it has a new and awful significance that we do notsee. 

Your ears are openest to the war-trumpet now. Ha! that isspirit-stirring!--that wakes up the old Revolutionary blood! Yourmanlier nature had been smothered under drudgery, the poor dailynecessity for bread and butter. I want you to go down into this common, every-day drudgery, and consider if there might not be in it also agreat warfare. Not a serfish war; not altogether ignoble, though evenits only end may appear to be your daily food. A great warfare, Ithink, with a history as old as the world, and not without its pathos. It has its slain. Men and women, lean-jawed, crippled in the slow, silent battle, are in your alleys, sit beside you at your table; itsmartyrs sleep under every green hill-side. 

You must fight in it; money will buy you no discharge from that war. There is room in it, believe me, whether your post be on a judge'sbench, or over a wash-tub, for heroism, for knightly honour, for purertriumph than his who falls foremost in the breach. Your enemy, Self, goes with you from the cradle to the coffin; it is a hand-to-handstruggle all the sad, slow way, fought in solitude, --a battle thatbegan with the first heart-beat, and whose victory will come only whenthe drops ooze out, and sudden halt in the veins, --a victory, if youcan gain it, that will drift you not a little way upon the coasts ofthe wider, stronger range of being, beyond death. 

Let me roughly outline for you one or two lives that I have known, andhow they conquered or were worsted in the fight. Very common lives, Iknow, --such as are swarming in yonder market-place; yet I dare to callthem voices of God, --all!

My reason for choosing this story to tell you is simple enough. 

An old book, which I happened to find to-day, recalled it. It was aledger, iron-bound, with the name of the firm on the outside, --Knowles& Co. You may have heard of the firm: they were large woollenmanufacturers: supplied the home market in Indiana for several years. This ledger, you see by the writing, has been kept by a woman. That isnot unusual in Western trading towns, especially in factories where theoperatives are chiefly women. In such establishments, they can fillevery post successfully, but that of overseer: they are too hard withthe hands for that. 

The writing here is curious: concise, square, not flowing, --verylegible, however, exactly suited to its purpose. People who profess toread character in chirography would decipher but little from thesecramped, quiet lines. Only this, probably: that the woman, whoever shewas, had not the usual fancy of her sex for dramatizing her soul in herwriting, her dress, her face, --kept it locked up instead, intact; thather words and looks, like her writing, were most likely simple, mereabsorbents by which she drew what she needed of the outer world to her, not flaunting helps to fling herself, or the tragedy or comedy that laywithin, before careless passers-by. The first page has the date, inred letters, October 2, 1860, largely and clearly written. I am surethe woman's hand trembled a little when she took up the pen; but thereis no sign of it here; for it was a new, desperate adventure to her, and she was young, with no faith in herself. She did not lookdesperate, at all, --a quiet, dark girl, coarsely dressed in brown. 

There was not much light in the office where she sat; for the factorywas in one of the close by-streets of the town, and the office theygave her was only a small square closet in the seventh story. It hadbut one window, which overlooked a back-yard full of dyeing vats. Thesunlight that did contrive to struggle in obliquely through the dustypanes and cobwebs of the window, had a sleepy odour of copperas latentin it. You smelt it when you stirred. The manager, Pike, who broughther up, had laid the day-books and this ledger open on the desk forher. As soon as he was gone, she shut the door, listening until hisheavy boots had thumped creaking down the rickety ladder leading to theframe-rooms. Then she climbed up on the high office-stool (climbed, Isaid, for she was a little, lithe thing) and went to work, opening thebooks, and copying from one to the other as steadily, monotonously, asif she had been used to it all her life. Here are the first pages: seehow sharp the angles are of the blue and black lines, how even thelong columns: one would not think, that, as the steel pen traced themout, it seemed to be lining out her life, narrow and black. If anysuch morbid fancy were in the girl's head, there was no tear to betrayit. The sordid, hard figures seemed to her types of the years coming, but she wrote them down unflinchingly: perhaps life had nothing betterfor her, so she did not care. She finished soon: they had given heronly an hour or two's work for the first day. She closed the books, wiped the pens in a quaint, mechanical fashion, then got down andexamined her new home. 

It was soon understood. There were the walls with their brokenplaster, showing the laths underneath, with here and there, over them, sketches with burnt coal, showing that her predecessor had been anartist in his way, --his name, P. Teagarden, emblazoned on the ceilingwith the smoke of a candle; heaps of hanks of yarn in the dustycorners; a half-used broom; other heaps of yarn on the old topplingdesk covered with dust; a raisin-box, with P. Teagarden done on the lidin bas-relief, half full of ends of cigars, a pack of cards, and arotten apple. That was all, except an impalpable sense of dust andworn-outness pervading the whole. One thing more, odd enough there: awire cage, hung on the wall, and in it a miserable pecking chicken, peering dolefully with suspicious eyes out at her, and then down at themouldy bit of bread on the floor of his cage, --left there, I suppose, by the departed Teagarden. That was all, inside. She looked out ofthe window. In it, as if set in a square black frame, was the deadbrick wall, and the opposite roof, with a cat sitting on the scuttle. Going closer, two or three feet of sky appeared. It looked as if itsmelt of copperas, and she drew suddenly back. 

She sat down, waiting until it was time to go; quietly taking the dullpicture into her slow, unrevealing eyes; a sluggish, hackneyedweariness creeping into her brain; a curious feeling, that all her lifebefore had been a silly dream, and this dust, these desks and ledgers, were real, --all that was real. It was her birthday; she was twenty. As she happened to remember that, another fancy floated up before her, oddly life-like: of the old seat she made under the currant-bushes athome when she was a child, and the plans she laid for herself, when sheshould be a woman, sitting there, --how she would dig down into themiddle of the world, and find the kingdom of the griffins, or would goafter Mercy and Christiana in their pilgrimage. It was only a littlewhile ago since these things were more alive to her than anything elsein the world. The seat was under the currant-bushes still. Verylittle time ago; but she was a woman now, --and, look here! A chanceray of sunlight slanted in, falling barely on the dust, the hot heapsof wool, waking a stronger smell of copperas; the chicken saw it, andbegan to chirp a weak, dismal joy, more sorrowful than tears. She wentto the cage, and put her finger in for it to peck at. Standing there, if the vacant life coming rose up before her in that hard blare ofsunlight, she looked at it with the same still, waiting eyes, that toldnothing. 

The door opened at last, and a man came in, --Dr. Knowles, the principalowner of the factory. He nodded shortly to her, and, going to thedesk, turned over the books, peering suspiciously at her work. An oldman, overgrown, looking like a huge misshapen mass of flesh, as hestood erect, facing her. 

"You can go now, " he said, gruffly. "Tomorrow you must wait for thebell to ring, and go--with the rest of the hands. "

A curious smile flickered over her face like a shadow; but she saidnothing. He waited a moment. 

"So!" he growled, "the Howth blood does not blush to go down into theslime of the gutter? is sufficient to itself?"

A cool, attentive motion, --that was all. Then she stooped to tie hersandals. The old man watched her, irritated. She had been used to thekeen scrutiny of his eyes since she was a baby, so was cool under italways. The face watching her was one that repelled most men:dominant, restless, flushing into red gusts of passion, a small, intolerant eye, half hidden in folds of yellow fat, --the eye of a manwho would give to his master (whether God or Satan) the last drop ofhis own blood, and exact the same of other men. 

She had tied her bonnet and fastened her shawl, and stood ready to go. 

"Is that all you want?" he demanded. "Are you waiting to hear thatyour work is well done? Women go through life as babies learn towalk, --a mouthful of pap every step, only they take it in praise orlove. Pap is better. Which do you want? Praise, I fancy. "

"Neither, " she said, quietly brushing her shawl. "The work is welldone, I know. "

The old man's eye glittered for an instant, satisfied; then he turnedto the books. He thought she had gone, but, hearing a slight clickingsound, turned round. She was taking the chicken out of the cage. 

"Let it alone!" he broke out, sharply. "Where are you going with it?"

"Home, " she said, with a queer, quizzical face. "Let it smell thegreen fields, Doctor. Ledgers and copperas are not good food for achicken's soul, or body either. "

"Let it alone!" he growled. "You take it for a type of yourself, eh?It has another work to do than to grow fat and sleep about thebarnyard. "

She opened the cage. 

"I think I will take it. "

"No, " he said, quietly. "It has a master here. Not P. Teagarden. Why, Margret, " pushing his stubby finger between the tin bars "do you thinkthe God you believe in would have sent it here without a work to do?"

She looked up; there was a curious tremour in his flabby face, a shadowin his rough voice. 

"If it dies here, its life won't have been lost. Nothing is lost. Letit alone. "

"Not lost?" she said, slowly, refastening the cage. "Only I think"----

"What, child?"

She glanced furtively at him. 

"It's a hard, scraping world where such a thing as that has work to do!"

He vouchsafed no answer. She waited to see his lip curl bitterly, andthen, amused, went down the stairs. She had paid him for his sneer. 

The steps were but a long ladder set in the wall, not the greatstaircase used by the hands: that was on the other side of the factory. It was a huge, unwieldy building, such as crowd the suburbs of tradingtowns. This one went round the four sides of a square, with the yardfor the vats in the middle. The ladders and passages she passed downwere on the inside, narrow and dimly lighted: she had to grope her waysometimes. The floors shook constantly with the incessant thud of thegreat looms that filled each story, like heavy, monotonous thunder. Itdeafened her, made her dizzy, as she went down slowly. It was no shortwalk to reach the lower hall, but she was down at last. Doors openedfrom it into the ground-floor ware-rooms; glancing in, she saw vast, dingy recesses of boxes piled up to the dark ceilings. There was acrowd of porters and draymen cracking their whips, and lounging on thetrucks by the door, waiting for loads, talking politics, and smoking. The smell of tobacco, copperas, and burning logwood was heavy toclamminess here. She stopped, uncertain. One of the porters, a short, sickly man, who stood aloof from the rest, pushed open a door for herwith his staff. Margret had a quick memory for faces; she thought shehad seen this one before as she passed, --a dark face, sullen, heavy-lipped, the hair cut convict-fashion, close to the head. Shethought too, one of the men muttered "jail-bird, " jeering him for hisforwardness. "Load for Clinton! Western Railroad!" sung out a sharpvoice behind her, and, as she went into the street, a train of carsrushed into the hall to be loaded, and men swarmed out of everycorner, --red-faced and pale, whiskey-bloated and heavy-brained, Irish, Dutch, black, with souls half asleep somewhere, and the destiny of anation in their grasp, --hands, like herself, going through the slow, heavy work, for, as Pike the manager would have told you, "threedollars a week, --good wages these tight times. " For nothing more?Some other meaning may have fallen from their faces into this girl'ssubtile intuition in the instant's glance, --cheerfuller, remoter aims, hidden in the most sensual face, --homeliest home-scenes, low climbingambitions, some delirium of pleasure to come, --whiskey, if nothingbetter: aims in life like yours differing in degree. Needing only tomake them the same----did you say what?

She had reached the street now, --a back-street, a crooked sort of lanerather, running between endless piles of warehouses. She hurried downit to gain the suburbs, for she lived out in the country. It was along, tiresome walk through the outskirts of the town, where thedwelling-houses were, --long rows of two-story bricks drabbled withsoot-stains. It was two years since she had been in the town. Remembering this, and the reason why she had shunned it, she quickenedher pace, her face growing stiller than before. One might have fanciedher a slave putting on a mask, fearing to meet her master. The town, being unfamiliar to her, struck her newly. She saw the expression onits face better. It was a large trading city, compactly built, shut inby hills. It had an anxious, harassed look, like a speculatorconcluding a keen bargain; the very dwelling-houses smelt of trade, having shops in the lower stories; in the outskirts, where there arecottages in other cities, there were mills here; the trees, which somedeluded dreamer had planted on the flat pavements, had all grown upinto abrupt Lombardy poplars, knowing their best policy was to keep outof the way; the boys, playing marbles under them, played sharply "forkeeps;" the bony old dray-horses, plodding through the dusty crowds, had speculative eyes, that measured their oats at night with a"you-don't-cheat-me" look. Even the churches had not the grave reposeof the old brown house yonder in the hills, where the fewfield-people--Arians, Calvinists, Churchmen--gathered every Sunday, andair and sunshine and God's charity made the day holy. These churcheslifted their hard stone faces insolently, registering their yearly almsin the morning journals. To be sure the back-seats were free for thepoor; but the emblazoned crimson of the windows, the carving of thearches, the very purity of the preacher's style, said plainly that itwas easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a manin a red wamus to enter the kingdom of heaven through that gate. 

Nature itself had turned her back on the town: the river turned aside, and but half a river crept reluctantly by; the hills were but barebanks of yellow clay. There was a cinder-road leading through these. Margret climbed it slowly. The low town-hills, as I said, were bare, covered at their bases with dingy stubble-fields. In the sidesbordering the road gaped the black mouths of the coal-pits thatburrowed under the hills, under the town. Trade everywhere, --on theearth and under it. No wonder the girl called it a hard, scrapingworld. But when the road had crept through these hills, it suddenlyshook off the cinders, and turned into the brown mould of themeadows, --turned its back on trade and the smoky town, and speedilyleft it out of sight contemptuously, never looking back once. This wasthe country now in earnest. 

Margret slackened her step, drawing long breaths of the fresh cold air. Far behind her, panting and puffing along, came a black, burly figure, Dr. Knowles. She had seen him behind her all the way, but they did notspeak. Between the two there lay that repellent resemblance which madethem like close relations, --closer when they were silent. You knowsuch people? When you speak to them, the little sharp points clash. Yet they are the few whom you surely know you will meet in the lifebeyond death, "saved" or not. The Doctor came slowly along the quietcountry-road, watching the woman's figure going as slowly before him. He had a curious interest in the girl, --a secret reason for theinterest, which as yet he kept darkly to himself. For this reason hetried to fancy how her new life would seem to her. It should be hardenough, her work, --he was determined on that; her strength andendurance must be tested to the uttermost. He must know what stuff wasin the weapon before he used it. He had been reading the slow, coldthing for years, --had not got into its secret yet. But there was powerthere, and it was the power he wanted. Her history was simple enough:she was going into the mill to support a helpless father and mother; itwas a common story; she had given up much for them;--other women didthe same. He gave her scanty praise. Two years ago (he had keen, watchful eyes, this man) he had fancied that the homely girl had adream, as most women have, of love and marriage: she had put it aside, he thought, forever; it was too expensive a luxury; she had to beginthe life-long battle for bread and butter. Her dream had been real andpure, perhaps; for she accepted no sham love in its place: if it hadleft an empty hunger in her heart, she had not tried to fill it. Well, well, it was the old story. Yet he looked after her kindly as hethought of it; as some people look sorrowfully at children, going backto their own childhood. For a moment he half relented in his purpose, thinking, perhaps, her work for life was hard enough. But no: thiswoman had been planned and kept by God for higher uses than daughter orwife or mother. It was his part to put her work into her hands. 

The road was creeping drowsily now between high grass-banks, outthrough the hills. A sleepy, quiet road. The restless dust of thetown never had been heard of out there. It went wandering lazilythrough the corn-fields, down by the river, into the very depths of thewoods, --the low October sunshine slanting warmly down it all the way, touching the grass-banks and the corn-fields with patches of russetgold. Nobody in such a road could be in a hurry. The quiet was sodeep, the free air, the heavy trees, the sunshine, all so full andcertain and fixed, one could be sure of finding them the same a hundredyears from now. Nobody ever was in a hurry. The brown bees came alongthere, when their work was over, and hummed into the great purplethistles on the road-side in a voluptuous stupor of delight. The cowssauntered through the clover by the fences, until they wound up bylying down in it and sleeping outright. The country-people, joggingalong to the mill, walked their fat old nags through the stillness andwarmth so slowly that even Margret left them far behind. As the roadwent deeper into the hills, the quiet grew even more penetrating andcertain, --so certain in these grand old mountains that one called iteternal, and, looking up to the peaks fixed in the clear blue, grewsurer of a world beyond this where there is neither change nor death. 

It was growing late; the evening air more motionless and cool; therusset gold of the sunshine mottled only the hill-tops now; in thevalleys there was a duskier brown, deepening every moment. Margretturned from the road, and went down the fields. One did not wonder, feeling the silence of these hills and broad sweeps of meadow, thatthis woman, coming down from among them, should be strangely still, with dark questioning eyes dumb to their own secrets. 

Looking into her face now, you could be sure of one thing: that she hadleft the town, the factory, the dust far away, shaken the thought ofthem off her brain. No miles could measure the distance between herhome and them. At a stile across the field an old man sat waiting. She hurried now, her cheek colouring. Dr. Knowles could see them goingto the house beyond, talking earnestly. He sat down in the darkeningtwilight on the stile, and waited half an hour. He did not care tohear the story of Margret's first day at the mill, knowing how herfather and mother would writhe under it, soften it as she would. Itwas nothing to her, he knew. So he waited. After a while he heard theold man's laugh, like that of a pleased child, and then went in andtook her place beside him. She went out, but came back presently, every grain of dust gone, in her clear dress of pearl gray. Theneutral tint suited her well. As she stood by the window, listeninggravely to them, the homely face and waiting figure came into fullrelief. Nature had made the woman in a freak of rare sincerity. Therewere no reflected lights about her; no gloss on her skin, no glitter inher eyes, no varnish on her soul. Simple and dark and pure, there shewas, for God and her master to conquer and understand. Her flesh wascold and colourless, --there were no surface tints on it, --it warmedsometimes slowly from far within; her voice, quiet, --out of her heart;her hair, the only beauty of the woman, was lustreless brown, lay inunpolished folds of dark shadow. I saw such hair once, only once. Ithad been cut from the head of a man, who, unconscious, simple as achild, lived out the law of his nature, and set the world atdefiance, --Bysshe Shelley. 

The Doctor, talking to her father, watched the girl furtively, took inevery point, as one might critically survey a Damascus blade which hewas going to carry into battle. There was neither love nor scorn inhis look, --a mere fixedness of purpose to make use of her some day. Hetalked, meanwhile, glancing at her now and then, as if the subject theydiscussed were indirectly linked with his plan for her. If it were, she was unconscious of it. She sat on the wooden step of the porch, looking out on the melancholy sweep of meadow and hill range growingcool and dimmer in the dun twilight, not hearing what they said, untilthe sharpened, earnest tones roused her. 

"You will fail, Knowles. "

It was her father who spoke. 

"Nothing can save such a scheme from failure. Neither the French norGerman Socialists attempted to base their systems on the lowest class, as you design. "

"I know, " said Knowles. "That accounts for their partial success. "

"Let me understand your plan practically, " eagerly demanded her father. 

She thought Knowles evaded the question, --wished to leave the subject. Perhaps he did not regard the poor old school-master as a practicaljudge of practical matters. All his life he had called him thriftlessand unready. 

"It never will do, Knowles, " he went on in his slow way. "Any plan, Phalanstery or Community, call it what you please, founded on selfgovernment, is based on a sham, the tawdriest of shams. "

The old school-master shook his head as one who knows, and tried topush the thin gray hairs out of his eyes in a groping way. Margretlifted them back, so quietly that he did not feel her. 

"You'll call the Republic a sham next!" said the Doctor, coollyaggravating. 

"The Republic!" The old man quickened his tone, like a war-horsescenting the battle near at hand. "There never was a thinner-crustedDevil's egg in the world than democracy. I think I've told you thatbefore?"

"I think you have, " said the other, dryly. 

"You always were a Tory, Mr. Howth, " said his wife, in her placid, creamy way. "It is in the blood, I think, Doctor. The Howths foughtunder Cornwallis, you know. "

The school-master waited until his wife had ended. 

"Very true, Mrs. Howth, " he said, with a grave smile. Then his thinface grew hot again. 

"No, Dr. Knowles. Your scheme is but a sign of the mad age we live in. Since the thirteenth century, when the anarchic element sprangfull-grown into the history of humanity, that history has been chaos. And this republic is the culmination of chaos. "

"Out of chaos came the new-born earth, " suggested the Doctor. 

"But its foundations were granite, " rejoined the old man with nervouseagerness, --"granite, not the slime of yesterday. When you foundempires, go to work as God worked. "

The Doctor did not answer; sat looking, instead, out into the darkindifferently, as if the heresies which the old man hurled at him weresome old worn-out song. Seeing, however, that the school-master'sflush of enthusiasm seemed on the point of dying out, he roused himselfto gibe it into life. 

"Well, Mr. Howth, what will you have? If the trodden rights of thehuman soul are the slime of yesterday, how shall we found our empire tolast? On despotism? Civil or theocratic?"

"Any despotism is better than that of newly enfranchised serfs, "replied the school-master. 

The Doctor laughed. 

"What a successful politician you would have made? You would have hadsuch a winning way to the hearts of the great unwashed!"

Mrs. Howth laid down her knitting. 

"My dear, " she said, timidly, "I think that is treason. "

The angry heat died out of his face instantly, as he turned to her, without the glimmer of a covert smile at her simplicity. She was awoman; and when he spoke to the Doctor, it was in a tone less sharp. 

"What is it the boys used to declaim, their Yankee hearts throbbingunder their round-aborts? 'Happy, proud America!' Somehow in that way. 'Cursed, abased America!' better if they had said. Look at her, in thewarm vigour of her youth, most vigorous in decay! Look at the germsand dregs of nations, creeds, religions, fermenting together! As forthe theory of self-government, it will muddle down here, as in thethree great archetypes of the experiment, into a paling, miserablefailure!"

The Doctor did not hear. Some sharper shadow seemed to haunt him thanthe downfall of the Republic. What help did he seek in this girl? Hiskeen, deep eyes never left her unconscious face. 

"No, " Mr. Howth went on, having the field to himself, --"we left Orderback there in the ages you call dark, and Progress will trumpet theworld into the ditch. "

"Comte!" growled the Doctor. 

The school-master's cane beat an angry tattoo on the hearth. 

"You sneer at Comte? Because, having the clearest eye, the widestsweeping eye ever given to man, he had no more? It was to show how farflesh can go alone. Could he help it, if God refused the prophet'svision?"

"I'm sure, Samuel, " interrupted his wife with a sorrowful earnestness, "your own eyes were as strong as a man's could be. It was ten yearsafter I wore spectacles that you began. Only for that miserable fever, you could read shorthand now. "

Her own blue eyes filled with tears. There was a sudden silence. Margret shivered, as if some pain stung her. Holding her father's bonyhand in hers, she patted it on her knee. The hand trembled a little. Knowles's sharp eyes darted from one to the other; then, with asmothered growl, he shook himself, and rushed headlong into the oldbattle which he and the school-master had been waging now, off and on, some six years. That was a fight, I can tell you! None of yourshallow, polite clashing of modern theories, --no talk of yourJeffersonian Democracy, your high-bred Federalism! They took hold ofthe matter by the roots, clear at the beginning. 

Mrs. Howth's breath fairly left her, they went into the soul of thematter in such a dangerous way. What if Joel should hear? No doubt hewould report that his master was an infidel, --that would be the nextthing they would hear. He was in the kitchen now: he finished hiswood-chopping an hour ago. Asleep, doubtless; that was one comfort. Well, if he were awake, he could not understand. That class ofpeople----And Mrs. Howth (into whose kindly brain just enough of herhusband's creed had glimmered to make her say, "that class of people, "in the tone with which Abraham would NOT have spoken of Dives over thegulf) went tranquilly back to her knitting, wondering why Dr. Knowlesshould come ten times now where he used to come once, to provoke Samuelinto these wearisome arguments. Ever since their misfortune came onthem, he had been there every night, always at it. She should think hemight be a little more considerate. Mr. Howth surely had enough tothink of, what with his--his misfortune, and the starvation waiting forthem, and poor Margret's degradation, (she sighed here, ) withoutbothering his head about the theocratic principle, or the Battle ofArmageddon. She had hinted as much to Dr. Knowles one day, and he hadmuttered out something about its being "the life of the dog, Ma'am. "She wondered what he meant by that! She looked over at his bearishfigure, snuff-drabbled waistcoat, and shock of black hair. Well, poorman, he could not help it, if he were coarse, and an Abolitionist, anda Fourierite, and----She was getting a little muddy now, she wasconscious, so turned her mind back to the repose of her stocking. Margret took it very quietly, seeing her father flaming so. ButMargret never had any opinions to express. She was not like theParnells: they were noted for their clear judgment. Mrs. Howth was aParnell. 

 "The combat deepens, --on, ye brave!"

The Doctor's fat, leathery face was quite red now, and his sentenceswere hurled out in a sarcastic bass, enough to wither the marrow of aweak man. But the school-master was no weak man. His foot was entirelyon his native heath, I assure you. He knew every inch of the ground, from the domination of the absolute faith in the ages of Fetichism, toits pseudo-presentment in the tenth century, and its actual subversionin the nineteenth. Every step. Our politicians might have picked up anidea or two there, I should think! Then he was so cool about it, soskilful! He fairly rubbed his hands with glee, enjoying the combat. And he was so sure that the Doctor was savagely in earnest: why, anyone with half an ear could hear that! He did not see how, in the veryheat of the fray, his eyes would wander off listlessly. But Mr. Howthdid not wander; there was nothing careless or two-sided in the makingof this man, --no sham about him, or borrowing. They came downgradually, or out, --for, as I told you, they dug into the very heart ofthe matter at first, --they came out gradually to modern times. Thingsbegan to assume a more familiar aspect. Spinoza, Fichte, SaintSimon, --one heard about them now. If you could but have heard theschool-master deal with these his enemies! With what tender charityfor the man, what relentless vengeance for the belief, he pounced onthem, dragging the soul out of their systems, holding it up for slowslaughter! As for Humanity, (how Knowles lingered on that word, with atenderness curious in so uncouth a mass of flesh!)--as for Humanity, itwas a study to see it stripped and flouted and thrown out of doors likea filthy rag by this poor old Howth, a man too child-hearted to kill aspider. It was pleasanter to hear him when he defended the great Pastin which his ideal truth had been faintly shadowed. How he caught thesalient tints of the feudal life! How the fine womanly nature of theman rose exulting in the free picturesque glow of the day of crusaderand heroic deed! How he crowded in traits of perfected manhood in theconqueror, simple trust in the serf, to colour and weaken his argument, not seeing that he weakened it! How, when he thought he had corneredthe Doctor, he would colour and laugh like a boy, then suddenly checkhimself, lest he might wound him! A curious laugh, genial, cheery, --bubbling out of his weak voice in a way that put you in mindof some old and rare wine. When he would check himself in one of thesetriumphant glows, he would turn to the Doctor with a deprecatorygravity, and for a few moments be almost submissive in his reply. Soearnest and worn it looked then, the poor old face, in the dim light!The black clothes he wore were so threadbare and shining at the kneesand elbows, the coarse leather shoes brought to so fine a polish! TheDoctor idly wondered who had blacked them, glancing at Margret'sfingers. 

There was a flower stuck in the button-hole of the school-master'scoat, a pale tea-rose. If Dr. Knowles had been a man of fineinstincts, (which his opaque shining eyes would seem to deny, ) he mighthave thought it was not unapt or ill-placed even in the shabby, scuffedcoat. A scholar, a gentleman, though in patched shoes and trousers aworld too short. Old and gaunt, hunger-bitten even it may be, withloose-jointed, bony limbs, and yellow face; clinging, loyal and brave, to the quaint, delicate fancies of his youth, that were dust and ashesto other men. In the very haggard face you could find the quiet purityof the child he had been, and the old child's smile, fresh andcredulous, on the mouth. 

The Doctor had not spoken for a moment. It might be that he wascareless of the poetic lights with which Mr. Howth tenderly decoratedhis old faith, or it might be, that even he, with the terribleintentness of a real life-purpose in his brain, was touched by thepicture of the far old chivalry, dead long ago. The master's voice grewlow and lingering now. It was a labour of love, this. Oh, it is soeasy to go back out of the broil of dust and meanness and barter intothe clear shadow of that old life where love and bravery stand eternalverities, --never to be bought and sold in that dusty town yonder! Togo back? To dream back, rather. To drag out of our own hearts, as thehungry old master did, whatever is truest and highest there, and clotheit with name and deed in the dim days of chivalry. Make a poem ofit, --so much easier than to make a life!

Knowles shuffled uneasily, watching the girl keenly, to know how thepicture touched her. Was, then, she thought, this grand, dead Past soshallow to him? These knights, pure, unstained, searching until deathfor the Holy Grail, could he understand the life-long agony, thetriumph of their conflict over Self? These women, content to live insolitude forever because they once had loved, could any man understandthat? Or the dead queen, dead that the man she loved might be free andhappy, --why, this WAS life, --this death! But did pain, and martyrdom, and victory lie back in the days of Galahad and Arthur alone? Thehomely face grew stiller than before, looking out into the dun sweep ofmoorland, --cold, unrevealing. It baffled the man that looked at it. He shuffled, chewed tobacco vehemently, tilted his chair on two legs, broke out in a thunder-gust at last. 

"Dead days for dead men! The world hears a bugle-call to-day morenoble than any of your piping troubadours. We have something better tofight for than a vacant tomb. "

The old man drew himself up haughtily. 

"I know what you would say, --Liberty for the low and vile. It is agood word. That was a better which they hid in their hearts in the oldtime, --Honour!"

Honour! I think, Calvinist though he was, that word was his religion. Men have had worse. Perhaps the Doctor thought this; for he roseabruptly, and, leaning on the old man's chair, said, gently, --

"It is better, even here. Yet you poison this child's mind. You makeher despise To-Day; make honour live for her now. "

"It does not, " the school-master said, bitterly. "The world's afailure. All the great old dreams are dead. Your own phantom, yourRepublic, your experiment to prove that all men are born free andequal, --what is it to-day?"

Knowles lifted his head, looking out into the brown twilight. Some wordof pregnant meaning flashed in his eye and trembled on his lip; but hekept it back. His face glowed, though, and the glow and strength gaveto the huge misshapen features a grand repose. 

"You talk of To-Day, " the old man continued, querulously. "I am tiredof it. Here is its type and history, " touching a county newspaper, --"afair type, with its cant, and bigotry, and weight of uncomprehendedfact. Bargain and sale, --it taints our religion, our brains, ourflags, --yours and mine, Knowles, with the rest. Did you never hear ofthose abject spirits who entered neither heaven nor hell, who wereneither faithful to God nor rebellious, caring only for themselves?"

He paused, fairly out of breath. Margret looked up. Knowles wassilent. There was a smothered look of pain on the coarse face; theschool-master's words were sinking deeper than he knew. 

"No, father, " said Margret, hastily ending his quotation, "'io nonaverei creduto, che [vita] tanta n' avesse disfatta. '"

Skilful Margret! The broil must have been turbid in the old man'sbrain which the grand, slow-stepping music of the Florentine could notcalm. She had learned that long ago, and used it as a nurse does someold song to quiet her pettish infant. His face brightened instantly. 

"Do not believe, then, child, " he said, after a pause. "It is a nobledoubt, in Dante or in you. "

The Doctor had turned away; she could not see his face. The angryscorn was gone from the old master's countenance; it was bent with itsusual wistful eagerness on the floor. A moment after he looked up witha flickering smile. 

"'Onorate l' altissmo poeta!'" he said, gently lifting his finger tohis forehead in a military fashion. "Where is my cane, Margret? TheDoctor and I will go and walk on the porch before it grows dark. "

The sun had gone down long before, and the stars were out; but no onespoke of this. Knowles lighted the school-master's pipe and his owncigar, and then moved the chairs out of their way, stepping softly thatthe old man might not hear him. Margret, in the room, watched them asthey went, seeing how gentle the rough, burly man was with her father, and how, every time they passed the sweet-brier, he bent the branchesaside, that they might not touch his face. Slow, childish tears cameinto her eyes as she saw it; for the school-master was blind. This hadbeen their regular walk every evening, since it grew too cold for themto go down under the lindens. The Doctor had not missed a night sinceher father gave up the school, a month ago: at first, under pretence ofattending to his eyes; but since the day he had told them there was nohope of cure, he had never spoken of it again. Only, since then, he hadgrown doubly quarrelsome, --standing ready armed to dispute with the oldman every inch of every subject in earth or air, keeping the old man ina state of boyish excitement during the long, idle days, lookingforward to this nightly battle. 

It was very still; for the house, with its half-dozen acres, lay in anangle of the hills, looking out on the river, which shut out alldistant noises. Only the men's footsteps broke the silence, passingand repassing the window. Without, the October starlight lay white andfrosty on the moors, the old barn, the sharp, dark hills, and theriver, which was half hidden by the orchard. One could hear it, likesome huge giant moaning in his sleep, at times, and see broad patchesof steel blue glittering through the thick apple-trees and the bushes. Her mother had fallen into a doze. Margret looked at her, thinking howsallow the plump, fair face had grown, and how faded the kindly blueeyes were now. Dim with crying, --she knew that, though she never sawher shed a tear. Always cheery, going placidly about the house in hergray dress and Quaker cap, as if there were no such things in the worldas debt or blindness. But Margret knew, though she said nothing. Whenher mother came in from those wonderful foraging expeditions in searchof late pease or corn, she could see the swollen circle round the eyes, and hear her breath like that of a child which has sobbed itself tired. Then, one night, when she had gone into her mother's room, after shewas in bed, the blue eyes were set in a wild, hopeless way, as ifstaring down into years of starvation and misery. The fire on thehearth burned low and clear; the old worn furniture stood outcheerfully in the red glow, and threw a maze of twisted shadow on thefloor. But the glow was all that was cheerful. To-morrow, when thehard daylight should jeer away the screening shadows, it would unbare adesolate, shabby home. She knew; struck with the white leprosy ofpoverty; the blank walls, the faded hangings, the old stone houseitself, looking vacantly out on the fields with a pitiful significanceof loss. Upon the mantel-shelf there was a small marble figure, one ofthe Dancing Graces: the other two were gone, gone in pledge. This onewas left, twirling her foot, and stretching out her hands in a drearysort of ecstasy, with no one to respond. For a moment, so empty andbitter seemed her home and her life, that she thought the lonely dancerwith her flaunting joy mocked her, --taunted them with the slow, graydesolation that had been creeping on them for years. Only for a momentthe morbid fancy hurt her. 

