University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.
WAS IT REALLY LOVE?

THE sunshine was hot between the April showers,
and the rude, rickety door-stones (they could
hardly be called door-steps) of the old farmhouse
to which, they led, were wet and dry
almost at the same moment, happening at the
moment in which our story opens, to be dry; the fickle
clouds had scattered, and the sun was shining with pretty
nearly midsummer heat. It was about noon-day, and the
young girl who had been busy all the morning digging in
the flower-beds that lay on either side a straight path running
from the front door to the front gate, suddenly tossed
aside her bonnet, and flung herself down on the steps. She
was tired, and rather lay than sat; and a pleasant picture
she made, her flushed cheek on her arm, the cape, lately
tied at her throat, drawn carelessly to her lap, her tiny
naked feet sunken in the grass, and all her fair neck and
dimpled shoulders bare.

Close to the wall on either side the steps grew a pair
of twin rose-bushes, and these were partly lying down, too,
so that but a narrow entrance was left between them, wide
enough, however, for only a few grand visitors presumed to
seek admission at the front door. A young peach-tree
spread out its thrifty branches over bushes, steps, and
all, and in its grateful shadow the rustic girl rested, quiet
as the shade; and as she thus rested, her heart full of sweet
dreams and fancies, no doubt, the head of a snake, flat, and
colored like old rusty copper, pushed itself up through a
crack in the stones, almost beneath her hand, and slowly,

ring after ring, drew itself out. A moment, and the head,
swollen from its first flatness, was high in the air, and the
slender and bluish throat curving itself lower and lower,
nearer and nearer to the fair, smooth shoulder beneath.

Is it true that nature has instincts for all the crises of life?
Perhaps so. At any rate, it was thus imported in this
instance. The helpless girl seemed rather to know, than to
perceive, her danger; she did not move a muscle, not when
the clammy head touched her shoulder, nor yet, when feeling
its sly way along, it stopped at her throat, and lay with
all its black length wriggling and throbbing against her side,
but with thought and breath suspended, and consciousness
narrowed to one awful chance, waited, hardly knowing that
she waited, hardly knowing anything. She remembered
afterward that a mountain's weight seemed to be upon her,
and that she had been restrained from motion by some power
quite independent of herself. She did not hear the lifting of
the gate-latch, nor the footstep that came up the path: she
heard nothing, saw nothing, felt nothing, till the mountain's
weight was gone, and, standing up, she saw the snake, without
its head, writhing and twisting to stiff, knotty rings, in
the bloody grass at her feet.

She saw this, and knew that she was saved, and then a
blind dizziness came upon her, and she fell to the ground,
quite swooned away.

When she came to herself, a young man, whom till then
she had never seen, was kneeling at her side and fanning her
with his hat, a broad-brimmed palm-leaf. She had never
seen him, and yet she gave him her hand confidently; the
heart had recognized him.

And here we may as well say a word or two of these
young persons. The girl lived with her widowed mother in
the old, but somewhat pretentious farm-house, on the door-steps
of which we have introduced her. She was at that
charming period when the look of the woman is borne up
from the heart of the child, like the lily from the wave, and,
in her way, she was beautiful; but, being born of a race of
rustics, she, of course, knew more of hard work than of the
schoolmaster, and was quite lacking in the intellectual culture
which gives to beauty its highest and most enchanting
expression. Her name was Margaret Fairfax.

The young man was almost a stranger in the neighborhood,

having within a few days past, hired to the mistress
of a sheep and dairy farm, a Mrs Whiteflock, whose hilly
grounds adjoined those of Mrs. Fairfax. She had a husband
whom she managed, together with her other property, but
of him, hereafter. The name of the stranger was Samuel
Dale. He had been commissioned that morning to return
home a crowbar, which Mrs. Whiteflock had borrowed of
her neighbor, and as he came up the door-yard path, with
the bar on his shoulder, felt suddenly the blood stand still
and freeze in his veins. He comprehended at a glance the
whole situation, and was master of it. Sliding the iron bar
from his shoulder to the ground, and slipping his feet from
out their stiff shoes, he came with the stealth of a leopard,
and seizing the reptile by the tail, gave it one wild whirl,
ending with a jerk so violent and sharp, as to snap off the
head, and send it half across the door-yard.

