University of Virginia Library

WEST LAWN.

1. CHAPTER I.
DORA'S DIARY.

2. CHAPTER II.
AUTHOR'S JOURNAL.

IT lacked ten minutes of car-time, and the omnibus-driver
was growing impatient and tired of
waiting for his passenge, when a noisy group
appeared upon the piazza: Mrs. Squire Russell, pale,
languid, drooping as usual, with a profusion of long
light curls falling in her eyes, and giving to her faded
face the appearance of a poodle dog; Mr. Squire Russell,
short, fat, hen-pecked, but very good-looking withal,
and some half dozen little Russells, clinging to and jumping
upon the young lady, whom we recognize at once as
Dora, our heroine.

“You won't stay long, even if Mrs. Randall does
urge you,” said Mrs. Russell, in a half-complaining tone as
she drew together her white wrapper, and leaned wearily
against a pillar of the piazza. “You know I can't do
anything with the children, and the hot weather makes
me so miserable. I shall expect you in two weeks.”

“Two weeks, Madge! are you crazy?” said the
Squire's good-humored voice. “Dora has not been from
home in ages, while you have almost made the tour of
the Western Continent. She shall stay as long as she

likes, and get some color in her face. She used to be
rosier than she is now, and it all comes of her being shut
up so close with the children.”

“I think it is very unkind in you, Mr. Russell, to
speak as if I was the worst sister in the world, and the
most exacting. I am sure Dora don't think so. Didn't
she go with us to Newport last summer, and wasn't she
more than once called the belle of the Ocean House?”

John gave a queer kind of whistle, while Dora involuntarily
drew a long breath as she remembered the
dreary time she had passed at the Ocean House, looking
after three nurses, six children, and her sister Margaret,
whose rooms were on the third floor, and to whom she
had acted the part of waiting-maid in general. But her
thoughts were suddenly brought back from Newport by
Margaret's next remark:

“You needn't charge the loss of her roses to me
either, John. No one can expect to be young-looking
forever, and you must remember Dora has passed the
bloom of youth. She's in her twenty-sixth year.”

“Twenty-sixth year! Thunder! that's nothing,” and
Squire Russell tossed up in the air the little Daisy crawling
at his feet, while Johnnie, the ten-year old boy,
roared out:

“Aunt Dora ain't old. She's real young and pretty,
and so Dr. West told Miss Markham that time she
counted on her fingers, and said, so spiteful like: `Yes,

Miss Freeman is full thirty. Why, they've been here
eleven years, and she must have been nineteen or twenty
when she came, for she was quite as big as she is now,
and looked as old. Yes, she's too old for the new minister,
Mr. Kelley.' I was so mad I could have knocked
her, and I did throw a brick at her parrot squawking in
the yard. Dr. West was as red as fire, and said to her
just as he spoke to me once, when he made me hold still
to be vaccinated, `Miss Freeman is not thirty. She
does not look twenty, and is perfectly suitable for Mr.
Kelley, if she wants him.'

“`She don't,' says I, `for she don't see him half the
time when he calls, nor Dr. Colby either.'

“I was going to spit out a lot more stuff, when Dr.
West put his hand to my mouth, and told me to hush
up.”

There were roses now on Dora's cheeks, and they made
her positively beautiful as she kissed her sister and the
little ones good-by, glancing nervously across the broad,
quiet street to where a small, white office was nestled
among the trees. But though the blinds were down, the
door was not opened, while around the house in the
same yard there were no signs of life except at an upper
window, where a head, which was unmistakably that of
Dr. West's landlady, Mrs. Markham, was discernible behind
the muslin curtain. He was not coming to say
good-by, and with a feeling of disappointment Dora

walked rapidly to the omnibus, which bore her away from
the house where they missed her so much, Squire John
looking uncomfortable and desolate, the children growing
very cross, and at last crying, every one of them, for
auntie; while Margaret took refuge from the turmoil behind
one of her nervous headaches, and went to her room,
wondering why Dora must select that time of all others
to leave her.

