University of Virginia Library

The Pride of Moses Grant.

SHAKSPEARE (Much ado about Nothing).

1. I.

IT was a wild, wet December night, full of tempest.
Outside the red wooden house in the hollow, where
Moses Grant had lived all his respectable life, the
winds blew with an eerie sound, like a lost spirit's
wail, and the snow fell steadily, folding the earth in
great white shrouds.

Moses Grant and his wife sat before the fire. A
cheerful glow came out from the blazing logs; a mug
of cider was toasting unheeded on the hearth, and a
few apples stood untouched on the stand between
them. Every thing in this peaceful family sitting-room
wore a snug and comfortable look, from the
neat bed standing in a recess in the wall, with homemade
blue woolen spread and snowy linen, to the
brightly-polished powter plates upon the dresser and
the unsoiled sand on the white floor.

Outside, through the snow and the storm, tottered
a single female figure—wearily, painfully, as if every
step must be her last. Forsaken of God and man, the
very elements seemed to do battle with her—the winds
blew her feeble steps backward—the snow piled up
higher and higher drifts before her feet, and yet those
feeble feet tottered on—over the drifts, against the
wind—steadily toward the red house in the hollow.

There was a strange shadow on the face of that meek
woman, Moses Grant's wife. Her knitting had fallen
from her busy fingers, her foot tapped the floor with a
restless beat, and at last, as if she could endure the
stillness no longer, she arose and began moving hurriedly
about the room, giving a touch here and there
to her domestic arrangements, and now and then going
stealthily to the window to look forth into the night.

“Oh!” she cried, in a low voice, “God have mercy
—this pitiless, pitiless storm!”

“You are thinking of Margaret,” said the slow, firm
tones of Moses Grant.

The woman started, and dropped the candlestick she
held in her confusion. She turned ghastly pale, and
grasped the dresser, near which she stood, for support.
If a grave had opened at her very feet she would have
been no more overwhelmed with wonder. For many
months in that household that name—Margaret—had
been dead and buried—a forbidden sound. Perhaps
—her eyes gleamed with a wild hope, and the color
came back to her cheeks—perhaps her husband had
relented; perhaps he would forgive their child—their
Margaret. She went toward him, that meek woman,
and, kneeling at his feet, lifted up her pleading voice.

“Surely, father, I may speak of her, now you have
called her name. It may be you are willing to forgive
her—to let her come back again. Five-and-twenty
years I have walked patiently by your side; I have
tried to be a help-meet to you. God has given us seven
children, and we have made their graves—all but
one—behind the church on the hill-top. And now
she is gone—the last—my one child—Margaret. Oh,
husband, will you forgive her? Will you let her come

back? What would even shame be to the loss of her?
And perhaps she has not sinned as we have thought.
She was a good child always, our Margaret. She
loved the church and the Bible, and you used to say
no one else learned their lessons in the catechism so
well as she. We are getting old, father—may I have
my girl back again?”

The old man's face had worked convulsively while
she poured forth her pleading prayer, but it settled
back now into stony, immovable calm. He looked
sternly at the woman crouching at his knees, as if she,
too, had some share in Margaret's sin. He said, in
his cold, resolved tones,

“It is of no use. If we would take the child back
we do not even know where to seek her. She is dead
to us, now and forever. Hear me, Mary: if she lay
at this moment outside that door, with this storm falling
on her bare, unsheltered head, I would not open it
one inch to let her in. She has made her bed; she
shall lie in it. We have lived here many years—I,
and my father, and my father's father—elders, one after
another, in the church—and when did disgrace ever
come to our humble, honest name, till she brought it?
She chose that bad young man and his unholy love,
and father and mother she has none. Hear me, Mary;
we are childless. Let her name never pass your lips
or mine.”

The woman rose and groped blindly to her chair.
She sat there with half-closed eyes, swaying herself to
and fro, muttering now and then, “Oh, this pitiless
storm!”

Outside, the figure tottered on.

Suddenly there was a cry borne upon the blast—a

wild, wailing human cry, rising high above the wind,
piercing into the red house, piercing Moses Grant's
firm, stony heart, as he sat before the fire. A weight
seemed to fall helplessly against the outside door, and
then there was silence.

The mother sprang up and mechanically threw open
the door, and the snow tumbled in, and the wailing
wind rushed in. What was it lying there, stiff and
helpless, upon the stone step, lifting up, whiter than
the snow, its ghastly human face? The old man
sprang to his wife's side. He had overrated his own
stoicism. He shook her arm, almost harshly.

“What are you thinking of, Mary?” he cried, passionately;
“have you no mother's heart? will you let
her die there before your eyes—our child, Margaret?”

He caught the prostrate figure in his arms—to his
breast; he carried her in, to the warmth, the light, the
father's house whence she had wandered; and then
the cold, iron man wept over her like a helpless child;
while the mother, fully herself now, worked with wild
energy, collecting and applying restoratives, chafing
the thin hands and the numb, half-frozen feet.

Her efforts were successful in so far that the girl, for
she was not more than eighteen, opened her eyes and
came back to life with a gasping shudder. She did
not seem quite restored, however, to the full use of
her faculties. She spoke by snatches, in a strange,
wandering fashion.

“I thought I was dead,” she said, “but I'm not.
This is home, isn't it? and there's father! What do
you cry so for, father? You never used to. I never
saw you do so before. Oh! I know; you are crying
about poor Margaret. You think, now, that she

wasn't so bad, after all. You are glad she has come
home.”

“Margaret,” broke in her mother's voice, “were
you deceived? Did you think you were married to
that man—that Gilbert Trumbull?”

It was pitiful to see such fierce passion in one so
gentle as Margaret Grant, who, from childhood, had
never known a thought save of loving submission to
her parents' will, until that stronger love came and
compelled her obedience in another direction. The
blood mantled her pale cheek, and burned there in
one round red spot. She rose up in the bed, and
shrieked out, with her eyes gleaming, her frame trembling,

“You shall not, I say you shall not speak his name
—you who hate him so. You shall not drive me into
betraying his secret. Turn me out again into the
storm, if you will. I can die there as well as here;
but you shall not make me answer your questions.”

“Hush, darling, darling, darling,” murmured Mary
Grant; the mother-love, the mother-tenderness, stronger
than life, choking in her voice, thrilling in her touch,
raining in tears from her eyes: “you shall not tell me
if you do not wish to. Be satisfied. You shall never
go out into the cold world again; you shall never suffer
any more.”

And Moses Grant wept on, the while, his proud,
stony heart melted, for the time, quite into childishness;
saying nothing, only looking now and then at
the girl whom his anger had driven forth, and who
had come back to him—alas! he knew it now, to die.