To one who saw only the outward man, this stranger
would not, perhaps, have been especially prepossessing; he
possessed neither gracefulness of motion, nor handsomeness
of proportion, nor yet that brilliancy of intelligence which
speaks for a man while he is silent, and bespeaks his manhood.
He was large of person, and ungainly of limb, a
laborer born to labor, and as yet, contented with his lot. The
conventional proprieties of life seemed to him but impediments
and hindrances; he would have nothing of them; the
flail and the scythe were pleasanter to his hand than a glove
or a book; in short, he was altogether in the rough, but he
had a large soul, a sweet and sound heart, and was honest
through and through.

`Don't be afeared! it's all over now!” he said to Margaret,
as she opened her eyes and looked at him, but it was bashfulness,
and not terror, that intimidated her; an angel could
not have seemed fairer than he, to her, just then, and she
replied to his encouragement with a smile and a blush.

He lifted her in his strong arms, carefully and tenderly
as though she had been a baby, and placed her on the grassy
border of the path in which she had fallen, and having done
this, drew away and stood gazing upon her with such reverence,
apparently, as the devout worshipper feels in the
presence of the Virgin.

He was quite unconscious of the reptile lying at his feet,
till Margaret, seeing that its slim tail was still quivering and

beating the ground, motioned him away. His face flushed
scarlet, and his voice trembled with outraged feeling as he
said, twisting his beard on his fingers — “Cuss the devilish
thing! think of it—in such a place, too.” Margaret dropped
her eyes, and hastily adjusted her cape. She was not sorry
he had cursed the snake, but she wished he had not said
cuss.

He had his heel on the creature now, and was admonishing
it on this wise: “You infernal blue-bellied son of perdition,
I reckon you won't frighten the like o' her again!”
nodding toward Margaret. “No! not while Sam Dale can
handle a crowbar. I only wish you had twenty lives so that
I might whisk 'em all out of you!” Then, addressing
Margaret: “Don't you s'pose his nasty black wife is keepin'
house there under the door-stone? Maybe there is a young
brood comin' on, too!” And seizing the iron bar, he set
to work, prying the stones away.

The mate was discovered directly, sure enough, with three
young copperheads in her embrace. “Don't be afeared, my
Daisy, don't be afeared!” he kept entreating, with eyes
fixed upon Margaret, the while he crushed one of the vile
things after the other, and tossed it from the end of his bar,
over the fence, into the highway.

“I am not afraid, not with you near me,” Margaret
answered ingenuously. There was no trembling, no terror
now, and even the first bashfulness was beginning to give
way. It seemed to her that her new friend might not only
stand between her and the present danger, but also between
her and all the dangers in the world. She had never in her
life experienced such a sense of quiet security and protection,
not even with her mother. She reposed in his presence
as in a comfortable shadow, and would have had the time
stand still while she listened; for this stranger seemed
strangely near and dear to her, the very sweetest of her
friends.

He talked continually, and mostly about the little affairs
of his daily life and observation, using strange words and
bad grammar, but she did not tire of his talk. Somehow,
she knew not how, it fed her, and she was satisfied. She
knew directly all about his brave, old grandfather who fought
in the Revolution; all about his mother, and her curious
way of dreaming out truth; all about his sturdy brother

Ned, who was a blacksmith, and all about handsome Phil,
who was lost at sea. Of himself, she knew almost the entire
history. He had been born in poverty, and was poor yet,
but willing to work, and confident of achieving success.
Mrs. Whiteflock was paying him high wages, he said, twenty
dollars a month, and that would soon make a fine start for a
young fellow.

It was like play to work for Mrs. Whiteflock. She was
so good-natured and kind-hearted, and next to attending her,
he was fond of attending her sheep. “I like to set among
'em,” he said, “and think about things.”

“About your work, I suppose,” answered Margaret,
archly.