The red glow was healthier, suited her temperament better. She choseto fancy the house as it had been once, --should be again, please God. She chose to see the old comfort and the old beauty which the poorschool-master had gathered about their home. Gone now. But it shouldreturn. It was well, perhaps, that he was blind, he knew so little ofwhat had come on them. There, where the black marks were on the wall, there had hung two pictures. Margret and her father religiouslybelieved them to be a Tintoret and Copley. Well, they were gone now. He had been used to dust them with a light brush every morning, himself, but now he said always, --

"You can clean the pictures to-day, Margret. Be careful, my child. "

And Margret would remember the greasy Irishman who had tucked themunder his arm, and flung them into a cart, her blood growing hotter inher veins. 

It was the same through all the house; there was not a niche in thebare rooms that did not recall a something gone, --something that shouldreturn. She willed that, that evening, standing by the dim fire. Whatwomen will, whose eyes are slow, attentive, still, as this Margret's, usually comes to pass. 

The red fire-glow suited her; another glow, warming her floating fancy, mingled with it, giving her every-day purpose the trait of heroism. The old spirit of the dead chivalry, of succour to the weak, life-longself-denial, --did it need the sand waste of Palestine or a tournamentto call it into life? Down in that trading town, in the thick of itsmills and drays, it could live, she thought. That very night, perhaps, in some of those fetid cellars or sunken shanties, there were vigilskept of purpose as unselfish, prayer as heaven-commanding, as that ofthe old aspirants for knighthood. She, too, --her quiet face stirredwith a simple, childish smile, like her father's. 

"Why, mother!" she said, stroking down the gray hair under the cap, "shall you sleep here all night?" laughing. 

A cheery, tender laugh, this woman's was, --seldom heard, --not far fromtears. 

Mrs. Howth roused herself. Just then, a broad, high-shouldered man, ina gray flannel shirt, and shoes redolent of the stable, appeared at thedoor. Margret looked at him as if he were an accusing spirit, --comingdown, as woman must, from heights of self-renunciation or bold resolve, to an undarned stocking or an uncooked meal. 

"Kittle's b'ilin', " he announced, flinging in the information as ageneral gratuity. 

"That will do, Joel, " said Mrs. Howth. 

The tone of stately blandness which Mrs. Howth erected as a shieldbetween herself and "that class of people" was a study: a success; theresume of her experience in the combat that had devoured half her life, like that of other American house-keepers. "Be gentle, but let themknow their place, my dear!" The class having its type and exponent inJoel, stopped at the door, and hitched up its suspenders. 

"That will DO, Joel, " with a stern suavity. 

Some idea was in Joel's head under the brush of red hair, --probably the"anarchic element. "

"Uh was wishin' toh read the G'zette. " Whereupon he advanced into theteeth of the enemy and bore off the newspaper, going before Margret, asshe went to the kitchen, and seating himself beside a flaringtallow-candle on the table. 

Reading, with Joel, was not the idle pastime that more trivial mindsfind it; a thing, on the contrary, to be gone into with slow spelling, and face knitted up into savage sternness, especially now, when, as hegravely explained to Margret, "in HIS opinion the crissis was jest athand, and ev'ry man must be seein' ef the gover'ment was carryin' outthe views of the people. "

With which intent, Joel, in company with five thousand othersovereigns, consulted, as definitive oracle, "The Daily Gazette" ofTowbridge. The school-master need not have grumbled for the old time:feodality in the days of Warwick and of "The Daily Gazette" was not sowidely different as he and Joel thought. 

Now and then, partly as an escape-valve for his overcharged conviction, partly in compassion to the ignorance of women in political economics, he threw off to Margret divers commentaries on the text, as she passedin and out. 

If she had risen to the full level of Joel's views, she might haveconsidered these views tinctured with radicalism, as they consisted inthe propriety of the immediate "impinging of the President. " Besides, (Joel was a good-natured man, too, merciful to his beast, ) Nero-like, he wished, with the tiger drop of blood that lies hid in everybody'sheart, that the few millions who differed with himself and the"Gazette" had but one neck for their more convenient hanging, "It's allthat'll save the kentry, " he said, and believed it, too. 

If Margret fell suddenly from the peak of outlook on life to the homelylabor of cooking supper, some of the healthy heroic flush of theknightly days and the hearth-fire went down with her, I think. Itbrightened and reddened the square kitchen with its cracked stove andmeagre array of tins; she bustled about in her quaint way, as if it hadbeen filled up and running over with comforts. It brightened andreddened her face when she came in to put the last dish on thetable, --a cosy, snug table, set for four. Heroic dreams with poets, Isuppose, make them unfit for food other than some feast such as Eve setfor the angel. But then Margret was no poet. So, with the kindling ofher hope, its healthful light struck out, and warmed and glorifiedthese common things. Such common things! Only a coarse white cloth, redeemed by neither silver nor china, the amber coffee, (some thatKnowles had brought out to her father--"thrown on his hands; hecouldn't use it, --product of slave-labour!--never, Sir!") the delicatebrown fish that Joel had caught, the bread her mother had made, thegolden butter, --all of them touched her nerves with a quick sense ofbeauty and pleasure. And more, the gaunt face of the blind old man, his bony hand trembling as he raised the cup to his lips, her motherand the Doctor managing silently to place everything he liked best nearhis plate. Wasn't it all part of the fresh, hopeful glow burning inher consciousness? It brightened and deepened. It blotted out thehard, dusty path of the future, and showed warm and clear the successat the end. Not much to show, you think. Only the old home as it oncewas, full of quiet laughter and content; only her mother's eyes clearshining again; only that gaunt old head raised proudly, owing no mananything but courtesy. The glow deepened, as she thought of it. Itwas strange, too, that, with the deep, slow-moving nature of this girl, she should have striven so eagerly to throw this light over the future. Commoner natures have done more and hoped less. It was a poor gift, you think, this of the labour of a life for so plain a duty; hardlyheroic. She knew it. Yet, if there lay in this coming labour anypain, any wearing effort, she clung to it desperately, as if thisshould banish, it might be, worse loss. She tried desperately, I say, to clutch the far, uncertain hope at the end, to make happiness out ofit, to give it to her silent gnawing heart to feed on. She thrust outof sight all possible life that might have called her true self intobeing, and clung to this present shallow duty and shallow reward. Pitiful and vain so to cling! It is the way of women. As if any humansoul could bury that which might have been, in that which is!

The Doctor, peering into her thought with sharp, suspicious eyes, heeded the transient flush of enthusiasm but little. Even the pleasantcheery talk that pleased her father so was but surface-deep, he knew. The woman he must conquer for his great end lay beneath, dark and cold. It was only for that end he cared for her. Through what cold depths ofsolitude her soul breathed faintly mattered little. Yet an idle fancytouched him, what a triumph the man had gained, whoever he might be, who had held the master-key to a nature so rare as this, who had thekingly power in his hand to break its silence into electric shivers oflaughter and tears, --terrible subtile pain, or joy as terrible. Did hehold the power still? He wondered. Meanwhile she sat there, unread. 

CHAPTER II. 

The evening came on, slow and cold. Life itself, the Doctor thought, impatiently, was cool and tardy here among the hills. Even he fell intothe tranquil tone, and chafed under it. Nowhere else did the eveninggray and sombre into the mysterious night impalpably as here. Thequiet, wide and deep, folded him in, forced his trivial heat intosilence and thought. The world seemed to think there. Quiet in thedead seas of fog, that filled the valleys like restless vapour curdledinto silence; quiet in the listening air, stretching gray up to thestars, --in the solemn mountains, that stood motionless, likehoary-headed prophets, waiting with uplifted hands, day and night, tohear the Voice, silent now for centuries; the very air, heavy with thebreath of the sleeping pine-forests, moved slowly and cold, like somehuman voice weary with preaching to unbelieving hearts of a peace onearth. This man's heart was unbelieving; he chafed in the oppressivequiet; it was unfeeling mockery to a sick and hungry world, --a deadtorpor of indifference. Years of hot and turbid pain had dulled hiseyes to the eternal secret of the night; his soul was too sore withstumbling, stung, inflamed with the needs and suffering of thecountless lives that hemmed him in, to accept the great prophetic calm. He was blind to the prophecy written on the earth since the day Godfirst bade it tell thwarted man of the great To-Morrow. 

He turned from the night in-doors. Human hearts were his proper study. The old house, he thought, slept with the rest. One did not wonderthat the pendulum of the clock swung long and slow. The frantic, nervous haste of town-clocks chorded better with the pulse of humanlife. Yet life in the veins of these people flowed slow and cool;their sorrows and joys were few and life-long. The enduring air suitedthis woman, Margret Howth. Her blood could never ebb or flow withsudden gusts of passion, like his own, throbbing, heating continually:one current, absorbing, deep, would carry its tide from one eternity tothe other, one love or one hate. Whatever power was in the tide shouldbe his, in its entirety. It was his right. Was not his aim high, thehighest? It was his right. 

Margret, looking up, saw the man's eye fixed on her. She met itcoolly. All her short life, this strange man, so tender to the weak, had watched her with a sort of savage scorn, sneering at her childish, dreamy apathy, driving her from effort to effort with a scourge ofcontempt. What did he want now with her? Her duty was light; she tookit up, --she was glad to take it up; what more would he have? She putthe whole matter away from her. 

It grew late. She sat down by the lamp and began to read to herfather, as usual. Her mother put away her knitting; Joel came inhalf-asleep; the Doctor put out his everlasting cigar, and listened, ashe did everything else, intently. It was an old story that sheread, --the story of a man who walked the fields and crowded streets ofGalilee eighteen hundred years ago. Knowles, with his heated brain, fancied that the silence without in the night grew deeper, that theslow-moving air stopped in its course to listen. Perhaps the simplestory carried a deeper meaning to these brooding mountains and solemnsky than to the purblind hearts within. It was a far-off story tothem, --very far off. The old school-master heard it with a loweredhead, with the proud obedience with which a cavalier would receive hisleader's orders. Was not the leader a knights the knight of truestcourage? All that was high, chivalric in the old man sprang up to ownhim Lord. That he not only preached to, but ate and drank withpublicans and sinners, was a requirement of his mission; nowadays----. Joel heard the "good word" with a bewildered consciousness of certainrules of honesty to be observed next day, and a maze of crowns andharps shining somewhere beyond. As for any immediate connectionbetween the teachings of this book and "The Daily Gazette, " it was pureblasphemy to think of it. The Lord held those old Jews in His hand, ofcourse; but as for the election next month, that was quite anotherthing. If Joel thrust the history out of the touch of common life, theDoctor brought it down, and held it there on trial. To him it was thestory of a Reformer who, eighteen centuries ago, had served his day. Could he serve this day? Could he? The need was desperate. Was thereanything in this Christianity, freed from bigotry, to work out theawful problem which the ages had left for America to solve? He doubtedit. People called this old Knowles an infidel, said his brain was asunnatural and distorted as his body. God, looking down into his heartthat night, saw the savage wrestling there, and judged him with othereyes than theirs. 

The story stood alive in his throbbing brain demanding hearing. Allthings were real to this man, this uncouth mass of flesh that hiscompanions sneered at; most real of all, the unhelped pain of life, thegreat seething mire of dumb wretchedness in streets and alleys, the cryfor aid from the starved souls of the world. You and I have other workto do than to listen, --pleasanter. But he, coming out of the mire, hisveins thick with the blood of a despised race, had carried up theirpain and hunger with him: it was the most real thing on earth tohim, --more real than his own share in the unseen heaven or hell. Bythe reality, the peril of the world's instant need, he tried theoffered help from Calvary. It was the work of years, not of this night. Perhaps, if they who preach Christ crucified had doubted him as thisman did, their work in the coming heaven might be higher, --and ours, who hear them. When the girl had finished reading, she went out intothe cool air. The Doctor passed her without notice. He went, in hislumbering way, down the hill into the city; glad to go; the trustful, waiting quiet oppressed, taunted him. It sent him back more madagainst Destiny, his heart more bitter in its great pity. Let him goto the great city, with its stifling gambling-hells, its negro-pens, its foul cellars;--his place and work. If he stumble blindly againstunconquerable ills, and die, others have so stumbled and so died. Doyou think their work is lost?

Margret stood looking down at the sloping moors and fog. She, too, hadher place and work. She thought that night she saw it clearly, andkept her eyes fixed on it, as I said. They plodded steadily down thewide years opening before her. Whatever slow, unending toil lay inthem, whatever hungry loneliness, or coarseness of deed, she saw itall, shrinking from nothing. She looked at the big blue-corded veinsin her wrist, full of untainted blood, --gauged herself coolly, herlease of life, her power of endurance, --measured it out against thework waiting for her. No short task, she knew that. She would be oldbefore it was finished, quite an old woman, hard, mechanical, worn out. But the day would be so bright, when it came, it would atone for all:the day would be bright, the home warm again; it would hold all thatlife had promised her of good. 

All? Oh, Margret, Margret! Was there no sullen doubt in the braveresolve? Was there no shadow just then, dark, ironical, blotting outfather and mother and home, creeping nearer, less alien to your soulthan these, than even your God?

If any such cold, masterful shadow rose out of years gone, and clutchedat the truest life of her heart, she stifled it, and thrust it down. And yet, leaning on the gate, and thinking vacantly, she remembered atime when through that shadow, she believed more in a God than she didnow. When, by the help of that very dead hope, He of whom she readto-night stood close, an infinitely tender Helper, that with thediffering human loves she knew, had loved His mother and Mary. Therefore, a Helper. Now, struggle as she would for warmth or healthyhopes, the world was gray and silent. Her defeated woman's naturecalled it so, bitterly. Christ was a dim, ideal power, heaven far-off. She doubted if it held anything as real as that which she had lost. 

As if to bring back the old times more vividly to her, there happenedone of those curious little coincidences with which Fate, we think, hasnothing to do. She heard a quick step along the clay road, and a muddylittle terrier jumped up, barking, beside her. She stopped with asuddenness strange in her slow movements. "TIGER!" she said, strokingits head with passionate eagerness. The dog licked her hand, smelt herclothes to know if she were the same: it was two years since he hadseen her. She sat there, softly stroking him. Presently there was asound of wheels jogging down the road, and a voice singing snatches ofsome song, one of those cheery street-songs that the boys whistle. Itwas a low, weak voice, but very pleasant. Margret heard it through thedark: she kissed the dog with a strange paleness on her face, and stoodup, quiet, attentive as before. Tiger still kept licking her hand, asit hung by her side: it was cold, and trembled as he touched it. Shewaited a moment, then pushed him from her, as if his touch, even, caused her to break some vow. He whined, but she hurried away, notwaiting to know how he came, or with whom. Perhaps, if Dr. Knowles hadseen her face as she looked back at him, he would have thought therewere depths in her nature which his probing eyes had never reached. 

The wheels came close, and directly a cart stopped at the gate. It wasone of those little wagons that hucksters drive; only this seemed to bea home-made affair, patched up with wicker-work and bits of board. Itwas piled up with baskets of vegetables, eggs, and chickens, and on abroken bench in the middle sat the driver, a woman. You could not helplaughing, when you looked at the whole turn-out, it had such amake-shift look altogether. The reins were twisted rope, the wheelsuneven. It went jolting along in such a careless, jolly way, as if itwould not care in the least, should it go to pieces any minute justthere in the road. The donkey that drew it was bony and blind of oneeye; but he winked the other knowingly at you, to ask if you saw thejoke of the thing. Even the voice of the owner of the establishment, chirruping some idle song, as I told you, was one of the cheeriestsounds you ever heard. Joel, up at the barn, forgot his dignity tosalute it with a prolonged "Hillo!" and presently appeared at the gate. 

"I'm late, Joel, " said the weak voice. It sounded like a child's, nearat hand. 

"We can trade in the dark, Lois, both bein' honest, " he responded, graciously, hoisting a basket of tomatoes into the cart, and taking outa jug of vinegar. 

"Is that Lois?" said Mrs. Howth, coming to the gate. "Sit still, child. Don't get down. "

But the child, as she called her, had scrambled off the cart, and stoodbeside her, leaning on the wheel, for she was helplessly crippled. 

"I thought you would be down to-night. I put some coffee on the stove. Bring it out, Joel. "

Mrs. Howth never put up the shield between herself and this member of"the class, "--because, perhaps, she was so wretchedly low in the socialscale. However, I suppose she never gave a reason for it even toherself. Nobody could help being kind to Lois, even if he tried. Joelbrought the coffee with more readiness than he would have waited onMrs. Howth. 

"Barney will be jealous, " he said, patting the bare ribs of the olddonkey, and glancing wistfully at his mistress. 

"Give him his supper, surely, " she said, taking the hint. 

It was a real treat to see how Lois enjoyed her supper, sipping andtasting the warm coffee, her face in a glow, like an epicure over somerare Falernian. You would be sure, from just that little thing, thatno sparkle of warmth or pleasure in the world slipped by her which shedid not catch and enjoy and be thankful for to the uttermost. Youwould think, perhaps, pitifully, that not much pleasure or warmth wouldever go down so low, within her reach. Now that she stood on theground, she scarcely came up to the level of the wheel; some deformityof her legs made her walk with a curious rolling jerk, very comical tosee. She laughed at it, when other people did; if it vexed her at all, she never showed it. She had turned back her calico sun-bonnet, andstood looking up at Mrs. Howth and Joel, laughing as they talked withher. The face would have startled you on so old and stunted a body. It was a child's face, quick, eager, with that pitiful beauty youalways see in deformed people. Her eyes, I think, were the kindliest, the hopefullest I ever saw. Nothing but the livid thickness of herskin betrayed the fact that set Lois apart from even the poorestpoor, --the taint in her veins of black blood. 

"Whoy! be n't this Tiger?" said Joel, as the dog ran yelping about him. "How comed yoh with him, Lois?"

"Tiger an' his master's good friends o' mine, --you remember they alluswas. An' he's back now, Mr. Holmes, --been back for a month. "

Margret, walking in the porch with her father, stopped. 

"Are you tired, father? It is late. "

"And you are worn out, poor child! It was selfish in me to forget. Good-night, dear!"

Margret kissed him, laughing cheerfully, as she led him to hisroom-door. He lingered, holding her dress. 

"Perhaps it will be easier for you to-morrow than it was to-day?"hesitating. 

"I am sure it will. To-morrow will be sure to be better than to-day. "

She left him, and went away with a step that did not echo the promiseof her words. 

Joel, meanwhile, consulted apart with his mistress. 

"Of course, " she said, emphatically. --"You must stay until morning, Lois. It is too late. Joel will toss you up a bed in the loft. "

The queer little body hesitated. 

"I can stay, " she said, at last. "It's his watch at the mill to-night. "

"Whose watch?" demanded Joel. 

Her face brightened. 

"Father's. He's back, mum. "

Joel caught himself in a whistle. 

"He's very stiddy, Joel, --as stiddy as yoh. "

"I am very glad he has come back, Lois, " said Mrs. Howth, gravely. 

At every place where Lois had been that day she had told her bit ofgood news, and at every place it had been met with the same kindlysmile and "I'm glad he's back, Lois. "

Yet Joe Yare, fresh from two years in the penitentiary, was not exactlythe person whom society usually welcomes with open arms. Lois had avague suspicion of this, perhaps; for, as she hobbled along the path, she added to her own assurance of his "stiddiness" earnest explanationsto Joel of how he had a place in the Croft Street woollen-mills, andhow Dr. Knowles had said he was as ready a stoker as any in thefurnace-rooms. 

The sound of her weak, eager voice was silent presently, and nothingbroke the solitary cold of the night. 

CHAPTER III. 

The morning, when it came long after, came quiet and cool, --the warmred dawn helplessly smothered under great waves of gray cloud. Margret, looking out into the thick fog, lay down wearily again, closing her eyes. What was the day to her?

Very slowly the night was driven back. An hour after, when she liftedher head again, the stars were still glittering through the foggy arch, like sparks of brassy blue, and hills and valleys were one drifting, slow-heaving mass of ashy damp. Off in the east a stifled red filmgroped through. It was another day coming; she might as well get up, and live the rest of her life out;--what else had she to do?

Whatever this night had been to the girl, it left one thought sharp, alive, in the exhausted quiet of her brain: a cowardly dread of thetrial of the day, when she would see him again. Was the old struggleof years before coming back? Was it all to go over again? She wasworn out. She had been quiet in these two years: what had gone beforeshe never looked back upon; but it made her thankful for even thisstupid quiet. And now, when she had planned her life, busy, useful, contented, why need God have sent the old thought to taunt her? Awild, sickening sense of what might have been struggled up: she thrustit down, --she had kept it down all night; the old pain should not comeback, --it should not. She did not think of the love she had given upas a dream, as verse-makers or sham people do; she knew it to be thequick seed of her soul. She cried for it even now, with all the fiercestrength of her nature; it was the best she knew; through it she camenearest to God. Thinking of the day when she had given it up, sheremembered it with a vague consciousness of having fought a deadlystruggle with her fate, and that she had been conquered, --never hadlived again. Let it be; she could not bear the struggle again. 

She went on dressing herself in a dreary, mechanical way. Once, abitter laugh came on her face, as she looked into the glass, and sawthe dead, dull eyes, and the wrinkle on her forehead. Was that the faceto be crowned with delicate caresses and love? She scorned herself forthe moment, grew sick of herself, balked, thwarted in her true life asshe was. Other women whom God has loved enough to probe to the depthsof their nature have done the same, --saw themselves as others saw them:their strength drying up within them, jeered at, utterly alone. It isa trial we laugh at. I think the quick fagots at the stake were fittersubjects for laughter than the slow gnawing hunger in the heart of manya slighted woman or a selfish man. They come out of the trial as outof martyrdom, according to their faith: you see its marks sometimes ina frivolous old age going down with tawdry hopes and starved eyes tothe grave; you see its victory in the freshest, fullest lives in theearth. This woman had accepted her trial, but she took it up as aninflexible fate which she did not understand; it was new to her; itssolitude, its hopeless thirst were freshly bitter. She loathed herselfas one whom God had thought unworthy of every woman's right, --to loveand be loved. 

She went to the window, looking blankly out into the gray cold. Any onewith keen analytic eye, noting the thin muscles of this woman, theprotruding brain, the eyes deep, concealing, would have foretold thatshe would conquer in the fight; force her soul down, --but that theforcing down would leave the weak, flaccid body spent and dead. Onething was certain: no curious eyes would see the struggle; the bodymight be nerveless or sickly, but it had the great power of reticence;the calm with which she faced the closest gaze was natural to her, --nomask. When she left her room and went down, the same unaltered quietthat had baffled Knowles steadied her step and cooled her eyes. 

After you have made a sacrifice of yourself for others, did you evernotice how apt you were to doubt, as soon as the deed was irrevocable, whether, after all, it were worth while to have done it? How meanseems the good gained! How new and unimagined the agony of empty handsand stifled wish! Very slow the angels are, sometimes, that are sentto minister!

Margret, going down the stairs that morning, found none of thechivalric unselfish glow of the night before in her home. It was anold, bare house in the midst of dreary stubble fields, in which herlife was slowly to be worn out: working for those who did notcomprehend her; thanked her little, --that was all. It did not matter;life was short: she could thank God for that at least. 

She opened the house-door. A draught of cold morning air struck herface, sweeping from the west; it had driven the fog in great gray banksupon the hills, or in shimmering swamps into the cleft hollows: a vaguetwilight filled the space left bare. Tiger, asleep in the hall, rushedout into the meadow, barking, wild with the freshness and cold, thenback again to tear round her for a noisy good-morning. The touch ofthe dog seemed to bring her closer to his master; she put him away; shedared not suffer even that treachery to her purpose: the verycircumstances that had forced her to give him up made it weak cowardiceto turn again. It was a simple story, yet one which she dared not tellto herself; for it was not altogether for her father's sake she hadmade the sacrifice. She knew, that, though she might be near to thisman Holmes as his own soul, she was a clog on him, --stood in hisway, --kept him back. So she had quietly stood aside, taken up her ownsolitary burden, and left him with his clear self-reliant life, --withhis Self, dearer to him than she had ever been. Why should it not bedearer? She thought, --remembering the man as he was, a master amongmen: fit to be a master. She, --what was she compared to him? He wasback again; she must see him. So she stood there with this persistentdread running through her brain. 

Suddenly, in the lane by the house, she heard a voice talking toJoel, --the huckster-girl. What a weak, cheery sound it was in the coldand fog! It touched her curiously: broke through her morbid thought asanything true and healthy should have done. "Poor Lois!" she thought, with an eager pity, forgetting her own intolerable future for themoment, as she gathered up some breakfast and went with it down thelane. Morning had come; great heavy bars of light fell from behind thehills athwart the banks of gray and black fog; there was shifting, uneasy, obstinate tumult among the shadows; they did not mean to yieldto the coming dawn. The hills, the massed woods, the mist opposedtheir immovable front, scornfully. Margret did not notice the silentcontest until she reached the lane. The girl Lois, sitting in hercart, was looking, attentive, at the slow surge of the shadows, and theslower lifting of the slanted rays. 

"T' mornin' comes grand here, Miss Marg'et!" she said, lowering hervoice. 

Margret said nothing in reply; the morning, she thought, was gray andcold, like her own life. She stood leaning on the low cart; somestrange sympathy drew her to this poor wretch, dwarfed, alone in theworld, --some tie of equality, which the odd childish face, nor thequaint air of content about the creature, did not lessen. Even whenLois shook down the patched skirt of her flannel frock straight, andsettled the heaps of corn and tomatoes about her, preparatory for astart, Margret kept her hand on the side of the cart, and walked slowlyby it down the road. Once, looking at the girl, she thought with ahalf smile how oddly clean she was. The flannel skirt she arranged socomplacently had been washed until the colours had run madly into eachother in sheer desperation; her hair was knotted with relentlesstightness into a comb such as old women wear. The very cart, patchedas it was, had a snug, cosy look; the masses of vegetables, green andcrimson and scarlet, were heaped with a certain reference to the glowof colour, Margret noticed, wondering if it were accidental. Lookingup, she saw the girl's brown eyes fixed on her face. They weresingularly soft, brooding brown. 

"Ye 'r' goin' to th' mill, Miss Marg'et?" she asked, in a half whisper. 

"Yes. You never go there now, Lois?"

"No, 'm. "

The girl shuddered, and then tried to hide it in a laugh. Margretwalked on beside her, her hand on the cart's edge. Somehow thiscreature, that Nature had thrown impatiently aside as a failure, somarred, imperfect, that even the dogs were kind to her, came strangelynear to her, claimed recognition by some subtile instinct. 

Partly for this, and partly striving to forget herself, she glancedfurtively at the childish face of the distorted little body, wonderingwhat impression the shifting dawn made on the unfinished soul that waslooking out so intently through the brown eyes. What artist sense hadshe, --what could she know--the ignorant huckster--of the eternal lawsof beauty or grandeur? Nothing. Yet something in the girl's face madeher think that these hills, this air and sky, were in fact alive toher, --real; that her soul, being lower, it might be, than ours, laycloser to Nature, knew the language of the changing day, of theseearnest-faced hills, of the very worms crawling through the brownmould. It was an idle fancy; Margret laughed at herself for it, andturned to watch the slow morning-struggle which Lois followed with sucheager eyes. 

The light was conquering. Up the gray arch the soft, dewy blue creptgently, deepening, broadening; below it, the level bars of light struckfull on the sullen black of the west, and worked there undaunted, tinging it with crimson and imperial purple. Two or three coymist-clouds, soon converted to the new allegiance, drifted giddilyabout, mere flakes of rosy blushes. The victory of the day came slowly, but sure, and then the full morning flushed out, fresh with moistureand light and delicate perfume. The bars of sunlight fell on the lowerearth from the steep hills like pointed swords; the foggy swamp of wetvapour trembled and broke, so touched, rose at last, leaving patches ofdamp brilliance on the fields, and floated majestically up in radiantvictor clouds, led by the conquering wind. Victory: it was in thecold, pure ether filling the heavens, in the solemn gladness of thehills. The great forests thrilling in the soft light, the very sleepyriver wakening under the mist, chorded with a grave bass in the risinganthem of welcome to the new life which God had freshly given to theworld. From the sun himself, come forth as a bridegroom from hischamber, to the flickering raindrops on the road-side mullein, theworld seemed to rejoice, exultant in victory. Homely, cheerier soundsbroke the outlined grandeur of the morning, on which Margret lookedwearily. Lois lost none of them; no morbid shadow of her own balkedlife kept their meaning from her. 

The light played on the heaped vegetables in the old cart; the bonylegs of the donkey trotted on with fresh vigour. There was not alowing cow in the distant barns, nor a chirping swallow on thefence-bushes, that did not seem to include the eager face of the littlehuckster in their morning greetings. Not a golden dandelion on theroad-side, not a gurgle of the plashing brown water from thewell-troughs, which did not give a quicker pleasure to the glowingface. Its curious content stung the woman walking by her side. Whatsecret of recompense had the poor wretch found?

"Your father is here, Lois, " she said carelessly, to break the silence. "I saw him at the mill yesterday. "

Her face kindled instantly. 

"He's home, Miss Marg'et, --yes. An' it's all right wid him. Thingsallus do come right, some time, " she added, in a reflective tone, brushing a fly off Barney's ear. 

Margret smiled. 

"Always? Who brings them right for you, Lois?"

"The Master, " she said, turning with an answering smile. 

Margret was touched. The owner of the mill was not a more real verityto this girl than the Master of whom she spoke with such quietknowledge. 

"Are things right in the mill?" she said, testing her. 

A shadow came on her face; her eyes wandered uncertainly, as if herweak brain were confused, --only for a moment. 

"They'll come right!" she said, bravely. "The Master'll see to it!"

But the light was gone from her eyes; some old pain seemed to besurging through her narrow thought; and when she began to talk, it wasin a bewildered, doubtful way. 

"It's a black place, th' mill, " she said, in a low voice. "It was agood while I was there: frum seven year old till sixteen. 'T seemedlonger t' me 'n 't was. 'T seemed as if I'd been there allus, --jes'forever, yoh know. 'Fore I went in, I had the rickets, they say:that's what ails me. 'T hurt my head, they've told me, --made medifferent frum other folks. "

She stopped a moment, with a dumb, hungry look in her eyes. After awhile she looked at Margret furtively, with a pitiful eagerness. 

"Miss Marg'et, I think there BE something wrong in my head. Did YOHever notice it?"

Margret put her hand kindly on the broad, misshapen forehead. 

"Something is wrong everywhere, Lois, " she said, absently. 

She did not see the slow sigh with which the girl smothered downwhatever hope had risen just then, listened half-attentive as thehuckster maundered on. 

"It was th' mill, " she said at last. "I kind o' grew into that placein them years: seemed to me like as I was part o' th' engines, somehow. Th' air used to be thick in my mouth, black wi' smoke 'n'wool 'n' smells. 

"In them years I got dazed in my head, I think. 'T was th' air 'n' th'work. I was weak allus. 'T got so that th' noise o' th' looms went onin my head night 'n' day, --allus thud, thud. 'N' hot days, when th'hands was chaffin' 'n' singin', th' black wheels 'n' rollers was alive, starin' down at me, 'n' th' shadders o' th' looms was like snakescreepin', --creepin' anear all th' time. They was very good to me, th'hands was, --very good. Ther' 's lots o' th' Master's people downthere, though they never heard His name: preachers don't go there. ButHe'll see to 't. He'll not min' their cursin' o' Him, seein' theydon't know His face, 'n' thinkin' He belongs to th' gentry. I knew itwud come right wi' me, when times was th' most bad. I knew"----

The girl's hands were working together, her eyes set, all the slowyears of ruin that had eaten into her brain rising before her, all thetainted blood in her veins of centuries of slavery and heathenismstruggling to drag her down. But above all, the Hope rose clear, simple: the trust in the Master: and shone in her scarredface, --through her marred senses. 

"I knew it wud come right, allus. I was alone then: mother was dead, and father was gone, 'n' th' Lord thought 't was time to see tome, --special as th' overseer was gettin' me an enter to th' poor-house. So He sent Mr. Holmes along. Then it come right!"

Margret did not speak. Even this mill-girl could talk of him, pray forhim; but she never must take his name on her lips!

"He got th' cart fur me, 'n' this blessed old donkey, 'n' my room. Didyoh ever see my room, Miss Marg'et?"

Her face lighted suddenly with its peculiar childlike smile. 