That night a babe was born in the red house in the

hollow. She came in the storm: was it a token of the
life that awaited her? Outside were the snow, the
darkness, the pitiless, wailing blast; within, only the
girl, so young, so fair even in her ruin, and the two
old people, tearless now and silent, keeping breathless
watch over their one child.

The baby came into the world with a wail. Mary
Grant brought forth from an old bureau, where they
had lain for almost eighteen years, the tiny garments,
soft and delicate in fabric, antique and simple in make,
which her own fingers had fashioned, joyfully, hopefully,
for her youngest-born, Margaret; and in them
she robed Margaret's child.

But death was written on the young mother's brow,
and the parents could not choose but read. She drew
her little one to her arms, and, holding her on her bosom,
she blessed her.

“She shall be called Elinor Trumbull, after the
mother of her father.” When she had said these
words, in a firm, quiet tone of command, she seemed
to sink in unconsciousness. After a time she roused
herself with wild energy.

“Let no one defraud my child of her name,” she
cried out. “It is hers—she has a right to it. Father,
mother, promise me that you will call her by this
name—Elinor Trumbull?”

The two old people, with one consent, faltered the
required promise, and then she said, in a humble tone,

“Before I die, forgive me, my parents. God knows
I have loved you, in spite of all I have done to make
you suffer. Tell me that you forgive me.”

They forgave her without reproach or question.
They blessed her with tender tears, and, sitting at her

bed's head, they watched her as she sank again into a
sort of drowse, still holding her babe on her breast.
After that she never opened her eyes, but she murmured
dreamily of green fields and fragrant blossoms,
and the babblings of summer brooks, blent now and
then with loving words or tender memories about her
baby's father. Then all was very still, and they
thought her sleeping; but somehow, I know not how,
unseen and silently, from that calm her soul stole forth,
and was translated to the great endless calm lying beyond.
Margaret was dead!

For the next two days the storm raged with unabated
violence. The snow, swept by the fierce wind
from the mountain tops, was piled high in the valleys,
and Moses Grant and his wife were all alone with their
dead child and the living babe she had left them. In
the interim much of his old sternness had come back
to the elder's heart, the self-command and reticence to
his outward life. I think he remembered his promise,
that the little one should be called by the name of her
father's family, with a kind of grim satisfaction in
keeping with the silent pride of his character. The
village where he lived was in the western part of Connecticut,
under the shadows of the mountains, and
Trumbull was an old and proud name in the far eastern
portion. Gilbert Trumbull had won Margaret
Grant's love during a shooting season among the hills,
and, a few months after he left Mayfield, driven forth
by her father's harshness and scorn, she had followed
him. Trumbull was a name any woman might be
proud to wear worthily, and Moses Grant was well resolved
the world should never know, through him, that
it did not legitimately belong to his infant grandchild.

For two days the elements did battle, but the third
morning of Elinor Trumbull's life rose calm, and
bright, and fair. Early in the day Moses Grant went
forth to seek the pastor of the old Presbyterian church,
in which he had been an elder for so many years, and
arrange for his daughter's burial.

That afternoon, where the snow had been scooped
away behind the church on the hill-top, they laid the
elder's last child, beside her six brothers and sisters,
in her narrow grave; and she, the youngest, the fairest,
slept best, perhaps, of all, for the calm is most precious
that comes after the wildest storms.

Very dear was she to the gray-haired pastor who
had baptized her in infancy, and had always accounted
her the gentlest and sweetest among the lambs of
his flock—very dear to every heart among the many
which beat around her grave that winter day. But
they asked few questions concerning her death or her
life. She had been the elder's favorite child, they all
knew, but no one had ever heard him mention her
name since the summer night when she went away
from Mayfield—no one knew whether alone or in company.
So they respected the old man's sorrow and
silence.

It was not many months before over Margaret's
grave there rose a simple head-stone, but no one's curiosity
was gratified by the inscription. It only said,

Margaret—Aged Eighteen Years.

The child was duly christened. The country folk
understood what an old and respectable name she bore;
and at length the wonder died away, and she was left
to grow up in the quiet stillness of the old red house.

Indeed, very few were brought into any near connection
with her, for Moses Grant and his wife neither
made nor received any visits now. Her only regular
education was imparted by her grandparents, who
taught her the three needfuls of an old-fashioned New
England woman—to read, and write, and cipher. In
addition, when she grew older, Parson Blake gave her
a few books and a chance lesson now and then; and
she learned early to form shrewd, self-reliant theories
and opinions, which no one mistrusted, however, that
she possessed.

Mary Grant often remarked that the little Elinor
was her mother's own child. She had the same fair
hair; the same clear blue eyes; the same slight figure;
but beyond these was a difference rather to be felt than
explained. About her mouth was a graver, more
saint-like smile. A tenderer light shone in her blue
eyes, and her voice did not ring out with quite such
joyous music as made Margaret's tones in her early
years such a cheery sound to hear. Elinor's were lower,
quieter—she spoke more slowly, as if, even in childhood,
to address others, she had to come out of an inner
world where she oftenest dwelt—the world of
thought and of dreams. Gentle, quiet child as she
was, her name, her stately name, borne once by the
proudest belle in Norwich, seemed not unsuited to the
simple dignity of her nature.

Sunday after Sunday she sat by Moses Grant's side,
in the old-fashioned Presbyterian church, bowing her
graceful head through the long prayers, lifting up her
clear voice to join in the well-known hymns. Sunday
after Sunday—first as child, then as maiden; and the
old pastor watched her lovingly—lovingly for her own

sake—lovingly for the sake of a grave under the willow
trees; and all the while, Sunday after Sunday, his
own hair grew whiter and his step more feeble.

2. II.

Parson Blake was dead. His life, his kindly life,
seventy summers and no winter, was ended. In the
little church-yard on the hill-top they laid him gently
and reverently to his long sleep—the little church-yard
where he had faltered the last prayer over so
many of his flock; where, sixteen years before, he had
stood tearfully beside the bier of Margaret Grant.

Wife and children he had none. He had lived alone
all his blameless life, and his people had been to him
instead of kindred. Like his children they all mourned
for him. Not a heart beat in Mayfield to which he
was not dear—not an eye but was dim with tears at
the pastor's burial. He had married the old folk, he
had baptized their children, he had buried their dead,
and now he was gone to receive the reward of his labors.
More than forty years had he been in and out
before them, and broken bread in their midst. Was
it strange that his death left a great void, which never,
thereafter, could be filled?

It was with saddened mien the elders met together
to consult on the choice of his successor. No one
could ever be to them in his stead, and perhaps it
could hardly be expected of human nature that they
should award due credit to the honest endeavors of a
younger man. Thus Walter Fairfield came to them
under a disadvantage. They were kind-hearted people

naturally, but the new pastor must stand in a place
which none but the dead could fill worthily to their
minds; and, moreover, he was a young man, just fresh
from his studies, not more than twenty-five.