“Sometimes,” he replied, with almost sad sincerity, “and
sometimes about the time when I shall have a flock of my
own and a house like the parson's, yonder, may be, with a
daisy at the winder, bloomin' all for me. I like to think
them things, and” (he glanced at Margaret) “I've always
got the picter of some little daisy in my heart.”

His eyes, so large, so full of gentle innocence and truth,
reminded her of the eyes of an ox, and she could have
stroked his beard and put her arm around his neck, just as
she had done many a time with some favorite of the field.
She had felt his remark to be almost, if not quite, personal,
and yet she had not blushed, nor picked at her apron, nor
looked down; on the contrary, she had looked straight in
his face, and returned his smile. “You mustn't tell anybody,”
she said, “that you always have one picture or
another in your heart, because we girls are selfish, and when
we give our pictures, like to think that no other will ever
have the same place.”

“Mustn't I? then I'm sorry that I told you. I'm always
wrong when I want most to be right.”

“Of course not; who would like to suppose she was going
to be put aside for the first pretty face you happened to
meet? I wouldn't, I'm sure!”

“Some faces couldn't be put aside very easy for a prettier
one, but I reckon the more I say about such things, the more
blunders I'll make.” He added the closing words, perhaps,
in deference to the grave, not to say frowning brow of Margaret,
and after a moment, went on apologetically: “I've

got to say just what I think, if I say anything; women don't,
I reckon; they are all artful like, aint they?”

Margaret shook her head, but smiled, at once admitting
and denying the accusation.

“So I've done wrong,” he resumed, speaking as if to himself.
“Well, I might'er knowed I would, for I've foreseen
one thing ever since I come to be a man; I've foreseen that
I should never set to work the right way to gather my daisy,
not even when I had it within reach o' my hand.”

“What makes you think so? The daisies must wait, you
know, and who comes first gets the fairest; they all grow
to be gathered, I suppose.”

“Yes, but I shall tread on mine, in my eager awkwardness,
or lose it somehow, it's all been foreshadowed!”

Margaret smiled.

“You laugh; but I have knowed it a good many year;
in the main, I can see how it will all be; ever since I have
stood here, I have seen it as plain as you see the shader of
that peach tree: and speakin' of shaders, I see by their slant
that the noon spell is over; I must go.” And he began to
draw on his coat which he had thrown aside for his battle
with the snakes, humming to himself the while, the fragment
of a spiritual song, beginning thus: —

Margaret was shocked; he was singing this sanctified
hymn to the tune of High Betty Martin!”

“Did you know,” she said, “that was a church hymn?”

Yes, the young man had sung it a thousand times at quarterly
and camp meetings, and he thought it was “mighty
purty.”

“But you didn't sing it to that wicked dancing tune!”

“Why,” he said, looking tenderly upon her, “hasn't
some o' them pious old men, Wesley, or some of 'em, said
the devil oughtn't to have all the good tunes?”

“I don't know what anybody has said,” Margaret
answered, “but don't you ever again sing that good hymn
to that bad tune; tell me you won't.”

“Not for the world, if it offends you!” and his manner

as he said this had all the grace of a courtier, because it had
all the simple sweetness and grace of nature.

“Not for the reason that it offends me,” Margaret replied,
“but for the reason that it offends Heaven.” She went
close to him as she spoke, and laid her hand lightly on his
arm; big, strong, sturdy as he was, he was trembling.

“I promise,” he said, bending low to her upturned face,
(he did not touch even a hair of her head), and speaking
almost in a whisper — “I promise, promise sacredly.”

Margaret did not dig any more in the flower-beds that
day. She had new matter for thought in her little heart.

It was market-day, and her mother was gone to town with
eggs and butter and other things which they were used to
sell once in the week, bringing home in their stead such articles
of household and personal comfort and adornment as
need or fancy suggested. Margaret expected nothing for
herself on this special day, indeed she had always the lesser
share, but no expectation could have augmented the interest
with which she awaited her mother's return. She had such
great news to tell! So much to say about Samuel Dale!
If her mother could only see him! if she could only hear
him sing “The day is a-wasting” to a real camp-meeting
tune! Perhaps this delightful consummation might yet
come about. When or how, she did not inquire, for all her
mind was in a sweet confusion of enthusiasm, dreamy, vague,
enchanting.