3. CHAPTER III.
DR. WEST'S DIARY.

“I like that boy, so outspoken and truthful, but Dora
will be shocked at his language. And so my services
were needed at the big house over the way. Usually I
like to go there, but now Dora is gone it is quite
another thing, for with all my daily discipline of myself,
I dislike Mrs. Russell. I have struggled against it,
prayed against it, but as often as I see her face and hear
her voice, the old dislike comes back. There's nothing
real about her except her selfishness and vanity. Were
she raving with fever, I verily believe her hair would be

just as elaborately curled, her handsome wrapper as carefully
arranged, and her heavy bracelets clasped as conspicuously
around the wrists as if in full dress for an evening
party. To-night I found her in just this costume,
with a blue scarf thrown round her, as she reclined upon
the pillow. I knew she was suffering, from the dark
rings beneath her eyes, and this roused my sympathy.
She seems to like me as a physician, and asked me to
stop after I had prescribed for her. Naturally enough
she spoke of Dora, whom she missed so much, she said,
and then with a little sigh continued:

“`It is not often that I talk familiarly with any but
my most intimate friends, but you have been in our
family so much, and know how necessary Dora is to us,
that you will partially understand what a loss it would
be to lose my sister entirely.'

“`Yes, a terrible loss,' I said, thinking more of myself
than of her. `But is there a prospect of losing her?'
I asked, feeling through my frame a cold, sickly chill,
which rapidly increased as she replied:

“`Perhaps not; but this Mrs. Randall, whom she has
gone to visit, has a brother at West Point, you know,
Lieutenant Reed, the young man with epaulets, who was
here last summer.'

“`Yes, I remember him,' I said, and Mrs. Russell
continued:

“`He has been in love with Dora ever since she was

with his sister Mattie at school. Dora has not yet given
him a decided answer, but I know her preference for
him, and as he is to be at his sister's while Dora is
there, it is natural to fear that it may result in eventually
taking Dora away from Beechwood.'

“`It may, it may,' I responded, in a kind of absent
way, for my brain was in a whirl, and I scarcely knew
what I did.

“She must have observed my manner, for her eyes
suddenly brightened as if an entirely new idea had been
suggested to her.

“`Now if it were some one near by,' she continued, `perhaps
she would not leave me. The house is large enough
for all, and Dora will marry some time, of course. She is
a kind sister, and will make a good wife.'

“At this point Squire Russell came in, and soon after
I said good-by, going out again into the summer night,
beneath the great, full moon, whose soft, pure light could
not still the throbbing of my heart; neither could the
long walk I took down by the lake, where Dora and I
went one day last summer. There were quite a number
of the villagers with us, for it was a picnic, but I saw
only Dora, who, afraid of the water, stayed on the shore
with me, while the rest went off in sail-boats. We talked
together very quietly, sitting on the bank, beneath a
broad grape-vine, of whose leaves she wove a sort of
wreath, as she told me of her dear old home, and how the

saddest moments she had ever known were those in
which she fully realized that she was never again to live
there, that stranger hands would henceforth tend the
flowers she had tended, and stranger feet tread the walks
and alleys and winding paths with which the grounds
abounded. I remember how the wish flashed upon me
that I might some day buy back the home, and take her
there as its mistress. Of all this I thought to-night, sitting
on the lone shore, just where she once sat, and listening
to the low dash of the waves, which, as they came
rolling almost to my feet, seemed to murmur, `Never,
never more!'

“I do not believe I am love-sick, but I am very sad to-night,
and the walk down to the lake did not dispel the
sadness. It may be it is wrong in me thus to despond,
when in many ways I have been prospered beyond my
most sanguine hopes. That heavy debt is paid at last,
thanks to the kind Father who raised me up so many
friends, and whose healing hand has more than once been
outstretched to save when medicine was no longer of
avail. As is natural, the cure was charged to me, when
I knew it was God who had wrought the almost miraculous
change. And shall I murmur at anything when sure
of His love and protection? Be still, my heart. If it be
God's will, Dora shall yet rest in these arms, which fain
would shelter her from all the ills of life; and if 'tis not His
will, what am I, that I should question His dealings?”

4. CHAPTER IV.
JOHNNIE'S LETTER TO DORA.

5. CHAPTER V.
DORA'S DIARY.

“I did not see Peter again until long after dinner, and
then I asked if he had done my errand.

“`Yes, miss,' he replied. `She was much obliged.
She's a nice woman.'

“`Peter, don't those verbenas need sheltering from the
hot sun?' Mr. Randall called out, his manner indicating
that by volunteering information respecting Mrs.
David West, Peter was getting too familiar.