On the first morning after his installation, Elder
Moses Grant called Elinor to his side, and charged her
to be ready in season for church—the young man
wouldn't be Parson Blake, to be sure, but they must
show his preaching due respect.

Elinor had grown, at sixteen, into a tall, graceful
girl, promoted to a seat in the village choir now, and
remarkable to all eyes but the accustomed ones of her
grandparents for her rare beauty.

There had never been much outward demonstration
of tenderness from Moses Grant to this girl, the child
of shame, the seal of disgrace, as he sometimes called
her in his accusing thoughts; and yet, almost unknown
to himself, he did love her tenderly. Much of
the love which had been Margaret's had come out of
her grave and folded itself round her child, though in
all her life the girl could never remember that he had
kissed her or lifted her upon his knee.

One night his wife, alarmed for Elinor's health during
the prevalence of an epidemic in the quiet town,
had called him to look upon her while she slept. It
was wonderful, the resemblance which she bore in her
slumbers to her dead mother. Waking, the play of
her features, the different expression of her eyes, was
all her own; but sleeping, he could almost have
thought Margaret was before him—Margaret, whom
he loved more in death than in life, because he forgave
her in dying.

Oh! how often the wave of death comes like a blessed

baptismal, washing away all memories of wrong and
strife—a new birth, making those born again into the
world of spirits seem to us fair, and pure, and blameless
as the infant just laid for the first time upon its
mother's loving bosom.

Many times after that night Moses Grant, hard, stern
man as he was, stole into his grandchild's room and
watched her as she slept, thinking tender, softened
thoughts of her dead young mother—always a girl,
young and fair, in the old man's memory—and bitter,
scornful, murderous thoughts, which, in a nature less
restrained by rules of outward holiness, would have
shaped themselves into curses on that Gilbert Trumbull,
hated with an unforgiving, unresting hatred all
these years.

It needs not to be told with what ceaseless, caressing
tenderness Mary Grant loved her grandchild; and yet,
woman-like, Elinor, dear as both were to her, loved
most the old man, whose calm reserve seemed kindred
with her own quiet, deep inherited nature. Going up
the hill to church on this first morning of the new pastor's
ministry, she walked by her grandfather's side,
feeling with most tender sympathy the trial it would
be to him to see a new face in the old pulpit.

When the hymn was sung that morning, Walter
Fairfield, sitting back in his pulpit, screened by the
high desk, leaning his head on his hands, was striving
to compose his thoughts for his first sermon among his
first parishioners.

He heard, as one in a dream, above and apart from
all other tones, one clear, rich soprano voice, flooding
the old-fashioned church with its melody. It strengthened
him; bore up his soul to the very gates of heaven;

and yet he scarcely knew, scarcely thought, whether
the voice was mortal or angelic. He was contented
to accept unquestioningly the help it brought. Elinor
Trumbull little knew what influence her singing
had on the sermon which followed.

It was such a discourse as had never before electrified
the simple villagers of Mayfield—full of earnest
thought, glowing with imagery, uttered with an eloquence
to which they were strangers. To Elinor
Trumbull it was a revelation. Full of sound religious
truth though it was, its unwonted grace of diction carried
her thoughts out—out from the quiet village
among the mountains into the world where such polish
must have been acquired—the gay, fascinating, far-off
world, beaming upon her fancy in such wondrous
hues. With her clear eyes fixed on the speaker, or
now and then veiled modestly under their fringing
lashes, unquiet, tumultuous thoughts were surging
through her heart—thoughts of the wonders of nature
and the wonders of art—brave men and beautiful
women, and a full, strong existence, tasking all her
capacities, quickening every pulse of her being, on
which she longed to enter; going out from the peace,
the quiet, the shadows of the mountains into the broad
plain, where were bugles and trumpets calling strong
souls onward to victory in the wonderful battle of
life.

The young clergyman, absorbed in his subject, did
not perceive her breathless interest—did not even consciously
see her face, so remarkable among all others
there for its patrician beauty; but yet he carried away
with him that day a conception of loveliness more perfect
than had ever dawned on him before—a sweet

face which seemed to smile on him from the clouds, to
meet him at every point of vision.

When the services were over, Walter Fairfield walked,
like one overtasked and weary, quietly out of the
church, and took the path leading through the field to
his simple parsonage. A kindly, cordial smile was on
his face, but he spoke to no one. The congregation
allowed him to pass in respectful silence, not ill-pleased
with the opportunity of discussing among themselves
the wonderful sermon to which they had listened.
Elinor Trumbull was faint and weak. The unwonted
excitement had been too much for her delicate organization,
and, telling her grandparents that she was not
well, she stole quietly away and went home.

Moses Grant came from church in the afternoon,
disposed to say but little of the young clergyman. He
had spoken with him after church—he would visit
them that week—it seemed that the Spirit of the Lord
was with him, but they must wait and see.

It was Wednesday afternoon when Elinor Trumbull,
busy among the stand of house-plants which were
her chief winter amusement, saw, from the kitchen window,
a figure coming down the hill. Her quick eye
recognized at once the new minister, and her girlish
heart thrilled with its first flutter of womanly vanity.
Shyly she gathered from her monthly-rose-bush a bud
just bursting into crimson bloom, and placed it in her
bosom. Then, stealing to the little looking-glass, she
smoothed down her already faultlessly smooth hair,
hoping, with pretty womanly self-consciousness, that
the two old people by the hearth would not notice her
unusual anxiety about her appearance. Then she said,
in her quiet, respectful voice,

“Hadn't I better light the fire in the parlor, grandfather?
I see the new minister is coming down the
hill.”

The room which she entered, in accordance with her
grandfather's “Certainly — make haste, child!” was
simply, even humbly furnished, and yet there had been
imparted to it an air of feminine grace and refinement
during the last two years, since it had been Elinor's
especial charge. Every thing was faultlessly neat.
Snowy muslin curtains draped the windows; the armchairs
were covered with crimson patch, and two corresponding
footstools—Elinor's own workmanship—
stood conveniently before them. A few books were
strewn upon the table—Parson Blake's gift to Elinor
—a Shakespeare, and the works of Pope and Milton, in
handsome bindings. Not a speck of dust was visible,
and yet Elinor, after lighting the fire, fidgeted nervously
with her feather-brush from chair to table, and
then, seized with a sudden impulse, sat down and appeared
diligently engaged in reading.

That was an afternoon of new and exquisite delight
in the girl's quiet life. Walter Fairfield possessed the
rare gift of clothing lofty thoughts in simple words,
and making himself alike agreeable to old and young.
To him also came, that winter day, a new revelation.
He recognized in Elinor's musical voice the clear tones
which had strengthened him for his Sabbath duties—
in her young, innocent face the vision he had carried
away from church on the Sabbath morning as a new
and superior type of loveliness. He had seen beautiful
women before, arrayed in the manifold charms of
style and fashion, but beside the unconscious grace of
Elinor Trumbull they seemed to him like flaunting

peonies contrasted with the fresh rose-bud she wore in
her bosom.