A benediction seemed to have fallen upon the old house,
and everything about it, and she looked upon it all with new
and placid satisfaction. She made haste to put the chimney-corner,
the dresser, the work-table and the tea-table in order,
against the return of her mother, she said to her heart, but
it answered, I am stirred with a new inspiration, I am come
uy from childhood to womanhood, I am in a new world, and
that is why your hand is so cheerfully busy. When she
came to her own little chamber, the chamber she had neglected
and almost despised for its humbleness, she sat on the low
bed a long time, musing softly.

From the east window she could see Mrs. Whiteflock's
fields, and she held the view an attraction now, the hills
covered with sheep, the dark woods beyond, the square
brick house with its many windows and porches, the gray
weather-beaten barn, the stone smoke-house, prison-like and
dark — everything was pleasing, nay, more, beautiful.

By and by she arose and fell to searching old drawers, and
climbing to unaccustomed shelves, a little love ditty singing
itself as she did so. She was intent on the adornment
of her chamber. Her mother's wedding petticoat, bestowed
upon her in her doll-baby days, would make curtains for the
small windows, and here was some silk stuff for pin cushions;
here some books of pictures that would garnish the table,
there a white counterpane, so much nicer than the patch-work
quilt, and at last, O, treasure of treasures, a cracked
china pitcher that would serve as a vase for flowers!

How nimbly her fingers flew; how nimbly her feet; and
when all was done, and a cup of daisies placed on the table,
no princess ever experienced more pleasure in her royal
apartments.

She had never felt half the beauty of daisies till now.
She wondered at her former dullness. Perhaps she had
trodden on their meek little faces sometime. She could
have cried to think of it. Henceforth they should share her
regard, claim indeed her tenderest and best.

Her hair she dressed with careful attention, not that she
expected to see Samuel Dale again that day, not at all.
And yet the careful dressing was for him. Her frock seemed
to her dull and common, and she tied over it a little coquettish
apron of white muslin, and at last, just for a moment's
pleasure, she put on her Sunday boots and laced and tied
them round her slender ankles; but to wear these of a week
day was not to be thought of. She surveyed herself in the
glass with smiling satisfaction. Could Samuel but have seen
her thus!

It was near sunset when the market cart came rattling
down the hill. Margaret was at the gate in a moment, but
she no sooner saw her mother sitting straight and formal in
her chair, her long veil drifting over her shoulder, and her
shawl of black silk pinned precisely across her bosom, than
Samuel receded somewhat; but when, without smiling or
slackening the rein, she drove into the yard, and down the
gravelled way, and Margaret perceived a new umbrella,
with an ivory stick and a border of crimson, together with
a willow work-basket, embellished with streaks of yellow
and green, beside her in the cart, her faltering courage
almost misgave her. Her mother, always a person of consequence
in her eyes, seemed invested with new dignity.

Delight overcame her, however, when she really had the
basket in her hands, and holding it up and turning it about,
that she might take in all its artistic elegance at once,
she cried, “A perfect beauty! Where did you find it,
mother?”

“In town, to be sure; what a foolish question, child.”
And she springs lightly to the ground, and gives her bombazine
dress a little shake.

Margaret began to be fairly shy, and her news lost its
zest completely, when pointing to the heap of detached
door-stones, the mother said, sharply, “What in the world
is this? What have you been about here?”

Margaret hung her head; “Nothing much,” she answered,
and then reducing the whole affair to its lowest
possibility, making little of the copperheads, and almost
nothing of Samuel Dale, she explained; and this, after all,
was the way she told her great news.

“Well,” exclaimed Mrs. Fairfax, when she heard to the
end of the story, “I'd thank this young jackanapes, whoever
he is, to come back and set up my doorsteps!” and
she walked into the house without another word. Margaret
had no heart now to speak of the bed-chamber she had furnished
with such housewifely pride and pleasure. The
pictures, the dainty curtains, all the pretty garniture seemed
to her like the memory of a dream; and as she went silently
about her household cares, she began to understand, she
thought, what Samuel meant by the shadows he had spoken
of in the morning.