"No? Yoh'll come some day, surely? It's a pore place, yoh'll think;but it's got th' air, --th' air. "

She stopped to breathe the cold morning wind, as if she thought to findin its fierce freshness the life and brains she had lost. 

"Ther' 's places in them alleys 'n' dark holes, Miss Marg'et, like th'openin's to hell, with th' thick smells 'n' th' sights yoh'd see. "

She went back with a terrible clinging pity to the Gehenna from whichshe had escaped. The ill of life was real enough to her, --a hungrydevil down in those alleys and dens. Margret listened, wakedreluctantly to the sense of a different pain in the world from herown, --lower deeps from which women like herself draw delicately back, lifting their gauzy dresses. 

"Miss Marg'et!"

Her face flashed. 

"Well, Lois?"

"Th' Master has His people 'mong them very lowest, that's not for suchas yoh to speak to. He knows 'em: men 'n' women starved 'n' drunk intojails 'n' work-houses, that 'd scorn to be cowardly or mean, --thatshows God's kindness, through th' whiskey 'n' thievin', to th' orphintsor--such as me. Ther' 's things th' Master likes in them, 'n' it'llcome right, it'll come right at last; they'll have a chance--somewhere. "

Margret did not speak; let the poor girl sob herself into quiet. Whathad she to do with this gulf of pain and wrong? Her own higher lifewas starved, thwarted. Could it be that the blood of these herbrothers called against HER from the ground? No wonder that thehuckster-girl sobbed, she thought, or talked heresy. It was not aneasy thing to see a mother drink herself into the grave. And yet--wasshe to blame? Her Virginian blood was cool, high-bred; she had learnedconservatism in her cradle. Her life in the West had not yet quickenedher pulse. So she put aside whatever social mystery or wrong faced herin this girl, just as you or I would have done. She had her own painto bear. Was she her brother's keeper? It was true, there was wrong;this woman's soul lay shattered by it; it was the fault of her blood, of her birth, and Society had finished the work. Where was the help?She was free, --and liberty, Dr. Knowles said, was the cure for all thesoul's diseases, and----

Well, Lois was quiet now, --ready to be drawn into a dissertation onBarney's vices and virtues, or her room, where "th' air was so strong, 'n' the fruit 'n' vegetables allus stayed fresh, --best in THIS town, "she said, with a bustling pride. 

They went on down the road, through the corn-fields sometimes, or onthe river-bank, or sometimes skirting the orchards or barn-yards of thefarms. The fences were well built, she noticed, --the barns wide andsnug-looking: for this county in Indiana is settled by New Englandpeople, as a general thing, or Pennsylvanians. They both leave theirmark on barns or fields, I can tell you! The two women were talkingall the way. In all his life Dr. Knowles had never heard from thissilent girl words as open and eager as she gave to the huckster aboutpaltry, common things, --partly, as I said, from a hope to forgetherself, and partly from a vague curiosity to know the strange worldwhich opened before her in this disjointed talk. There were no morbidshadows in this Lois's life, she saw. Her pains and pleasures wereintensely real, like those of her class. If there were latent powersin her distorted brain, smothered by hereditary vice of blood, or foulair and life, she knew nothing of it. She never probed her own soulwith fierce self-scorn, as this quiet woman by her side did;--accepted, instead, the passing moment, with keen enjoyment. For the rest, childishly trusted "the Master. "

This very drive, now, for instance, --although she and the cart andBarney went through the same routine every day, you would have thoughtit was a new treat for a special holiday, if you had seen the perfectabandon with which they all threw themselves into the fun of the thing. Not only did the very heaps of ruby tomatoes, and corn in delicategreen casings, tremble and shine as though they enjoyed the fresh lightand dew, but the old donkey cocked his ears, and curved his scraggyneck, and tried to look as like a high-spirited charger as he could. Then everybody along the road knew Lois, and she knew everybody, andthere was a mutual liking and perpetual joking, not very refined, perhaps, but hearty and kind. It was a new side of life for Margret. She had no time for thoughts of self-sacrifice, or chivalry, ancient ormodern, watching it. It was a very busy ride, --something to do atevery farm-house: a basket of eggs to be taken in, or some egg-plants, maybe, which Lois laid side by side, Margret noticed, --the pearly whiteballs close to the heap of royal purple. No matter how small thebasket was that she stopped for, it brought out two or three to put itin; for Lois and her cart were the event of the day for the lonelyfarm-houses. The wife would come out, her face ablaze from the oven, with an anxious charge about that butter; the old man would hail herfrom the barn to know "ef she'd thought toh look in th' mail yes'rday;"and one or the other was sure to add, "Jes' time for breakfast, Lois. "If she had no baskets to stop for, she had "a bit o' business, " whichturned out to be a paper she had brought for the grandfather, or somefresh mint for the baby, or "jes' to inquire fur th' fam'ly. "

As to the amount that cart carried, it was a perpetual mystery to Lois. Every day since she and the cart went into partnership, she had goneinto town with a dead certainty in the minds of lookers-on that itwould break down in five minutes, and a triumphant faith in hers in itsunlimited endurance. "This cart 'll be right side up fur years tocome, " she would assert, shaking her head. "It 's got no more notiono' givin' up than me nor Barney, --not a bit. " Margret had herdoubts, --and so would you, if you had heard how it creaked under theload, --how they piled in great straw panniers of apples: black appleswith yellow hearts, scarlet veined, --golden pippin apples, that heldthe warmth and light longest, --russet apples with a hot blush on theirrough brown skins, --plums shining coldly in their delicate purplebloom, --peaches with the crimson velvet of their cheeks aglow with theprisoned heat of a hundred summer days. 

I wish with all my heart somebody would paint me Lois and her cart!Mr. Kitts, the artist in the city then, used to see it going past hisroom out by the coal-pits every day, and thought about it seriously. But he had his grand battle-piece on hand then, --and after that he wentthe way of all geniuses, and died down into colourer for aphotographer. He met them, that day, out by the stone quarry, andtouched his hat as he returned Lois's "Good-morning, " and took a coupleof great pawpaws from her. She was a woman, you see, and he had someof the school-master's old-fashioned notions about women. He was asickly-looking soul. One day Lois had heard him say that there werepawpaws on his mother's place in Ohio; so after that she always broughthim some every day. She was one of those people who must give, if itis nothing better than a Kentucky banana. 

After they passed the stone quarry, they left the country behind them, going down the stubble-covered hills that fenced in the town. Even inthe narrow streets, and through the warehouses, the strong, dewy airhad quite blown down and off the fog and dust. Morning (town morning, to be sure, but still morning) was shining in the red window-panes, inthe tossing smoke up in the frosty air, in the very glowing faces ofpeople hurrying from market with their noses nipped blue and their eyeswatering with cold. Lois and her cart, fresh with country breathhanging about them, were not so out of place, after all. House-maidsleft the steps half-scrubbed, and helped her measure out the corn andbeans, gossiping eagerly; the newsboys "Hi-d!" at her in a friendly, patronizing way; women in rusty black, with sharp, pale faces, hoistedtheir baskets, in which usually lay a scraggy bit of flitch, on to thewheel, their whispered bargaining ending oftenest in a low "Thank ye, Lois!"--for she sold cheaper to some people than they did in the market. 

Lois was Lois in town or country. Some subtile power lay in thecoarse, distorted body, in the pleading child's face, to rouse, wherever they went, the same curious, kindly smile. Not, I think, thatdumb, pathetic eye, common to deformity, that cries, "Have mercy uponme, O my friend, for the hand of God hath touched me!"--a deeper, mightier charm, rather: a trust down in the fouled fragments of herbrain, even in the bitterest hour of her bare life, --a faith faith inGod, faith in her fellow-man, faith in herself. No human soul refusedto answer its summons. Down in the dark alleys, in the very vilest ofthe black and white wretches that crowded sometimes about her cart, there was an undefined sense of pride in protecting this wretch whoseportion of life was more meagre and low than theirs. Something in themstruggled up to meet the trust in the pitiful eyes, --something whichscorned to betray the trust, --some Christ-like power in their souls, smothered, dying, under the filth of their life and the terror of hell. A something in them never to be lost. If the Great Spirit of love andtrust lives, not lost!

Even in the cold and quiet of the woman walking by her side the homelypower of the poor huckster was wholesome to strengthen. Margret lefther, turning into the crowded street leading to the part of the townwhere the factories lay. The throng of anxious-faced men and womenjostled and pushed, but she passed through them with a different heartfrom yesterday's. Somehow, the morbid fancies were gone: she waskeenly alive; the coarse real life of this huckster fired her, touchedher blood with a more vital stimulus than any tale of crusader. As shewent down the crooked maze of dingy lanes, she could hear Lois's littlecracked bell far off: it sounded like a Christmas song to her. She halfsmiled, remembering how sometimes in her distempered brain the worldhad seemed a gray, dismal Dance of Death. How actual it wasto-day, --hearty, vigorous, alive with honest work and tears andpleasure! A broad, good world to live and work in, to suffer or die, if God so willed it, --God, the good!

CHAPTER IV. 

She entered the vast, dingy factory; the woollen dust, the clammy airof copperas were easier to breathe in; the cramped, sordid office, thework, mere trifles to laugh at; and she bent over the ledger with itshard lines in earnest good-will, through the slow creeping hours of thelong day. She noticed that the unfortunate chicken was making itsheart glad over a piece of fresh earth covered with damp moss. Dr. Knowles stopped to look at it when he came, passing her with a surlynod. 

"So your master's not forgotten you, " he snarled, while the blind oldhen cocked her one eye up at him. 

Pike, the manager, had brought in some bills. 

"Who's its master?" he said, curiously, stopping by the door. 

"Holmes, --he feeds it every morning. "

The Doctor drawled out the words with a covert sneer, watching the coldface bending over the desk, meantime. 

Pike laughed. 

"Bah! it's the first thing he ever fed, then, besides himself. Chickensmust lie nearer his heart than men. "

Knowles scowled at him; he had no fancy for Pike's scurrilous gossip. 

The quiet face was unmoved. When he heard the manager's foot on theladder without, he tested it again. He had a vague suspicion which hewas determined to verify. 

"Holmes, " he said, carelessly, "has an affinity for animals. Nowonder. Adam must have been some such man as he, when the Lord gavehim 'dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air. '"

The hand paused courteously a moment, then resumed its quick, coolmovement over the page. He was not baffled. 

"If there were such a reality as mastership, that man was born to rule. Pike will find him harder to cheat than me, when he takes possessionhere. "

She looked up now. 

"He came here to take my place in the mills, --buy me out, --articleswill be signed in a day or two. I know what you think, --no, --not wortha dollar. Only brains and a soul, and he 's sold them at a highfigure, --threw his heart in, --the purchaser being a lady. It waslight, I fancy, --starved out, long ago. "

The old man's words were spurted out in the bitterness of scorn. Thegirl listened with a cool incredulity in her eyes, and went back to herwork. 

"Miss Herne is the lady, --my partner's daughter. Herne and Holmesthey'll call the firm. He is here every day, counting future profit. "

Nothing could be read on the face; so he left her, cursing, as he went, men who put themselves up at auction, --worse than Orleans slaves. Margret laughed to herself at his passion; as for the story he hinted, it was absurd. She forgot it in a moment. 

Two or three gentlemen down in one of the counting-rooms, just then, looked at the story from another point of view. They were talking low, out of hearing from the clerks. 

"It's a good thing for Holmes, " said one, a burly, farmer-like man, whowas choosing specimens of wool. 

"Cheap. And long credit. Just half the concern he takes. "

"There is a lady in the case?" suggested a young doctor, who, by virtueof having spent six months in the South, dropped his r-s, and talked of"niggahs" in a way to make a Georgian's hair stand on end. 

"A lady in the case?"

"Of course. Only child of Herne's. HE comes down with the dust asdowry. Good thing for Holmes. 'Stonishin' how he's made his way up. If money 's what he wants in this world, he's making a long stride nowto 't. "

The young doctor lighted his cigar, asserting that--

"Ba George, some low people did get on, re-markably! Mary Herne, now, was best catch in town. "

"Do you think money is what he wants?" said a quiet little man, sitting lazily on a barrel, --a clergyman, Vandyke; whom his clericalbrothers shook their heads when they named, but never argued with, andbowed to with uncommon deference. 

The wool-buyer hesitated with a puzzled look. 

"No, " he said, slowly; "Stephen Holmes is not miserly. I've knowed himsince a boy. To buy place, power, perhaps, eh? Yet not that, neither, " he added, hastily. "We think a sight of him out our way, (self-made, you see, ) and would have had him the best office in theState before this, only he was so cursedly indifferent. "

"Indifferent, yes. No man cares much for stepping-stones inthemselves, " said Vandyke, half to himself. 

"Great fault of American society, especially in the West, " said theyoung aristocrat. "Stepping-stones lie low, as my reverend friendsuggests; impudence ascends; merit and refinement scorn such dirtypaths, "--with a mournful remembrance of the last dime in hiswaistcoat-pocket. 

"But do you, " exclaimed the farmer, with sudden solemnity, "do youunderstand this scheme of Knowles's? Every dollar he owns is in thismill, and every dollar of it is going into some castle in the air thatno sane man can comprehend. "

"Mad as a March hare, " contemptuously muttered the doctor. 

His reverend friend gave him a look, --after which he was silent. 

"I wish to the Lord some one would persuade him out of it, " persistedthe wool-man, earnestly looking at the attentive face of his listener. "We can't spare old Knowles's brain or heart while he ruins himself. It's something of a Communist fraternity: I don't know the name, but Iknow the thing. "

Very hard common-sense shone out of his eyes just then at theclergyman, whom he suspected of being one of Knowles's abettors. 

"There's two ways for 'em to end. If they're made out of the top ofsociety, they get so refined, so idealized, that every particle fliesoff on its own special path to the sun, and the Community 's broke; andif they're made of the lower mud, they keep going down, downtogether, --they live to drink and eat, and make themselves as near thebrutes as they can. It isn't easy to believe, Sir, but it's true. Ihave seen it. I've seen every one of them the United States canproduce. It's FACTS, Sir; and facts, as Lord Bacon says, 'are thebasis of every sound speculation. '"

The last sentence was slowly brought out, as quotations were notexactly his forte, but, as he said afterwards, --"You see, that nailedthe parson. "

The parson nodded gravely. 

"You'll find no such experiment in the Bible, " threw in the youngdoctor, alluding to "serious things" as a peace-offering to hisreverend friend. 

"One, I believe, " dryly. 

"Well, " broke in the farmer, folding up his wool, "that's neither herenor there. This experiment of Knowles's is like nothing known sincethe Creation. Plan of his own. He spends his days now hunting out thegallows-birds out of the dens in town here, and they're all to betransported into the country to start a new Arcadia. A few men andwomen like himself, but the bulk is from the dens, I tell you. Allstart fair, level ground, perpetual celibacy, mutual trust, honour, rise according to the stuff that's in them, --pah! it makes me sick!"

"Knowles's inclination to that sort of people is easily explained, "spitefully lisped the doctor. "Blood, Sir. His mother was ahalf-breed Creek, with all the propensities of the redskins tofire-water and 'itching palms. ' Blood will out. "

"Here he is, " maliciously whispered the woolman. "No, it's Holmes, " headded, after the doctor had started into a more respectful posture, andglanced around frightened. 

He, the doctor, rose to meet Holmes's coming footstep, --"a low fellah, but always sure to be the upper dog in the fight, goin' to marry thebest catch, " etc. , etc. The others, on the contrary, put on their hatsand sauntered away into the street. 

The day broadened hotly; the shadows of the Lombardy poplars curdlingup into a sluggish pool of black at their roots along the dry gutters. The old school-master in the shade of the great horse-chestnuts(brought from the homestead in the Piedmont country, every one) huskedcorn for his wife, composing, meanwhile, a page of his essay on the"Sirventes de Bertrand de Born. " Joel, up in the barn by himself, worked through the long day in the old fashion, --pondering gravely(being of a religious turn) upon a sermon by the Reverend Mr. Clinche, reported in the "Gazette;" wherein that disciple of the meek Teacherinvoked, as he did once a week, the curses of the law uponslaveholders, praying the Lord to sweep them immediately from the faceof the earth. Which rendering of Christian doctrine was so muchrelished by Joel, and the other leading members of Mr. Clinche'schurch, that they hinted to him it might be as well to continuechoosing his texts from Moses and the Prophets until the excitement ofthe day was over. The New Testament was, --well, --hardly suited forthe--emergency; did not, somehow, chime in with the lesson of the hour. I may remark, in passing, that this course of conduct so disgusted theHigh Church rector of the parish, that he not only ignored all newdevils, (as Mr. Carlyle might have called them, ) but talked as if themillennium were un fait accompli, and he had leisure to go and hammerat the poor dead old troubles of Luther's time. One thing, though, about Joel: while he was joining in Mr. Clinche's petition for the"wiping out" of some few thousands, he was using up all the fragmentsof the hot day in fixing a stall for a half-dead old horse he had foundby the road-side. 

Perhaps, even if the listening angel did not grant the prayer, hemarked down the stall at least, as a something done for eternity. 

Margret, through the stifling air, worked steadily alone in the dustyoffice, her face bent over the books, never changing but once. It wasa trifle then; yet, when she looked back afterwards, the trifle was allthat gave the day a name. The room shook, as I said, with thethunderous, incessant sound of the engines and the looms; she scarcelyheard it, being used to it. Once, however, another sound camebetween, --an iron tread, passing through the long wooden corridor, --sofirm and measured that it sounded like the monotonous beatings of aclock. She heard it through the noise in the far distance; it cameslowly nearer, up to the door without, --passed it, going down theechoing plank walk. The girl sat quietly, looking out at the deadbrick wall. The slow step fell on her brain like the sceptre of hermaster; if Knowles had looked in her face then, he would have seenbared the secret of her life. Holmes had gone by, unconscious of whowas within the door. She had not seen him; it was nothing but a stepshe heard. Yet a power, the power of the girl's life, shook off alloutward masks, all surface cloudy fancies, and stood up in her with aterrible passion at the sound; her blood burned fiercely; her soullooked out, her soul as it was, as God knew it, --God and this man. Nolonger a cold, clear face; you would have thought, looking at it, whata strong spirit the soul of this woman would be, if set free in heavenor in hell. The man who held it in his grasp went on carelessly, notknowing that the mere sound of his step had raised it as from the dead. She, and her right, and her pain, were nothing to him now, sheremembered, staring out at the taunting hot sky. Yet so vacant was thesudden life opened before her when he was gone, that, in thedesperation of her weakness, her mad longing to see him but once again, she would have thrown herself at his feet, and let the cold, heavy stepcrush her life out, --as he would have done, she thought, choking downthe icy smother in her throat, if it had served his purpose, though itcost his own heart's life to do it. He would trample her down, if shekept him back from his end; but be false to her, false to himself, thathe would never be!

The red bricks, the dusty desk covered with wool, the miserable chickenpeering out, grew sharper and more real. Life was no morbid nightmarenow; her weak woman's heart found it near, cruel. There was not a painnor a want, from the dumb question in the dog's eyes that passed her onthe street, to her father's hopeless fancies, that did not touch hersharply through her own loss, with a keen pity, a wild wish to help todo something to save others with this poor life left in her hands. 

So the day wore on in the town and country; the old sun glaring downlike some fierce old judge, intolerant of weakness or shams, --bakingthe hard earth in the streets harder for the horses' feet, drying upthe bits of grass that grew between the boulders of the gutter, scalingoff the paint from the brazen faces of the interminable brick houses. He looked down in that city as in every American town, as in thesewhere you and I live, on the same countless maze of human faces goingday by day through the same monotonous routine. Knowles, passingthrough the restless crowds, read with keen eye among them strangemeanings by this common light of the sun, --meanings such as you and Imight read, if our eyes were clear as his, --or morbid, it may be, youthink? A commonplace crowd like this in the street without: women withcold, fastidious faces, heavy-brained, bilious men, dapper 'prentices, draymen, prize-fighters, negroes. Knowles looked about him as into aseething caldron, in which the people I tell you of were atoms, wherethe blood of uncounted races was fused, but not mingled, --where creeds, philosophies, centuries old, grappled hand to hand in theirdeath-struggle, --where innumerable aims and beliefs and powers ofintellect, smothered rights and triumphant wrongs, warred together, struggling for victory. 

Vulgar American life? He thought it a life more potent, more tragic inits history and prophecy, than any that has gone before. People calledhim a fanatic. It may be that he was one: yet the uncouth old man, sick in soul from some pain that I dare not tell you of; in his ownlife, looked into the depths of human loss with a mad desire to set itright. On the very faces of those who sneered at him he found sometrace of failure, something that his heart carried up to God with aloud and exceeding bitter cry. The voice of the world, he thought, went up to heaven a discord, unintelligible, hopeless, --the great blindworld, astray since the first ages! Was there no hope, no help?

The sun shone down, as it had done for six thousand years; it shone onopen problems in the lives of these men and women, of these dogs andhorses who walked the streets, problems whose end and beginning no eyecould read. There were places where it did not shine: down in thefetid cellars, in the slimy cells of the prison yonder: what riddles oflife lay there he dared not think of. God knows how the man groped forthe light, --for any voice to make earth and heaven clear to him. 

There was another light by which the world was seen that day, rarerthan the sunshine, and purer. It fell on the dense crowds, --upon thejust and the unjust. It went into the fogs of the fetid dens fromwhich the coarser light was barred, into the deepest mires of bodywhere a soul could wallow, and made them clear. It lighted the depthsof the hearts whose outer pain and passion men were keen to read in theunpitying sunshine, and bared in those depths the feeble gropings forthe right, the loving hope, the unuttered prayer. No kind thought, nopure desire, no weakest faith in a God and heaven somewhere, could beso smothered under guilt that this subtile light did not search it out, glow about it, shine under it, hold it up in full view of God and theangels, --lighting the world other than the sun had done for sixthousand years. I have no name for the light: it has a name, --yonder. Not many eyes were clear to see its--shining that day; and if they did, it was as through a glass, darkly. Yet it belonged to us also, in theold time, the time when men could "hear the voice of the Lord God inthe garden in the cool of the day. " It is God's light now alone. 

Yet Lois caught faint glimpses, I think, sometimes, of its heavenlyclearness. I think it was this light that made the burning ofChristmas fires warmer for her than for others, that showed her all thelove and outspoken honesty and hearty frolic which her eyes sawperpetually in the old warm-hearted world. That evening, as she sat onthe step of her frame-shanty, knitting at a great blue stocking, herscarred face and misshapen body very pitiful to the passers-by, it wasthis that gave to her face its homely, cheery smile. It made her eyesquick to know the message in the depths of colour in the evening sky, or even the flickering tints of the green creeper on the wall with itscrimson cornucopias filled with hot shining. She liked clear, vitalcolours, this girl, --the crimsons and blues. They answered her, somehow. They could speak. There were things in the world that likeherself were marred, --did not understand, --were hungry to know: thegray sky, the mud streets, the tawny lichens. She cried sometimes, looking at them, hardly knowing why: she could not help it, with avague sense of loss. It seemed at those times so dreary for them to bealive, --or for her. Other things her eyes were quicker to see thanours: delicate or grand lines, which she perpetually sought forunconsciously, --in the homeliest things, the very soft curling of thewoollen yarn in her fingers, as in the eternal sculpture of themountains. Was it the disease of her injured brain that made allthings alive to her, --that made her watch, in her ignorant way, thegrave hills, the flashing, victorious rivers, look pitifully into theface of some starved hound, or dingy mushroom trodden in the mud beforeit scarce had lived, just as we should look into human faces to knowwhat they would say to us? Was it weakness and ignorance that madeeverything she saw or touched nearer, more human to her than to you orme? She never got used to living as other people do; these sights andsounds did not come to her common, hackneyed. Why, sometimes, out inthe hills, in the torrid quiet of summer noons, she had knelt by theshaded pools, and buried her hands in the great slumberous beds ofwater-lilies, her blood curdling in a feverish languor, a passionedtrance, from which she roused herself, weak and tired. 

She had no self-poised artist sense, this Lois, --knew nothing ofNature's laws, as you do. Yet sometimes, watching the dun sea of theprairie rise and fall in the crimson light of early morning, or, in thefarms, breathing the blue air trembling up to heaven exultant with thelife of bird and forest, she forgot the poor vile thing she was, somecoarse weight fell off, and something within, not the sickly Lois ofthe mill, went out, free, like an exile dreaming of home. 

You tell me, that, doubtless, in the wreck of the creature's brain, there were fragments of some artistic insight that made her thus riseabove the level of her daily life, drunk with the mere beauty of formand colour. I do not know, --not knowing how sham or real a thing youmean by artistic insight. But I do know that the clear light I toldyou of shone for this girl dimly through this beauty of form andcolour; alive. The Life, rather; and ignorant, with no words for herthoughts, she believed in it as the Highest that she knew. I think itcame to her thus in imperfect language, (not an outward show of tintsand lines, as to artists, )--a language, the same that Moses heard whenhe stood alone, with nothing between his naked soul and God, but thedesert and the mountain and the bush that burned with fire. I thinkthe weak soul of the girl staggered from its dungeon, and gropedthrough these heavy-browed hills, these colour-dreams, through thefaces of dog or man upon the street, to find the God that lay behind. So she saw the world, and its beauty and warmth being divine as near toher, the warmth and beauty became real in her, found their homelyreflection in her daily life. So she knew, too, the Master in whom shebelieved, saw Him in everything that lived, more real than all beside. The waiting earth, the prophetic sky, the very worm in the gutter wasbut a part of this man, something come to tell her of Him, --she dimlyfelt; though, as I said, she had no words for such a thought. Yet evenmore real than this. There was no pain nor temptation down in thosedark cellars where she went that He had not borne, --not one. Nor wasthere the least pleasure came to her or the others, not even a cheerfulfire, or kind words, or a warm, hearty laugh, that she did not know Hesent it and was glad to do it. She knew that well! So it was that Hetook part in her humble daily life, and became more real to her day byday. Very homely shadows her life gave of His light, for it was His:homely, because of her poor way of living, and of the depth to whichthe heavy foot of the world had crushed her. Yet they were there allthe time, in her cheery patience, if nothing more. To-night, forinstance, how differently the surging crowd seemed to her from what itdid to Knowles! She looked down on it from her high wood-steps with aneager interest, ready with her weak, timid laugh to answer everyfriendly call from below. She had no power to see them as types ofgreat classes; they were just so many living people, whom she knew, andwho, most of them, had been kind to her. Whatever good there was inthe vilest face, (and there was always something, ) she was sure to seeit. The light made her poor eyes strong for that. 

She liked to sit there in the evenings, being alone, yet never growinglonesome; there was so much that was pleasant to watch and listen to, as the cool brown twilight came on. If, as Knowles thought, the worldwas a dreary discord, she knew nothing of it. People were going fromtheir work now, --they had time to talk and joke by the way, --stopping, or walking slowly down the cool shadows of the pavement; while here andthere a lingering red sunbeam burnished a window, or struck athwart thegray boulder-paved street. From the houses near you could catch afaint smell of supper: very friendly people those were in these houses;she knew them all well. The children came out with their faces washed, to play, now the sun was down: the oldest of them generally came to sitwith her and hear a story. 

After it grew darker, you would see the girls in their neat bluecalicoes go sauntering down the street with their sweethearts for awalk. There was old Polston and his son Sam coming home from thecoal-pits, as black as ink, with their little tin lanterns on theircaps. After a while Sam would come out in his suit of Kentucky jean, his face shining with the soap, and go sheepishly down to Jenny Ball's, and the old man would bring his pipe and chair out on the pavement, andhis wife would sit on the steps. Most likely they would call Lois down, or come over themselves, for they were the most sociable, cosiest oldcouple you ever knew. There was a great stopping at Lois's door, asthe girls walked past, for a bunch of the flowers she brought from thecountry, or posies, as they called them, (Sam never would take any toJenny but "old man" and pinks, ) and she always had them ready in brokenjugs inside. They were good, kind girls, every one of them, --had takenit in turn to sit up with Lois last winter all the time she had therheumatism. She never forgot that time, --never once. 

Later in the evening you would see a man coming along, close by thewall, with his head down, the same Margret had seen in the mill, --adark man, with gray, thin hair, --Joe Yare, Lois's old father. No onespoke to him, --people always were looking away as he passed; and if oldMr. Or Mrs. Polston were on the steps when he came up, they would say, "Good-evening, Mr. Yare, " very formally, and go away presently. Ithurt Lois more than anything else they could have done. But shebustled about noisily, so that he would not notice it. If they saw themarks of the ill life he had lived on his old face, she did not; hissad, uncertain eyes may have been dishonest to them, but they werenothing but kind to the misshapen little soul that he kissed so warmlywith a "Why, Lo, my little girl!" Nobody else in the world ever calledher by a pet name. 

Sometimes he was gloomy and silent, but generally he told her of allthat had happened in the mill, particularly any little word of noticeor praise he might have received, watching her anxiously until shelaughed at it, and then rubbing his hands cheerfully. He need not havedoubted Lois's faith in him. Whatever the rest did, she believed inhim; she always had believed in him, through all the dark years, whenhe was at home, and in the penitentiary. They were gone now, never tocome back. It had come right. If the others wronged him, and it hurther bitterly that they did, that would come right some day too, shewould think, as she looked at the tired, sullen face of the old manbent to the window-pane, afraid to go out. But they had very cheerfullittle suppers there by themselves in the odd, bare little room, ashomely and clean as Lois herself. 

Sometimes, late at night, when he had gone to bed, she sat alone in thedoor, while the moonlight fell in broad patches over the square, andthe great poplars stood like giants whispering together. Still the farsounds of the town came up cheerfully, while she folded up herknitting, it being dark, thinking how happy an ending this was to ahappy day. When it grew quiet, she could hear the solemn whisper ofthe poplars, and sometimes broken strains of music from the cathedralin the city floated through the cold and moonlight past her, far offinto the blue beyond the hills. All the keen pleasure of the day, thewarm, bright sights and sounds, coarse and homely though they were, seemed to fade into the deep music, and make a part of it. 

Yet, sitting there, looking out into the listening night, the poorchild's face grew slowly pale as she heard it. It humbled her. Itmade her meanness, her low, weak life so plain to her! There was nopain nor hunger she had known that did not find a voice in itsarticulate cry. SHE! what was she? The pain and wants of the worldmust be going up to God in that sound, she thought. There wassomething more in it, --an unknown meaning of a great content that hershattered brain struggled to grasp. She could not. Her heart achedwith a wild, restless longing. She had no words for the vague, insatiate hunger to understand. It was because she was ignorant andlow, perhaps; others could know. She thought her Master was speaking. She thought that unknown Joy linked all earth and heaven together, andmade it plain. So she hid her face in her hands, and listened, whilethe low harmony shivered through the air, unheeded by others, with themessage of God to man. Not comprehending, it may be, --the poorgirl, --hungry still to know. Yet, when she looked up, there were warmtears in her eyes, and her scarred face was bright with a sad, deepcontent and love. 

So the hot, long day was over for them all, --passed as thousands ofdays have done for us, gone down, forgotten: as that long, hot day wecall life will be over some time, and go down into the gray and cold. Surely, whatever of sorrow or pain may have made darkness in that dayfor you or me, there were countless openings where we might have seenglimpses of that other light than sunshine: the light of that greatTo-Morrow, of the land where all wrongs shall be righted. If we hadbut chosen to see it, --if we only had chosen!

CHAPTER V. 

Now that I have come to the love part of my story, I am suddenlyconscious of dingy common colors on the palette with which I have beenpainting. I wish I had some brilliant dyes. I wish, with all myheart, I could take you back to that "Once upon a time" in which thesouls of our grandmothers delighted, --the time which Dr. Johnson sat upall night to read about in "Evelina, "--the time when all the celestialvirtues, all the earthly graces were revealed in a condensed state toman through the blue eyes and sumptuous linens of some Belinda Portmanor Lord Mortimer. None of your good-hearted, sorely-tempted villainsthen! It made your hair stand on end only to read of them, --goingabout perpetually seeking innocent maidens and unsophisticated old mento devour. That was the time for holding up virtue and vice; no troublethen in seeing which were sheep and which were goats! A person couldwrite a story with a moral to it, then, I should hope! People that wereborn in those days had no fancy for going through the world withhalf-and-half characters, such as we put up with; so Nature turned outcomplete specimens of each class, with all the appendages of dress, fortune, et cetera, chording decently. The heroine glides into lifefull-charged with rank, virtues, a name three-syllabled, and a whitedress that never needs washing, ready to sail through dangers dire intoa triumphant haven of matrimony;--all the aristocrats have highforeheads and cold blue eyes; all the peasants are old women, miraculously grateful, in neat check aprons, or sullen-browedinsurgents planning revolts in caves. 