There was something dearer in Elinor's beauty than
the untroubled azure of her eyes, the golden flow of
her hair, the clear tints of her complexion—a soul
looking forth from the young wistful face, womanly,
pure, strong, and true.

And she, with her imaginative, dreamy nature, her
haunting visions of a perfect life, a refined and extended
culture shut out from her reach by mountains of
circumstances and destiny, listened to the new-comer's
voice, making music through all the avenues of her
being, and was content.

That night, when the supper was over—the supper
prefaced by a blessing, the first one spoken in that
house by Walter Fairfield, and whose prophecy to that
household of good or ill only the after years could
unseal — the simple supper which Elinor had made
beautiful by the exquisite neatness and delicacy of her
arrangement—when it was over, and the new minister
had taken his departure, the elder sat alone in the
best room, absorbed in thought; while his wife and
her granddaughter were busy in the kitchen, clearing
away the fragments and washing up the painted china.

Moses Grant was growing old. His hair was very
white; and trouble, more than years, had dug deep
furrows in his stern face. The habit was growing on
him, as it does on so many old men, of talking to himself.
As he sat there, leaning his head back in his
chair, and looking thoughtfully into the fire, he murmured,

“Well, after all, the young man does seem full of
the Spirit of the Lord. Yes, I really think the Lord

is with him. But he can never be what Parson Blake
was to Mary and me. He didn't marry us; he didn't
bury our seven children; he didn't know and love
Margaret. We are too old now for him to care for us
—too old to make new ties—and yet, there's Elinor.
The child needs a pastor's care. He will take an interest
in her. I believe he does already: she's a good
child. Through her, he may get attached to us—who
knows? It's a blessed thing when folk can love their
minister, and be loved back again, as in Parson Blake's
time. And then this young man will be getting married
one of these days. He'll be sure to marry a good
woman, and she'll be a nice friend for Elinor when
Mary and I are laid in the church-yard, with our seven
children gone before. Yes, they'll be good friends for
the child, and she'll need them then. Elinor!” he
called, in a louder tone, and the girl came into the old
parlor, and sat down on a stool in the firelight.

“I like this young man, Elinor. He isn't Parson
Blake, to be sure; but I think he has the Spirit of
God in his heart, and there's no reason why you
shouldn't like him as well as another. You have not
the memories of so many years to bind you to the
dead. He told me this afternoon that he should start
a Bible-class, and I want you to join it, and see if you
can't keep up your reputation as Parson Blake's best
scholar.”

“Very well, grandpa;” and then the girl sat there
in the silence, while her fancy made glowing pictures
in the embers, out of which looked the dark, kindly
eyes of the new minister. That she could ever be
any thing to him never entered her dreams; she only
hoped that, ignorant girl as she was, she might find

such favor in his eyes that he would impart to her
some of his wonderful knowledge; lend her books,
perhaps, and now and then condescend to talk to her.

The next Sunday she joined his Bible-class; and
that day, and for many quiet Sabbath-days thereafter,
the clear tones of her singing renewed his strength,
and carried his soul heavenward; and the approving
light of her expressive eyes, never by any chance turned
away from their steady gaze, filled him with calm,
and yet not always calm, delight.

3. III.

The slow, reluctant feet of the New England spring
came over the mountains. Her blue eyes shone over
hill and meadow-land through many tears, and in her
footprints sprang up crocuses and violets, to live their
little day, and die their balmy death. The plowman
turned up the rich, loamy soil of the valleys, whistling
at his task. The larch hung forth her fragrant blossoms,
the laburnum dropped her long sprays of gold.
The old lilac-bushes, planted in Moses Grant's front
yard when Margaret was a baby, put on once more
their liveries of green, and coquettishly tossed up their
purple blossoms, that the winds might rifle their perfume.

Walter Fairfield came very often, in these days, to
the elder's house. He had undertaken to teach Elinor
botany, and the study involved long, delightful walks
over the hills. The old folks were well content that
their grandchild should acquire a little of the learning
they held in sincere reverence, but which they would

never have sent her out into the world to obtain. She
seemed to them so mere a child still, that they never
thought of the danger that she might learn another
lesson — that while she analyzed the blossoms that
skirted hillside and brookside her own heart might
be unfolding itself, petal by petal, even to the golden
centre, whereon was written “love.”

And Elinor was, like them, blissfully unconscious.
She had never read a novel in her life. No one had
ever talked to her of love or marriage. How should
she, at sixteen, be able to translate aright the story
which Walter Fairfield delighted to read in her blushes,
her downcast eyes, to hear in her tremulous tones which
replied to his questionings?

He was an honorable man, and he loved her with
an honorable man's deathless love — a man's love,
full of passion, stronger than life, and yet he shrank
from telling her so—from awaking her heart from its
maidenly repose—changing sweet hope into certainty
—binding her by vows of betrothal.

The time when he could keep silence no longer
came to him, as it does to most men, unexpectedly.
They had been taking a long walk. The sun had
scarcely set, but a young June moon was drifting, like
a tiny, glittering cloud, up the blue sky, and they stood
watching it together. At last Elinor turned her wet
face toward him. He had never seen tears in her eyes
before.

“I have been thinking,” she said, “how lonely my
life used to be before you came. What mysterious
fancies, which I had none to explain, haunted me at
twilight and moonrise, and how your coming changed
all; and you found time to talk with me, and understand

all my thoughts; and then, how this, too, must
end some day, and you will be busy with other happiness,
and I shall be all alone.”

Then the words—the wild, loving, yet reverent
words—gushed in a tide from his full heart, and overflowed
his lips. The story was told—the old, evernew
story—old as our first parents, new as a new day.
They loved one another. The veil was lifted from
Elinor's heart, and she knew that, with all the quiet
strength of her quiet nature, she loved Walter Fairfield.
She was silent from very happiness.

As her lover drew her close to his side, and pressed
his first kiss on her pure lips, he said, fervently,

“Elinor, you are all I ever asked—good, gifted,
beautiful. You fulfill my every want. God in heaven
bless you—the crown, the glory of my life, whom
He has given me.”

4. IV.

The next morning Elinor was with her grandparents
in the little summer parlor. When the elder had read
a chapter in the Bible, as was his wont, and finished
his accustomed prayer, she said, timidly,

“Dear grandpa, I would like to speak to you a moment.”

She had settled it with her lover that she should be
the first to communicate to the grave old man the news
of her betrothal. This was her own desire. She had
thought it would be best so. She feared nothing more
than that he might object to her extreme youth, and
she hoped much from the strong esteem in which she
knew he held their young minister.