When Mrs. Fairfax had partaken of tea, her reserve
thawed a little, and by degrees she became communicative,
and finally the great event of the day, the great event of
her life, as she seemed to regard it, came out. She had
been introduced to the son of a bishop! “Just think of
it,” she cried, “dressed in all my old market-day things!”

Margaret neither expressed surprise nor pleasure. She
had been hurt by the previous coldness and severity of her
mother, and besides her heart was preoccupied. Mrs.
Fairfax understood in part the significance of this silence,
and hastened to say that she had been quite upset by the
day's experience, but that, however she might have appeared,
she had really not been in the least out of humor.
She had never before conceded to Margaret anything so

nearly approaching an apology. The girl had her new dignity,
too, and somehow it commanded respect; and when
the conversation flowed freely, as it did by and by, it was
upon terms of greater equality than had hitherto existed
between them.

Mrs. Fairfax had a good many incidents to relate, but all
leading to the great event. She had, by the merest accident,
stopped at Mrs. Briggs's on her way home, not suspecting
in the least what was to befal her, when lo, and
behold! she was ushered right into the drawing-room, and
found herself standing face to face with Mr. John Lightwait,
the bishop's son! “He called me Sister Fairfax,”
she said, proudly, “and held my hand ever so long!”

Margaret shrugged her shoulder; she was probably
thinking of Samuel Dale, who was far enough from being a
bishop's son.

Young brother Lightwait — (Mrs. Fairfax didn't believe
he was so very young, not much younger than herself, in
fact) — was the handsomest man she had ever set eyes on.
Such beautiful hair, such nice little hands, and such lovely
nails! And then his white neck-cloth, tied in, oh, the
sweetest of knots! If Margaret could but see him!

But Margaret did not care about seeing him. “I am not
so taken up with fine folks as you are, mother,” she said.

Then Mrs. Fairfax answered, exultantly, “you will have
to see him, my child, whether you care about it or not, and
that pretty often; he is going to be stationed here! but as
for being taken up with fine folks, I am sure I am free from
that weakness.” Then she told how she visited the poorest
members of the church, how she gave Mrs. Spinner's
little boy a new hat, and how she had helped to make shirts
for old Mr. Beggerman, and of many other praiseworthy
works she had done; and in the end she again referred to
the bishop's son, as though the church was to be especially
blessed in having a bishop's son for its pastor.

Margaret never contradicted her mother, and did not now,
though none knew better than she her exceeding liability to
the weakness she had disclaimed. She only said she would
be very sorry to lose Father Goodman; that, for her part,
she would not willingly exchange him even for a bishop.

“Nor I,” said Mrs. Fairfax; but the words seemed
mechanical, and directly she brought forth a little lace cap,

gayly set off with red ribbon. “I was determined,” she
said, “the bishop's son should never see me again in that
horrid thing I wore this morning!”

“Father Goodman says fine feathers don't make a fine
bird,” replied Margaret, quietly.

“Dear me! I'm fairly tired of the name of Father Goodman!
he ain't the only preacher in the conference, I
hope!”

Margaret said she hoped not, and then the mother and
daughter were silent for a long time. There would not
indeed have existed a close sympathy between them if there
had been close intimacy, which there never had been.
There were radical and irrevocable differences in their
original constitutions, that were always in wait, ready to
produce irritation, if not anger.

The happiest moment was never quite secure, therefore,
each holding her interior self in leash, as it were, for the
time being, with the implied understanding that said leash
was imminently liable to be slipped.

As before intimated, Mrs. Fairfax had, up to the very
evening under review, regarded Margaret as a little girl, a
mere child, and as her child who was to know only her will.
There are women who consider children, especially their
own children, as hindrances, nuisances, and plagues. They
put them off, put them out of the way, ignore them, in
fact, as far as possible. Mrs. Fairfax was a woman of this
unmotherly organization. When she bought a new silk
apron for herself, she bought one of checked cotton stuff for
Margaret. She was only a little girl, and what better did
she require! When it chanced that visitors were entertained
of an evening, extra candles lighted, and after the
refreshment, ghost stories told, about the pleasant fire,
Margaret was sent to bed betimes, where she lay wide
awake, hour after hour, listening to the hum of the voices,
and contrasting the dark and cold loneliness of her chamber
with the cheer and hospitable light and warmth below
stairs.