Of course, I do not mean that these times are gone: they are alive (ina modern fashion) in many places in the world; some of my friends havedescribed them in prose and verse. I only mean to say that I never wasthere; I was born unlucky. I am willing to do my best, but I live inthe commonplace. Once or twice I have rashly tried my hand at darkconspiracies, and women rare and radiant in Italian bowers; but I havea friend who is sure to say, "Try and tell us about the butcher nextdoor, my dear. " If I look up from my paper now, I shall be just as aptto see our dog and his kennel as the white sky stained with blood andTyrian purple. I never saw a full-blooded saint or sinner in my life. The coldest villain I ever knew was the only son of his mother, and shea widow, --and a kinder son never lived. Doubtless there are peoplecapable of a love terrible in its strength; but I never knew such acase that some one did not consider its expediency as "a match" in thelight of dollars and cents. As for heroines, of course I have seenbeautiful women, and good as fair. The most beautiful is delicate andpure enough for a type of the Madonna, and has a heart almost as warmand holy. (Very pure blood is in her veins, too, if you care aboutblood. ) But at home they call her Tode for a nickname; all we can do, she will sing, and sing through her nose; and on washing-days she oftencooks the dinner, and scolds wholesomely, if the tea-napkins are not inorder. Now, what is anybody to do with a heroine like that? I haveknown old maids in abundance, with pathos and sunshine in their lives;but the old maid of novels I never have met, who abandoned her soul togossip, --nor yet the other type, a life-long martyr of unselfishness. They are mixed generally, and not unlike their married sisters, so faras I can see. Then as to men, certainly I know heroes. One man, Iknew, as high a chevalier in heart as any Bayard of them all; one ofthose souls simple and gentle as a woman, tender in knightly honour. He was an old man, with a rusty brown coat and rustier wig, who spenthis life in a dingy village office. You poets would have laughed athim. Well, well, his history never will be written. The kind, sad, blue eyes are shut now. There is a little farm-graveyard overgrownwith privet and wild grape-vines, and a flattened grave where he waslaid to rest; and only a few who knew him when they were children careto go there, and think of what he was to them. But it was not in thefar days of Chivalry alone, I think, that true and proud souls havestood in the world unwelcome, and, hurt to the quick, have turned awayand dumbly died. Let it be. Their lives are not lost, thank God!

I meant only to ask you, How can I help it, if the people in my storyseem coarse to you, --if the hero, unlike all other heroes, stopped tocount the cost before he fell in love, --if it made his fingers thrillwith pleasure to touch a full pocket-book as well as his mistress'shand, --not being withal, this Stephen Holmes, a man to be despised? Ahero, rather, of a peculiar type, --a man, more than other men: the verymould of man, doubt it who will, that women love longest and mostmadly. Of course, if I could, I would have blotted out every meannessbefore I showed him to you; I would have told you Margret was animpetuous, whole-souled woman, glad to throw her life down for herfather, without one bitter thought of the wife and mother she mighthave been; I would have painted her mother tender, (as she was, )forgetting how pettish she grew on busy days: but what can I do? Imust show you men and women as they are in that especial State of theUnion where I live. In all the others, of course, it is verydifferent. Now, being prepared for disappointment, will you see myhero?

He had sauntered out from the city for a morning walk, --not through thehills, as Margret went, going home, but on the other side, to theriver, over which you could see the Prairie. We are in Indiana, remember. The sunlight was pure that morning, powerful, tintless, thetrue wine of life for body or spirit. Stephen Holmes knew that, being aman of delicate animal instincts, and so used it, just as he had usedthe dumb-bells in the morning. All things were made for man, weren'tthey? He was leaning against the door of the school-house, --a red, flaunting house, the daub on the landscape: but, having his back to it, he could not see it, so through his half-shut eyes he suffered thebeauty of the scene to act on him. Suffered: in a man, according tohis creed, the will being dominant, and all influences, such as beauty, pain, religion, permitted to act under orders. Of course. 

It was a peculiar landscape, --like the man who looked at it, of athoroughly American type. A range of sharp, dark hills, with a sombredepth of green shadow in the clefts, and on the sides massed forests ofscarlet and flame and crimson. Above, the sharp peaks of stone roseinto the wan blue, wan and pale themselves, and wearing a certain airof fixed calm, the type of an eternal quiet. At the base of the hillslay the city, a dirty mass of bricks and smoke and dust, and at its faredge flowed the river, --deep here, tinted with green, writhing andgurgling and curdling on the banks over shelving ledges of lichen andmud-covered rock. Beyond it yawned the opening to the great West, --thePrairies. Not the dreary deadness here, as farther west. A plain, dark russet in hue, --for the grass was sun-scorched, --stretching awayinto the vague distance, intolerable, silent, broken by hillocks andpuny streams that only made the vastness and silence more wide andheavy. Its limitless torpor weighed on the brain; the eyes ached, stretching to find some break before the dull russet faded into theamber of the horizon and was lost. An American landscape: of fewfeatures, simple, grand in outline as a face of one of the early gods. It lay utterly motionless before him, not a fleck of cloud in the pureblue above, even where the mist rose from the river; it only hadglorified the clear blue into clearer violet. 

Holmes stood quietly looking; he could have created a picture likethis, if he never had seen one; therefore he was able to recognize it, accepted it into his soul, and let it do what it would there. 

Suddenly a low wind from the far Pacific coast struck from the amberline where the sun went down. A faint tremble passed over the greathills, the broad sweeps of colour darkened from base to summit, thenflashed again, --while below, the prairie rose and fell like a dun sea, and rolled in long, slow, solemn waves. 

The wind struck so broad and fiercely in Holmes's face that he caughthis breath. It was a savage freedom, he thought, in the West there, whose breath blew on him, --the freedom of the primitive man, theuntamed animal man, self-reliant and self-assertant, having conqueredNature. Well, this fierce, masterful freedom was good for the soul, sometimes, doubtless. It was old Knowles's vital air. He wondered ifthe old man would succeed in his hobby, if he could make the slavishbeggars and thieves in the alleys yonder comprehend this fiercefreedom. They craved leave to live on sufferance now, not knowing theirpossible divinity. It was a desperate remedy, this sense of uncheckedliberty; but their disease was desperate. As for himself, he did notneed it; that element was not lacking. In a mere bodily sense, to besure. He felt his arm. Yes, the cold rigor of this new life hadalready worn off much of the clogging weight of flesh, strengthened themuscles. Six months more in the West would toughen the fibres to iron. He raised an iron weight that lay on the steps, carelessly testingthem. For the rest, he was going back here; something of the cold, loose freshness got into his brain, he believed. In the two years ofabsence his power of concentration had been stronger, his perceptionsmore free from prejudice, gaining every day delicate point, acutenessof analysis. He drew a long breath of the icy air, coarse with thewild perfume of the prairie. No, his temperament needed a subtileratmosphere than this, rarer essence than mere brutal freedom The East, the Old World, was his proper sphere for self-development. He would goas soon as he could command the means, leaving all clogs behind. ALL?His idle thought balked here, suddenly; the sallow forehead contractedsharply, and his gray eyes grew in an instant shallow, careless, formal, as a man who holds back his thought. There was a fiercewarring in his brain for a moment. Then he brushed his Kossuth hatwith his arm, and put it on, looking out at the landscape again. Somehow its meaning was dulled to him. Just then a muddy terrier cameup, and rubbed itself against his knee. "Why, Tige, old boy!" he said, stooping to pat it kindly. The hard, shallow look faded out; he halfsmiled, looking in the dog's eyes. A curious smile, unspeakably tenderand sad. It was the idiosyncrasy of the man's face, rarely seen there. He might have looked with it at a criminal, condemning him to death. But he would have condemned him, and, if no hangman could be found, would have put the rope on with his own hands, and then most probablywould have sat down pale and trembling, and analyzed his sensations onpaper, --being sincere in all. 

He sat down on the school-house step, which the boys had hacked andwhittled rough, and waited; for he was there by appointment, to meetDr. Knowles. 

Knowles had gone out early in the morning to look at the ground he wasgoing to buy for his Phalanstery, or whatever he chose to call it. Hewas to bring the deed of sale of the mill out with him for Holmes. Thenext day it was to be signed. Holmes saw him at last lumbering acrossthe prairie, wiping the perspiration from his forehead. Summer orwinter, he contrived to be always hot. There was a cart drawn by anold donkey coming along beside him. Knowles was talking to the driver. The old man clapped his hands as stage-coachmen do, and drew in longdraughts of air, as if there were keen life and promise in everybreath. They came up at last, the cart empty, and drying for the day'swork after its morning's scrubbing, Lois's pock-marked face all in aglow with trying to keep Barney awake. She grew quite red withpleasure at seeing Holmes, but went on quickly as the men began totalk. Tige followed her, of course; but when she had gone a little wayacross the prairie, they saw her stop, and presently the dog came backwith something in his mouth, which he laid down beside his master, andbolted off. It was only a rough wicker-basket which she had filledwith damp plushy moss, and half-buried in it clusters of plumy fern, delicate brown and ashen lichens, masses of forest-leaves all shadedgreen with a few crimson tints. It had a clear woody smell, likefar-off myrrh. The Doctor laughed as Holmes took it up. 

"An artist's gift, if it is from a mulatto, " he said. "A borncolourist. "

The men were not at ease, --for some reason; they seized on every trifleto keep off the subject which had brought them together. 

"That girl's artist-sense is pure, and her religion, down under theperversion and ignorance of her brain. Curious, eh?"

"Look at the top of her head, when you see her, " said Holmes. "It isnecessity for such brains to worship. They let the fire lick theirblood, if they happen to be born Parsees. This girl, if she had been aJew when Christ was born, would have known him as Simeon did. "

Knowles said nothing, --only glanced at the massive head of the speaker, with its overhanging brow, square development at the sides, and loweredcrown, and smiled significantly. 

"Exactly, " laughed Holmes, putting his hand on his head. "Crippledthere by my Yorkshire blood, --my mother. Never mind; outside of thislife, blood or circumstance matters nothing. "

They walked on slowly towards town. Surely there was nothing in thebill-of-sale which the old man had in his pocket but a mere matter ofbusiness; yet they were strangely silent about it, as if it broughtshame to some one. There was an embarrassed pause. The Doctor wentback to Lois for relief. 

"I think it is the pain and want of such as she that makes themsusceptible to religion. The self in them is so starved and humbledthat it cannot obscure their eyes; they see God clearly. "

"Say rather, " said Holmes, "that the soul is so starved and blind thatit cannot recognize itself as God. "

The Doctor's intolerant eye kindled. 

"Humph! So that's your creed! Not Pantheism. Ego sum. Of course yougo on with the conjugation: I have been, I shall be. I, --that coversthe whole ground, creation, redemption, and commands the hereafter?"

"It does so, " said Holmes, coolly. 

"And this wretched huckster carries her deity about her, --herself-existent soul? How, in God's name, is her life to set it free?"

Holmes said nothing. The coarse sneer could not be answered. Men withpale faces and heavy jaws like his do not carry their religion on theirtongue's end; their creeds leave them only in the slow oozinglife-blood, false as the creeds may be. 

Knowles went on hotly, half to himself, seizing on the new ideafiercely, as men and women do who are yet groping for the truth of life. 

"What is it your Novalis says? 'The true Shechinah is man. ' You knowno higher God? Pooh! the idea is old enough; it began with Eve. Itworks slowly, Holmes. In six thousand years, taking humanity as one, this self-existent soul should have clothed itself with a freer, royaller garment than poor Lois's body, --or mine, " he added, bitterly. 

"It works slowly, " said the other, quietly. "Faster soon, in America. There are yet many ills of life for the divinity within to conquer. "

"And Lois and the swarming mass yonder in those dens? It is late forthem to begin the fight?"

"Endurance is enough for them here, and their religions teach themthat. They could not bear the truth. One does not put a weapon intothe hands of a man dying of the fetor and hunger of the siege. "

"But what will this life, or the lives to come, give to you, championswho know the truth?"

"Nothing but victory, " he said, in a low tone, looking away. 

Knowles looked at the pale strength of the iron face. 

"God help you, Stephen!" he broke out, his shallow jeering falling off. "For there IS a God higher than we. The ills of life you mean toconquer will teach it to you, Holmes. You'll find the Something aboveyourself, if it's only to curse Him and die. "

Holmes did not smile at the old man's heat, --walked gravely, steadily. 

There was a short silence. Knowles put his hand gently on the other'sarm. 

"Stephen, " he hesitated, "you're a stronger man than I. I know whatyou are; I've watched you from a boy. But you're wrong here. I'm anold man. There's not much I know in life, --enough to madden me. But Ido know there's something stronger, --some God outside of the mean devilthey call 'Me. ' You'll learn it, boy. There's an old story of a manlike you and the rest of your sect, and of the vile, mean, crawlingthings that God sent to bring him down. There are such things yet. Mean passions in your divine soul, low, selfish things, that will getthe better of you, show you what you are. You'll do all that man cando. But they are coming, Stephen Holmes! they're coming!"

He stopped, startled. For Holmes had turned abruptly, glancing over atthe city with a strange wistfulness. It was over in a moment. Heresumed the slow, controlling walk beside him. They went on in silenceinto town, and when they did speak, it was on indifferent subjects, notreferring to the last. The Doctor's heat, as it usually did, boiledout in spasms on trifles. Once he stumped his toe, and, I am sorry tosay, swore roundly about it, just as he would have done in the newArcadia, if one of the jail-birds comprising that colony had beenungrateful for his advantages. Philanthropists, for some curiousreason, are not the most amiable members of small families. 

He gave Holmes the roll of parchment he had in his pocket, lookingkeenly at him, as he did so, but only saying, that, if he meant to signit, it would be done to-morrow. As Holmes took it, they stopped at thegreat door of the factory. He went in alone, Knowles going down thestreet. One trifle, strange in its way, he remembered afterwards. Holding the roll of paper in his hand that would make the mill his, hewent, in his slow, grave way, down the long passage to the loom-rooms. There was a crowd of porters and firemen there, as usual, and hethought one of them hastily passed him in the dark passage, hidingbehind an engine. As the shadow fell on him, his teeth chattered with achilly shudder. He smiled, thinking how superstitious people would saythat some one trod on his grave just then, or that Death looked at him, and went on. Afterwards he thought of it. Going through the office, the fat old book-keeper, Huff, stopped him with a story he had beenkeeping for him all day. He liked to tell a story to Holmes; he couldsee into a joke; it did a man good to hear a fellow laugh like that. Holmes did laugh, for the story was a good one, and stood a moment, then went in, leaving the old fellow chuckling over his desk. Huff didnot know how, lately, after every laugh, this man felt a vague scorn ofhimself, as if jokes and laughter belonged to a self that ought to havebeen dead long ago. Perhaps, if the fat old book-keeper had known it, he would have said that the man was better than he knew. Butthen, --poor Huff! He passed slowly through the alleys between thegreat looms. Overhead the ceiling looked like a heavy maze of ironcylinders and black swinging bars and wheels, all in swift, ponderousmotion. It was enough to make a brain dizzy with the clanging thunderof the engines, the whizzing spindles of red and yellow, and the hotdaylight glaring over all. The looms were watched by women, most ofthem bold, tawdry girls of fifteen or sixteen, or lean-jawed women fromthe hills, wives of the coal-diggers. There was a breathless odour ofcopperas. As he went from one room to another up through the ascendingstories, he had a vague sensation of being followed. Some shadowlurked at times behind the engines, or stole after him in the darkentries. Were there ghosts, then, in mills in broad daylight? Nonebut the ghosts of Want and Hunger and Crime, he might have known, thatdo not wait for night to walk our streets: the ghosts that poor oldKnowles hoped to lay forever. 

Holmes had a room fitted up in the mill, where he slept. He went up toit slowly, holding the paper tightly in one hand, glancing at theoperatives, the work, through his furtive half-shut eye. Nothingescaped him. Passing the windows, he did not once look out at theprophetic dream of beauty he had left without. In the mill he was ofthe mill. Yet he went slowly, as if he shrank from the task waitingfor him. Why should he? It was a simple matter of business, thistransfer of Knowles's share in the mill to himself; to-day he was todecide whether he would conclude the bargain. If any dark history ofwrong lay underneath, if this simple decision of his was to be thestruggle for life and death with him, his cold, firm face told nothingof it. Let us be just to him, stand by him, if we can, in the midst ofhis desolate home and desolate life, and look through his cold, sorrowful eyes at the deed he was going to do. Dreary enough helooked, going through the great mill, despite the power in his quietface. A man who had strength for solitude; yet, I think, with all hisstrength, his mother could not have borne to look back from the deadthat day, to see her boy so utterly alone. The day was the crisis ofhis life, looked forward to for years; he held in his hand a surepassport to fortune. Yet he thrust the hour off, perversely, triflingwith idle fancies, pushing from him the one question which all theyears past and to come had left for this day to decide. 

Some such idle fancy it may have been that made the man turn from theusual way down a narrow passage into which opened doors from smalloffices. Margret Howth, he had learned to-day, was in the first one. He hesitated before he did it, his sallow face turning a trifle paler;then he went on in his hard, grave way, wondering dimly if sheremembered his step, if she cared to see him now. She used to knowit, --she was the only one in the world who ever had cared to knowit, --silly child! Doubtless she was wiser now. He remembered he usedto think, that, when this woman loved, it would be as he himself would, with a simple trust which the wrong of years could not touch. And oncehe had thought---- Well, well, he was mistaken. Poor Margret! Betteras it was. They were nothing to each other. She had put him from her, and he had suffered himself to be put away. Why, he would have givenup every prospect of life, if he had done otherwise! Yet he wonderedbitterly if she had thought him selfish, --if she thought it was moneyhe cared for, as the others did. It mattered nothing what theythought, but it wounded him intolerably that she should wrong him. Yet, with all this, whenever he looked forward to death, it was withthe certainty that he should find her there beyond. There would be nosecrets then; she would know then how he had loved her always. Lovedher? Yes; he need not hide it from himself, surely. 

He was now by the door of the office;--she was within. Little Margret, poor little Margret! struggling there day after day for the old fatherand mother. What a pale, cold little child she used to be! such achild! yet kindling at his look or touch, as if her veins were filledwith subtile flame. Her soul was--like his own, he thought. He knewwhat it was, --he only. Even now he glowed with a man's triumph to knowhe held the secret life of this woman bare in his hand. No other humanpower could ever come near her; he was secure in possession. She hadput him from her;--it was better for both, perhaps. Their paths wereseparate here; for she had some unreal notions of duty, and he had toomuch to do in the world to clog himself with cares, or to idle an hourin the rare ecstasy of even love like this. 

He passed the office, not pausing in his slow step. Some suddenimpulse made him put his hand on the door as he brushed against it:just a quick, light touch; but it had all the fierce passion of acaress. He drew it back as quickly, and went on, wiping a clammy sweatfrom his face. 

The room he had fitted up for himself was whitewashed and barelyfurnished; it made one's bones ache to look at the iron bedstead andchairs. Holmes's natural taste was more glowing, however smothered, than that of any saffron-robed Sybarite. It needed correction, heknew; here was discipline. Besides, he had set apart the coming threeor four years of his life to make money in, enough for the time tocome. He would devote his whole strength to that work, and so besooner done with it. Money, or place, or even power, was nothing but ameans to him: other men valued them because of their influence onothers. As his work in the world was only the development of himself, it was different, of course. What would it matter to his soul the dayafter death, if millions called his name aloud in blame or praise?Would he hear or answer then? What would it matter to him then, if hehad starved with them, or ruled over them? People talked ofbenevolence. What would it matter to him then, the misery or happinessof those yet working in this paltry life of ours? In so far as theexercise of kindly emotions or self-denial developed the higher part ofhis nature, it was to be commended; as for its effect on others, thathe had nothing to do with. He practised self-denial constantly tostrengthen the benevolent instincts. That very morning he had givenhis last dollar to Joe Byers, a half-starved cripple. "Chucked it atme, " Joe said, "like as he'd give a bone to a dog, and be damned tohim! Who thanks him?" To tell the truth, you will find no fairerexponent than this Stephen Holmes of the great idea of Americansociology, --that the object of life is TO GROW. Circumstances hadforced it on him, partly. Sitting now in his room, where he wascounting the cost of becoming a merchant prince, he could look back tothe time of a boyhood passed in the depths of ignorance and vice. Heknew what this Self within him was; he knew how it had forced him togrope his way up, to give this hungry, insatiate soul air and freedomand knowledge. All men around him were doing the same, --thrusting andjostling and struggling, up, up. It was the American motto, Go ahead;mothers taught it to their children; the whole system was a scale ofglittering prizes. He at least saw the higher meaning of the truth; hehad no low ambitions. To lift this self up into a higher range ofbeing when it had done with the uses of this, --that was his work. Self-salvation, self-elevation, --the ideas that give birth to, anddestroy half of our Christianity, half of our philanthropy! Sometimes, sleeping instincts in the man struggled up to assert a divinity moreterrible than this growing self-existent soul that he purified andanalyzed day by day: a depth of tender pity for outer pain; a fiercelonging for rest, on something, in something, he cared not what. Hestifled such rebellious promptings, --called them morbid. He called itmorbid, too, the passion now that chilled his strong blood, and wrungout these clammy drops on his forehead, at the mere thought of thisgirl below. 

He shut the door of his room tightly: he had no time to-day forlounging visitors. For Holmes, quiet and steady, was sought for, ifnot popular, even in the free-and-easy West; one of those men who areunwillingly masters among men. Just and mild, always; with a peculiargift that made men talk their best thoughts to him, knowing they wouldbe understood; if any core of eternal flint lay under the simple, truthful manner of the man, nobody saw it. 

He laid the bill of sale on the table; it was an altogether practicalmatter on which he sat in judgment, but he was going to do nothingrashly. A plain business document: he took Dr. Knowles's share in thefactory; the payments made with short intervals; John Herne was to behis endorser: it needed only the names to make it valid. Plain enough;no hint there of the tacit understanding that the purchase-money was awedding dowry; even between Herne and himself it never was openly putinto words. If he did not marry Miss Herne, the mill was her father's;that of course must be spoken of, arranged to-morrow. If he took it, then? if he married her? Holmes had been poor, was miserably poor yet, with the position and habits of a man, of refinement. God knows it wasnot to gratify those tastes that he clutched at this money. All theslow years of work trailed up before him, that were gone, --of hard, wearing work for daily bread, when his brain had been starving forknowledge, and his soul dulled, debased with sordid trading. Was thisto be always? Were these few golden moments of life to be traded forthe bread and meat he ate? To eat and drink, --was that what he washere for?

As he paced the floor mechanically, some vague recollection crossed hisbrain of a childish story of the man standing where the two great roadsof life parted. They were open before him now. Money, money, --he tookthe word into his heart as a miser might do. With it, he was free fromthese carking cares that were making his mind foul and muddy. If hehad money! Slow, cool visions of triumphs rose before him outlined onthe years to come, practical, if Utopian. Slow and sure successes ofscience and art, where his brain could work, helpful and growing. Faroff, yet surely to come, --surely for him, --a day when a pure socialsystem should be universal, should have thrust out its fibres of light, knitting into one the nations of the earth, when the lowest slaveshould find its true place and rightful work, and stand up, knowingitself divine. "To insure to every man the freest development of hisfaculties:" he said over the hackneyed dogma again and again, while theheavy, hateful years of poverty rose before him that had trampled himdown. "To insure to him the freest development, " he did not need towait for St. Simon, or the golden year, he thought with a dreary gibe;money was enough, and--Miss Herne. 

It was curious, that, when this woman, whom he saw every day, came upin his mind, it was always in one posture, one costume. You havenoticed that peculiarity in your remembrance of some persons? Perhapsyou would find, if you looked closely, that in that look or indeliblegesture which your memory has caught there lies some subtile hint ofthe tie between your soul and theirs. Now, when Holmes had resolvedcoolly to weigh this woman, brain, heart, and flesh, to know how muchof a hindrance she would be, he could only see her, with his artist'ssense, as delicate a bloom of colouring as eye could crave, in oneimmovable posture, --as he had seen her once in some masquerade ortableau vivant. June, I think it was, she chose to represent thatevening, --and with her usual success; for no woman ever knew morethoroughly her material of shape or colour, or how to work it up. Notan ill-chosen fancy, either, that of the moist, warm month. Sometranced summer's day might have drowsed down into such a human form bya dank pool, or on the thick grass-crusted meadows. There was the fullcontour of the limbs hid under warm green folds, the white flesh thatglowed when you touched it as if some smothered heat lay beneath, thesnaring eyes, the sleeping face, the amber hair uncoiled in a languidquiet, while yellow jasmines deepened its hue into molten sunshine, anda great tiger-lily laid its sultry head on her breast. June? CouldJune become incarnate with higher poetic meaning than that which thiswoman gave it? Mr. Kitts, the artist I told you of, thought not, andfell in love with June and her on the spot, which passion became quiteunbearable after she had graciously permitted him to sketch her, --forthe benefit of Art. Three medical students and one attorney, MissHerne numbered as having been driven into a state of dogged despair onthat triumphal occasion. Mr. Holmes may have quarrelled with therendering, doubting to himself if her lip were not too thick, her eyetoo brassy and pale a blue for the queen of months; though I do notbelieve he thought at all about it. Yet the picture clung to hismemory. 

As he slowly paced the room to-day, thinking of this woman as his wife, light blue eyes and yellow hair and the unclean sweetness ofjasmine-flowers mixed with the hot sunshine and smells of the mill. Hecould think of her in no other light. He might have done so; for thepoor girl had her other sides for view. She had one of those sharp, tawdry intellects whose possessors are always reckoned "brilliantwomen, fine talkers. " She was (aside from the necessary sarcasm tokeep up this reputation) a good-humoured soul enough, --when no onestood in her way. But if her shallow virtues or vices were palpable atall to him, they became one with the torpid beauty of the oppressivesummer day, and weighed on him alike with a vague disgust. The womanluxuriated in perfume; some heavy odour always hung about her. Holmes, thinking of her now, fancied he felt it stifling the air, and openedthe window for breath. Patchouli or copperas, --what was thedifference? The mill and his future wife came to him together; it wasscarcely his fault, if he thought of them as one, or muttered, "Damnable clog!" as he sat down to write, his cold eye growing colder. But he did not argue the question any longer; decision had come keenlyin one moment, fixed, unalterable. 

If, through the long day, the starved heart of the man called feeblyfor its natural food, he called it a paltry weakness; or if the oldthought of the quiet, pure little girl in the office below came back tohim, he--he wished her well, he hoped she might succeed in her work, hewould always be ready to lend her a helping hand. So many years (hewas ashamed to think how many) he had built the thought of this girl ashis wife into the future, put his soul's strength into the hope, as iflove and the homely duties of husband and father were what life wasgiven for! A boyish fancy, he thought. He had not learned then thatall dreams must yield to self-reverence and self-growth. As for takingup this life of poverty and soul-starvation for the sake of a littlelove, it would be an ignoble martyrdom, the sacrifice of a grandunmeasured life to a shallow pleasure. He was no longer a young mannow; he had no time to waste. Poor Margret! he wondered if it hurt her?

He signed the deed, and left it in the slow, quiet way natural to him, and after a while stooped to pat the dog softly, who was trying tolick his hand, --with the hard fingers shaking a little, and a smotheredfierceness in the half-closed eye, like a man who is tortured and alone. 

There is a miserable drama acted in other homes than the Tuileries, when men have found a woman's heart in their way to success, andtrampled it down under an iron heel. Men like Napoleon must live outthe law of their natures, I suppose, --on a throne, or in a mill. 

So many trifles that day roused the undercurrent of old thoughts andold hopes that taunted him, --trifles, too, that he would not haveheeded at another time. Pike came in on business, a bunch of bills inhis hand. A wily, keen eye he had, looking over them, --a lean face, emphasized only by cunning. No wonder Dr. Knowles cursed him for a"slippery customer, " and was cheated by him the next hour. While heand Holmes were counting out the bills, a little white-headed girlcrept shyly in at the door, and came up to the table, --oddly dressed, in a frock fastened with great horn buttons, and with an old-fashionedanxious pair of eyes, the color of blue Delft. Holmes smoothed herhair, as she stood beside them; for he never could help caressingchildren or dogs. Pike looked up sharply, --then half smiled, as hewent on counting. 

"Ninety, ninety-five, AND one hundred, all right, "--tying a bit of tapeabout the papers. "My Sophy, Mr. Holmes. Good girl, Sophy is. Bringher up to the mill sometimes, " he said, apologetically, "on 'count ofnot leaving her alone. She gets lonesome at th' house. "

Holmes glanced at Pike's felt hat lying on the table: there was a rustystrip of crape on it. 

"Yes, " said Pike, in a lower tone, "I'm father and mother, both, toSophy now. "

"I had not heard, " said Holmes, kindly. "How about the boys, now?"

"Pete and John 's both gone West, " the man said, his eyes kindlingeagerly. "'S fine boys as ever turned out of Indiana. Good eddicationsI give 'em both. I've felt the want of that all my life.. Goodeddications. Says I, 'Now, boys, you've got your fortunes, nothing tohinder your bein' President. Let's see what stuff 's in ye, ' says I. So they're doin' well. Wrote fur me to come out in the fall. But I'drather scratch on, and gather up a little for Sophy here, before I stopwork. "

He patted Sophy's tanned little hand on the table, as if beating somesoft tune. Holmes folded up the bills. Even this man could spare timeout of his hard, stingy life to love, and be loved, and to be generous!But then he had no higher aim, knew nothing better. 

"Well, " said Pike, rising, "in case you take th' mill, Mr. Holmes, Ihope we'll be agreeable. I'll strive to do my best, "--in the oldfawning manner, to which Holmes nodded a curt reply. 

The man stopped for Sophy to gather up her bits of broken "chayney"with which she was making a tea-party on the table, and wentdown-stairs. 

Towards evening Holmes went out, --not going through the narrow passagethat led to the offices, but avoiding it by a circuitous route. If itcost him any pain to think why he did it, he showed none in his calm, observant face. Buttoning up his coat as he went: the October sunsetlooked as if it ought to be warm, but he was deathly cold. On thestreet the young doctor beset him again with bows and news: Cox was hisname, I believe; the one, you remember, who had such a Talleyrand nosefor ferreting out successful men. He had to bear with him but for afew moments, however. They met a crowd of workmen at the corner, oneof whom, an old man freshly washed, with honest eyes looking out ofhorn spectacles, waited for them by a fire-plug. It was Polston, thecoal-digger, --an acquaintance, a far-off kinsman of Holmes, in fact. 

"Curious person making signs to you, yonder, " said Cox; "hand, Ipresume. "

"My cousin Polston. If you do not know him, you'll excuse me?"

Cox sniffed the air down the street, and twirled his rattan, as hewent. The coal-digger was abrupt and distant in his greeting, goingstraight to business. 

"I will keep yoh only a minute, Mr. Holmes"----

"Stephen, " corrected Holmes. 

The old man's face warmed. 

"Stephen, then, " holding out his hand, "sence old times dawn't shameyoh, Stephen. That's hearty, now. It's only a wured I want, but it'simmediate. Concernin' Joe Yare, --Lois's father, yoh know? He's back. "

"Back? I saw him to-day, following me in the mill. His hair is gray?I think it was he. "

"No doubt. Yes, he's aged fast, down in the lock-up; goin' fast to theend. Feeble, pore-like. It's a bad life, Joe Yare's; I wish 'n' 'twould be better to the end"----

He stopped with a wistful look at Holmes, who stood outwardlyattentive, but with little thought to waste on Joe Yare. The oldcoal-digger drummed on the fire-plug uneasily. 

"Myself, 't was for Lois's sake I thowt on it. To speak plain, --yoh'llmind that Stokes affair, th' note Yare forged? Yes? Ther' 's noneknows o' that but yoh an' me. He's safe, Yare is, only fur yoh an' me. Yoh speak the wured an' back he goes to the lock-up. Fur life. D' yohsee?"

"I see. "

"He's tryin' to do right, Yare is. "

The old man went on, trying not to be eager, and watching Holmes's face. 

"He's tryin'. Sendin' him back--yoh know how THAT'll end. Seems likeas we'd his soul in our hands. S'pose, --what d' yoh think, if we givehim a chance? It's yoh he fears. I see him a-watchin' yoh; what d'yoh think, if we give him a chance?" catching Holmes's sleeve. "He'sold, an' he's tryin'. Heh?"

Holmes smiled. 

"We didn't make the law he broke. Justice before mercy. Haven't Iheard you talk to Sam in that way, long ago?"

The old man loosened his hold of Holmes's arm, looked up and down thestreet, uncertain, disappointed. 

"The law. Yes. That's right! Yoh're just man, Stephen Holmes. "

"And yet?"----

"Yes. I dun'no'. Law's right, but Yare's had a bad chance, an' he'stryin'. An' we're sendin' him to hell. Somethin' 's wrong. But Ithink yoh're a just man, " looking keenly in Holmes's face. 

"A hard one, people say, " said Holmes, after a pause, as they walked on. 

He had spoken half to himself, and received no answer. Some blackershadow troubled him than old Yare's fate. 

"My mother was a hard woman, --you knew her?" he said, abruptly. 

"She was just, like yoh. She was one o' th' elect, she said. Mercy'sfur them, --an' outside, justice. It's a narrer showin', I'm thinkin'. "

"My father was outside, " said Holmes, some old bitterness rising up inhis tone, his gray eye lighting with some unrevenged wrong. 

Polston did not speak for a moment. 

"Dunnot bear malice agin her. They're dead, now. It wasn't left furher to judge him out yonder. Yoh've yer father's Stephen, 'times. Hungry, pitiful, like women's. His got desper't' 't th' last. Drunkhard, --died of 't, yoh know. But SHE killed him, --th' sin was writdown fur her. Never was a boy I loved like him, when we was boys. "

There was a short silence. 