Falteringly she told her story, and the old man listened
in silence.

He did not answer her for some moments, but he
was evidently deeply moved. Elinor was frightened
at the convulsive workings of his face, and the tears
that coursed like rain down her grandmother's withered
cheeks. At length he spoke.

“God forgive me, I have done great wrong. I never
thought of this. You were so young. Elinor, you
can not marry this man. No, not to save your own
life. Do you hear? I forbid it. It shall not be.”

Elinor rose and stood before him. She was not
Margaret's child merely—the old Trumbull blood fired
her glance. Her face was as resolute, her tone as firm
as Moses Grant's own.

“Grandfather,” she said, “I love Walter Fairfield
—he loves me. We are more than life to each other,
and this question shall not be decided so. If you will
separate us, I must know the reason, or, God helping
me, I will go and pray him on my bended knees to
take me away from you and make me his wife.”

There was no pity in the elder's face now for the
young creature who had dared to resist his decree, to
rise up in the might of her love and oppose him. His
face grew livid with rage.

“You must know my secret, then, young madam,”
he said, in the fierce tones of passion. “Well, mark
it: you have no right even to the name you bear.
Your mother, my child though she was, was not your
father's wife. Don't you think Walter Fairfield, a
minister of the Gospel, would be proud to marry you
in disgrace?”

But the last taunting question fell on ears that could

not listen. With every faculty intensely aroused, she
had heard the fatal truth, scorching her for the first
time with its blight, and then she heard no more.
Gradually she had sunk lower and lower at the old
man's feet, until now she lay upon the floor, her white,
death-like face cold as her young mother's under the
June roses.

“Go into the kitchen, father,” said Mary Grant,
“for it'll throw her back again into her swoon to see
you when she comes to.”

The elder obeyed, and then his wife quietly busied
herself in bringing back consciousness to Elinor. It
was no very difficult task. The girl was young, and
even so great a shock could not overcome her utterly.
In a few moments she was able to sit down in an easy-chair
by the open window, and the balmy air of the
summer morning stole over her senses like a new life-draught.

Her face was very white and rigid still, and Mary
Grant put back her soft hair and looked pityingly into
her troubled eyes.

“Oh, my darling!” she murmured, “my poor darling!
to think that your first sorrow should darken
all your life!” But the voice was calm that answered
her.

“It will not darken it, grandmother. I have full
faith in Walter. He loves me, and he will not give
me up, even because of this great shame. I shall tell
him all, and I know he will marry me.”

“God grant it, darling!” and the old woman dropped
on the white, earnest face a very tender kiss.
“You sit quietly here. I want to go and speak to
your grandfather.”

Moses Grant was sitting, though it was June, by the
fireside, in the very spot where he had sat before, one
memorable night. Absorbed in surging, bitter, tumultuous
thought, he was indifferent to heat or cold,
or any outward surrounding whatsoever. His wife
went up to him; she knelt down by his side; she
clasped her hands across his knee, and then she plead
with him even as she had plead with him on a wild,
wet night, more than sixteen years before—the night
on which, amid storm and tempest, and the wail of
restless winds, Elinor Trumbull's dawn of life was
ushered in.

“Oh, father,” she said, “she is all we have left.
We are old now, and she is young; do not break her
heart.”

“Woman,” said the elder's stern tones, “tempt me
not. The minister shall not be deceived. I will not
do this great sin against God.”

“But you can let her tell him. She says he loves
her, and she knows he will marry her, in spite of all.
Let her tell him: only leave her this one hope.”

Then the elder's wrath rose to a white heat.

“Yes, I have no doubt you would approve of that.
Her mother did not shame me enough; you would
bring another into this secret. Elinor!” he cried, with
raised tones, and forth from the inner room the young
girl tottered. Moses Grant's face was terrible to look
upon in his rage, but Elinor confronted him calmly,
though she was obliged to cling to the table for support.

“I have told you all; what do you propose to do
now?” he asked, in tones of forced composure.

“There is but one thing, grandfather. I should feel

this disgrace more bitterly if Walter's love had not
made me strong to bear any thing. I will tell him
what you have told me. I would not deceive him
any more than you would; but I will tell him all, and
he will but love me the better because I need his pity.
Oh, you don't know Walter. He has such a great
heart. He will not care for the world. He fears
nothing but sin. He will make me his wife.”

The old man was silent for a moment. The girl's
face beamed like one inspired. It awed him, it was
so full of deathless, triumphant love and faith. But
this emotion passed, and his tone, when he answered
her, was firm as ever.

“Elinor, you shall not tell him this secret. I, your
grandfather, forbid it. He himself would be the first
one to say it was your duty to obey me. If you tell
him, I will curse you; do you hear me? curse you
with a curse that shall cling to you all your life. You
shall not tell him. I bear a humble name, but an
honorable one. Only this one shadow of disgrace has
fallen on it. As God hears me, you shall not spread
the shameful secret. Tell your lover that you can
not marry him—that I forbid it. If he wants to know
why, he can come to me.”

Elinor had heard this outburst silently, growing
stronger, as it seemed, under every stern, cruel word
which fell on her ear, slaying her lifetime hope, blotting
all the brightness out of her existence. When
the last word, swift, crushing, remorseless, had died on
his lips, she answered in such tones as he had never
dreamed she could utter, so cold were they, so passionless.

“Give yourself no trouble, grandfather: I shall

obey you. I will not incur your curse, still less will
I deceive Walter. Thank God, the time comes when
you and I will go before Him together, and the wrongs
of earth shall be righted by the immaculate justice of
Heaven.”

Mary Grant would fain have soothed her, but she
seemed sufficient unto herself. Calmly she walked
into the parlor and took her seat by the open window,
where she could watch the road leading down the hill.

Soon she saw him coming—the young lover who
could remain away from his betrothed no longer.
Joyously he walked, with quick step and erect head.
Hope was holding a cup to his lips beaded to the brim
with bubbling drops of joy. She must dash it from
them—she who loved him best, whom he best loved.
She clasped her hands over her eyes, and prayed—a
short, silent prayer which Heaven would answer. She
heard his step upon the door-stone. He opened the
little front door without knocking. He came to her
side. He drew her close, close, as one who had a right
to hold her on his heart forever, and she was silent:
she could not break the spell.

At last she started from his arms—she stood before
him with her white face and gleaming eyes.

“Walter!” she cried, eagerly, “you know I love
you. You never can doubt that. I am very young;
I have had no other fancies, no other dreams. You
won all my heart. Hear me, Walter! I am yours—I
will be yours till I die. Never shall any other man
speak words of love to Elinor Trumbull. I give you
all. I am yours—yours—yours—on earth and in
heaven. But I can not be your wife. My grandfather
has forbidden it. You yourself will counsel

me to obedience. It is harder for me than for you.
You have the great world to flee to—your high calling
to follow. I must stay here—here, where light,
and hope, and love came to my life—where they will
go out, and leave me alone in the darkness. God forgive
me, Walter, but death were better.”