When the travelling show made halt at the village, and
all the young folks, dressed in their best, went to see the
Babes in the Wood, represented in wax figures, with such
beautiful white dresses, and such dazzlingly pink cheeks,
together with the robin red-breast, that sung just like any

live bird, and made believe to be sexton, with a degree of
intelligence beggaring all description, Margaret remained at
home, worked in the garden, or darned stockings, as the
case might be, for always, in one way or another, the holiday
was taken out of the holiday, for her. Her dissipation
had, therefore, up to the time our story begins, and she was
now in her sixteenth year, been chiefly confined to the
teaching of a ragged class in the Sunday school, and the
knitting of woollen stockings for the missionaries. True,
these diversions were sometimes varied by attending a
funeral, but this did not happen often. Since the pastorship
of Father Goodman, and chiefly through his instrumentality,
she had gone to church, excepting when her
shoes were too badly worn, or when some like accident
prevented; being led thither and home again in the hand
of her mother. If she knew one young man from another,
she had never evinced such knowledge by any outward
sign, but doubtless she did know one from another, and it
may be, too, that she had dreamed dreams, of which her
mother had not dreamed that she dreamed.

“Come, Margaret,” exclaimed Mrs. Fairfax, breaking
the uneasy silence, as the clock from the mantel of the best
room struck nine, and Margaret lighted the short end of a
candle and went to bed. There was no good-night word
and no good-night kiss between them. She left the candle
to burn itself all out, just for the pleasure she had in surveying
the decorations of her chamber, and the cup of
daisies she placed close by the bedside where she could
smell them after she could no longer see them.

That night, as she slept, it seemed to her that Samuel
Dale put a ring on her finger, and that in shaking hands
with Mr. Lightwait, the bishop's son, who was come to be
their pastor, it slipped off, and was lost. She awoke with
a cry of pain, and could hardly, for the moment, persuade
herself that the vision was not reality. It passed from her
mind, however, with the morning light, and it was not till
years after, that she recollected and mused upon it.

It was on the evening of the second day since the transpiring
of the incidents already recorded, that, as mother
and daughter sat together, silently watching the clouds as
they ran across the face of the moon, making fantastic
shadows come and go, and giving a weird impression to the

commonest things, a sharp sound, like the ringing of iron
against stone, startled and surprised them.

“What is that?” the mother demands, rather than
inquires, rising, and looking upon Margaret almost angrily.
Margaret says she doesn't know, but by this time her
heart has told her what it is, and the ribbon on her bosom
is all in a flutter.

“There it is again!” cries the mother. “Some wicked
or drunken person is certainly about; really, a lone woman
has reason to be afraid of her life!” And then she said
she wished brother Lightwait were come. Father Goodman
was too old to be of any account in case of danger. Margaret
laughed. “Wolf is a very good protector,” she
said; but here he comes, wagging his tail as though he had
found a friend. Anyhow, I ain't afraid.”

“Of course not! And you'd laugh, I suppose, if you
saw a murderer with his hand on my throat.” And Mrs.
Fairfax intercepted the dog, Wolf, who came crouching and
whining, and opening his black mouth wide, and giving
him a sharp box on the ear, called him stupid and good-for-nothing,
and passing out of the house, went with an energetic
step in the direction of the sounds, ringing out now
continuously.

“O no, I wouldn't!” says Margaret, with good-natured
satire, and she laughed again, with provoking heartiness.
Another time she would have suppressed this inclination to
mirthfulness, but she felt strong in the consciousness of a
new ally. Passing through the house instead of around it,
as her mother had done, she was already exchanging greetings
with Samuel Dale, when her indignant ladyship bore
down upon them, her broad cap-strings flapping about her
shoulders like sails.