“Mr. Randall is very proud, and so is Mattie, but in a
different way. If she knew how much I wish to see
Mrs. West, or at least learn something of her, she would
never rest until the wish was gratified. We took a walk
after tea to the village cemetery, of which the people are
justly proud, for it is a most beautiful spot, divesting the
dark, still grave of half its terrors. There are some
splendid monuments there, one costing I dare not tell
how much. It was reared to the memory of General
Morris, for whom the town was named, but this did not
impress me one half so much as a solitary grave standing
apart from all the others and enclosed by a slender iron
fence. The grass in the little yard was fresh and green,
and there were many roses growing there. The stone was
a plain slab of Italian marble, with only these words upon
it:

“`Anna, aged 20.'

“Even Mattie was interested, and we leaned a long time
on the gate, speculating upon the Anna sleeping at our

feet. Who was she, and whose the hand of love which
had been so often busy there? She was young, only
twenty when she died. Had many years been joined to
the past since she was laid to rest? Was she beautiful,
and good, and pure? Yes, she was all that, I fancied,
and I even dared to pluck a rose-bud whose parent stalk
had taken root near the foot of the grave. I can see it
now in the glass of water where I put it after returning
home. That rose and that grave have interested me
strangely, painfully I may say, as if the Anna whom they
represented were destined to cross my path, if ever the
dead can rise up a barrier between the living.

“Nothing can be more ladylike than the handwriting,
and, indeed, the whole thing. Mrs. David West may be
poor and unknown, but she is every whit as refined and
cultivated as either Mattie or Bell. I shall see her, too,
before I leave Morrisville; but why does she take it for
granted that I am interested in Dr. West? I am not, except
as a good physician; and what is she to him? Here
I am puzzling my brain and wasting the gas, when I
ought to be in bed; so with one look at that rose, which I
have been foolish enough to press,—the rose from Anna's
grave,—I'll bid the world good-night.”

6. CHAPTER VI.
LETTERS.

“By the way, did you know that Mr. Randall was the
purchaser of West Lawn, our old home?

“H. W.”

Scene in Mrs. Russell's parlor one morning about the
first of July.

Squire John nervously fumbling his watch-chain, looking
very hot and distressed; Johnnie all swollen up, looking
like a little volcano ready to explode; Mrs. Russell crying
over Mr. and Mrs. Randall's letters, wondering what
business it was of theirs to meddle and talk, just as if she
did not do her duty by Dora. Who, she'd like to know, had
supported Dora these dozen years, sending her to school,
taking her to Newport, and buying her such nice dresses?
It was right mean in Dora, and she would not stand it.
Dora should come home, and John should write that very
day to tell her so, unless he liked Dora better than he did
her, as she presumed he did—yes, she knew he did.

“Thunderation, mother, why shouldn't he like Auntie
best?” and with this outburst, Johnnie plunged heart
and soul into the contest. “Who, I'd like to know,
makes the house decent as a fellow likes to have it,—a
married old chap, I mean, like father. 'Tain't you. It's
Auntie, and so the whole co-boozle of servants say. You
ask 'em. Talk about what you've done for Dora these
dozen years, taking her to Newport, and all that! I think
I'd dry up on that strain and tell what she'd done for me.
Hasn't there been a baby about every other week since
she lived here, and hasn't Auntie had the whole care of the
brats? And at Newport how was it? I never told before,
but I will now. I heard two nice gentlemen talking
over what a pretty girl Miss Freeman was, and how
mean and selfish it was in her sister to make such a
little nigger of her. They didn't say nigger, but that's
what they meant. Dora ain't coming home, no how.
You can go to Saratogo without her. Take Clem, and
Daisy, and Tish, and Jim. You know they act the best
of the lot. Leave me and Burt and Ben at home. I'll
see to them, and we shall get on well enough.”

By this time Margaret was in hysterics, to think a son
of hers should abuse her so, with his father standing by
and never once trying to stop him. Possibly some such
idea crept through Squire John's brain, for, putting into
his voice as much sternness as he was capable of doing,
he said, “My boy, I'm astonished that you should use

such shocking words as thunderation, co-boozle, dry up,
and the like. Your Aunt Dora would be greatly distressed;
but, Madge,” turning to his sobbing wife and
trying to wind his arm around her waist, “Johnnie is
right, on the whole; his plan is a good one. We'll take
Clem, and Rosa, too, if you like, leaving Johnnie, Ben,
and Burt at home, and Dora shall stay where she is.
She was tired when she went away, and very pale. You
are not selfish, Madge; you'll let her stay. I'll write so
now,—shall I?” and there was a sound very much like a
very large, hearty kiss, while a moment after Johnnie,
in the kitchen, was turning a round of somersaults, striking
his heels in the fat sides of the cook, and tripping up
little Burt in his delight at the victory achieved for
Dora.