She had spoken with wild energy. She sank back
exhausted now in her chair. Walter Fairfield stood
struck dumb for the moment with sheer wonder. At
length he faltered,

“You can not mean it; you do not know what you
are saying, Elinor. Your grandfather may object to
our marrying while you are still so young, but he can
not mean that you must never be my wife.”

The door had been open all this time between the
parlor and the kitchen, and now Moses Grant himself
came forward. The anger had passed away from his
face, leaving a look of pity blent with stern resolve.
He said gravely,

“I like you, Mr. Fairfield. I had not thought any
one else could so fill Parson Blake's place in my love
as you have filled it. If I could, Heaven knows I
would gladly give you this girl, but it can not be. In
all truthfulness, you must not marry her—you must
never marry her. I, her grandfather, forbid it before
the God whose servant you are. You will not dare
to disobey me. It will go hard with you both; but
if you knew the reason, you would thank me. It is
my fault. I should not have put you in each other's
way; but I thought she was only a child.”

“Elder Grant,” the young man said, respectfully,
“will you come out of doors with me? I would like
to speak to you for a few moments quite alone.”

The particulars of that interview were never known,
but the result was decisive. In a little while the
young man came alone into the room where Elinor
still sat by the open window. He closed the door.
He went up to her and took her, for the last time, in
his arms.

“The hand of God is in it, Elinor, as it is in every
earthly thing, though we can not see it now. We
must submit. Thank God, my beloved, that after life
comes death, and after death heaven. And yet, how
can I give you up, my poor, innocent darling—my one
love?” And his voice broke down into low, agonized
sobs—a strong man's sobs, very pitiful to hear.

That last half hour of love, and torture, and despair
—that parting which they both felt was eternal—I
may not dwell on it. When Walter Fairfield passed
out of the wicket gate and walked up the hill along
the winding road, Elinor Trumbull watched him with
eyes in which there were no tears, with a pale face on
which shone a hope purer than earthly love, holier
than earthly happiness—a hope born in tears, in anguish,
in desolation—of a meeting where all that remains
of sorrow is the wings by which it has borne
the soul upward—in the city without foundation, eternal
in the heavens.

They parted on Saturday, and the next day more
than one strong heart in Mayfield was moved to tears
as the young minister read his mysterious, unexplained
resignation of the pastoral charge. He had become
strangely dear to them, this young man, whose coming
had seemed such a doubtful experiment. He was not
their father in the Lord as Parson Blake had been,
but they cherished him equally in another way. He

was their very own. He had come to them first.
They were to him almost like a first love, the parish
in whose service he had been first installed into the
ministry. They had hoped he would live and die
among them, and now they must give him up. There
was scarcely a dry eye among the many which rested
upon his face this last Sunday. Moses Grant sat, with
sorrowful yet composed mien, in his accustomed seat,
with his quiet old wife by his side, but Elinor's voice
did not flood the church with its melody; Walter
Fairfield preached his last sermon in Mayfield without
the silent encouragement of her eyes.

The next morning, when he rode by the red house
in the hollow on his way to take the stage at Cornwall,
he gazed in vain at the windows. No small
hand fluttered among the roses, no gentle face looked
out from between the muslin curtains. It cost him
much then not to spring from the wagon and seek one
last farewell, one more blessing; but, for her sake he
rode on and made no sign.

And where was Elinor? Looking forth, herself
unseen, from her chamber window, straining her eyes
to catch one last glimpse of his too dear face, praying
for him in her self-abnegation, praying that his life
might be very full of joy, though over her own, with
all the promised hopes of its future, rose, like the lettering
on a monument, the one sorrowful inscription
—“Never more.”

5. V.

There came a new minister to Mayfield, a worthy
man, who dwelt quietly in the parsonage with his wife
and his six children. He had not old Parson Blake's
place in their hearts, consecrated by the memories of
a lifetime, nor had they pride in his eloquence and
tenderness for his youth and enthusiasm, as during
Walter Fairfield's brief sojourn among them; still
there was mutual good feeling between pastor and
people, and, save in one quiet household, all things
went on as before.

This autumn and the winter which followed were a
very trying time to Elinor Trumbull. She had a
strong consciousness of duty. Earnestly she strove to
be in all things the same to her grandparents as before
her brief, bright dream of love; but something was
wanting. The fullness of the old content would never
come back again. For the second time in the red
house in the hollow was a buried name. Walter Fairfield
was never mentioned there. Mary Grant had
once commenced to say a few words of comfort to her
granddaughter, but the expression on Elinor's face
stopped her — it was so full of hopeless suffering.
After that she only silently pitied the sorrow she had
no power to soothe.

Elinor never uttered a single complaint. She performed
all the little housewifely duties which had formerly
fallen to her share: she went regularly to the
church on the hill-top—listened quietly to the new
pastor's preaching. But Mary Grant's tears fell as she

saw her silently taking in the few dresses which composed
her simple wardrobe, that they might better fit
the figure growing so very fragile and thin now. Her
step lost its accustomed lightness; her voice never
rang through the house with its old, gay melody.
When her seventeenth birth-day was ushered in on
the wings of storm and tempest, it found her no longer
a girl, but a woman, prematurely grave, and thoughtful,
and silent. The delicate summer bloom was gone
from the blossom, the subtle fragrance vanished, and
there was but a poor consolation in thinking life's autumn
might ripen it into fruit.

One day Mary Grant called her husband's attention,
when they were alone, to Elinor's languid step and
wasting cheek. An expression of sudden pain crossed
the elder's face for the moment—a look as if conscience
were forcing upon him an unwelcome truth, and then
he answered, with easy self-delusion,

“It's not strange. It's a hard winter. The girl
will be herself again when the spring opens.”

And so the months passed on, and once more the
slow, reluctant feet of the New England spring stole
over the mountains, and the crocus and the violet
started up in her footprints. Once more the brooks,
set free from their winter chains, began to babble—the
plow-boy whistled at his task—the birch hung out her
tassels, and the lilacs in Elder Grant's yard burst into
purple bloom; but this time there were no long, pleasant
walks over the hills. She had no strength for
them—that pale, silent girl, whom the spring had surprised
as she sat nursing her sorrow.