"Yoh're like yer mother, " said Polston, striving for a lighter tone. "Here, "--motioning to the heavy iron jaws. "She never--let go. Somehow, too, she'd the law on her side in outward showin', an' th'right. But I hated religion, knowin' her. Well, ther' 's a day ofmakin' things clear, comin'. "

They had reached the corner now, and Polston turned down the lane. 

"Yoh 'll think o' Yare's case?" he said. 

"Yes. But how can I help it, " Holmes said, lightly, "if I am like mymother, here?"--putting his hand to his mouth. 

"God help us, how can yoh? It's hard to think father and mother leavetheir souls fightin' in their childern, cos th' love was wantin' tomake them one here. "

Something glittered along the street as he spoke: the silver mountingsof a low-hung phaeton drawn by a pair of Mexican ponies. One or twogentlemen on horseback were alongside, attendant on a lady within, MissHerne. She turned her fair face, and pale, greedy eyes, as she passed, and lifted her hand languidly in recognition of Holmes. Polston's facecoloured. 

"I've heered, " he said, holding out his grimy hand. "I wish yoh well, Stephen, boy. So'll the old 'oman. Yoh'll come an' see us, soon?Ye'r' lookin' fagged, an' yer eyes is gettin' more like yer father's. I'm glad things is takin' a good turn with yoh; an' yoh'll never belike him, starvin' fur th' kind wured, an' havin' to die without it. I'm glad yoh've got true love. She'd a fair face, I think. I wish yohwell, Stephen. "

Holmes shook the grimy hand, and then stood a moment looking back tothe mill, from which the hands were just coming, and then down at thephaeton moving idly down the road. How cold it was growing! Peoplepassing by had a sickly look, as if they were struck by the plague. Hepushed the damp hair back, wiping his forehead, with another glance atthe mill-women coming out of the gate, and then followed the phaetondown the hill. 

CHAPTER VI. 

An hour after, the evening came on sultry, the air murky, opaque, withyellow trails of colour dragging in the west: a sullen stillness in thewoods and farms; only, in fact, that dark, inexplicable hush thatprecedes a storm. But Lois, coming down the hill-road, singing toherself, and keeping time with her whip-end on the wooden measure, stopped when she grew conscious of it. It seemed to her blurred fancymore than a deadening sky: a something solemn and unknown, hinting ofevil to come. The dwarf-pines on the road-side scowled weakly at herthrough the gray; the very silver minnows in the pools she passed, flashed frightened away, and darkened into the muddy niches. There wasa vague dread in the sudden silence. She called to the old donkey, andwent faster down the hill, as if escaping from some overhanging peril, unseen. She saw Margret coming up the road. There was a phaeton behindLois, and some horsemen: she jolted the cart off into the stones to letthem pass, seeing Mr. Holmes's face in the carriage as she did so. Hedid not look at her; had his head turned towards the gray distance. Lois's vivid eye caught the full meaning of the woman beside him. Theface hurt her: not fair, as Polston called it: vapid and cruel. Shewas dressed in yellow: the colour seemed jeering and mocking to thegirl's sensitive instinct, keenly alive to every trifle. She did notknow that it is the colour of shams, and that women like this are themost deadly of shams. As the phaeton went slowly down, Margret camenearer, meeting it on the road-side, the dust from the wheels stiflingthe air. Lois saw her look up, and then suddenly stand still, holdingto the fence, as they met her. Holmes's cold, wandering eye turned onthe little dusty figure standing there, poor and despised. Polstoncalled his eyes hungry: it was a savage hunger that sprang into themnow; a gray shadow creeping over his set face, as he looked at her, inthat flashing moment. The phaeton was gone in an instant, leaving heralone in the road. One of the men looked back, and then whisperedsomething to the lady with a laugh. She turned to Holmes, when he hadfinished, fixing her light, confusing eyes on his face, and softeningher voice. 

"Fred swears that woman we passed was your first love. Were you, then, so chivalric? Was it to have been a second romaunt of 'King Cophetuaand the Beggar Maid?'"

He met her look, and saw the fierce demand through the softness andpersiflage. He gave it no answer, but, turning to her, kindled intothe man whom she was so proud to show as her capture, --a man far offfrom Stephen Holmes. Brilliant she called him, --frank, winning, generous. She thought she knew him well; held him a slave to herfluttering hand. Being proud of her slave, she let the hand flutterdown now somehow with some flowers it held until it touched his hardfingers, her cheek flushing into rose. The nerveless, spongyhand, --what a death-grip it had on his life! He did not look back onceat the motionless, dusty figure on the road. What was that Polston hadsaid about starving to death for a kind word? LOVE? He was sick ofthe sickly talk, --crushed it out of his heart with a savage scorn. Heremembered his father, the night he died, had said in his weak ravingsthat God was love. Was He? No wonder, then, He was the God of women, and children, and unsuccessful men. For him, he was done with it. Hewas here with stronger purpose than to yield to weaknesses of theflesh. He had made his choice, --a straight, hard path upwards; he wasdeaf now and forever to any word of kindness or pity. As for thiswoman beside him, he would be just to her, in justice to himself: shenever should know the loathing in his heart: just to her as to allliving creatures. Some little, mean doubt kept up a sullen whisper ofbought and sold, --sold, --but he laughed it down. He sat there with hishead steadily turned towards her: a kingly face, she called it, and shewas right, --it was a kingly face: with the same shallow, fixed smile onhis mouth, --no weary cry went up to God that day so terrible in itspathos, I think: with the same dull consciousness that this was thetrial night of his life, --that with the homely figure on the road-sidehe had turned his back on love and kindly happiness and warmth, on allthat was weak and useless in the world. He had made his choice; hewould abide by it, --he would abide by it. He said that over and overagain, dulling down the death-gnawing of his outraged heart. 

Miss Herne was quite contented, sitting by him, with herself, and theadmiring world. She had no notion of trial nights in life. Not manytemptations pierced through her callous, flabby temperament to stingher to defeat or triumph. There was for her no under-current ofconflict, in these people whom she passed, between self and the unseenpower that Holmes sneered at, whose name was love; they were nothingbut movables, pleasant or ugly to look at, well- or ill-dressed. Therewere no dark iron bars across her life for her soul to clutch and shakemadly, --nothing "in the world amiss, to be unriddled by and by. "Little Margret, sitting by the muddy road, digging her fingers dullyinto the clover-roots, while she looked at the spot where the wheelshad passed, looked at life differently, it may be;--or old Joe Yare bythe furnace-fire, his black face and gray hair bent over a torn oldspelling-book Lois had given him. The night, perhaps, was going to bemore to them than so many rainy hours for sleeping, --the time to belooked back on through coming lives as the hour when good and ill cameto them, and they made their choice, and, as Holmes said, did abide byit. 

It grew cool and darker. Holmes left the phaeton before they enteredtown, and turned back. He was going to see this Margret Howth, tellher what he meant to do. Because he was going to leave a clean record. No one should accuse him of want of honour. This girl alone of allliving beings had a right to see him as he stood, justified to himself. Why she had this right, I do not think he answered to himself. Besides, he must see her, if only on business. She must keep her placeat the mill: he would not begin his new life by an act of injustice, taking the bread out of Margret's mouth. LITTLE MARGRET! He stoppedsuddenly, looking down into a deep pool of water by the road-side. What madness of weariness crossed his brain just then I do not know. He shook it off. Was he mad? Life was worth more to him than to othermen, he thought; and perhaps he was right. He went slowly through thecool dusk, looking across the fields, up at the pale, frightened faceof the moon hooded in clouds: he did not dare to look, with all hisiron nerve, at the dark figure beyond him on the road. She was sittingthere just where he had left her: he knew she would be. When he camecloser, she got up, not looking towards him; but he saw her clasp herhands behind her, the fingers plucking weakly at each other. It was anold, childish fashion of hers, when she was frightened or hurt. Itwould only need a word, and he could be quiet and firm, --she was such achild compared to him: he always had thought of her so. He went on upto her slowly, and stopped; when she looked at him, he untied the linenbonnet that hid her face, and threw it back. How thin and tired thelittle face had grown! Poor child! He put his strong arm kindly abouther, and stooped to kiss her hand, but she drew it away. God! what didshe do that for? Did not she know that he could put his head beneathher foot then, he was so mad with pity for the woman he had wronged?Not love, he thought, controlling himself, --it was only justice to bekind to her. 

"You have been ill, Margret, these two years, while I was gone?"

He could not hear her answer; only saw that she looked up with a white, pitiful smile. Only a word it needed, he thought, --very kind and firm:and he must be quick, --he could not bear this long. But he held thelittle worn fingers, stroking them with an unutterable tenderness. 

"You must let these fingers work for me, Margret, " he said, at last, "when I am master in the mill. "

"It is true, then, Stephen?"

"It is true, --yes. "

She lifted her hand to her head, uncertainly: he held it tightly, andthen let it go. What right had he to touch the dust upon hershoes, --he, bought and sold? She did not speak for a time; when shedid, it was a weak and sick voice. 

"I am glad. I saw her, you know. She is very beautiful. "

The fingers were plucking at each other again; and a strange, vacantsmile on her face, trying to look glad. 

"You love her, Stephen?"

He was quiet and firm enough now. 

"I do not. Her money will help me to become what I ought to be. Shedoes not care for love. You want me to succeed, Margret? No one everunderstood me as you did, child though you were. "

Her whole face glowed. 

"I know! I know! I did understand you!"

She said, lower, after a little while, --

"I knew you did not love her. "

"There is no such thing as love in real life, " he said, in his steeledvoice. "You will know that, when you grow older. I used to believe init once, myself. "

She did not speak, only watched the slow motion of his lips, notlooking into his eyes, --as she used to do in the old time. Whateversecret account lay between the souls of this man and woman came outnow, and stood bare on their faces. 

"I used to think that I, too, loved, " he went on, in his low, hardtone. "But it kept me back, Margret, and"----

He was silent. 

"I know, Stephen. It kept you back"----

"And I put it away. I put it away to-night, forever. "

She did not speak; stood quite quiet, her head bent on her breast. Hisconscience was clear now. But he almost wished he had not said it, shewas such a weak, sickly thing. She sat down at last, burying her facein her hands, with a shivering sob. He dared not trust him self tospeak again. 

"I am not proud, --as a woman ought to be, " she said, wearily, when hewiped her clammy forehead. 

"You loved me, then?" he whispered. 

Her face flashed at the unmanly triumph; her puny frame started up, away from him. 

"I did love you, Stephen. I did love you, --as you might be, not as youare, --not with those inhuman eyes. I do understand you, --I do. I knowyou for a better man than you know yourself this night. "

She turned to go. He put his hand on her arm; something we have neverseen on his face struggled up, --the better soul that she knew. 

"Come back, " he said, hoarsely; "don't leave me with myself. Come back, Margret. "

She did not come; stood leaning, her sudden strength gone, against thebroken wall. There was a heavy silence. The night throbbed slow aboutthem. Some late bird rose from the sedges of the pool, and with afrightened cry flapped its tired wings, and drifted into the dark. Hiseyes, through the gathering shadow, devoured the weak, trembling body, met the soul that looked at him, strong as his own. Was it because itknew and trusted him that all that was pure and strongest in hiscrushed nature struggled madly to be free? He thrust it down; theself-learned lesson of years was not to be conquered in a moment. 

"There have been times, " he said, in a smothered, restless voice, "whenI thought you belonged to me. Not here, but before this life. My souland body thirst and hunger for you, then, Margret. "

She did not answer; her hands worked feebly together, the dull bloodfainting in her veins. 

Knowing only that the night yawned intolerable about her, that she wasalone, --going mad with being alone. No thought of heaven or God in hersoul: her craving eyes seeing him only. The strong, living man thatshe loved: her tired-out heart goading, aching to lie down on hisbrawny breast for one minute, and die there, --that was all. 

She did not move: underneath the pain there was power, as Knowlesthought. 

He came nearer, and held up his arms to where she stood, --the heavy, masterful face pale and wet. 

"I need you, Margret. I shall be nothing without you, now. Come, Margret, little Margret!"

She came to him, then, and put her hands in his. 

"No, Stephen, " she said. 

If there were any pain in her tone, she kept it down, for his sake. 

"Never, I could never help you, --as you are. It might have been, once. Good-by, Stephen. "

Her childish way put him in mind of the old days when this girl wasdearer to him than his own soul. She was so yet. He held her close tohis breast, looking down into her eyes. She moved uneasily; she darednot trust herself. 

"You will come?" he said. "It might have been, --it shall be again. "

"It may be, " she said, humbly. "God is good. And I believe in you, Stephen. I will be yours some time: we cannot help it, if we would:but not as you are. "

"You do not love me?" he said, flinging her off, his face whitening. 

She said nothing, gathered her damp shawl around her, and turned to go. Just a moment they stood, looking at each other. If the dark squarefigure standing there had been an iron fate trampling her young lifedown into hopeless wretchedness, she forgot it now. Women like Margretare apt to forget. His eye never abated in its fierce question. 

"I will wait for you yonder, if I die first, " she whispered. 

He came closer, waiting for an answer. 

"And--I love you, Stephen. "

He gathered her in his arms, and put his cold lips to hers, without aword; then turned, and left her slowly. 

She made no sign, shed no tear, as she stood, watching him go. It wasall over: she had willed it, herself, and yet--he could not go! Godwould not suffer it! Oh, he could not leave her, --he could not!--Hewent down the hill, slowly. If it were a trial of life and death forher, did he know or care?--He did not look back. What if he did not?his heart was true; he suffered in going; even now he walked wearily. God forgive her, if she had wronged him!--What did it matter, if hewere hard in this life, and it hurt her a little? It would comeright, --beyond, some time. But life was long. --She would not sit down, sick as she was: he might turn, and it would vex him to see hersuffer. --He walked slowly; once he stopped to pick up something. Shesaw the deep-cut face and half-shut eyes. How often those eyes hadlooked into her soul, and it had answered! They never would look soany more. --There was a tree by the place where the road turned intotown. If he came back, he would be sure to turn there. --How tired hewalked, and slow!--If he was sick, that beautiful woman could be nearhim, --help him. --SHE never would touch his hand again, --never again, never, --unless he came back now. --He was near the tree: she closed hereyes, turning away. When she looked again, only the bare road laythere, yellow and wet. It was over, now. 

How long she sat there she did not know. She tried once or twice to goto the house, but the lights seemed so far off that she gave it up andsat quiet, unconscious, except of the damp stone-wall her head leanedon, and the stretch of muddy road. Some time, she knew not when, therewas a heavy step beside her, and a rough hand shook hers where shestooped, feebly tracing out the lines of mortar between the stones. Itwas Knowles. She looked up, bewildered. 

"Hunting catarrhs, eh?" he growled, eying her keenly. "Got your fatheron the Bourbons, so took the chance to come and find you. He'll notmiss ME for an hour. That man has a natural hankering after treasonagainst the people. Lord, Margret! what a stiff old head he'd havecarried to the guillotine! How he'd have looked at the canaille!"

He helped her up gently enough. 

"Your bonnet's like a wet rag, "--with a furtive glance at the worn-outface. A hungry face always, with her life unfed by its stingy fewcrumbs of good; but to-night it was vacant with utter loss. 

She got up, trying to laugh cheerfully, and went beside him down theroad. 

"You saw that painted Jezebel to-night, and"----stopping abruptly. 

She had not heard him, and he followed her doggedly, with an occasionalsnort or grunt or other inarticulate damn at the obstinate mud. Shestopped at last, with a quick gasp. Looking at her, he chafed her limphands, --his huge, uncouth face growing pale. When she was better, hesaid, gravely, --

"I want you, Margret. Not at home, child. I want to show yousomething. "

He turned with her suddenly off the main road into a by-path, helpingher along, watching her stealthily, but going on with his disjointed, bearish growls. If it stung her from her pain, vexing her, he did notcare. 

"I want to show you a bit of hell: outskirt. You're in a fit state:it'll do you good. I'm minister there. The clergy can't attend to itjust now: they're too busy measuring God's truth by the States'--Rightsdoctrine, or the Chicago Platform. Consequence, religion yields tomajorities. Are you able? It's only a step. "

She went on indifferently. The night was breathless and dark. Black, wet gusts dragged now and then through the skyless fog, striking herface with a chill. The Doctor quit talking, hurrying her, watching heranxiously. They came at last to the railway-track, with long trains ofempty freight-cars. 

"We are nearly there, " he whispered. "It's time you knew your work, and forgot your weakness. The curse of pampered generations. 'HighNorman blood, '--pah!"

There was a broken gap in the fence. He led her through it into amuddy yard. Inside was one of those taverns you will find in thesuburbs of large cities, haunts of the lowest vice. This one was asmoky frame, standing on piles over an open space where hogs wererooting. Half a dozen drunken Irishmen were playing poker with a packof greasy cards in an out-house. He led her up the rickety ladder tothe one room, where a flaring tallow-dip threw a saffron glare into thedarkness. A putrid odour met them at the door. She drew back, trembling. 

"Come here!" he said, fiercely, clutching her hand. "Women as fair andpure as you have come into dens like this, --and never gone away. Doesit make your delicate breath faint? And you a follower of the meek andlowly Jesus! Look here! and here!"

The room was swarming with human life. Women, idle trampers, whiskey-bloated, filthy, lay half-asleep, or smoking, on the floor, andset up a chorus of whining begging when they entered. Half-nakedchildren crawled about in rags. On the damp, mildewed walls there washung a picture of the Benicia Boy, and close by, Pio Nono, crook inhand, with the usual inscription, "Feed my sheep. " The Doctor lookedat it. 

"'Tu es Petrus, et super hanc'---- Good God! what IS truth?" hemuttered, bitterly. 

He dragged her closer to the women, through the darkness and foul smell. 

"Look in their faces, " he whispered. "There is not one of them that isnot a living lie. Can they help it? Think of the centuries of serfdomand superstition through which their blood has crawled. Comecloser, --here. "

In the corner slept a heap of half-clothed blacks. Going on theunderground railroad to Canada. Stolid, sensual wretches, with hereand there a broad, melancholy brow, and desperate jaws. One littlepickaninny rubbed its sleepy eyes, and laughed at them. 

"So much flesh and blood out of the market, unweighed!"

Margret took up the child, kissing its brown face. Knowles looked ather. 

"Would you touch her? I forgot you were born down South. Put it down, and come on. "

They went out of the door. Margret stopped, looking back. 

"Did I call it a bit of hell? It 's only a glimpse of the under-lifeof America, --God help us!--where all men are born free and equal. "

The air in the passage grew fouler. She leaned back faint andshuddering. He did not heed her. The passion of the man, the terriblepity for these people, came out of his soul now, writhing his face, anddulling his eyes. 

"And you, " he said, savagely, "you sit by the road-side, with help inyour hands, and Christ in your heart, and call your life lost, quarrelwith your God, because that mass of selfishness has left you, --becauseyou are balked in your puny hope! Look at these women. What is theirloss, do you think? Go back, will you, and drone out your lifewhimpering over your lost dream, and go to Shakspeare for tragedy whenyou want it? Tragedy! Come here, --let me hear what you call this. "

He led her through the passage, up a narrow flight of stairs. An oldwoman in a flaring cap sat at the top, nodding, --wakening now and then, to rock herself to and fro, and give the shrill Irish keen. 

"You know that stoker who was killed in the mill a month ago? Ofcourse not, --what are such people to you? There was a girl who lovedhim, --you know what that is? She's dead now, here. She drank herselfto death, --a most unpicturesque suicide. I want you to look at her. You need not blush for her life of shame, now; she's dead. --Is Hettyhere?"

The woman got up. 

"She is, Zur. She is, Mem. She's lookin' foine in her Sunday suit. Shrouds is gone out, Mem, they say. "

She went tipping over the floor to something white that lay on a board, a candle at the head, and drew off the sheet. A girl of fifteen, almost a child, lay underneath, dead, --her lithe, delicate figuredecked out in a dirty plaid skirt, and stained velvet bodice, --her neckand arms bare. The small face was purely cut, haggard, patient in itssleep, --the soft, fair hair gathered off the tired forehead. Margretleaned over her, shuddering, pinning her handkerchief about the child'sdead neck. 

"How young she is!" muttered Knowles. "Merciful God, how young sheis!--What is that you say?" sharply, seeing Margret's lips move. 

"'He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. '"

"Ah, child, that is old-time philosophy. Put your hand here, on herdead face. Is your loss like hers?" he said lower, looking into thedull pain in her eyes. Selfish pain he called it. 

"Let me go, " she said. "I am tired. "

He took her out into the cool, open road, leading her tenderlyenough, --for the girl suffered, he saw. 

"What will you do?" he asked her then. "It is not too late, --will youhelp me save these people?"

She wrung her hands helplessly. 

"What do you want with me?" she cried. "I have enough to bear. "

The burly black figure before her seemed to tower and strengthen; theman's face in the wall light showed a terrible life-purpose coming outbare. 

"I want you to do your work. It is hard, it will wear out yourstrength and brain and heart. Give yourself to these people. God callsyou to it. There is none to help them. Give up love, and the pettyhopes of women. Help me. God calls you to the work. "

She went, on blindly: he followed her. For years he had set apart thisgirl to help him in his scheme: he would not be balked now. He hadgreat hopes from his plan: he meant to give all he had: it was thenoblest of aims. He thought some day it would work like leaven throughthe festering mass under the country he loved so well, and raise it toa new life. If it failed, --if it failed, and saved one life, his workwas not lost. But it could not fail. 

"Home!" he said, stopping her as she reached the stile, --"oh, Margret, what is home? There is a cry going up night and day from homes likethat den yonder, for help, --and no man listens. "

She was weak; her brain faltered. 

"Does God call me to this work? Does He call me?" she moaned. 

He watched her eagerly. 

"He calls you. He waits for your answer. Swear to me that you willhelp His people. Give up father and mother and love, and go down asChrist did. Help me to give liberty and truth and Jesus' love to thesewretches on the brink of hell. Live with them, raise them with you. "

She looked up, white; she was a weak, weak woman, sick for her naturalfood of love. 

"Is it my work?"

"It is your work. Listen to me, Margret, " softly. "Who cares for you?You stand alone to-night. There is not a single human heart that callsyou nearest and best. Shiver, if you will, --it is true. The man youwasted your soul on left you in the night and cold to go to hisbride, --is sitting by her now, holding her hand in his. "

He waited a moment, looking down at her, until she should understand. 

"Do you think you deserved this of God? I know that yonder on the muddyroad you looked up to Him, and knew it was not just; that you had doneright, and this was your reward. I know that for these two years youhave trusted in the Christ you worship to make it right, to give youyour heart's desire. Did He do it? Did He hear your prayer? Does Hecare for your weak love, when the nations of the earth are going down?What is your poor hope to Him, when the very land you live in is awine-press that will be trodden some day by the fierceness and wrath ofAlmighty God? O Christ!--if there be a Christ, --help me to save it!"

He looked up, --his face white with pain. After a time he said to her, --

"Help me, Margret! Your prayer was selfish; it was not heard. Give upyour idle hope that Christ will aid you. Swear to me, this night whenyou have lost all, to give yourself to this work. "

The storm had been dark and windy: it cleared now slowly, the warmsummer rain falling softly, the fresh blue stealing broadly from behindthe gray. It seemed to Margret like a blessing; for her brain rose upstronger, more healthful. 

"I will not swear, " she said, weakly. "I think He heard my prayer. Ithink He will answer it. He was a man, and loved as we do. My love isnot selfish; it is the best gift God has given me. "

Knowles went slowly with her to the house. He was not baffled. He knewthat the struggle was yet to come; that, when she was alone, her faithin the far-off Christ would falter; that she would grasp at this work, to fill her empty hands and starved heart, if for no other reason, --tostifle by a sense of duty her unutterable feeling of loss. He waskeenly read in woman's heart, this Knowles. He left her silently, andshe passed through the dark passage to her own room. 

Putting her damp shawl off, she sat down on the floor, leaning her headon a low chair, --one her father had given her for a Christmas gift whenshe was little. How fond Holmes and her father used to be of eachother! Every Christmas he spent with them. She remembered them allnow. "He was sitting by her now, holding her hand in his. " She saidthat over to herself, though it was not hard to understand. 

After a long time, her mother came with a candle to the door. 

"Good-night, Margret. Why, your hair is wet, child!"

For Margret, kissing her good-night, had laid her head down a minute onher breast. She stroked the hair a moment, and then turned away. 

"Mother, could you stay with me to-night?"

"Why, no, Maggie, --your father wants me to read to him. "

"Oh, I know. Did he miss me to-night, --father?"

"Not much; we were talking old times over, --in Virginia, you know. "

"I know; good-night. "

She went back to the chair. Tige was there, --for he used to spend halfof his time on the farm. She put her arm about his head. God knowshow lonely the poor child was when she drew the dog so warmly to herheart: not for his master's sake alone; but it was all she had. Hegrew tired at last, and whined, trying to get out. 

"Will you go, Tige?" she said, and opened the window. 

He jumped out, and she watched him going towards town. Such a littlething, it was! But not even a dog "called her nearest and best. "

Let us be silent; the story of the night is not for us to read. Do youthink that He, who in the far, dim Life holds the worlds in His hand, knew or cared how alone the child was? What if she wrung her thinhands, grew sick with the slow, mad, solitary tears?--was not the worldto save, as Knowles said?

He, too, had been alone; He had come unto His own, and His own receivedhim not: so, while the struggling world rested, unconscious, ininfinite calm of right, He came close to her with human eyes that hadloved, and not been loved, and had suffered with that pain. And, trusting Him, she only said, "Show me my work! Thou that takest awaythe pain of the world, have mercy upon me!"

CHAPTER VII. 

For that night, at least, Holmes swept his soul clean of doubt andindecision; one of his natures was conquered, --finally, he thought. Polston, if he had seen his face as he paced the street slowly home tothe mill, would have remembered his mother's the day she died. How thestern old woman met death half-way! why should she fear? she was asstrong as he. Wherein had she failed of duty? her hands were clean:she was going to meet her just reward. 

It was different with Holmes, of course, with his self-existent soul. It was life he accepted to-night, he thought, --a life of growth, labour, achievement, --eternal. 

"Ohne Hast, aber ohne Rast, "--favourite words with him. He liked tostudy the nature of the man who spoke them; because, I think, it waslike his own, --a Titan strength of endurance, an infinite capability oflove, and hate, and suffering, and over all, (the peculiar identity ofthe man, ) a cold, speculative eye of reason, that looked down into thepassion and depths of his growing self, and calmly noted them, a lessonfor all time. 

"Ohne Hast. " Going slowly through the night, he strengthened himself bymarking how all things in Nature accomplish a perfected life throughslow, narrow fixedness of purpose, --each life complete in itself: whynot his own, then? The windless gray, the stars, the stone under hisfeet, stood alone in the universe, each working out its own soul intodeed. If there were any all-embracing harmony, one soul through all, he did not see it. Knowles--that old sceptic--believed in it, andcalled it Love. Even Goethe himself, what was it he said? "DerAllumfasser, der Allerhalter, fasst und erhalt er nicht, dich, mich, sich selbst?"

There was a curious power in the words, as he lingered over them, likehalf-comprehended music, --as simple and tender as if they had come fromthe depths of a woman's heart: it touched him deeper than his power ofcontrol. Pah! it was a dream of Faust's; he, too, had his Margaret; hefell, through that love. 

He went on slowly to the mill. If the name or the words woke a subtileremorse or longing, he buried them under restful composure. Whetherthey should ever rise like angry ghosts of what might have been, totaunt the man, only the future could tell. 

Going through the gas-lit streets, Holmes met some cordial greeting atevery turn. What a just, clever fellow he was! people said: one ofthose men improved by success: just to the defrauding of himself: sawthe true worth of everybody, the very lowest: hadn't one spark ofself-esteem: despised all humbug and show, one could see, though henever said it: when he was a boy, he was moody, with passionate likesand dislikes; but success had improved him, vastly. So Holmes waspopular, though the beggars shunned him, and the lazy Italianorgan-grinders never held their tambourines up to him. 

The mill street was dark; the building threw its great shadow over thesquare. It was empty, he supposed; only one hand generally remained tokeep in the furnace-fires. Going through one of the lower passages, heheard voices, and turned aside to examine. The management was notstrict, and in case of a fire the mill was not insured: like Knowles'scarelessness. 

It was Lois and her father, --Joe Yare being feeder that night. Theywere in one of the great furnace-rooms in the cellar, --a verycomfortable place that stormy night. Two or three doors of the widebrick ovens were open, and the fire threw a ruddy glow over the stonefloor, and shimmered into the dark recesses of the shadows, veryhome-like after the rain and mud without. Lois seemed to think so, atany rate, for she had made a table of a store-box, put a white cloth onit, and was busy getting up a regular supper for her father, --down onher knees before the red coals, turning something on an iron plate, while some slices of ham sent up a cloud of juicy, hungry smell. 

The old stoker had just finished slaking the out-fires, and was puttingsome blue plates on the table, gravely straightening them. He hadgrown old, as Polston said, --Holmes saw, stooped much, with a low, hacking cough; his coarse clothes were curiously clean: that was toplease Lois, of course. She put the ham on the table, and somebubbling coffee, and then, from a hickory board in front of the fire, took off, with a jerk, brown, flaky slices of Virginia johnny-cake. 

"Ther' yoh are, father, hot 'n' hot, " with her face onfire, --"ther'--yoh--are, --coaxin' to be eatin'. --Why, Mr. Holmes!Father! Now, ef yoh jes' hedn't hed yer supper?"

She came up, coaxingly. What brooding brown eyes the poor cripple had!Not many years ago he would have sat down with the two poor souls, andmade a hearty meal of it: he had no heart for such follies now. 

Old Yare stood in the background, his hat in his hand, stooping in hissubmissive negro fashion, with a frightened watch on Holmes. 

"Do you stay here, Lois?" he asked, kindly, turning his back on the oldman. 

"On'y to bring his supper. I couldn't bide all night 'n th' mill, " theold shadow coming on her face, --"I couldn't, yoh know. HE doesn't mindit. "

She glanced quickly from one to the other in silence, seeing the fearon her father's face. 

"Yoh know father, Mr. Holmes? He's back now. This is him. "

The old man came forward, humbly. 

"It's me, Marster Stephen. "

The sullen, stealthy face disgusted Holmes. He nodded, shortly. 

"Yoh've been kind to my little girl while I was gone, " he said, catching his breath. "I thank yoh, Marster. "

"You need not. It was for Lois. "

"'T was fur her I comed back hyur. 'T was a resk, "--with a dumb look ofentreaty at Holmes, --"but fur her I thort I'd try it. I know't was aresk; but I thort them as cared fur Lo wud be merciful. She's a goodgirl, Lo. She's all I hev. "

Lois brought a box over, lugging it heavily. 

"We hev n't chairs; but yoh'll sit down, Mr. Holmes?" laughing as shecovered it with a cloth. "It'd a warm place, here. Father studies 'nhis watch, 'n' I'm teacher, "--showing the torn old spelling-book. 

The old man came eagerly forward, seeing the smile flicker on Holmes'sface. 

"It's slow work, Marster, --slow. But Lo's a good teacher, 'n' I'mtryin', --I'm tryin' hard. "

"It's not slow, Sir, seein' father hed n't 'dvantages, like me. He wasa"----

She stopped, lowering her voice, a hot flush of shame on her face. 

"I know. "

"Be n't that'll 'xcuse, Marster, seein' I knowed noght at thebeginnin'? Thenk o' that, Marster. I'm tryin' to be a different man. Fur Lo. I AM tryin'. "

Holmes did not notice him. 

"Good-night, Lois, " he said, kindly, as she lighted his lamp. 

He put some money on the table. 

"You must take it, " as she looked uneasy. "For Tiger's board, say. Inever see him now. A bright new frock, remember. "

She thanked him, her eyes brightening, looking at her father's patchedcoat. 

The old man followed Holmes out. 

"Marster Holmes"----

"Have done with this, " said Holmes, sternly. "Whoever breaks lawabides by it. It is no affair of mine. "

The old man clutched his hands together fiercely, struggling to bequiet. 

"Ther' 's none knows it but yoh, " he said, in a smothered voice. "FurGod's sake be merciful! It'll kill my girl, --it 'll kill her. Gev mea chance, Marster. "

"You trouble me. I must do what is just. "

"It's not just, " he said, savagely. "What good'll it do me to go backther'? I was goin' down, down, an' bringin' th' others with me. Whatgood'll it do you or the rest to hev me ther'? To make me afraid?It's poor learnin' frum fear. Who taught me what was right? Whocared? No man cared fur my soul, till I thieved 'n' robbed; 'n' thenjudge 'n' jury 'n' jailers was glad to pounce on me. Will yoh gev me achance? will yoh?"

It was a desperate face before him; but Holmes never knew fear. 

"Stand aside, " he said, quietly. "To-morrow I will see you. You neednot try to escape. "

He passed him, and went slowly up through the vacant mill to hischamber. 

The man sat down on the lower step a few moments, quite quiet, crushinghis hat up in a slow, steady way, looking up at the mouldy cobwebs onthe wall. He got up at last, and went in to Lois. Had she heard? Theold scarred face of the girl looked years older, he thought, --but itmight be fancy. She did not say anything for a while, moving slowly, with a new gentleness, about him; her very voice was changed, older. He tried to be cheerful, eating his supper: she need not know untilto-morrow. He would get out of the town to-night, or---- There weredifferent ways to escape. When he had done, he told her to go; but shewould not. 