7. CHAPTER VII.
DORA'S DIARY CONTINUED.

IT is a long time since I wrote a word in this book;
I have been so happy and so busy withal; visits,
rides, picnics, and everything. I did not know
that life was so bright and pleasant as I have found it here
in Morrisville, where everybody seems trying to entertain
me. Mattie's brother Charlie is here, but he behaves
like a man; does not annoy me one bit, but flirts shockingly
with Bell Verner, who flirts as hard in return. He
teasingly asked me one day about Dr. West, and when
Bell inquired who he was, he said he was `a country
doctor of little pills; a sort of lackadaisical chap, who
read service very loud, and almost touched the pew railing
when he bowed in the Apostles' Creed.'

“I grew so very angry defending Dr. West that Bell
honestly believes I care for him, and kindly stops Lieutenant
Reed when he begins his fun. I like Bell Verner more
and more, only she is too proud. How I cried over that
letter from Margaret telling me to come home, and how
I tried not to have Mr. and Mrs. Randall answer it; but
they did, and there came back such a nice response from

John. What a dear, unselfish man he is, and how smooth
he made it look,—so smooth that I really felt as if doing
him a favor by staying until Johnnie's letter was received,
and I guessed at once the storm through which they had
passed.

“Will I ever forget the day I received a letter from Dr.
West? I could scarcely credit my own eyes, yet there
was his name, Richard West, looking so natural. I felt
the blood tingling in my veins, even though he merely
wrote to ask me if he might read my books, the foolish
man! Of course he might. He says he misses me, and
this I think is why the letter is worth so much, and
why I answered it. Perhaps it was foolish to do so, but
I can't help it now. It is not at all likely he'll write
again, though I find myself fancying how I shall feel, and
what he would say in a second letter. Bell Verner knows
he wrote, for I told her, but pretended I did not care.
To-morrow I am going at last to see Mrs. David West.

“July 15th.—I have seen Mrs. David West; have
looked into her eyes, so like the doctor's; have heard her
voice; have seen the child; and oh! why am I so
wretched, and why, when I came back, did I tear up
that rose from Anna's grave and throw it to the winds?
I hate this room. I cannot bear it, for Anna used to
occupy it; she haunts me continually. She died in this
room. Richard kissed her here, and here that child was
born. Oh, what am I to think except what I do? And

yet it is all suspicion, based on what a gossiping woman
told me. I wish she had never come here. I would
rather have cooked the dinner myself than have heard
what I have.

“It was arranged that Mattie should go with me to see
this Mrs. David West, and I thought of little else all
the morning; but when dinner came Mattie had been
seized with one of her violent headaches, and it was impossible
for her even to sit up. Knowing how much I
had anticipated the call, and not wishing to have me disappointed,
she insisted that I should go without her,
Peter acting as my escort there, while the new cook, a
Mrs. Felton, who, it seems, had business on that street,
would call for me on her way home. This was the arrangement,
and at about four o'clock I started. I had in
some way received the impression that Mrs. David West
lived on Elm Street, and when we passed that point I
asked Peter if we were right.

“`Yes, miss, Grove Street,—just there a ways in the
neatest little cottage you ever set eyes on, I reckon.'

“Involuntarily I thought of the woman and child seen
that first evening of my arrival at Morrisville, and something
told me I was going straight to that cottage with
its roses, its vines, and bay-windows. The surmise was
correct. I knew the house in an instant, and had there
been a doubt it would have been dispelled by the widow's
cap and the little child out on the grass-plat, just where

they were that other summer day so like this and yet so
unlike it, for then I never guessed how sharp a pang I
should be suffering now.

“`There she is. That's Mrs. West with Robin,' Peter
said, and the next moment I was speaking to Mrs. David
West, and before she said to me, `You know my son,'
I felt sure she was the doctor's mother.