As the days grew longer and brighter, the blue sky
overhead more intensely clear and blue, Mary Grant,

watching her grandchild, could see her fade. Each
day she seemed to move more feebly about the house,
until at last she seldom moved any more, but lay all
day on a lounge, which, perhaps, with a secret care for
her comfort, the elder had bought at an auction sale.
She did not seem unhappy, for the one hope, mightier
than earthly love, stronger than earthly grief, was
gently guiding her tired feet—so early tired with the
crooked paths of life—toward the “distant hills” of
heaven. And Moses Grant saw it at last; the great
fear struck to his heart that his pride would have a second
victim—that another young, fair face would lie
beneath the drifting leaves of this year's autumn. Did
not conscience speak to him then?

He came home one day with a strange look on his
face. He held in his hand a large, business-like epistle.
He beckoned his wife into the kitchen. She left
Elinor lying upon the lounge in the best room, and
closed the door after her.

“What is it, father?” she said, in pitying tones, going
to her husband's side. “Has some great trouble
come over us?”

“The hand of the Lord is laid upon me, Mary. I
am punished for my sin. I killed Margaret, I have
wellnigh killed her child, and yet, listen, wife, Margaret
was true—Margaret was pure.”

“Oh, thank God! thank God!” burst involuntarily
from the mother's lips as she sank upon her knees.
The vail of her life's greatest sorrow was rent away,
and she seemed to see her child, her last child, her
pure, innocent, blessed child, as she named her in her
heart, waiting for her in heaven. But her cry of
thanksgiving fell on unheeding ears.

Moses Grant spoke earnestly:

“Yes, Mary, God has suffered this knowledge to
come to me in the eleventh hour, just to show me that
I, who dared to call myself His servant, have been but
a hard, unmerciful tyrant, after all; fearing earthly
disgrace more than I feared him. Oh, Mary, is it too
late to save our child?”

“God grant it may be in time,” Mary Grant faltered;
“but tell me how the knowledge came to you.
Are you sure of its truth?”

“Look there! see with your own eyes Margaret's
marriage certificate; and listen! I will read you this
letter which I have received from Gilbert Trumbull.
It seems his lawyer wrote it for him when he was dying.
It says:

“There are a few lines more in the lawyer's hand,
to say that he died twenty-four hours after that letter
was dictated; and the will is inclosed, by which Elinor
falls heir to fifty thousand dollars.”

“But how he insulted you. I can not bear that!”
exclaimed the wife, her first wifely thought a jealous
one of her husband's honor.

“Nay, Mary, he but spoke the truth. I have been
a self-deceiver. The judgment of the Lord is visiting
me now, and I see my sin. I killed her—he said truly
—oh, Margaret—my child Margaret!”

“I want to see it, husband—the picture.”

“Well, here, only don't show it to me. I don't want
to see her eyes—poor Margaret.”

The mother took it from his hand and looked at it
in silence. It was Margaret, in her youth, her love,
her beauty, only there was an unwonted shade of sadness
in the clear eyes and about the flexible mouth.
Beside her face Gilbert Trumbull's was painted—handsome,
fascinating, brilliant—the face in which Margaret's
eyes had seen heaven. Mary Grant looked at
the two steadily for a few moments through her tears,
and then, without saying a word, holding the picture
still in her hand, she went in to Elinor.

“My child,” she said, in faltering tones, “would you
like to see your mother's picture?”

A hot flush rose to the girl's cheek, but she stretched
out her hand for the miniature.

“That is your father, too, darling. Nay, Elinor,
you needn't blush so to look on them; for, see this,
child—here is something worth more to you than all
the gold that comes with it, your mother's marriage
certificate.”

Elinor Trumbull clasped the paper with convulsive
energy. She looked at it with eager gaze, reading it
over and over again. Then it dropped from her nerveless
fingers, her eyes shut together, and her stricken
heart, for the first time, uttered the wail of its anguish.

“Oh, Walter, Walter!” was the low cry which rung
helplessly through the room. Mary Grant knelt beside

her, and folded her motherly arms around her.
She was not repulsed. She drew that young head to
her old, loving bosom, and Elinor wept there, at last,
like a grieved child.

“Oh!” she murmured, after a time, “I might have
married him—I should not have disgraced him, after
all. What was it you said about gold, grandmother?”

“You have inherited fifty thousand dollars, dear
child. Your father's will came with his letter and
these things I have shown you.”

“His letter! my father's letter! Why don't you
give it to me?”

Mary Grant put the girl from her, and laid her tenderly
back on the lounge. Then she went out, closing
the door behind her.

“Father,” she said, “Elinor wants to see that letter.
I think she has a right to.”

“Yes, Mary, take it. Her seeing it can not make
my shame any greater. Leave me alone for a while;
I am trying to see my way clear.”

And so Mary Grant carried Gilbert Trumbull's letter
in to his child. The girl read it, pausing tenderly
over the passages where her father wrote of his love
for her young mother, pressing the sheet to her lips
where he invoked his blessing—a dying man's blessing—upon
her. Then, folding it up, she put it in her
bosom, and sank back again upon her pillow.

“You are very tired, darling,” said her grandmother's
gentle voice.

“Yes, very—but oh! so thankful. It is such a blessing
that this knowledge came to me before I died, that
I might reverence my dead mother's memory as much
as I had always loved it.”

“Before you die! Oh, Elinor, you must not say
that; you will break my heart.”

This was the first time any allusion had been made
between them to the slow decay of Elinor's powers.
Mary Grant had trembled long before the phantom of
this very fear, but every nerve quivered when it took
to itself a voice and stood unmasked before her. Elinor
saw it, and soothingly laid her hand—alas! so very
thin and white now—on the withered one of the old
woman.

“Yes, dear grandmother, we may as well meet it
bravely. I have known it a long time; but, thank
God, I shall die happy now. You will explain all this
mystery to Walter, and he will know I am worthy of
his loving. He will be mine in heaven.”

There were a few moments of solemn silence, and
then Mary Grant murmured, falteringly,

“Elinor, will you, can you forgive your grandfather?”

“As I hope God will forgive me. His punishment
will be heavy enough at the best. His sinful pride
will soon lay a second victim beside my poor mother,
and, seeing this, he will repent in dust and ashes. God
forbid that a word or look of mine should add one pang
to his self-reproach.”

While these words were trembling on her lips, the
door opened, and the old man came in, with his humbled,
heart-stricken face, and his bowed head. He
came up to her, and, for the first time in all his life, Moses
Grant knelt by a woman's side.

“Elinor, child,” he cried out, beseechingly, lifting up
his withered, trembling hands, “God has shown me
my crime as it is; can you, whom I have wronged,
forgive me?”

“Fully, freely, and love you also, as your last child
should.”

He drew her close to him. He held her in his arms,
as he had never done before, even in the days of her
innocent babyhood. He murmured blessings over her
—tender, caressing words, such as no one could have
thought his stern lips would ever utter—and when
he lifted up his head, Elinor's cheek was wet with tears
which were not her own.