“Who on earth is making a racket about my house this
time o' night!” she demanded, squaring about and putting
herself in position.

Now, as to the time of night, the sun had not been set an
hour, and as to the racket, it was not very alarming, certainly.
Samuel Dale was not a person to be easily flurried,
and he now possessed his soul in patience. Removing his
hat, he leaned on his crow-bar, and explained. He was
come to repair the damage incidentally done the door-steps
in his encounter with the imps of the old enemy, about

which she had no doubt heard. He was sorry for the mischief,
but hoped to make amends.

Mrs. Fairfax relented a little; old enemy was an epithet
she loved to hear, and her imagination immediately invested
the young man with a limited number of Christian graces.

“I am sure I am obliged to you,” she said, “for your
goodness to my little daughter.”

“Not at all,” answered Samuel; “not obleeged to me in
the least; it was owing to your little Daisy; she behaved
like an angel.”

“I am glad to hear it,” Mrs. Fairfax said, and she hastened
to change the subject.

“Were you brought up to the mason's trade?” she
asked.

Samuel by this time had slipped a tow apron over his
head, and producing a bucket of mortar and a trowel, had
set to work, cutting smooth the rough edges of the stones,
and cementing them together as equably as though the distrustful
eyes upon him were the friendliest in the world.

“No, ma'am,” he answered, “I wasn't brought up to no
trade, but I can turn my hand to a good many things, after
a fashion.”

“After a pretty nice fashion, I should say, too,” remarked
Mrs. Fairfax; she saw that the work was going to
be a success, and had already calculated the advantage.

Margaret was happy; her new friend was doing himself
such credit. The mother, seeing her delight, told her she
had better go to bed. “I wonder at your imprudence,”
she said, “standing with your bare feet in the dew.”

It was not often that Margaret had stood any other way
in the dew, than with bare feet, and she said so, to the
great annoyance of her mother, who was given to a show
of fondness toward her, in the presence of strangers, simply
for the sake of effect. “Go, because I tell you to, then,”
she said.

Woman though she was, Margaret was a child, too, and
she began to cry.

“Maybe you'd ruther I come some other time?” Samuel
exclaimed, throwing down his trowel, and slipping off the
apron.

“O no, sir, by no means — not at all!” And Mrs. Fairfax,
trembling lest the advantage upon which she had

counted might not accrue, after all, came nearer her man,
by a step or two, and her disordered cap-strings settled
themselves quite gracefully.

“There, little Daisy, stand on this!” and Samuel threw
down his apron, and took up his trowel again.

Margaret glanced at her mother. “Certainly, my little
wilful dear, stay if you like.” Then to Samuel — “You
are very good to mind the child.”

“No, ma'am, I ain't good, not in that, nor in nothing,
but in general it's my way to do purty much as I'd be done
by, except it's in self-defence, or when the defence of somebody
else requires a difference, like settin' on to them copperheads,
'tother day, for instance.”

“O, sir, I'm so obliged to you! the nasty things! how
many were there? My little girl didn't seem to say much
about it.”

Samuel demeaned himself very modestly; he didn't mind
just how many there was, he said; three or four altogether
he believed, but the biggest of 'em wasn't so long as his
arm; it was no great thing to kill 'em.

Margaret could not endure that her hero should thus depreciate
his achievement, and so must needs give evidence
in his favor, adding, in the first place, one to the number of
snakes, and afterward insisting that they were red as fire,
and of hideous length.

“Red as fire!” cries Samuel, charmed with the exaggeration,
and then, with strict adherence to truth, and
perhaps to draw her out still further, he says they were
about the color of an old copper cent, and not so long as
his arm.

“Not so long as your arm, indeed! Why, the first one
you killed reached half round my waist, and —”

What further she would have said Samuel prevented.

“And my arm would quite reach round your waist,” he
said, “with half a chance;” and seeing that Mrs. Fairfax
frowned, he colored, and in his confusion struck the stone
rather awkwardly with his hammer; a sharp piece flew off,
and grazing the bare arm of Margaret, caused a very painful,
though not serious abrasion, the blood flowing profusely,
and her face turning deadly pale.