"Let me stay til' night, " she said. "I be n't afraid o' th' mill. "

"Why, Lo, " he said, laughing, "yoh used to say yer death was hid here, somewheres. "

"I know. But ther' 's worse nor death. But it'll come right, " shesaid, persistently, muttering to herself, as she leaned her face on herknees, watching, --"it'll come right. "

The glimmering shadows changed and faded for an hour. The man satquiet. There was not much in the years gone to soften his thought, asit grew desperate and cruel: there was oppression and vice heaped onhim, and flung back out of his bitter heart. Nor much in the future: ablank stretch of punishment to the end. He was an old man: was it easyto bear? What if he were black? what if he were born a thief? what ifall the sullen revenge of his nature had made him an outcast from thepoorest poor? Was there no latent good in this soul for which Christdied, that a kind hand might not have brought to life?

None? Something, I think, struggled up in the touch of his hand, catching the skirt of his child's dress, when it came near him, withthe timid tenderness of a mother touching her dead baby's hair, --assomething holy, far off, yet very near: something in his oldcrime-marked face, --a look like this dog's, putting his head on myknee, --a dumb, unhelpful love in his eyes, and the slow memory of awrong done to his soul in a day long past. A wrong to both, you say, perhaps; but if so, irreparable, and never to be recompensed. Never?

"Yoh must go, my little girl, " he said at last. 

Whatever he did must be done quickly. She came up, combing the thingray hairs through her fingers. 

"Father, I dunnot understan' what it is, rightly. But stay withme, --stay, father!"

"Yoh've a many frien's, Lo, " he said, with a keen flash of jealousy. "Ther' 's none like yoh, --none. "

"Father, look here. "

She put her misshapen head and scarred face down on his hand, where hecould see them. If it had ever hurt her to be as she was, if she hadever compared herself bitterly with fair, beloved women, she was gladnow, and thankful, for every fault and deformity that brought hernearer to him, and made her dearer. 

"They're kind, but ther' 's not many loves me with true love, like yoh. Stay, father! Bear it out, whatever it be. Th' good time 'll come, father. "

He kissed her, saying nothing, and went with her down the street. Whenhe left her, she waited, and, creeping back, hid near the mill. Godknows what vague dread was in her brain; but she came back to watch andhelp. 

Old Yare wandered through the great loom rooms of the mill with but onefact clear in his cloudy, faltering perception, --that above him the manlay quietly sleeping who would bring worse than death on him to-morrow. Up and down, aimlessly, with his stoker's torch in hand, going over theyears gone and the years to come, with the dead hatred through all ofthe pitiless man above him, --with now and then, perhaps, a pleasanterthought of things that had been warm and cheerful in his life, --of thecorn-huskings long ago, when he was a boy, down in "th' Alabam', "--ofthe scow his young master gave him once, the first thing he reallyowned: he was almost as proud of it as he was of Lois when she wasborn. Most of all remembering the good times in his life, he went backto Lois. It was all good, there, to go back to. What a little chubshe used to be! Remembering, with bitter remorse, how all his life hehad meant to try and do better, on her account, but had kept puttingoff and putting off until now. And now---- Did nothing lie before himbut to go back and rot yonder? Was that the end, because he never hadlearned better, and was a "dam' nigger"?

"I'll NOT leave my girl!" he muttered, going up and down, --"I'll NOTleave my girl!"

If Holmes did sleep above him, the trial of the day, of which we haveseen nothing, came back sharper in sleep. While the strong self in theman lay torpid, whatever holier power was in him came out, undaunted bydefeat, and unwearied, and took the form of dreams, those slightedmessengers of God, to soothe and charm and win him out into fuller, kindlier life. Let us hope that they did so win him; let us hope thateven in that unreal world the better nature of the man triumphed atlast, and claimed its reward before the terrible reality broke upon him. 

Lois, over in the damp, fresh-smelling lumber-yard, sat coiled up inone of the creviced houses made by the jutting boards. She rememberedhow she used to play in them, before she went into the mill. Themill, --even now, with the vague dread of some uncertain evil to come, the mill absorbed all fear in its old hated shadow. Whatever dangerwas coming to them lay in it, came from it, she knew, in her confused, blurred way of thinking. It loomed up now, with the square patch ofashen sky above, black, heavy with years of remembered agony and loss. In Lois's hopeful, warm life this was the one uncomprehended monster. Her crushed brain, her unwakened powers, resented their wrong dimly tothe mass of iron and work and impure smells, unconscious of anyremorseless power that wielded it. It was a monster, she thought, through the sleepy, dreading night, --a monster that kept her wakefulwith a dull, mysterious terror. 

When the night grew sultry and deepest, she started from her half-dozeto see her father come stealthily out and go down the street. She musthave slept, she thought, rubbing her eyes, and watching him out ofsight, --and then, creeping out, turned to glance at the mill. Shecried out, shrill with horror. It was a live monster now, --in oneswift instant, alive with fire, --quick, greedy fire, leaping likeserpents' tongues out of its hundred jaws, hungry sheets of flamemaddening and writhing towards her, and under all a dull and hollowroar that shook the night. Did it call her to her death? She turnedto fly, and then----He was alone, dying! He had been so kind to her!She wrung her hands, standing there a moment. It was a brave hope thatwas in her heart, and a prayer on her lips never left unanswered, asshe hobbled, in her lame, slow way, up to the open black door, and, with one backward look, went in. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

There was a dull smell of camphor; a farther sense of coolness andprickling wet on Holmes's hot, cracking face and hands; then silenceand sleep again. Sometime--when, he never knew--a gray light stinginghis eyes like pain, and again a slow sinking into warm, unsoundeddarkness and unconsciousness. It might be years, it might be ages. Even in after-life, looking back, he never broke that time into weeksor days: people might so divide it for him, but he was uncertain, always: it was a vague vacuum in his memory: he had drifted out ofcoarse, measured life into some out-coast of eternity, and slept in itscalm. When, by long degrees, the shock of outer life jarred and wokehim, it was feebly done: he came back reluctant, weak: the quietclinging to him, as if he had been drowned in Lethe, and had broughtits calming mist with him out of the shades. 

The low chatter of voices, the occasional lifting of his head on thepillow, the very soothing draught, came to him unreal at first: partsonly of the dull, lifeless pleasure. There was a sharper memorypierced it sometimes, making him moan and try to sleep, --a remembranceof great, cleaving pain, of falling giddily, of owing life to some one, and being angry that he owed it, in the pain. Was it he that had borneit? He did not know, --nor care: it made him tired to think. Even whenhe heard the name, Stephen Holmes, it had but a far-off meaning: henever woke enough to know if it were his or not. He learned, longafter, to watch the red light curling among the shavings in the gratewhen they made a fire in the evenings, to listen to the voices of thewomen by the bed, to know that the pleasantest belonged to the one withthe low, shapeless figure, and to call her Lois, when he wanted adrink, long before he knew himself. 

They were very long, pleasant days in early December. The sunshine waspale, but it suited his hurt eyes better: it crept slowly in themornings over the snuff-coloured carpet on the floor, up the brownfoot-board of the bed, and, when the wind shook the window-curtains, made little crimson pools of mottled light over the ceiling, --curdlingpools, that he liked to watch: going off, from the clean gray walls, and rustling curtain, and transparent crimson, into sleeps that lastedall day. 

He was not conscious how he knew he was in a hospital: but he did knowit, vaguely; thought sometimes of the long halls outside of the door, with ranges of rooms opening into them, like this, and of very barns ofrooms on the other side of the building with rows of white cots wherethe poorer patients lay: a stretch of travel from which his brain cameback to his snug fireplace, quite tired, and to Lois sitting knittingby it. He called the little Welsh-woman, "Sister, " too, who used tocome in a stuff dress, and white bands about her face, to give hismedicine, and gossip with Lois in the evening: she had a comical voice, like a cricket chirping. There was another with a real Scotch brogue, who came and listened sometimes, bringing a basket of undarnedstockings: the doctor told him one day how fearless and skilful shewas, every summer going to New Orleans when the yellow fever came. Shedied there the next June: but Holmes never, somehow, could realize amartyr in the cheery, freckled-faced woman whom he always remembereddarning stockings in the quiet fire-light. It was very quiet; thevoices about him were pleasant and low. If he had drifted from anyshock of pain into a sleep like death, some of the stillness hung abouthim yet; but the outer life was homely and fresh and natural. 

The doctor used to talk to him a little; and sometimes one or two ofthe patients from the eye-ward would grow tired of sitting about in thegarden-alleys, and would loiter in, if Lois would give them leave; buttheir talk wearied him, jarred him as strangely as if one had begun onpolitics and price-currents to the silent souls in Hades. It wasenough thought for him to listen to the whispered stories of thesisters in the long evenings, and, half-heard, try and make an end tothem; to look drowsily down into the garden, where the afternoonsunshine was still so summer-like that a few holly-hocks persisted inshowing their honest red faces along the walls, and the very leavesthat filled the paths would not wither, but kept up a wholesome ruddybrown. One of the sisters had a poultry-yard in it, which he couldsee: the wall around it was of stone covered with a brown featherylichen, which every rooster in that yard was determined to stand on, orperish in the attempt; and Holmes would watch, through the quiet, bright mornings, the frantic ambition of the successful aspirant withan amused smile. 

"One 'd thenk, " said Lois, sagely, "a chicken never stood on a wallbefore, to hear 'em, or a hen laid an egg. "

Nor did Holmes smile once because the chicken burlesqued man: histhought was too single for that yet. It was long, too, before hethought of the people who came in quietly to see him as anything butshadows, or wished for them to come again. Lois, perhaps, was the mostreal thing in life then to him: growing conscious, day by day, as hewatched her, of his old life over the gulf. Very slowly conscious: witha weak groping to comprehend the sudden, awful change that had come onhim, and then forgetting his old life, and the change, and the pity hefelt for himself, in the vague content of the fire-lit room, and hisnurse with her interminable knitting through the long afternoons, whilethe sky without would thicken and gray, and a few still flakes of snowwould come drifting down to whiten the brown fields, --with no chillythought of winter, but only to make the quiet autumn more quiet. Whatever honest, commonplace affection was in the man came out in asimple way to this Lois, who ruled his sick whims and crotchets in sucha quiet, sturdy fashion. Not because she had risked her life to savehis; even when he understood that, he recalled it with an uneasy, heavygratitude; but the drinks she made him, and the plot they laid tosmuggle in some oysters in defiance of all rules, and the cheerful, pock-marked face, he never forgot. 

Doctor Knowles came sometimes, but seldom: never talked, when he didcome: late in the evening generally: and then would punch his skin, andlook at his tongue, and shake the bottles on the mantel-shelf with agrunt that terrified Lois into the belief that the other doctor was aquack, and her patient was totally undone. He would sit, grum enough, with his feet higher than his head, chewing an unlighted cigar, andleave them both thankful when he saw proper to go. 

The truth is, Knowles was thoroughly out of place in these littlemending-shops called sick-chambers, where bodies are taken to pieces, and souls set right. He had no faith in your slow, impalpable cures:all reforms were to be accomplished by a wrench, from the abolition ofslavery to the pulling of a tooth. 

He had no especial sympathy with Holmes, either: the men were startedin life from opposite poles: and with all the real tenderness under hissurly, rugged habit, it would have been hard to touch him with thesudden doom fallen on this man, thrown crippled and penniless upon theworld, helpless, it might be, for life. He would have been apt to tellyou, savagely, that "he wrought for it. "

Besides, it made him out of temper to meet the sisters. Knowles couldhave sketched for you with a fine decision of touch the role played bythe Papal power in the progress of humanity, --how far it served as astepping-stone, and the exact period when it became a wearisome clog. The world was done with it now, --utterly. Its breath was only poisoned, with coming death. So the homely live charity of these women, theirwork, which no other hands were ready to take, jarred against hisabstract theory, and irritated him, as an obstinate fact always doesrun into the hand of a man who is determined to clutch the very heartof a matter. Truth will not underlie all facts, in this muddle of aworld, in spite of the Positive Philosophy, you know. 

Don't sneer at Knowles. Your own clear, tolerant brain, that reflectsall men and creeds alike, like colourless water, drawing the truth fromall, is very different, doubtless, from this narrow, solitary soul, whothought the world waited for him to fight down his one evil before itwent on its slow way. An intolerant fanatic, of course. But the truthhe did know was so terribly real to him, there was such sick, throbbingpity in his heart for men who suffered as he had done! And then, fanatics must make history for conservative men to learn from, Isuppose. 

If Knowles shunned the hospital, there was another place he shunnedmore, --the place where his Communist buildings were to have stood. Hewent out there once, as one might go alone to bury his dead out of hissight, the day after the mill was burnt, --looking first at the smokingmass of hot bricks and charred shingles, so as clearly to understandhow utterly dead his life-long scheme was. He stalked gravely aroundit, his hands in his pockets; the hodmen who were raking out theirwinter's firewood from the ashes remarking, that "old Knowles didn'tseem a bit cut up about it. " Then he went out to the farm he had meantto buy, as I told you, and looked at it in the same stolid way. It wasa dull day in October. The river crawled moodily past his feet, thedingy prairie stretched drearily away on the other side, while theheavy-browed Indiana hills stood solemnly looking down the plateauwhere the buildings were to have risen. 

Well, most men have some plan of life, into which all the strength andthe keen, fine feeling of their nature enter; but generally they try tomake it real in early youth, and, balked then, laugh ever afterwards attheir own folly. This poor old Knowles had begun to block out hisdream when he was a gaunt, gray-haired man of sixty. I have known menso build their heart's blood, and brains into their work, that, when ittumbled down, their lives went with it. His fell that dull day inOctober; but if it hurt him, no man knew it. He sat there, looking atthe broad plateau, whistling softly to himself, a long time. He hadmeant that a great many hearts should be made better and happier there;he had dreamed----God knows what he had dreamed, of which this realitywas the foundation, --of how much world-freedom, or beauty, or kindlylife this was the heart or seed. It was all over now. All theafternoon the muddy sky hung low over the hills and dull prairie, whilehe sat there looking at the dingy gloom: just as you and I have done, perhaps, some time, thwarted in some true hope, --sore and bitteragainst God, because He did not see how much His universe needed ourpet reform. 

He got up at last, and without a sigh went slowly away, leaving thecourage and self-reliance of his life behind him, buried with that onebeautiful, fair dream of life. He never came back again. People saidKnowles was quieter since his loss; but I think only God saw the depthof the difference. When he was leaving the plateau, that day, helooked back at it, as if to say good-bye, --not to the dingy fields andriver, but to the Something he had nursed so long in his rugged heart, and given up now forever. As he looked, the warm, red sun came out, lighting up with a heartsome warmth the whole gray day. Some blessingpower seemed to look at him from this grave yard of his hopes, from thegloomy hills, the prairie, and the river, which he never was to seeagain. His hope accomplished could not have looked at him with surercontent and fulfilment. He turned away, ungrateful and moody. Longafterwards he remembered the calm and brightness which his hand had notbeen raised to make, and understood the meaning of its promise. 

He went to work now in earnest: he had to work for hisbread-and-butter, you understand? Restless, impatient at first; but wewill forgive him that: you yourself were not altogether submissive, perhaps, when the slow-built expectation of life was destroyed by somechance, as you called it, no more controllable than this paltry burningof a mill. Yet, now that the great hope was gone on which his brainhad worked with rigid, fierce intentness, now that his hands werepowerless to redeem a perishing class, he had time to fall intocareless, kindly habit: he thought it wasted time, remorsefully, ofcourse. He was seized with a curiosity to know what plan in livingthese people had who crossed his way on the streets; if they weredisappointed, like him. Humbled, he hardly knew why: vague, uncertainin action. Quit dogging old Huff with his advice; trotted about thestreets with a cowed look, that, if one could have seen into the jadedold heart under his snuffy waistcoat, would have seemed pitiful enough. He went sometimes to read the papers to old Tim Poole, who wasbed-ridden, and did not pish or pshaw once at his maundering aboutsecession, or the misery in his back. Went to church sometimes: thesermons were bigotry, always, to his notion, sitting on a back seat, squirting tobacco-juice about him; but the simple, old-fashioned hymnsbrought the tears to his eyes:--"They sounded to him like his mother'svoice, singing in Paradise:" he hoped she could not see how things hadgone on here, --how all that was honest and strong in his life hadfallen in that infernal mill. Once or twice he went down Crane Alley, and lumbered up three pair of stairs to the garret where Kitts had hisstudio, --got him orders, in fact, for two portraits; and when thatpale-eyed young man, in a fit of confidence, one night, with a very redface drew back the curtain from his grand "Fall of Chapultepec, " andwatched him with a lean and hungry look, Knowles, who knew no moreabout painting than a gorilla, walked about, looking through his fistat it, saying, "how fine the chiaroscuro was, and that it was adevilish good thing altogether. " "Well, well, " he soothed hisconscience, going downstairs, "maybe that bit of canvas is as much tothat poor chap as the Phalanstery was once to another fool. " And sowent on through the gas-lit streets into his parishes in cellars andalleys, with a sorer heart, but cheerfuller words, now that he hadnothing but words to give. 

The only place where he hardened his heart was in the hospital withHolmes. After he had wakened to full consciousness, Knowles thoughtthe man a beast to sit there uncomplaining day after day, cold andgrave, as if the lifeful warmth of the late autumn were enough for him. Did he understand the iron fate laid on him? Where was the strength ofthe self-existent soul now? Did he know that it was a balked, defeatedlife, that waited for him, vacant of the triumphs he had planned? "Theself-existent soul! stopped in its growth by chance, this omnipotentdeity, --the chance burning of a mill!" Knowles muttered to himself, looking at Holmes. With a dim flash of doubt, as he said it, whetherthere might not, after all, be a Something, --some deep of calm, ofeternal order, where he and Holmes, these coarse chances, thesewrestling souls, these creeds, Catholic or Humanitarian, even thatnamby-pamby Kitts and his picture, might be unconsciously working outtheir part. Looking out of the hospital-window, he saw the deep of thestainless blue, impenetrable, with the stars unconscious in theirsilence of the maddest raging of the petty world. There was such calm!such infinite love and justice! it was around, above him; it held him, it held the world, --all Wrong, all Right! For an instant the turbidheart of the man cowered, awestruck, as yours or mine has done whensome swift touch of music or human love gave us a cleaving glimpse ofthe great I AM. The next, he opened the newspaper in his hand. Whatpart in the eternal order could THAT hold? or slavery, or secession, orcivil war? No harmony could be infinite enough to hold such discords, he thought, pushing the whole matter from him in despair. Why, theexperiment of self-government, the problem of the ages, was crumblingin ruin! So he despaired, just as Tige did the night the mill fellabout his ears, in full confidence that the world had come to an endnow, without hope of salvation, --crawling out of his cellar in dumbamazement, when the sun rose as usual the next morning. 

Knowles sat, peering at Holmes over his paper, watching the languidbreath that showed how deep the hurt had been, the maimed body, theface outwardly cool, watchful, reticent as before. He fancied theslough of disappointment into which God had crushed the soul of thisman: would he struggle out? Would he take Miss Herne as the first stepin his stair-way, or be content to be flung down in vigorous manhood tothe depth of impotent poverty? He could not tell if the quiet onHolmes's face were stolid defiance or submission: the dumb kings mighthave looked thus beneath the feet of Pharaoh. When he walked over thefloor, too, weak as he was it was with the old iron tread. He askedKnowles presently what business he had gone into. 

"My old hobby in an humble way, --the House of Refuge. "

They both laughed. 

"Yes, it is true. The janitor points me out to visitors as'under-superintendent, a philanthropist in decayed circumstances. 'Perhaps it is my life-work, "--growing sad and earnest. 

"If you can inoculate these infant beggars and thieves with yourtheory, it will be practice when you are dead. "

"I think that, " said Knowles, gravely, his eye kindling, --"I thinkthat. "

"As thankless a task as that of Moses, " said the other, watching himcuriously. "For YOU will not see the pleasant land, --YOU will not goover. "

The old man's flabby face darkened. 

"I know, " he said. 

He glanced involuntarily out at the blue, and the clear-shining, eternal stars. 

"I suppose, " he said, after a while, cheerfully, "I must content myselfwith Lois's creed, here, --'It'll come right some time. '"

Lois looked up from the saucepan she was stirring, her face growingquite red, nodding emphatically some half-dozen times. 

"After all, " said Holmes, kindly, "this chance may have forced you onthe true road to success for your new system of Sociology. Onlyuntainted natures could be fitted for self-government. Do you find thefallow field easily worked?"

Knowles fidgeted uneasily. 

"No. Fact is, I'm beginning to think there 's a good deal of anobstacle in blood. I find difficulty, much difficulty, Sir, in givingto the youngest child true ideas of absolute freedom, and unselfishheroism. "

"You teach them these by reason alone?" said Holmes, gravely. 

"Well, --of course, --that is the true theory; reason is the only yokethat should be laid upon a free-born soul; but I--I find it necessaryto have them whipped, Mr. Holmes. "

Holmes stooped suddenly to pat Tiger, hiding a furtive smile. The oldman went on, anxiously, --

"Old Mr. Howth says that is the end of all self-governments: fromanarchy to despotism, he says. Brute force must come in. Old peopleare apt to be set in their ways, you know. Honestly, we do not findunlimited freedom answer in the House. I hope much from a woman'sassistance: I have destined her for this work always: she has greatlatent power of sympathy and endurance, such as can bring the Christianteaching home to these wretches. "

"The Christian?" said Holmes. 

"Well, yes. I am not a believer myself, you know; but I find that ittakes hold of these people more vitally than more abstract faiths: Isuppose because of the humanity of Jesus. In Utopia, of course, weshall live from scientific principles; but they do not answer in theHouse. "

"Who is the woman?" asked Holmes, carelessly. 

The other watched him keenly. 

"She is coming for five years. Margret Howth. "

He patted the dog with the same hard, unmoved touch. 

"It is a religious duty with her. Besides, she must do something. They have been almost starving since the mill was burnt. "

Holmes's face was bent; he could not see it. When he looked up, Knowles thought it more rigid, immovable than before. 

When Knowles was going away, Holmes said to him, --

"When does Margret Howth go into that devils' den?"

"The House? On New-Year's. " The scorn in him was too savage to besilent. "It is the best time to begin a new life. Yourself, now, youwill have fulfilled your design by that time, --of marriage?"

Holmes was leaning on the mantel-shelf; his very lips were pale. 

"Yes, I shall, I shall, "--in his low, hard tone. 

Some sudden dream of warmth and beauty flashed before his gray eyes, lighting them as Knowles never had seen before. 

"Miss Herne is beautiful, --let me congratulate you, in Western fashion. "

The old man did not hide his sneer. 

Holmes bowed. 

"I thank you, for her. "

Lois held the candle to light the Doctor out of the long passages. 

"Yoh hev n't seen Barney out 't Mr. Howth's, Doctor? He's ther' now. "

"No. When shall you have done waiting on this--man, Lois? God helpyou, child!"

Lois's quick instinct answered, --

"He's very kind. He's like a woman fur kindness to such as me. When Icome to die, I'd like eyes such as his to look at, tender, pitiful. "

"Women are fools alike, " grumbled the Doctor. "Never mind. 'When youcome to die?' What put that into your head? Look up. "

The child sheltered the flaring candle with her hand. 

"I've no tho't o' dyin', " she said, laughing. 

There was a gray shadow about her eyes, a peaked look to the face, henever saw before, looking at her now with a physician's eyes. 

"Does anything hurt you here?" touching her chest. 

"It's better now. It was that night o' th' fire. Th' breath o' th'mill, I thenk, --but it's nothin'. "

"Burning copperas? Of course it's better! Oh, that's nothing!" hesaid, cheerfully. 

When they reached the door, he held out his hand, the first time heever had done it to her, and then waited, patting her on the head. 

"I think it'll come right, Lois, " he said, dreamily, looking out intothe night. "You're a good girl. I think it'll all come right. Foryou and me. Some time. Good-night, child. "

After he was a long way down the street, he turned to nod good-nightagain to the comical little figure in the door-way. 

CHAPTER IX. 

If Knowles hated anybody that night, he hated the man he had leftstanding there with pale, heavy jaws, and heart of iron; he could havecursed him, standing there. He did not see how, after he was leftalone, the man lay with his face to the wall, holding his bony hand tohis forehead, with a look in his eyes that if you had seen, you wouldhave thought his soul had entered on that path whose steps take hold onhell. 

There was no struggle in his face; whatever was the resolve he hadreached in the solitary hours when he had stood so close upon theborders of death, it was unshaken now; but the heart, crushed andstifled before, was taking its dire revenge. If ever it had hungered, through the cold, selfish days, for God's help, or a woman's love, ithungered now, with a craving like death. If ever he had thought howbare and vacant the years would be, going down to the grave with lipsthat never had known a true wife's kiss, he remembered it now, when itwas too late, with bitterness such as wrings a man's heart but once ina lifetime. If ever he had denied to his own soul this Margret, calledher alien or foreign, it called her now, when it was too late, to herrightful place; there was not a thought nor a hope in the darkestdepths of his nature that did not cry out for her help that night, --forher, a part of himself, --now, when it was too late. He went over allthe years gone, and pictured the years to come; he remembered the moneythat was to help his divine soul upward; he thought of it with a curse, getting up and pacing the floor of the narrow room, slowly and quietly. Looking out into the still starlight and the quaint garden, he tried tofancy this woman as he knew her, after the restless power of her soulshould have been chilled and starved into a narrow, lifeless duty. Hefancied her old, and stern, and sick of life, she that might have beenwhat might they not have been, together? And he had driven her to thisfor money, --money!

It was of no use to repent of it now. He had frozen the love out ofher heart, long ago. He remembered (all that he did remember of theblank night after he was hurt) that he had seen her white, worn-outface looking down at him; that she did not touch him; and that, whenone of the sisters told her she might take her place, and sponge hisforehead, she said, bitterly, she had no right to do it, that he was nofriend of hers. He saw and heard that, unconscious to all else; hewould have known it, if he had been dead, lying there. It was too latenow: why need he think of what might have been? Yet he did think of itthrough the long winter's night, --each moment his thought of the lifeto come, or of her, growing more tender and more bitter. Do you wonderat the remorse of this man? Wait, then, until you lie alone, as he haddone, through days as slow, revealing as ages, face to face with Godand death. Wait until you go down so close to eternity that the lifeyou have lived stands out before you in the dreadful bareness in whichGod sees it, --as you shall see it some day from heaven or hell: money, and hate, and love will stand in their true light then. Yet, comingback to life again, he held whatever resolve he had reached down therewith his old iron will: all the pain he bore in looking back to thefalse life before, or the ceaseless remembrance that it was too latenow to atone for that false life, made him the stronger to abide bythat resolve, to go on the path self-chosen, let the end be what itmight. Whatever the resolve was, it did not still the gnawing hungerin his heart that night, which every trifle made more fresh and strong. 

There was a wicker-basket that Lois had left by the fire, piled up withbits of cloth and leather out of which she was manufacturing Christmasgifts; a pair of great woollen socks, which one of the sisters had toldhim privately Lois meant for him, lying on top. As with all of herpeople, Christmas was the great day of the year to her. Holmes couldnot but smile, looking at them. Poor Lois!--Christmas would be heresoon, then? And sitting by the covered fire, he went back toChristmases gone, the thought of all others that brought Margretnearest and warmest to him: since he was a boy they had been togetheron that day. With his hand over his eyes, he sat quiet by the fireuntil morning. He heard some boy going by in the gray dawn call toanother that they would have holiday on Christmas week. It was coming, he thought, rousing himself, --but never as it had been: that couldnever be again. Yet it was strange how this thought of Christmas tookhold of him, after this, --famished his heart. As it approached in theslow-coming winter, the days growing shorter, and the nights longer andmore solitary, so Margret became more real to him, --not rejected andlost, but as the wife she might have been, with the simple, passionatelove she gave him once. The thought grew intolerable to him; yet therewas not a homely pleasure of those years gone, when the oldschool-master kept high holiday on Christmas, that he did not recalland linger over with a boyish yearning, now that these things were overforever. He chafed under his weakness. If the day would but come whenhe could go out and conquer his fate, as a man ought to do! OnChristmas eve he would put an end to these torturing taunts, be donewith them, let the sacrifice be what it might. For I fear that even nowStephen Holmes thought of his own need and his own hunger. 

He watched Lois knitting and patching her poor little gifts, with avague feeling that every stitch made the time a moment shorter until heshould be free, with his life in his hand again. She left the hospitalat last, sorrowfully enough, but he made her go: he fancied the closeair was hurting her, seeing at night the strange shadow growing on herface. I do not think he ever said to her that he knew all she had donefor him, or thanked her; but no dog or woman that Stephen Holmes lovedcould look into his eyes, and doubt that love. Sad, masterful eyes, such as are seen but once or twice in a lifetime: no woman but wouldwish, like Lois, for such eyes to be near her when she came to die, forher to remember the world's love in. She came hobbling back every dayto see him after she had gone, and would stay to make his soup, tellinghim, child-like, how many days it was until Christmas. He knew that, as well as she, waiting through the cold, slow hours, in his solitaryroom. He thought sometimes she had some eager petition to offer him, when she stood watching him wistfully, twisting her hands together; butshe always smothered it with a sigh, and, tying her little woollen cap, went away, walking more slowly, he thought, every day. 

Do you remember how Christmas came that year? how there was a waitingpause, when the States stood still, and from the peoples came the firstawful murmurs of the storm that was to shake the earth? how men'shearts failed them for fear, how women turned pale, and held theirchildren closer to their breasts, while they heard a far cry oflamentation for their country that had fallen? Do you remember how, amidst the fury of men's anger, the storehouses of God were opened forthat land? how the very sunshine gathered new splendours, the rainsmore fruitful moisture, until the earth poured forth an unknown fulnessof life and beauty? Was there no promise there, no prophecy? Do youremember, while the very life of the people hung in doubt before them, while the angel of death came again to pass over the land, and therewas no blood on any door-post to keep him from that house, how serenelythe old earth folded in her harvest, dead, till it should waken to astronger life? how quietly, as the time came near for the birth ofChrist, this old earth made ready for his coming, heedless of theclamour of men? how the air grew fresher above, day by day, and thegray deep silently opened for the snow to go down and screen and whitenand make holy that fouled earth? I think the slow-falling snow did notfail in its quiet warning; for I remember that men, too, in a feebleway tried to make ready for the birth of Christ. There was a healthierglow than terror stirred in their hearts; because of the vague, greatdread without, it may be, they drew closer together round householdfires, were kindlier in the good old-fashioned way; old friendshipswere wakened, old times talked over, fathers and mothers and childrenplanned homely ways to show the love in their hearts and to welcome inChristmas. Who knew but it might be the last? Let us be thankful forthat happy Christmas-day. What if it were the last? What if, whenanother comes, and another, one voice, the kindest and cheerfullestthen, shall never say "Happy Christmas" to us again? Let us bethankful for that day the more, --accept it the more as a sign of thatwhich will surely come. 

Holmes, even, in his dreary room and drearier thought, felt the warmthand expectant stir creeping through the land as the day drew near. Even in the hospital, the sisters were in a busy flutter, decking theirlittle chapel with flowers, and preparing a fete for their patients. The doctor, as he bandaged his broken arm, hinted at faint rumours inthe city of masquerades and concerts. Even Knowles, who had notvisited the hospital for weeks, relented and came back, moody and grum. He brought Kitts with him, and started him on talking of how they keptChristmas in Ohio on his mother's farm; and the poor soul, encouragedby the silence of two of his auditors, and the intense interest of Loisin the background, mazed on about Santa-Claus trees and Virginia reelsuntil the clock struck twelve, and Knowles began to snore. 

Christmas was coming. As he stood, day after day, looking out of thegray window, he could see the signs of its coming even in theshop-windows glittering with miraculous toys, in the market-carts withtheir red-faced drivers and heaps of ducks and turkeys, in everystage-coach or omnibus that went by crowded with boys home for theholidays, hallooing for Bell or Lincoln, forgetful that the electionwas over, and Carolina out. 

Pike came to see him one day, his arms full of a bundle, which turnedout to be an accordion for Sophy. 

"Christmas, you know, " he said, taking off the brown paper, while hewas cursing the Cotton States the hardest, and gravely kneading at thekeys, and stretching it until he made as much discord as fiveCongressmen. "I think Sophy will like that, " he said, looking at itsideways, and tying it up carefully. 

"I am sure she will, " said Holmes, --and did not think the man a foolfor one moment. 

Always going back, this Holmes, when he was alone, to the certaintythat home-comings or children's kisses or Christmas feasts were not forsuch as he, --never could be, though he sought for the old time inbitterness of heart; and so, dully remembering his resolve, and waitingfor Christmas eve, when he might end it all. Not one of the myriads ofhappy children listened more intently to the clock clanging off hourafter hour than the silent, stern man who had no hope in that day thatwas coming. 