“I will go now and write to Walter,” he said, in
more hopeful tones.

The young girl turned her face toward the wall, to
hide the anguish which convulsed her slight frame
when the beloved name was uttered.

“It is of no use, now,” she said, sadly; “we do not
know where he is, and if we did, it is all too late.”

“Oh, Elinor, you must not say that. God will not
chasten me so heavily. It is not too late. It shall not
be too late. You shall see him.”

6. VI.

The letter which the elder wrote that afternoon told
Walter Fairfield the whole story—the fearful wrong
—the penitence which would fain make feeble restitution
by confession. He laid bare in it his stricken,
humbled heart.

No one at Mayfield knew Walter Fairfield's present
location. There was but one hope of the letter's reaching
him. The elder directed it, on the outside, to the
care of the Principal of the Theological Seminary
where the young man had been fitted for the ministry.

Then he sent it forth with wild, anguished prayers that
God would speed it—that it might find him—might be
in time to save the young life trembling in the balance.

That night, when Mary Grant told her granddaughter
that the letter had been sent, and in what wise it
had been directed, a longing hope took possession of
Elinor that it would reach him, would bring him there
before she died—that she might look once more into
his loving eyes—that his voice, none but his, might
murmur the last prayer over her grave. During the
weeks that followed, this hope never left her, and,
though unconsciously to herself, it seemed to be leading
her feet backward a little from the brink of the
dark river over whose waters she had thought so soon
to journey to the country of everlasting life lying beyond.

Her step grew a little less weary and feeble. She
lay less frequently, as days passed on, upon the lounge,
and sat oftener in the arm-chair by the window, where
she could watch the road winding down the hill. It
had been four weeks since the receipt of her father's
letter, and now it was midsummer. The little village
among the mountains was gay with blossoms and verdure—vocal
with bird-songs—sweet with the incense
of summer flowers. How pleasantly the world looked
to Elinor, sitting by the window; the world, which
she thought so soon to leave, brightened now with
the radiance of sunset. The landscape seemed, as she
sat there, so calm and peaceful, with not a living thing
to mar the perfectness of its repose.

But the quiet is broken now. A rider comes dashing
down the hill, fast, fast, fast. It seemed dangerous.
Elinor is very weak; she dares not look at him. She

closes her eyes, and lays her head back against the
chair, but she listens—she can not help that. The
rider rides swiftly on. He has stopped now in front
of the house. He opens the little wicket gate. He
comes up the walk—into the door. Courage! trembling
heart. Open your eyes, Elinor Trumbull. He
springs to her side—he folds her close in his arms, calling
her his poor little sorrow-stricken darling, his pride,
his wife, his best-loved Elinor; thanking God that he
can hold her now as he had never hoped to hold her
again on earth.

Weak as Elinor was, she did not faint. There was
power in that voice to rouse, instead, every faculty
into its fullest life. Strength seemed to flow out from
him into her own exhausted being. She clung to him
in silent rapture.

When the passionate joy of meeting had grown
calmer, Walter Fairfield told his story. The summons,
he said, came to him in the far West. After
leaving Mayfield he had gone there, and striven to
absorb himself in the arduous duties of a missionary
preacher. He had worked night and day: it was his
only consolation. On his return from a three days'
tramp in the woods he had found the elder's letter.
At its first reading his heart had swelled with wrath.
A Cain among all other men he had felt Moses Grant
would be to him henceforth. His soul rebelled against
the sinful, worldly pride which had sacrificed the
whole life of two who loved one another to a selfish,
cowardly fear of disgrace. Then he read it again, and
the heartbroken tone of sincere penitence, of despairing,
self-despising humility which pervaded it, moved
him to pity; and then all thought of Moses Grant was

lost in one agonizing fear lest he should not be in time
to see his Elinor alive. He had traveled night and
day. He was with her now, and she lived still—she
would live. God would grant her life to his prayers.
His love should call her back—she should be his own
yet—his wife.

He was no professed worker of miracles, and yet, as
she listened to his words, the crimson tint stole back
into the fair cheek of his betrothed, and she seemed to
feel a sense of returning strength, a faith in the reality
of his prediction.

Moses Grant met the young minister with outward
calmness. In his letter he had poured forth his remorse,
his sorrow, his penitence. Neither of them
ever alluded to it afterward. Only in the hand-clasp
between them—full on the one side of timid self-abasement,
on the other of pity, forgiveness, encouragement
— there was a silent reconciliation. Mary
Grant sobbed out her welcome with murmured blessings,
and choking pauses, and many tears, and that
night the four knelt together in peace before the throne
of Him who looks on human weakness with the eyes
of heavenly pity.

Elinor's health improved rapidly. Before the summer
roses under the parlor window had faded, she
twined from them a wreath for her bridal, and another
garland, which she hung in the pleasant August morning—a
daughter's reverent farewell—over the low
head-stone which marked her mother's grave. She
went there leaning upon her husband's arm, and, lifting
to him her relying eyes, she murmured,

“I wonder if she knows, up in heaven, how happy
her daughter is this hour?”

The farewell between the old people and their children
was full of tender peace and love, and the elder
and his wife stood together at the wicket gate, watching
them with moist eyes as they rode up the hill.
Moses Grant was not too proud to weep now.

The next Sunday, after the sermon was over, the
congregation was requested to wait, and there, before
them all, an old man, bowing his gray head in shame
and sorrow, laid down his eldership in the Mayfield
church, and bewailed the sin which made him unworthy,
in his own eyes, to wear it longer. A very
old book saith, “Whoso humbleth himself shall be
exalted,” and perchance that seemed to angel eyes the
hour most worthy of pride of all Moses Grant's earthly
life.

Walter Fairfield spent that winter at the South with
his young wife; but cheerful letters came now and
then, telling the old people of Elinor's renewed health
and strength, and promising to bring her back blooming
and happy.

In the early spring Parson Stevens received an unexpected
call to a larger salary and wider sphere of
usefulness, procured, some said, through Mr. Fairfield's
influence. Accepting it, he went away with his wife
and his six children. Walter Fairfield came back in
good time to take his place. Elinor's fortune would
more than satisfy all their wants, and they chose to
settle down with the people of his first love—to live
and die among them.

To Elinor no other spot could be half so dear as the
quiet village among the mountains, where, for her, the
star had risen which rises but once—the star of love,
whose light was to bless all her happy life on earth,

and sparkle still in the golden crown the angels were
keeping for her in the Beyond.

And so, after all its pride, and pain, and passion, rest
came at last to Moses Grant's life. The old man and
his old wife live quietly still in the shadow of the
mountains, in whose shadow they were born; and by-and-by,
when their willing feet have drawn nigh to
the fathomless river, kind hands will lay them gently
down to their last sleep, beside Margaret's grave, in
the little church-yard on the hill-top.