“The same fine cast of feature, the same kind, honest
expression beaming in the dark eye, and the same curve
of the upper lip,—said by some to be always indicative
of high breeding. The mother and son were very much
alike, except that she as a female was noticeable for a
softer style of beauty. I never saw one to whom the
widow's cap was so becoming. It seemed peculiarly
adapted to her sad, sweet face and the silken bands of
grayish hair, which it did not conceal. There was also in
her manner and speech a refinement which even Bell Verner
might have imitated with advantage. My heart
went out to her at once, and by the time I was seated in
the rustic chair, for I preferred remaining in the yard, I
felt as much at ease as if I had known her all my life.

“`This is Robin,' she said, turning to the child, who I
now discovered was a cripple in its feet, and unable to
walk. `Did Richard ever tell you of Robin?'

“There was a hesitancy now in her voice, as if she knew
Richard had never told me of him, and doubted her own
integrity in asking the question.

“`No,' I replied, `the doctor never told me of Robin,
nor yet of himself.'

“`Richard is very reticent,' she answered; and then
as she saw my glance constantly directed to Robin, she
evidently tried to keep me from talking of him by asking
numberless questions about Richard, and by telling me
what a good, kind child he was to her.

“It is true I did not suspect her then of such a motive,
but I can see now how she headed me off from the dangerous
ground on which I leaped at last, for I could not
resist the expression of that child's face, and breaking
away from what she was telling me of Richard, I knelt
by his chair, and kissing his round cheek, asked:

“`Whose boy are you?'

“`Papa Richard's and grandma's,' he replied, and then
there flashed upon me the thought that in spite of his
deep blue eyes and soft golden curls he was like Dr.
West. For an instant I was conscious of a sharp, stinging
pain, as I said to myself, `Was Dr. West ever married?'
Surely he would have told of that,—would at
some time have mentioned his wife, and with the pain
there came the knowledge that I did care more for Dr.
West than I had supposed; that I was jealous of the dead
woman, the mother of this child. Mrs. West must have
divined a part of my thoughts, for she said half laughingly,
like one under restraint:

“`He has always called my son “Papa Richard,” as he

is the only father the child ever knew,' and a shadow
flitted across her face as she directed my attention to a
tall heliotrope near by. But I was not to be evaded;
curiosity was aroused, and replying to her remark concerning
the heliotrope, I turned again to Robin, whose
little hand I now held in mine, and said, `He is your
grandchild?'

“Suddenly the dark eyes looked afar off as if appealing
to something or somebody for help; then they softened
and tears were visible in them.

“`Poor little Robin, he has been a source of great sorrow
as well as of comfort to me, Miss Freeman,' and
Mrs. West's delicate hand smoothed and unwound the
golden curls clustering around Robin's head. `So I
used to unwind her curls,' she continued abstractedly.
`Robin's mother. I must show you her picture when
we go in. She was very beautiful, more so than any one
I ever knew, and Richard thinks the same.'

“Again that keen pain, as of a sharp knife gliding
through my flesh, passed over me, but I listened breathlessly,
while still caressing the child she continued:

“`His mother was my adopted daughter: I never had
one of my own. Two sons have been born to me; one
I have lost,—and her breath came gaspingly like speaking
of the dead,—`the other you know is Richard. To all
intents and purposes Anna was my daughter, and I am
sure no mother ever loved her own offspring more than I

did Anna. O Anna darling, Anna darling! I never
dreamed, when I took her to my bosom, that she could
—O Anna!' and Mrs. West's voice broke down in a
storm of sobs.

“After this I could not ask her any more questions, and
in a kind of maze I followed her into the house, which
was a perfect little gem, and showed marks of most exquisite
taste. Some of the furniture struck me as rather
too heavy and expensive for that cottage, but I gave it but
little thought, so interested was I in what I had heard
and seen.

“`That is Anna,' Mrs. West said, pointing to a small
portrait hanging upon the wall just where the western
sunbeams were falling upon it and lighting it up with a
wonderful halo of beauty.

“Instantly I forgot all else in my surprise that anything
so perfectly beautiful could ever have belonged to a
human being, and with a scream of delight I stood before
the picture, exclaiming, `It is not possible that this
is natural!'

“`It is said to be,' Mrs. West rejoined, `though there
is a look in her eye which I did not notice until a few
months before she died. She was crazy at the last.'

“`Crazy!' I repeated, now gazing with a feeling of
pity upon the lovely face, which seemed imbued with life.