He learned to watch even for poor Lois coming up the corridor everyday, --being the only tie that bound the solitary man to the inner worldof love and warmth. The deformed little body was quite alive withChristmas now, and brought its glow with her, in her weak way. Different from the others, he saw with a curious interest. The day wasmore real to her than to them. Not because, only, the care she had ofeverybody, and everybody had of her seemed to reach its culmination ofkindly thought for the Christmas time; not because, as she sat talkingslowly, stopping for breath, her great fear seemed to be that she wouldnot have gifts enough to go round; but deeper than that, --the day wasreal to her. As if it were actually true that the Master in whom shebelieved was freshly born into the world once a year, to waken all thatwas genial and noble and pure in the turbid, worn-out hearts; as if newhonour and pride and love did flash into the realms below heaven withthe breaking of Christmas morn. It was a beautiful faith; he almostwished it were his. A beautiful faith! it gave a meaning to the oldcustom of gifts and kind words. LOVE coming into the world!--the ideapleased his artistic taste, being simple and sublime. Lois used totell him, while she feebly tried to set his room in order, of all herplans, --of how Sam Polston was to be married on New-Year's, --but mostof all of the Christmas coming out at the old school-master's: how theold house had been scrubbed from top to bottom, was fairly glowing withshining paint and hot fires, --how Margret and her mother worked, interror lest the old man should find out how poor and bare it was, --howhe and Joel had some secret enterprise on foot at the far end of theplantation out in the swamp, and were gone nearly all day. 

She ceased coming at last. One of the sisters went out to see her, andtold him she was too weak to walk, but meant to be better soon, --quitewell by the holidays. He wished the poor thing had told him what shewanted of him, --wished it anxiously, with a dull presentiment of evil. 

The days went by, cold and slow. He watched grimly the preparationsthe hospital physician was silently making in his case, for fever, inflammation. 

"I must be strong enough to go out cured on Christmas eve, " he said tohim one day, coolly. 

The old doctor glanced up shrewdly. He was an old Alsatian, veryplain-spoken. 

"You say so?" he mumbled. "Chut! Then you will go. There aresome--bull-dog, men. They do what they please, --they never die unlessthey choose, begar! We know them in our practice, Herr Holmes!"

Holmes laughed. Some acumen there, he thought, in medicine or mind: asfor himself, it was true enough; whatever success he had gained in lifehad been by no flush of enthusiasm or hope; a dogged persistence of"holding on, " rather. 

A long time; but Christmas eve came at last: bright, still, frosty. "Whatever he had to do, let it be done quickly;" but not till the sethour came. So he laid his watch on the table beside him, waiting untilit should mark the time he had chosen: the ruling passion ofself-control as strong in this turn of life's tide as it would be inits ebb, at the last. The old doctor found him alone in the drearyroom, coming in with the frosty breath of the eager street about him. A grim, chilling sight enough, as solitary and impenetrable as theSphinx. He did not like such faces in this genial and gracious time, so hurried over his examination. The eye was cool, the pulse steady, the man's body, battered though it was, strong in its steely composure. "Ja wohl!--ja wohl!" he went on chuffily, summing up: latentfever, --the very lips were blue, dry as husks; "he wouldgo, --oui?--then go!"--with a chuckle. "All right, gluck Zu!" And soshuffled out. Latent fever? Doubtless, yet hardly from broken bones, the doctor thought, --with no suspicion of the subtile, intolerablepassion smouldering in every drop of this man's phlegmatic blood. 

Evening came at last. He stopped until the cracked bell of the chapelhad done striking the Angelus, and then put on his overcoat, and wentout. Passing down the garden walk a miserable chicken staggered up tohim, chirping a drunken recognition. For a moment, he breathed againthe hot smoke of the mill, remembering how Lois had found him inMargret's office, not forgetting the cage: chary of this low life, evenin the peril of his own. So, going out on the street, he tested hisown nature by this trifle in his old fashion. "The ruling passionstrong in death, " eh? It had not been self-love; something deeper: aninstinct rather than reason. Was he glad to think this of himself? Helooked out more watchful of the face which the coming Christmas bore. The air was cold and pungent. The crowded city seemed wakening to somekeen enjoyment; even his own weak, deliberate step rang on the icypavement as if it wished to rejoice with the rest. I said it was atrading city: so it was, but the very trade to-day had a jollyChristmas face on; the surly old banks and pawnbrokers' shops had grownashamed of their doings, and shut their doors, and covered theirwindows with frosty trees, and cathedrals, and castles; the shopsopened their inmost hearts; some child's angel had touched them, andthey flushed out into a magic splendour of Christmas trees, and lights, and toys; Santa Claus might have made his head-quarters in any one ofthem. As for children, you stumbled over them at every step, quiteweighed down with the heaviness of their joy, and the money burningtheir pockets; the acrid old brokers and pettifoggers, that you metwith a chill on other days, had turned into jolly fathers of families, and lounged laughing along with half a dozen little hands pulling theminto candy-stores or toy-shops; all of the churches whose rulespermitted them to show their deep rejoicing in a simple way, hadcovered their cold stone walls with evergreens, and wreaths of glowingfire-berries: the child's angel had touched them too, perhaps, --notunwisely. 

He passed crowds of thin-clad women looking in through open doors, withred cheeks and hungry eyes, at red-hot stoves within, and a placard, "Christmas dinners for the poor, gratis;" out of every window on thestreets came a ruddy light, and a spicy smell; the very sunset sky hadcaught the reflection of the countless Christmas fires, and flamed upto the zenith, blood-red as cinnabar. 

Holmes turned down one of the back streets: he was going to see Lois, first of all. I hardly know why: the child's angel may have touchedhim, too; or his heart, full of a yearning pity for the poor cripple, who, he believed now, had given her own life for his, may have pleadfor indulgence, as men remember their childish prayers, before goinginto battle. He came at last, in the quiet lane where she lived, toher little brown frame-shanty, to which you mounted by a flight ofwooden steps: there were two narrow windows at the top, hung with redcurtains; he could hear her feeble voice singing within. As he turnedto go up the steps, he caught sight of something crouched underneaththem in the dark, hiding from him: whether a man or a dog he could notsee. He touched it. 

"What d' ye want, Mas'r?" said a stifled voice. 

He touched it again with his stick. The man stood upright, back in theshadow: it was old Yare. 

"Had ye any word wi' me, Mas'r?"

He saw the negro's face grow gray with fear. 

"Come out, Yare, " he said, quietly. "Any word? What word is arson, eh?"

The man did not move. Holmes touched him with the stick. 

"Come out, " he said. 

He came out, looking gaunt, as with famine. 

"I'll not flurr myself, " he said, crunching his ragged hat in hishands, --"I'll not. "

He drove the hat down upon his head, and looked up with a sullenfierceness. 

"Yoh've got me, an' I'm glad of 't. I'm tired, fearin'. I was bornfor hangin', they say, " with a laugh. "But I'll see my girl. I'vewaited hyur, runnin' the resk, --not darin' to see her, on 'count o'yoh. I thort I was safe on Christmas-day, --but what's Christmas to yohor me?"

Holmes's quiet motion drove him up the steps before him. He stopped atthe top, his cowardly nature getting the better of him, and sat downwhining on the upper step. 

"Be marciful, Mas'r! I wanted to see my girl, --that's all. She's all Ihev. "

Holmes passed him and went in. Was Christmas nothing to him? How didthis foul wretch know that they stood alone, apart from the world?

It was a low, cheerful little room that he came into, stooping his tallhead: a tea-kettle humming and singing on the wood-fire, that lightedup the coarse carpet and the gray walls, but spent its warmest heat onthe low settee where Lois lay sewing, and singing to herself. She waswrapped up in a shawl, but the hands, he saw, were worn to skin andbone; the gray shadow was heavier on her face, and the brooding browneyes were like a tired child's. She tried to jump up when she saw him, and not being able, leaned on one elbow, half-crying as she laughed. 

"It's the best Christmas gift of all! I can hardly b'lieveit!"--touching the strong hand humbly that was held out to her. 

Holmes had a gentle touch, I told you, for dogs and children and women:so, sitting quietly by her, he listened for a long time with untiringpatience to her long story; looked at the heap of worthless trifles shehad patched up for gifts, wondering secretly at the delicate sense ofcolour and grace betrayed in the bits of flannel and leather; and took, with a grave look of wonder, his own package, out of which a bit ofwoollen thread peeped forth. 

"Don't look till to-morrow mornin', " she said, anxiously, as she layback trembling and exhausted. 

The breath of the mill! The fires of the world's want and crime hadfinished their work on her life, --so! She caught the meaning of hisface quickly. 

"It's nothin', " she said, eagerly. "I'll be strong by New-Year's; it'sonly a day or two rest I need. I've no tho't o' givin' up. "

And to show how strong she was, she got up and hobbled about to makethe tea. He had not the heart to stop her; she did not want todie, --why should she? the world was a great, warm, beautiful nest forthe little cripple, --why need he show her the cold without? He saw herat last go near the door where old Yare sat outside, then heard herbreathless cry, and a sob. A moment after the old man came into theroom, carrying her, and, laying her down on the settee, chafed herhands, and misshapen head. 

"What ails her?" he said, looking up, bewildered, to Holmes. "We'vekilled her among us. "

She laughed, though the great eyes were growing dim, and drew hiscoarse gray hair into her hand. 

"Yoh wur long comin', " she said, weakly. "I hunted fur yoh everyday, --every day. "

The old man had pushed her hair back, and was reading the sunken facewith a wild fear. 

"What ails her?" he cried. "Ther' 's somethin' gone wi' my girl. Wasit my fault? Lo, was it my fault?"

"Be quiet!" said Holmes, sternly. 

"Is it THAT?" he gasped, shrilly. "My God! not that! I can't bear it!"

Lois soothed him, patting his face childishly. 

"Am I dyin' now?" she asked, with a frightened look at Holmes. 

He told her no, cheerfully. 

"I've no tho't o' dyin'. I dunnot thenk o' dyin'. Don't mind, dear!Yoh'll stay with me, fur good?"

The man's paroxysm of fear for her over, his spite and cowardice cameuppermost. 

"It's him, " he yelped, looking fiercely at Holmes. "He's got my lifein his hands. He kin take it. What does he keer fur me or my girl?I'll not stay wi' yoh no longer, Lo. Mornin' he'll send me t' th'lock-up, an' after"----

"I care for you, child, " said Holmes, stooping suddenly close to thegirl's livid face. 

"To-morrow?" she muttered. "My Christmas-day?"

He wet her face while he looked over at the wretch whose life he heldin his hands. It was the iron rule of Holmes's nature to be just; butto-night dim perceptions of a deeper justice than law opened beforehim, --problems he had no time to solve: the sternest fortress is liableto be taken by assault, --and the dew of the coming morn was on hisheart. 

"So as I've hunted fur him!" she whispered, weakly. "I didn't thenk itwud come to this. So as I loved him! Oh, Mr. Holmes, he's hed a porechance in livin', --forgive him this! Him that'll come to-morrow 'd sayto forgive him this. "

She caught the old man's head in her arms with an agony of tears, andheld it tight. 

"I hev hed a pore chance, " he said, looking up, --"that's God's truth, Lo! I dunnot keer fur that: it's too late goin' back. But Lo--Mas'r, "he mumbled, servilely, "it's on'y a little time t' th' end: let me staywith Lo. She loves me, --Lo does. "

A look of disgust crept over Holmes's face. 

"Stay, then, " he muttered, --"I wash my hands of you, you old scoundrel!"

He bent over Lois with his rare, pitiful smile. 

"Have I his life in my hands? I put it into yours, --so, child! Now putit all out of your head, and look up here to wish me good-bye. "

She looked up cheerfully, hardly conscious how deep the danger hadbeen; but the flush had gone from her face, leaving it sad and still. 

"I must go to keep Christmas, Lois, " he said, playfully. 

"Yoh're keepin' it here, Sir. " She held her weak grip on his handstill, with the vague outlook in her eyes that came there sometimes. 

"Was it fur me yoh done it?"

"Yes, for you. "

"And fur Him that's comin', Sir?" smiling. 

Holmes's face grew graver. 

"No, Lois. " She looked into his eyes bewildered. "For the poor childthat loved me" he said, half to himself, smoothing her hair. 

Perhaps in that day when the under-currents of the soul's life will bebared, this man will know the subtile instincts that drew him out ofhis self-reliance by the hand of the child that loved him to the Lovebeyond, that was man and died for him, as well as she. He did not seeit now. 

The clear evening light fell on Holmes, as he stood there looking downat the dying little lamiter: a powerful figure, with a face supreme, masterful, but tender: you will find no higher type of manhood. DidGod make him of the same blood as the vicious, cringing wretchcrouching to hide his black face at the other side of the bed? Somesuch thought came into Lois's brain, and vexed her, bringing the tearsto her eyes: he was her father, you know. She drew their handstogether, as if she would have joined them, then stopped, closing hereyes wearily. 

"It's all wrong, " she muttered, --"oh, it's far wrong! Ther' 's Onecould make them 'like. Not me. "

She stroked her father's hand once, and then let it go. There was along silence. Holmes glanced out, and saw the sun was down. 

"Lois, " he said, "I want you to wish me a happy Christmas, as peopledo. "

Holmes had a curious vein of superstition: he knew no lips so pure asthis girl's, and he wanted them to wish him good-luck that night. Shedid it, looking up laughing and growing red: riddles of life did nottrouble her childish fancy long. And so he left her, with a dullfeeling, as I said before, that it was good to say a prayer before thebattle came on. For men who believed in prayers: for him, it was thesame thing to make one day for Lois happier. 

CHAPTER X. 

It was later than Holmes thought: a gray, cold evening. The streets inthat suburb were lonely: he went down them, the new-fallen snow dullinghis step. It had covered the peaked roofs of the houses too, and theystood in listening rows, white and still. Here and there a paleflicker from the gas-lamps struggled with the ashy twilight. He met noone: people had gone home early on Christmas eve. He had no home to goto: pah! there were plenty of hotels, he remembered, smiling grimly. It was bitter cold: he buttoned up his coat tightly, as he walkedslowly along as if waiting for some one, --wondering dully if the grayair were any colder or stiller than the heart hardly beating under thecoat. Well, men had conquered Fate, conquered life and love, beforenow. It grew darker: he was pacing now slowly in the shadow of a longlow wall surrounding the grounds of some building. When he came nearthe gate, he would stop and listen: he could have heard a sparrow onthe snow, it was so still. After a while he did hear footsteps, crunching the snow heavily; the gate clicked as they came out: it wasKnowles, and the clergyman whom Dr. Cox did not like; Vandyke was hisname. 

"Don't bolt the gate, " said Knowles; "Miss Howth will be out presently. "

They sat down on a pile of lumber near by, waiting, apparently. Holmeswent up and joined them, standing in the shadow of the lumber, talkingto Vandyke. He did not meet him, perhaps, once in six months; but hebelieved in the man, thoroughly. 

"I've just helped Knowles build a Christmas-tree in yonder, --the Houseof Refuge: you know. He could not tell an oak from an arbor-vitae, Ibelieve. "

Knowles was in no mood for quizzing. 

"There are other things I don't know, " he said, gloomily, recurring tosome subject Holmes had interrupted. "The House is going to the Devil, Charley, headlong. "

"There's no use in saying no, " said the other; "you'll call me a lyingdiviner. "

Knowles did not listen. 

"Seems as if I am to go groping and stumbling through the world likesome forsaken Cyclops with his eye out, dragging down whatever I touch. If there were anything to hold by, anything certain!"

Vandyke looked at him gravely, but did not answer; rose and walkedindolently up and down to keep himself warm. A lithe, slow figure, aclear face with delicate lips, and careless eyes that saw everything:the face of a man quick to learn, and slow to teach. 

"There she comes!" said Knowles, as the lock of the gate rasped. 

Holmes had heard the slow step in the snow long before. A small womancame out, and went down the silent street into the road beyond. Holmeskept his back turned to her, lighting his cigar; the other men watchedher eagerly. 

"What do you think, Vandyke?" demanded Knowles. "How will she do?"

"Do for what?"--resuming his lazy walk. "You talk as if she were amachine. It is the way with modern reformers. Men are so many ploughsand harrows to work on 'the classes. ' Do for what?"

Knowles flushed hotly. 

"The work the Lord has left for her. Do you mean to say there is noneto do, --you, pledged to Missionary labour?"

The young man's face coloured. 

"I know this street needs paving terribly, Knowles; but I don't see aboulder in your hands. Yet the great Task-master does not despise thepavers. He did not give you the spirit and understanding for paving, eh, is that it? How do you know He gave this Margret Howth the spiritand understanding of a reformer? There may be higher work for her todo. "

"Higher!" The old man stood aghast. "I know your creed, then, --thatthe true work for a man or a woman is that which develops their highestnature?"

Vandyke laughed. 

"You have a creed-mania, Knowles. You have a confession of faithready-made for everybody, but yourself. I only meant for you to takecare what you do. That woman looks as the Prodigal Son might have donewhen he began to be in want, and would fain have fed himself with thehusks that the swine did eat. "

Knowles got up moodily. 

"Whose work is it, then?" he muttered, following the men down thestreet; for they walked on. "The world has waited six thousand yearsfor help. It comes slowly, --slowly, Vandyke; even through yourreligion. "

The young man did not answer: looked up, with quiet, rapt eyes, throughthe silent city, and the clear gray beyond. They passed a littlechurch lighted up for evening service: as if to give a meaning to theold man's words, they were chanting the one anthem of the world, theGloria in Excelsis. Hearing the deep organ-roll, the men stoppedoutside to listen: it heaved and sobbed through the night, as ifbearing up to God the wrong of countless aching hearts, then wassilent, and a single voice swept over the moors in a long, lamentablecry:--"Thou that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us!"

The men stood silent, until the hush was broken by a low murmur:--"ForThou only art holy. " Holmes had taken off his hat, unconscious that hedid it; he put it on slowly, and walked on. What was it that Knowleshad said to him once about mean and selfish taints on his divine soul?"For Thou only art holy:" if there were truth in that!

"How quiet it is!" he said, as they stopped to leave him. It was, --abreathless quiet; the great streets of the town behind them wereshrouded in snow; the hills, the moors, the prairie swept off into theskyless dark, a gray and motionless sea lit by a low watery moon. "Thevery earth listens, " he said. 

"Listens for what?" said the literal old Doctor. 

"I think it listens always, " said Vandyke, his eye on fire. "For itsKing--that shall be. Not as He came before. It has not long to waitnow: the New Year is not far off. "

"I've no faith in holding your hands, waiting for it; nor have youeither, Charley, " growled Knowles. "There's an infernal lot of work tobe done before it comes, I fancy. Here, let me light my cigar. "

Holmes bade them good-night, laughing, and struck into the by-roadthrough the hills. He shook hands with Vandyke before he went, --athing he scarce ever did with anybody. Knowles noticed it, and, afterhe was out of hearing, mumbled out some sarcasm at "a minister of thegospel consorting with a cold, silent scoundrel like that!" Vandykelistened to his scolding in his usual lazy way, and they went back intotown. 

The road Holmes took was rutted deep with wagon-wheels, not easilytravelled; he walked slowly therefore, being weak, stopping now andthen to gather strength. He had not counted the hours until this day, to be balked now by a little loss of blood. The moon was nearly downbefore he reached the Cloughton hills: he turned there into a narrowpath which he remembered well. Now and then he saw the mark of alittle shoe in the snow, --looking down at it with a hot panting in hisveins, and a strange flash in his eye, as he walked on steadily. 

There was a turn in the path at the top of the hill, a sunken wall, with a broad stone from which the wind had blown the snow. This was theplace. He sat down on the stone, resting. Just there she had stood, clutching her little fingers behind her, when he came up and threw backher hood to look in her face: how pale and worn it was, even then! Hehad not looked at her to-night: he would not, if he had been dying, with those men standing there. He stood alone in the world with thislittle Margret. How those men had carped, and criticised her, chattered of the duties of her soul! Why, it was his, it was his own, softer and fresher. There was not a glance with which they followedthe weak little body in its poor dress that he had not seen, andsavagely resented. They measured her strength? counted how long thebones and blood would last in their House of Refuge? There was not amorsel of her flesh that was not pure and holy in his eyes. HisMargret? He chafed with an intolerable fever to make her his, but forone instant, as she had been once. Now, when it was too late. For hewent back over every word he had spoken that night, forcing himself togo through with it, --every cold, poisoned word. It was a fittingpenance. "There is no such thing as love in real life:" he had toldher that! How he had stood, with all the power of his "divine soul" inhis will, and told her, --he, --a man, --that he put away her love fromhim then, forever! He spared himself nothing, --slurred over nothing;spurned himself, as it were, for the meanness, in which he had wallowedthat night. How firm he had been! how kind! how masterful!--pluminghimself on his man's strength, while he held her in his power as onemight hold an insect, played with her shrinking woman's nature, andtrampled it under his feet, coldly and quietly! She was in his way, and he had put her aside. How the fine subtile spirit had risen up outof its agony of shame, and scorned him! How it had flashed from thepuny frame standing there in the muddy road despised and jeered at, andcalmly judged him! He might go from her as he would, toss her off likea worn-out plaything, but he could not blind her: let him put on whatface he would to the world, whether they called him a master among men, or a miser, or, as Knowles did to-night after he turned away, ascoundrel, this girl laid her little hand on his soul with an utterrecognition: she alone. "She knew him for a better man than he knewhimself that night:" he remembered the words. 

The night was growing murky and bitingly cold: there was no prospect onthe snow-covered hills, or the rough road at his feet with its poolsof ice-water, to bring content into his face, or the dewy light intohis eyes; but they came there, slowly, while he sat thinking. Some oldthought was stealing into his brain, perhaps, fresh and warm, like asoft spring air, --some hope of the future, in which this child-womancame close to him, and near. It was an idle dream, only would taunthim when it was over, but he opened his arms to it: it was an oldfriend; it had made him once a purer and better man than he could everbe again. A warm, happy dream, whatever it may have been: the rugged, sinister face grew calm and sad, as the faces of the dead change whenloving tears fall on them. 

He sighed wearily: the homely little hope was fanning into lifestagnant depths of desire and purpose, stirring his resolute ambition. Too late? Was it too late? Living or dead she was his, though heshould never see her face, by some subtile power that had made themone, he knew not when nor how. He did not reason now, --abandonedhimself, as morbid men only do, to this delirious hope of a home, andcheerful warmth, and this woman's love fresh and eternal: a pleasantdream at first, to be put away at pleasure. But it grew bolder, touched under-deeps in his nature of longing and intense passion; allthat he knew or felt of power or will, of craving effort, of success inthe world, drifted into this dream, and became one with it. He stoodup, his vigorous frame starting into a nobler manhood, with theconsciousness of right, --with a willed assurance, that, the firstvictory gained, the others should follow. 

It was late; he must go on; he had not meant to sit idling by theroad-side. He went through the fields, his heavy step crushing thesnow, a dry heat in his blood, his eye intent, still, until he camewithin sight of the farm-house; then he went on, cool and grave, in hisordinary port. 

The house was quite dark; only a light in one of the lowerwindows, --the library, he thought. The broad field he was crossingsloped down to the house, so that, as he came nearer, he saw the littleroom quite plainly in the red glow of the fire within, the curtainsbeing undrawn. He had a keen eye; did not fail to see the marks ofpoverty about the place, the gateless fences, even the bare room withits worn and patched carpet: noted it all with a triumphant gleam ofsatisfaction. There was a black shadow passing and repassing thewindows: he waited a moment looking at it, then came more slowlytowards them, intenser heats smouldering in his face. He would notsurprise her; she should be as ready as he was for the meeting. If sheever put her pure hand in his again, it should be freely done, and ofher own good-will. 

She saw him as he came up on the porch, and stopped, looking out, as ifbewildered, --then resumed her walk, mechanically. What it cost her tosee him again he could not tell: her face did not alter. It waslifeless and schooled, the eyes looking straight forward always, indifferently. Was this his work? If he had killed her outright, itwould have been better than this. 

The windows were low: it had been his old habit to go in through them, and he now went up to one unconsciously. As he opened it, he saw herturn away for an instant; then she waited for him, entirely tranquil, the clear fire shedding a still glow over the room, no cry or shiver ofpain to show how his coming broke open the old wound. She smiled even, when he leaned against the window, with a careless welcome. 

Holmes stopped, confounded. It did not suit him, --this. If you know aman's nature, you comprehend why. The bitterest reproach, or a proudcontempt would have been less galling than this gentle indifference. His hold had slipped from off the woman, he believed. A moment beforehe had remembered how he had held her in his arms, touched her coldlips, and then flung her off, --he had remembered it, every nerveshrinking with remorse and unutterable tenderness: now----! The utterquiet of her face told more than words could do. She did not love him;he was nothing to her. Then love was a lie. A moment before he couldhave humbled himself in her eyes as low as he lay in his own, andaccepted her pardon as a necessity of her enduring, faithful nature:now, the whole strength of the man sprang into rage, and mad desire ofconquest. 

He came gravely across the room, holding out his hand with his oldquiet control. She might be cold and grave as he, but underneath heknew there was a thwarted, hungry spirit, --a strong, fine spirit asdainty Ariel. He would sting it to life, and tame it: it was his. 

"I thought you would come, Stephen, " she said, simply, motioning him toa chair. 

Could this automaton be Margret? He leaned on the mantel-shelf, looking down with a cynical sneer. 

"Is that the welcome? Why, there are a thousand greetings for thistime of love and good words you might have chosen. Besides, I havecome back ill and poor, --a beggar perhaps. How do women receivesuch, --generous women? Is there no etiquette? no hand-shaking? nothingmore? remembering that I was once--not indifferent to you. "

He laughed. She stood still and grave as before. 

"Why, Margret, I have been down near death since that night. "

He thought her lips grew gray, but she looked up clear and steady. 

"I am glad you did not die. Yes, I can say that. As for hand-shaking, my ideas may be peculiar as your own. "

"She measures her words, " he said, as to himself; "her very eye-lightis ruled by decorum; she is a machine, for work. She has swept herchild's heart clean of anger and revenge, even scorn for the wretchthat sold himself for money. There was nothing else to sweep out, wasthere?"--bitterly, --"no friendships, such as weak women nurse andcoddle into being, --or love, that they live in, and die for sometimes, in a silly way?"

"Unmanly!"

"No, not unmanly. Margret, let us be serious and calm. It is no timeto trifle or wear masks. That has passed between us which leaves noroom for sham courtesies. "

"There needs none, "--meeting his eye unflinchingly. "I am ready tomeet you and hear your good-bye. Dr. Knowles told me your marriage wasnear at hand. I knew you would come, Stephen. You did before. "

He winced, --the more that her voice was so clear of pain. 

"Why should I come? To show you what sort of a heart I have sold formoney? Why, you think you know, little Margret. You can reckon up itsdeformity, its worthlessness, on your cool fingers. You could tell theserene and gracious lady who is chaffering for it what a bargain shehas made, --that there is not in it one spark of manly honour or truelove. Don't venture too near it in your coldness and prudence. It hastiger passions I will not answer for. Give me your hand, and feel howit pants like a hungry fiend. It will have food, Margret. "

She drew away the hand he grasped, and stood back in the shadow. 

"What is it to me?"--in the same measured voice. 

Holmes wiped the cold drops from his forehead, a sort of shudder in hispowerful frame. He stood a moment looking into the fire, his headdropped on his arm. 

"Let it be so, " he said at last, quietly. "The worn old heart can gnawon itself a little longer. I have no mind to whimper over pain. "

Something that she saw on the dark sardonic face, as the red gleamslighted it, made her start convulsively, as if she would go to him;then controlling herself, she stood silent. He had not seen themovement, --or, if he saw, did not heed it. He did not care to tame hernow. The firelight flashed and darkened, the crackling wood breakingthe dead silence of the room. 

"It does not matter, " he said, raising his head, laying his arm overhis strong chest unconsciously, as if to shut in all complaint. "I hadan idle fancy that it would be good on this Christmas night to bare thesecrets hidden in here to you, --to suffer your pure eyes to probe thesorest depths: I thought perhaps they would have a blessing power. Itwas an idle fancy. What is my want or crime to you?"

The answer came slowly, but it did come. 

"Nothing to me. "

She tried to meet the gaunt face looking down on her with its proudsadness, --did meet it at last with her meek eyes. 

"No, nothing to you. There is no need that I should stay longer, isthere? You made ready to meet me, and have gone through your partwell. "

"It is no part. I speak God's truth to you as I can. "

"I know. There is nothing more for us to say to each other in thisworld, then, except good-night. Words--polite words--are bitterer thandeath, sometimes. If ever we happen to meet, that courteous smile onyour face will be enough to speak--God's truth for you. Shall we saygood-night now?"

"If you will. "

She drew farther into the shadow, leaning on a chair. 

He stopped, some sudden thought striking him. 

"I have a whim, " he said, dreamily, "that I would like to satisfy. Itwould be a trifle to you: will you grant it?--for the sake of some oldhappy day, long ago?"

She put her hand up to her throat; then it fell again. 

"Anything you wish, Stephen, " she said, gravely. 

"Yes. Come nearer, then, and let me see what I have lost. A heart socold and strong as yours need not fear inspection. I have a fancy tolook into it, for the last time. "

She stood motionless and silent. 

"Come, "--softly, --"there is no hurt in your heart that fears detection?"

She came out into the full light, and stood before him, pushing backthe hair from her forehead, that he might see every wrinkle, and thefaded, lifeless eyes. It was a true woman's motion, remembering eventhen to scorn deception. The light glowed brightly in her face, as theslow minutes ebbed without a sound: she only saw his face in shadow, with the fitful gleam of intolerable meaning in his eyes. Her ownquailed and fell. 

"Does it hurt you that I should even look at you?" he said, drawingback. "Why, even the sainted dead suffer us to come near them afterthey have died to us, --to touch their hands, to kiss their lips, tofind what look they left in their faces for us. Be patient, for thesake of the old time. My whim is not satisfied yet. "

"I am patient. "

"Tell me something of yourself, to take with me when I go, for the lasttime. Shall I think of you as happy in these days?"

"I am contented, "--the words oozing from her white lips in thebitterness of truth. "I asked God, that night, to show me my work; andI think He has shown it to me. I do not complain. It is a great work. "

"Is that all?" he demanded, fiercely. 

"No, not all. It pleases me to feel I have a warm home, and to helpkeep it cheerful. When my father kisses me at night, or my mothersays, 'God bless you, child, ' I know that is enough, that I ought to behappy. "

The old clock in the corner hummed and ticked through the deep silence, like the humble voice of the home she toiled to keep warm, thankingher, comforting her. 

"Once more, " as the light grew stronger on her face, --"will you lookdown into your heart that you have given to this great work, and tellme what you see there? Dare you do it, Margret?"

"I dare do it, "--but her whisper was husky. 

"Go on. "

He watched her more as a judge would a criminal, as she sat before him:she struggled weakly under the power of his eye, not meeting it. Hewaited relentless, seeing her face slowly whiten, her limbs shiver, herbosom heave. 

"Let me speak for you, " he said at last. "I know who once filled yourheart to the exclusion of all others: it is no time for mock shame. Iknow it was my hand that held the very secret of your being. WhateverI may have been, you loved me, Margret. Will you say that now?"

"I loved you, --once. "

Whether it were truth that nerved her, or self-delusion, she was strongnow to utter it all. 

"You love me no longer, then?"

"I love you no longer. "

She did not look at him; she was conscious only of the hot fire wearingher eyes, and the vexing click of the clock. After a while he bentover her silently, --a manly, tender presence. 

"When love goes once, " he said, "it never returns. Did you say it wasgone, Margret?"

One effort more, and Duty would be satisfied. 

"It is gone. "

In the slow darkness that came to her she covered her face, knowing andhearing nothing. When she looked up, Holmes was standing by thewindow, with his face toward the gray fields. It was a long timebefore he turned and came to her. 

"You have spoken honestly: it is an old fashion of yours. You believedwhat you said. Let me also tell you what you call God's truth, for amoment, Margret. It will not do you harm. "--He spoke gravely, solemnly. --"When you loved me long ago, selfish, erring as I was, youfulfilled the law of your nature; when you put that love out of yourheart, you make your duty a tawdry sham, and your life a lie. Listento me. I am calm. "

It was calmness that made her tremble as she had not done before, witha strange suspicion of the truth flashing on her. That she, casingherself in her pride, her conscious righteousness, hugging hernew-found philanthropy close, had sunk to a depth of niggardlyselfishness, of which this man knew nothing. Nobler than she; halfangry as she felt that, sitting at his feet, looking up. He knew it, too; the grave judging voice told it; he had taken his rightful place. Just, as only a man can be, in his judgment of himself and her: herlove that she had prided herself with, seemed weak and drifting, brought into contact with this cool integrity of meaning. I think shewas glad to be humbled before him. Women have strange fancies, sometimes. 

"You have deceived yourself, " he said: "when you try to fill your heartwith this work, you serve neither your God nor your fellow-man. Youtell me, " stooping close to her, "that I am nothing to you: you believeit, poor child! There is not a line on your face that does not prove itfalse. I have keen eyes, Margret!"-- He laughed. --"You have wrung thislove out of your heart? If it were easy to do, did it need to wringwith it every sparkle of pleasure and grace out of your life! Yourvery hair is gathered out of your sight: you feared to remember how myhand had touched it? Your dress is stingy and hard; your step, youreyes, your mouth under rule. So hard it was to force yourself into anold worn-out woman! Oh, Margret! Margret!"