“God 'a' mercy!” he cried; “what have I done?
Bruised to bleedin' death the sweetest, whitest daisy that

ever growed in mortal ground! God 'a' mercy on me!”
And he bent reverently over her, and waved his hands to
and fro as if invoking blessings.

He would have made an eloquent study for an artist, as he
thus stood, this poor, rude man, in coarse garments, his
silence so tender, and his toil-worn hands waving so gently
over the fair head he did not dare to touch.

Even Mrs. Fairfax seemed affected, for she assured him
that the wound was only skin-deep, and that, notwithstanding
the free flow of blood, the danger was all in his fancy.
But in her sympathy, if sympathy she felt, she did not forget
her own interest, and concluded by begging that he would
not allow so trifling an incident to interrupt the business in
hand.

“Your work is going to do you credit, young man,” she
says, “and it ain't worth while to be hindered. Come,
Margaret, I'm ashamed of you! do rouse yourself up a little!
So, — I knew you could; here, give me your handkerchief!
and she bound up the arm very roughly, as it
seemed to Samuel.

“I'll go and fetch Father Goodman,” he said, bending low,
and speaking almost in a whisper.

“Father nonsense!” cries Mrs. Fairfax; “the child
would do better if you paid less attention to her.”

The sides of nature must have cracked, if Samuel had not
spoken out, now.

“You are a woman,” he says, “and a mother, and it
isn't becomin' in me, a stranger and a man, to be a pintin'
out your duty to you; you know what's right to be done
better 'an I do, I s'pose, but I can tell you one thing, an'
it's this; but just for one of God's happy accidents, you'd
a had a shader in your house to-day, instid o' that precious
bit 'o sunshine a-lyin' at your feet!”

“One of God's accidents!” repeated Mrs. Fairfax sneeringly.

“I knowed what I was a-sayin' and I know I couldn't 'a'
been chose to do the work I done; I never done nothin' to
make me worthy of bein' so chose; but thank God, I happened
to be in the way.”

Mrs. Fairfax, softened a little, in spite of herself, as this
devout spirit shamed her cold pretence.

“If you don't mind,” she says, “you may help me get the

child into the house; the bed will be the best place for her.”
And she added, “If you had only minded me, my wilful
darling!”

“Poor lamb!” says Samuel, and he takes her in his strong
arms as easily as though she were a lamb in very truth. She
smiled upon him from her pillows, and said she was better,
and that she would be almost well if the bandage were but
loosened. Then, dropping on one knee by the low bedside,
he loosened the handkerchief, and wound it again with the
skilful tenderness of one who had done nothing else, but
dress wounds all his life.

Afterwards he knelt by that low bed again, and took
Margaret in his arms, recalling this night, when she smiled
upon him from her pillows, and saying it was the night of
their bridal.

But before that time comes there is much to be said, and
much to be unsaid. Much to be lived, and much to be lived
down. We must wait.

When Mrs. Fairfax parted with Samuel that night, she
took occasion to speak of her sick darling in terms of the
greatest concern, as well as fondness, but he was no sooner
gone than she berated her soundly for weakly yielding to
the sight of a little blood, and suffering herself to be taken
in the arms of a man she had hardly seen. It was a shameful
thing, she said, and for her part, she never permitted her
most intimate male friend to touch her hand. No, indeed!
not she. It may be remarked here that this frozen austerity
was not perceptible to the naked eye.

As Margaret lay awake, tearful and troubled, that night,
she heard a sound like the noise of footsteps going about
her room. “Who is there?” she said, putting out her
hand, and feeling in the darkness, for she was not afraid.
The steps came trotting to her bedside, and the rough,
shaggy head of Wolf put itself under her hand, as though he
would say, “It is I, my little mistress; go to sleep, you
are protected.”

He was not accustomed to remain in the house of nights,
and had cunningly concealed himself at the time he was
used to be put out of doors, as though he had understood
the discordance between mother and daughter, and was
taking part with Margaret. Perhaps he remembered the
box on the ear.