She moaned under her breath. 

"I notice trifles, child! Yonder, in that corner, used to stand thedesk where I helped you with your Latin. How you hated it! Do youremember?"

"I remember. "

"It always stood there: it is gone now. Outside of the gate there wasthat elm I planted, and you promised to water while I was gone. It iscut down now by the roots. "

"I had it done, Stephen. "

"I know. Do you know why? Because you love me: because you do notdare to think of me, you dare not trust yourself to look at the treethat I had planted. "

She started up with a cry, and stood there in the old way, her fingerscatching at each other. 

"It is cruel, --let me go!"

"It is not cruel. "--He came up closer to her. --"You think you do notlove me, and see what I have made you! Look at the torpor of thisface, --the dead, frozen eyes! It is a 'nightmare death in life. ' GoodGod, to think that I have done this! To think of the countless days ofagony, the nights, the years of solitude that have brought her tothis, --little Margret!"

He paced the floor, slowly. She sat down on a low stool, leaning herhead on her hands. The little figure, the bent head, the quiveringchin brought up her childhood to him. She used to sit so when he hadtormented her, waiting to be coaxed back to love and smiles again. Thehard man's eyes filled with tears, as he thought of it. He watched thedeep, tearless sobs that shook her breast: he had wounded her todeath, --his bonny Margret! She was like a dead thing now: what need totorture her longer? Let him be manly and go out to his solitary life, taking the remembrance of what he had done with him for company. Herose uncertainly, --then came to her: was that the way to leave her?

"I am going, Margret, " he whispered, "but let me tell you a storybefore I go, --a Christmas story, say. It will not touch you, --it istoo late to hope for that, --but it is right that you should hear it. "

She looked up wearily. 

"As you will, Stephen. "

Whatever impulse drove the man to speak words that he knew wereuseless, made him stand back from her, as though she were something hewas unfit to touch: the words dragged from him slowly. 

"I had a curious dream to-night, Margret, --a waking dream: only a clearvision of what had been once. Do you remember--the old time?"

What disconnected rambling was this? Yet the girl understood it, looked into the low fire with sad, listening eyes. 

"Long ago. That was a free, strong life that opened before us then, little one, --before you and me? Do you remember the Christmas before Iwent away? I had a strong arm and a hungry brain to go out into theworld with, then. Something better, too, I had. A purer self than wasborn with me came late in life, and nestled in my heart. Margret, there was no fresh loving thought in my brain for God or man that didnot grow from my love of you; there was nothing noble or kindly in mynature that did not flow into that love, and deepen there. I was yourmaster, too. I held my own soul by no diviner right than I held yourlove and owed you mine. I understand it, now, when it is toolate. "--He wiped the cold drops from his face. --"Now do you knowwhether it is remorse I feel, when I think how I put this purer selfaway, --how I went out triumphant in my inhuman, greedy brain, --how Iresolved to know, to be, to trample under foot all weak love or homelypleasures? I have been punished. Let those years go. I think, sometimes, I came near to the nature of the damned who dare not love: Iwould not. It was then I hurt you, Margret, --to the death: your truelife lay in me, as mine in you. "

He had gone on drearily, as though holding colloquy with himself, asthough great years of meaning surged up and filled the broken words. It may have been thus with the girl, for her face deepened as shelistened. For the first time for many long days tears welled up intoher eyes, and rolled between her fingers unheeded. 

"I came through the streets to-night baffled in life, --a mean man thatmight have been noble, --all the years wasted that had gonebefore, --disappointed, --with nothing to hope for but time to workhumbly and atone for the wrongs I had done. When I lay yonder, my soulon the coast of eternity, I resolved to atone for every selfish deed. I had no thought of happiness; God knows I had no hope of it. I hadwronged you most: I could not die with that wrong unforgiven. "

"Unforgiven, Stephen?" she sobbed; "I forgave it long ago. "

He looked at her a moment, then by some effort choked down the word hewould have spoken, and went on with his bitter confession. 

"I came through the crowded town, a homeless, solitary man, on theChristmas eve when love comes to every man. If ever I had grown sickfor a word or touch from the one soul to whom alone mine was open, Ithirsted for it then. The better part of my nature was crushed out, and flung away with you, Margret. I cried for it, --I wanted help to bea better, purer man. I need it now. And so, " he said, with a smilethat hurt her more than tears, "I came to my good angel, to tell her Ihad sinned and repented, that I had made humble plans for the future, and ask her---- God knows what I would have asked her then! She hadforgotten me, --she had another work to do!"

She wrung her hands with a helpless cry. Holmes went to the window:the dull waste of snow looked to him as hopeless and vague as his ownlife. 

"I have deserved it, " he muttered to himself. "It is too late to amend. "

Some light touch thrilled his arm. 

"Is it too late, Stephen?" whispered a childish voice. 

The strong man trembled, looking at the little dark figure standingnear him. 

"We were both wrong: I have been untrue, selfish. More than you. Stephen, help me to be a better girl; let us be friends again. "

She went back unconsciously to the old words of their quarrels longago. He drew back. 

"Do not mock me, " he gasped. "I suffer, Margret. Do not mock me withmore courtesy. "

"I do not; let us be friends again. "

She was crying like a penitent child; her face was turned away; love, pure and deep, was in her eyes. 

The red fire-light grew stronger; the clock hushed its noisy ticking tohear the story. Holmes's pale lip worked: what was this coming to him?His breast heaved, a dry heat panted in his veins, his deep eyesflashed fire. 

"If my little friend comes to me, " he said, in a smothered voice, "there is but one place for her, --her soul with my soul, her heart onmy heart. "--He opened his arms. --"She must rest her head here. Mylittle friend must be--my wife. "

She looked into the strong, haggard face, --a smile crept out on herown, arch and debonair like that of old time. 

"I am tired, Stephen, " she whispered, and softly laid her head down onhis breast. 

The red fire-light flashed into a glory of crimson through the room, about the two figures standing motionless there, --shimmered down intoawe-struck shadow: who heeded it? The old clock ticked away furiously, as if rejoicing that weary days were over for the pet and darling ofthe house: nothing else broke the silence. Without, the deep nightpaused, gray, impenetrable. Did it hope that far angel-voices wouldbreak its breathless hush, as once on the fields of Judea, to usher inChristmas morn? A hush, in air, and earth, and sky, of waiting hope, of a promised joy. Down there in the farm-window two human hearts hadgiven the joy a name; the hope throbbed into being; the hearts touchingeach other beat in a slow, full chord of love as pure in God's eyes asthe song the angels sang, and as sure a promise of the Christ that isto come. Forever, --not even death would part them; he knew that, holding her closer, looking down into her face. 

What a pale little face it was! Through the intensest heat of hispassion the sting touched him. Some instinct made her glance up athim, with a keen insight, seeing the morbid gloom that was the man'ssin, in his face. She lifted her head from his breast, and when hestooped to touch her lips, shook herself free, laughing carelessly. Alas, Stephen Holmes! you will have little time for morbid questioningsin those years to come: her cheerful work has begun: no moreself-devouring reveries: your very pauses of silent content and lovewill be rare and well-earned. No more tranced raptures forto-night, --let to-morrow bring what it would. 

"You do not seem to find your purer self altogether perfect?" shedemanded. "I think the pale skin hurts your artistic eye, or thefrozen eyes, --which is it?"

"They have thawed into brilliant fire, --something looks at mehalf-yielding and half-defiant, --you know that, you vain child! But, Margret, nothing can atone"----

He stopped. 

"Yes, stop. That is right, Stephen. Remorse grows maudlin when itgoes into words, " laughing again at his astounded look. 

He took her hand, --a dewy, healthy hand, --the very touch of it meantaction and life. 

"What if I say, then, " he said, earnestly, "that I do not find my angelperfect, be the fault mine or hers? The child Margret, with her suddentears, and laughter, and angry heats, is gone, --I killed her, Ithink, --gone long ago. I will not take in place of her this worn, paleghost, who wears clothes as chilly as if she came from the dead, andstands alone, as ghosts do. "

She stood a little way off, her great brown eyes flashing with tears. It was so strange a joy to find herself cared for, when she hadbelieved she was old and hard: the very idle jesting made her youth andhappiness real to her. Holmes saw that with his quick tact. He flungplayfully a crimson shawl that lay there about her white neck. 

"My wife must suffer her life to flush out in gleams of colour andlight: her cheeks must hint at a glow within, as yours do now. I willhave no hard angles, no pallor, no uncertain memory of pain in herlife: it shall be perpetual summer. "

He loosened her hair, and it rolled down about the bright, tearfulface, shining in the red fire-light like a mist of tawny gold. 

"I need warmth and freshness and light: my wife shall bring them to me. She shall be no strong-willed reformer, standing alone: a sovereignlady with kind words for the world, who gives her hand only to that manwhom she trusts, and keeps her heart and its secrets for me alone. "

She paid no heed to him other than by a deepening colour; the clock, however, grew tired of the long soliloquy, and broke in with anasthmatic warning as to the time of night. 

"There is midnight, " she said. "You shall go, now, StephenHolmes, --quick! before your sovereign lady fades, like Cinderella, intograyness and frozen eyes!"

When he was gone, she knelt down by her window, remembering that nightlong ago, --free to sob and weep out her joy, --very sure that her Masterhad not forgotten to hear even a woman's prayer, and to give her hertrue work, --very sure, --never to doubt again. There was a dark, sturdyfigure pacing up and down the road, that she did not see. It was therewhen the night was over, and morning began to dawn. Christmas morning!he remembered, --it was something to him now! Never again a homeless, solitary man! You would think the man weak, if I were to tell yon howthis word "home" had taken possession of him, --how he had planned outwork through the long night: success to come, but with his wife nearesthis heart, and the homely farm-house, and the old school-master in thecentre of the picture. Such an humble castle in the air! Christmasmorning was surely something to him. Yet, as the night passed, he wentback to the years that had been wasted, with an unavailing bitterness. He would not turn from the truth, that, with his strength of body andbrain to command happiness and growth, his life had been a failure. Ithink it was first on that night that the story of the despisedNazarene came to him with a new meaning, --One who came to gather upthese broken fragments of lives and save them with His own. Butvaguely, though: Christmas-day as yet was to him the day when love cameinto the world. He knew the meaning of that. So he watched with aneagerness new to him the day-breaking. He could see Margret's window, and a dim light in it: she would be awake, praying for him, no doubt. He pondered on that. Would you think Holmes weak, if he forsook thefaith of Fichte, sometime, led by a woman's hand? Think of the apostleof the positive philosophers, and say no more. He could see aflickering light at dawn crossing the hall: he remembered the oldschool-master's habit well, --calling "Happy Christmas" at every door:he meant to go down there for breakfast, as he used to do, imagininghow the old man would wring his hands, with a "Holloa! you're welcomehome, Stephen, boy!" and Mrs. Howth would bring out the jars ofpine-apple preserve which her sister sent her every year from the WestIndies. And then---- Never mind what then. Stephen Holmes was verymuch in love, and this Christmas-day had much to bring him. Yet it waswith a solemn shadow on his face that he watched the dawn, showing thathe grasped the awful meaning of this day that "brought love into theworld. " Through the clear, frosty night he could hear a low chime ofdistant bells shiver the air, hurrying faint and far to tell the gladtidings. He fancied that the dawn flushed warm to hear thestory, --that the very earth should rejoice in its frozen depths, if itwere true. If it were true!--if this passion in his heart were but apart of an all-embracing power, in whose clear depths the worldstruggled vainly!--if it were true that this Christ did come to makethat love clear to us! There would be some meaning then in the oldschool-master's joy, in the bells wakening the city yonder, in evenpoor Lois's thorough content in this day, --for it would be, he knew, athrice happy day to her. A strange story that of the Child coming intothe world, --simple! He thought of it, watching, through his cold, grayeyes, how all the fresh morning told it, --it was in the very air;thinking how its echo stole through the whole world, --how innumerablechildren's voices told it in eager laughter, --how even the lowest slavehalf-smiled, on waking, to think it was Christmas-day, the day thatChrist was born. He could hear from the church on the hill that theywere singing again the old song of the angels. Did this matter to him?Did not he care, with the new throb in his heart, who was born thisday? There is no smile on his face as he listens to the words, "Gloryto God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men;" itbends lower, --lower only. But in his soul-lit eyes there are warmtears, and on his worn face a sad and solemn joy. 

CHAPTER XI. 

I am going to end my story now. There are phases more vivid in thecommonplace lives of these men and women, I do not doubt: love, aspoignant as pain in its joy; crime, weak and foul and foolish, like allcrime; silent self-sacrifices: but I leave them for you to paint; youwill find colours enough in your own house and heart. 

As for Christmas-day, neither you nor I need try to do justice to thattheme: how the old school-master went about, bustling, his thin facequite hot with enthusiasm, and muttering, "God bless my soul!"--hardlyrecovered from the sudden delight of finding his old pupil waiting forhim when he went down in the morning; how he insisted on being led byhim, and nobody else, all day, and before half an hour had confided, under solemn pledges of secrecy, the great project of the book aboutBertrand de Born; how even easy Mrs. Howth found her hospitableVirginian blood in a glow at the unexpected breakfast-guest, --settlinginto more confident pleasure as dinner came on, for which success wassurer; how cold it was, outside; how Joel piled on great fires, andwent off on some mysterious errand, having "other chores to do thanidling and duddering;" how the day rose into a climax of perfection atdinner-time, to Mrs. Howth's mind, --the turkey being done to adelicious brown, the plum-pudding quivering like luscious jelly (aChristian dinner to-day, if we starve the rest of the year!). Even Dr. Knowles, who brought a great bouquet out for the school-master, was inan unwonted good-humour; and Mr. Holmes, of whom she stood a little indread, enjoyed it all with such zest, and was so attentive to them all, but Margret. They hardly spoke to each other all day; it quite frettedthe old lady; indeed, she gave the girl a good scolding about it out inthe pantry, until she was ready to cry. She had looked that way allday, however. 

Knowles was hurt deep enough when he saw Holmes, and suspected theworst, under all his good-humour. It was a bitter disappointment togive up the girl; for, beside the great work, he loved her in anuncouth fashion, and hated Holmes. He met her alone in the morning;but when he saw how pale she grew, expecting his outbreak, and how sheglanced timidly in at the room where Stephen was, he relented. Something in the wet brown eye perhaps recalled a forgotten dream ofhis boyhood; for he sighed sharply, and did not swear as he meant to. All he said was, that "women will be women, and that she had a worsejob on her hands than the House of Refuge, "--which she put down to theaccount of his ill-temper, and only laughed, and made him shake hands. 

Lois and her father came out in the old cart in high state across thebleak, snowy hills, quite aglow with all they had seen at thefarm-houses on the road. Margret had arranged a settle for the sickgirl by the kitchen-fire, but they all came out to speak to her. 

As for the dinner, it was the essence of all Christmas dinners: Dickenshimself, the priest of the genial day, would have been contented. Theold school-master and his wife had hearts big and warm enough to do theperpetual honours of a baronial castle; so you may know how the littleroom and the faces about the homely table glowed and brightened. EvenKnowles began to think that Holmes might not be so bad, after all, recalling the chicken in the mill, and, --"Well, it was better to thinkwell of all men, poor devils!"

I am sorry to say there was a short thunderstorm in the very midst ofthe dinner. Knowles and Mr. Howth, in their anxiety to keep off fromancient subjects of dispute, came, for a wonder, on modern politics, and of course there was a terrible collision, which made Mrs. Howthquite breathless: it was over in a minute, however, and it was hard totell which was the most repentant. Knowles, as you know, was a discipleof Garrison, and the old school-master was a States'-rights man, as youmight suppose from his antecedents, --suspected, indeed, of being acontributor to "DeBow's Review. " I may as well come out with the wholetruth, and acknowledge that at the present writing the old gentleman isthe very hottest Secessionist I know. If it hurts the type, write itdown a vice of blood, O printers of New England!

The dinner, perhaps, was fresher and heartier after that. Then Knowleswent back to town; and in the middle of the afternoon, as it grew dusk, Lois started, knowing how many would come into her little shanty in theevening to wish her Happy Christmas, although it was over. They piledup comforts and blankets in the cart, and she lay on them quite snugly, her scarred child's-face looking out from a great woollen hood Mrs. Howth gave her. Old Yare held Barney, with his hat in his hand, looking as if he deserved hanging, but very proud of the kindness theyall showed his girl. Holmes gave him some money for a Christmas gift, and he took it, eagerly enough. For some unexpressed reason, theystood a long time in the snow bidding Lois good-bye; and for the samereason, it may be, she was loath to go, looking at each one earnestlyas she laughed and grew red and pale answering them, kissing Mrs. Howth's hand when she gave it to her. When the cart did drive away, she watched them standing there until she was out of sight, and wavedher scrap of a handkerchief; and when the road turned down the hill, lay down and softly cried to herself. 

Now that they were alone they gathered close about the fire, while theday without grew gray and colder, --Margret in her old place by herfather's knee. Some dim instinct had troubled the old man all day; itdid now: whenever Margret spoke, he listened eagerly, and forgot toanswer sometimes, he was so lost in thought. At last he put his handon her head, and whispered, "What ails my little girl?" And then hislittle girl sobbed and cried, as she had been ready to do all day, andkissed his trembling hand, and went and hid on her mother's neck, andleft Stephen to say everything for her. And I think you and I hadbetter come away. 

It was quite dark before they had done talking, --quite dark; thewood-fire had charred down into a great bed of crimson; the tea stoodtill it grew cold, and no one drank it. 

The old man got up at last, and Holmes led him to the library, where hesmoked every evening. He held Maggie, as he called her, in his arms along time, and wrung Holmes's hand. "God bless you, Stephen!" hesaid, --"this is a very happy Christmas-day to me. " And yet, sittingalone, the tears ran over his wrinkled face as he smoked; and when hispipe went out, he did not know it, but sat motionless. Mrs. Howth, fairly confounded by the shock, went up-stairs, and stayed there a longtime. When she came down, the old lady's blue eyes were tenderer, ifthat were possible, and her face very pale. She went into the libraryand asked her husband if she didn't prophesy this two years ago, and hesaid she did, and after a while asked her if she remembered thebarbecue-night at Judge Clapp's thirty years ago. She blushed at that, and then went up and kissed him. She had heard Joel's horse clatteringup to the kitchen-door, so concluded she would go out and scold him. Under the circumstances it would be a relief. 

If Mrs. Howth's nerves had been weak, she might have supposed thatfree-born serving-man seized with sudden insanity, from the sight thatmet her, going into the kitchen. His dinner, set on the dresser, wasflung contemptuously on the ashes; a horrible cloud of burning greaserushed from a dirty pint-pot on the table, and before this Joel wascapering and snorting like some red-headed Hottentot before his fetich, occasionally sticking his fingers into the nauseous stuff, and snuffingit up as if it were roses. He was a church-member: he could NOT bedrunk? At the sight of her, he tried to regain the austere dignityusual to him when women were concerned, but lapsed into an occasionalgiggle, which spoiled the effect. 

"Where have you been, " she inquired, severely, "scouring the countrylike a heathen on this blessed day? And what is that you have burning?You're disgracing the house, and strangers in it. "

Joel's good-humour was proof against even this. 

"I've scoured to some purpose, then. Dun't tell the mester: it'llmuddle his brains t'-night. Wait till mornin'. Squire More'll be downhis-self t' 'xplain. "

He rubbed the greasy fingers into his hair, while Mrs. Howth's eyeswere fixed in dumb perplexity. 

"Ye see, "--slowly, determined to make it clear to her now andforever, --"it's water: no, t' a'n't water: it's troubled me an' MesterHowth some time in Poke Run, atop o' 't. I hed my suspicions, --so'dhe; lay low, though, frum all women-folks. So 's I tuk a bottle down, unbeknown, to Squire More, an' it's oil!"--jumping like a wildIndian, --"thank the Lord fur his marcies, it's oil!"

"Well, Joel, " she said, calmly, "very disagreeably smelling oil it is, I must say. "

"Good save the woman!" he broke out, sotto voce, "she's a born natural!Did ye never hear of a shaft? or millions o' gallons a day? It's betternor a California ranch, I tell ye. Mebbe, " charitably, "ye didn't knowPoke Run's the mester's?"

"I certainly do. But I do not see what this green ditch-water is tome. And I think, Joel, "----

"It's more to ye nor all yer States'-rights as I'm sick o' hearin' of. It's carpets, an' bunnets, an' slithers of railroad-stock, an' somecolour on Margot's cheeks, --ye 'ed best think o' that! That's what itis to ye! I'm goin' to take stock myself. I'm glad that gell 'll gitrest frum her mills an' her Houses o' Deviltry, --she's got gumption fura dozen women. "

He went on muttering, as he gathered up his pint-pot and bottle, --

"I'm goin' to send my Tim to college soon's the thing's in runnin'order. Lord! what a lawyer that boy'll make!"

Mrs. Howth's brain was still muddled. 

"You are better pleased than you were at Lincoln's election, " sheobserved, placidly. 

"Lincoln be darned!" he broke out, forgetting the teachings of Mr. Clinche. "Now, Mem, dun't ye muddle the mester's brain t'-night wi''t, I say. I'm goin' t' 'xperiment myself a bit. "

Which he did, accordingly, --shutting himself up in the smoke-house andburning the compound in divers sconces and Wide-Awake torches, givingup the entire night to his diabolical orgies. 

Mrs. Howth did not tell the master; for one reason: it took a long timefor so stupendous an idea to penetrate the good lady's brain; and foranother: her motherly heart was touched by another story than thisAladdin's lamp of Joel's wherein burned petroleum. She watched fromher window until she saw Holmes crossing the icy road: there was alittle bitterness, I confess, in the thought that he had taken herchild from her; but the prayer that rose for them both took her wholewoman's heart with it. 

The road was rough over the hills; the wind that struck Holmes's facebitingly keen: perhaps the life coming for him would be as cold astruggle, having not only poverty to conquer, but himself. But he is astrong man, --no stronger puts his foot down with cool, resolute tread;and to-night there is a thrill on his lips that never rested therebefore, --a kiss, dewy and warm. Something, some new belief, too, stirsin his heart, like a subtile atom of pure fire, that he hugsclosely, --his for all time. No poverty or death shall ever drive itaway. Perhaps he entertains an angel unaware. 

After that night Lois never left her little shanty. The days thatfollowed were like one long Christmas; for her poor neighbors, blackand white, had some plot among themselves, and worked zealously to makethem seem so to her. It was easy to make these last days happy for thesimple little soul who had always gathered up every fragment ofpleasure in her featureless life, and made much of it, and rejoicedover it. She grew bewildered, sometimes, lying on her wooden settle bythe fire; people lead always been friendly, taken care of her, but nowthey were eager in their kindness, as though the time were short. Shedid not understand the reason, at first; she did not want to die: yetif it hurt her, when it grew clear at last, no one knew it; it was nother way to speak of pain. Only, as she grew weaker, day by day, shebegan to set her house in order, as one might say, in a quaint, almostcomical fashion, giving away everything she owned, down to hertreasures of colored bottles and needle-books, mending her father'sclothes, and laying them out in her drawers; lastly, she had Barneybrought in from the country, and every day would creep to the window tosee him fed and chirrup to him, whereat the poor old beast would lookup with his dim eye, and try to neigh a feeble answer. Kitts used tocome every day to see her, though he never said much when he was there:he lugged his great copy of the Venus del Pardo along with him one day, and left it, thinking she would like to look at it; Knowles called ittrash, when he came. The Doctor came always in the morning; he toldher he would read to her one day, and did it always afterwards, puttingon his horn spectacles, and holding her old Bible close up to hisrugged, anxious face. He used to read most from the Gospel of St. John. She liked better to hear him than any of the others, even thanMargret, whose voice was so low and tender: something in the man'shalf-savage nature was akin to the child's. 

As the day drew near when she was to go, every pleasant trifle seemedto gather a deeper, solemn meaning. Jenny Balls came in one night, andold Mrs. Polston. 

"We thought you'd like to see her weddin'-dress, Lois, " said the oldwoman, taking off Jenny's cloak, "seein' as the weddin' was to hev beento-morrow, and was put off on 'count of you. "

Lois did like to see it; sat up, her face quite flushed to see hownicely it fitted, and stroked back Jenny's soft hair under the veil. And Jenny, being a warm-hearted little thing, broke into a sobbing fit, saying that it spoiled it all to have Lois gone. 

"Don't muss your veil, child, " said Mrs. Polston. 

But Jenny cried on, hiding her face in Lois's skinny hand, until SamPolston came in, when she grew quiet and shy. The poor deformed girllay watching them, as they talked. Very pretty Jenny looked, with herblue eyes and damp pink cheeks; and it was a manly, grave love in Sam'sface, when it turned to her. A different love from any she had known:better, she thought. It could not be helped; but it WAS better. 

After they were gone, she lay a long time quiet, with her hand over hereyes. Forgive her! she, too, was a woman. Ah, it may be there aremore wrongs that shall be righted yonder in the To-Morrow than are setdown in your theology!

And so it was, that, as she drew nearer to this To-Morrow, the brain ofthe girl grew clearer, --struggling, one would think, to shake offwhatever weight had been put on it by blood or vice or poverty, andbecome itself again. Perhaps, even in her cheerful, patient life, there had been hours when she had known the wrongs that had been doneher, known how cruelly the world had thwarted her; her very keeninsight into whatever was beautiful or helpful may have made her seeher own mischance, the blank she had drawn in life, more bitterly. Shedid not see it bitterly now. Death is honest; all things grew clear toher, going down into the valley of the shadow; so, wakening to theconsciousness of stifled powers and ungiven happiness, she saw that thefault was not hers, nor His who had appointed her lot; He had helpedher to bear it, --bearing worse himself. She did not say once, "I mighthave been, " but day by day, more surely, "I shall be. " There was not atear on the homely faces turning from her bed, not a tint of colour inthe flowers they brought her, not a shiver of light in the ashy sky, that did not make her more sure of that which was to come. More lovingshe grew, as she went away from them, the touch of her hand morepitiful, her voice more tender, if such a thing could be, --with a lookin her eyes never seen there before. Old Yare pointed it out to Mrs. Polston one day. 

"My girl's far off frum us, " he said, sobbing in the kitchen, --"mygirl's far off now. "

It was the last night of the year that she died. She was so muchbetter that they all were quite cheerful. Kitts went away as it grewdark, and she bade him wrap up his throat with such a motherlydogmatism that they all laughed at her; she, too, with the rest. 

"I'll make you a New-Year's call, " he said, going out; and she calledout that she should be sure to expect him. 

She seemed so strong that Holmes and Mrs. Polston and Margret, who werethere, were going home; besides, old Yare said, "I'd like to take careo' my girl alone to-night, ef yoh'd let me, "--for they had not trustedhim before. But Lois asked them not to go until the Old Year was over;so they waited down-stairs. 

The old man fell asleep, and it was near midnight when he wakened witha cold touch on his hand. 

"It's come, father!"

He started up with a cry, looking at the new smile in her eyes, grownstrangely still. 

"Call them all, quick, father!"

Whatever was the mystery of death that met her now, her heart clung tothe old love that had been true to her so long. 

He did not move. 

"Let me hev yoh to myself, Lo, 't th' last; yoh're all I hev; let mehev yoh 't th' last. "

It was a bitter disappointment, but she roused herself even then tosmile, and tell him yes, cheerfully. You call it a trifle, nothing? Itmay be; yet I think the angels looking down had tears in their eyes, when they saw the last trial of the unselfish, solitary heart, and keptfor her a different crown from his who conquers a city. 

The fire-light grew warmer and redder; her eyes followed it, as if allthat had been bright and kindly in her life were coming back in it. She put her hand on her father, trying vainly to smooth his gray hair. The old man's heart smote him for something, for his sobs grew louder, and he left her a moment; then she saw them all, faces very dear to hereven then. She laughed and nodded to them all in the old childish way;then her lips moved. "It's come right!" she tried to say; but the weakvoice would never speak again on earth. 

"It's the turn o' the night, " said Mrs. Polston, solemnly; "lift herhead; the Old Year's 'goin' out. "

Margret lifted her head, and held it on her breast. She could hearcries and sobs; the faces, white now, and wet, pressed nearer, yetfading slowly: it was the Old Year going out, the worn-out year of herlife. Holmes opened the window: the cold night-wind rushed in, bearingwith it snatches of broken harmony: some idle musician down in thecity, playing fragments of some old, sweet air, heavy with love andregret. It may have been chance: yet, let us think it was not chance;let us believe that He, who had made the world warm and happy for her, chose that this best voice of all should bid her good-bye at the last. 

So the Old Year went out in that music. The dull eyes, loving to theend, wandered vaguely as the sounds died away, as if losingsomething, --losing all, suddenly. She sighed as the clock struck, andthen a strange calm, unknown before, stole over her face; her eyesflashed open with a living joy. Margret stooped to close them, kissingthe cold lids; and Tiger, who had climbed upon the bed, whined andcrept down. 

"It is the New Year, " said Holmes, bending his head. 

The cripple was dead; but LOIS, free, loving, and beloved, trembledfrom her prison to her Master's side in the To-Morrow. 

I can show you her grave out there in the hills, --a short, stuntedgrave, like a child's. No one goes there, although there are manyfiresides where they speak of "Lois" softly, as of something holy anddear: but they think of her always as not there; as gone home; even oldYare looks up, when he talks of "my girl. " Yet, knowing that nothingin God's just universe is lost, or fails to meet the late fulfilment ofits hope, I like to think of her poor body lying there: I like tobelieve that the great mother was glad to receive the form that wantand crime of men had thwarted, --took her uncouth child home again, thathad been so cruelly wronged, --folded it in her warm bosom with tender, palpitating love. 

It pleased me in the winter months to think that the worn-out limbs, the old scarred face of Lois rested, slept: crumbled into fresh atoms, woke at last with a strange sentience, and, when God smiled permissionthrough the summer sun, flashed forth in a wild ecstasy of the truebeauty that she loved so well. In no questioning, sad pallor of sombreleaves or gray lichens: throbbed out rather in answering crimsons, inlilies, white, exultant in a chordant life!

Yet, more than this: I strive to grope, with dull, earthy sense, at herfreed life in that earnest land where souls forget to hunger or tohope, and learn to be. And so thinking, the certainty of her aim andwork and love yonder comes with a new, vital reality, beside which thestory of the yet living men and women of whom I have told you growsvague and incomplete, like unguessed riddles. I have no key to solvethem with, --no right to solve them. 

My story is but a mere groping hint? It lacks determined truth, acertain yea and nay? It has no conduit of God's justice running throughit, awarding apparent good and ill? I know: it is a story of To-Day. The Old Year is on us yet. Poor old Knowles will tell you it is a darkday; bewildered at the inexplicable failure of the cause for which hisold blood ran like water that dull morning at Ball's Bluff. He doubtseverything in the bitterness of wasted effort; doubts sometimes, even, if the very flag he fights for, be not the symbol of a giganticselfishness: if the Wrong he calls his enemy, have not caught a certaintruth to give it strength. A dark day, he tells you: that the air isfilled with the cry of the slave, and of nations going down intodarkness, their message untold, their work undone: that now, aseighteen centuries ago, the Helper stands unwelcome in the world; thatyour own heart, as well as the great humanity, asks an unrenderedjustice. Does he utter all the problems of To-Day? Vandyke, standinghigher, perhaps, or, at any rate, born with hopefuller brain, wouldshow you how, by the very instant peril of the hour, is lifted clearerinto view the eternal prophecy of coming content: could tell you thatthe unquiet earth, and the unanswering heaven are instinct with it:that the ungranted prayer of your own life should teach it to you: thatin that Book wherein God has not scorned to write the history ofAmerica, he finds the quiet surety that the rescue of the world is nearat hand. 

Holmes, like most men who make destiny, does not pause in his cool, slow work for their prophecy or lamentation. "Such men will mould theage, " old Knowles says, drearily, for he does not like Holmes: followshim unwillingly, even knowing him nearer the truth than he. "Born formastership, as I told you long ago: they strike the blow, while----. I'm tired of theorists, exponents of the abstract right: your Hamlets, and your Sewards, that let occasion slip until circumstance or--mobsdrift them as they will. "

But Knowles's growls are unheeded, as usual. 

What is this To-Day to Margret? She has no prophetic insight, caresfor none, I am afraid: the common things of every-day wear their oldfaces to her, dear and real. Her haste is too eager to allay the painabout her, her husband's touch too strong and tender, the Master besideher too actual a presence, for her to waste her life in visions. Something of Lois's live, universal sympathy has come into her narrow, intenser nature; through its one love, it may be. What is To-Morrowuntil it comes? This moment the evening air thrills with a purple ofwhich no painter as yet has caught the tint, no poet the meaning; nosilent face passes her on the street on which a human voice might nothave charm to call out love and power: the Helper yet waits near her. Here is work, life: the Old Year you despise holds beauty, pain, content yet unmastered: let us leave Margret to master them. 

It does not satisfy you? Child-souls, you tell me, like that of Lois, may find it enough to hold no past and no future, to accept the work ofeach moment, and think it no wrong to drink every drop of its beautyand joy: we, who are wiser, laugh at them. It may be: yet I say untoyou, their angels only do always behold the face of our Father in theNew Year.