“I cannot describe that face, and I will not attempt it,
for after I had told of the dark blue eyes and curls of

golden hair, of the pure white skin and full ripe lips,
you, my journal, would not have the least idea of the
face, for the sweet, heavenly expression which made it
what it was can never be described on paper. The
artist had put it on canvas, so at least said Mrs. David
West, and I believed her, drinking in its rare loveliness
and repeating again, `Crazy—poor Anna! Was it for
long?'

“`No, not long; she died when Robin was born.'

“`And her husband; he must have been heart-broken,'
I ventured to say next, but if Mrs. West heard me, she
made no reply, and with my thoughts in a tumult, I
continued looking at the portrait until, suddenly remembering
the grave which had so interested me, I asked,
`How old was Anna when she died?'

“`Just twenty,' was the reply; while I rejoined, `I
am sure then I have seen her grave. It says upon the
stone, “Anna, aged 20.”

“`Yes, that's all Richard would have on the marble.
It almost killed Richard, but God has healed the wound
just as He will heal all hearts which go to Him.'

“I don't know why I said what I did next, unless it
were that I should have died if I had not. The words
were wrung from me almost against my will:

“`Was Richard Anna's husband?'

“`No, no, oh no, Richard was not her husband!' Mrs.
West replied, quickly.

“Heretofore she had answered my queries concerning
Anna with hesitancy, but the `No, no, oh no, Richard
was not her husband,' was spoken eagerly, decidedly, as
if it were a fact she would particularly impress upon my
mind. Then, as I stood looking at her expectantly, she
went on, but this time in the old, cautious manner:

“`I never knew who Anna's husband was. It is a sad
story, which I would gladly forget, but Robin's presence
keeps it in my mind,' and bowing her head over the
child, the poor woman wept passionately.

“`Poor grandma, don't cry. I love you! What
makes grandma cry over me so much, and look so sorry
at me? Is it because I am a little lame boy?'

“This Robin said to me, while he tried to brush away
the tears of her he called grandmother. He had not
talked much before, but what he said now went through
my heart, and kissing his forehead, I whispered:

“`People sometimes cry for joy.'

“`But she don't,' he said, nodding toward Mrs. West,
who left us alone while she bathed her face and eyes.
`She looks so sorry, and says, “Poor Robin,” so often.
I guess it's because my feet will never walk, that she
says that. I should cry too, but Papa Richard talked to
me so good, and said God made me lame; that up in
heaven there were no little cripples; that if I loved the
Saviour, and didn't fret about my feet, I'd go up there
some day; and since then I've tried hard not to mind,

and ever so many times a day I say softly to myself,
“Will Jesus help Robin not to fret because he's a poor
lame boy, of no use to anybody.” I say it way in my
mouth, but God hears just the same.'

“I could not answer for my weeping, but kneeling beside
the lame boy, I wound my arms around his neck,
and laid his curly head upon my bosom, just as I would
have done had it been Johnnie, Ben, or Bertie thus
afflicted.

“`Seems like you was most my mother,' he said,
caressing my cheek with his soft little hand. `You
don't look like her much, only I dreamed once she came
to me and loved me, as you do, and kissed my twisted
feet, oh! so many times. It was a beautiful dream, and
next day I told it to grandma, and asked her if she wasn't
sure my mother was in heaven! She did not answer
until I said again, “Is she in heaven?” Then she said,
“I hope so, Robin;” but I wanted to know sure, and
kept on asking, until she burst out with the loudest cry
I ever heard her or anybody cry, and said, “God knows,
my little Robin. He will take care of her. I hope she's
there!” but she wouldn't say for sure, just as she did
when the minister and Mrs. Terry's baby died. Why
not? Why didn't she? Lady, you look good. You
look as if you prayed. Do you pray?'

“`Yes,' I answered, wondering if he would call my
careless words a prayer.

“`Then lady,' and the deep eyes of blue looked eagerly,
wistfully at me, `then tell me true, is my mother in
heaven, sure?'

“What could I do,—I who knew nothing to warrant a
different conclusion,—what could I do but answer, `Yes.'
He believed me, the trustful, innocent child, clapping his
hands for joy, while the picture on the wall, wholly
wrapped in the summer sunshine, seemed one gleam of
heavenly glory, as if the mother herself confirmed the
answer given to her boy. He did not doubt me in the
least, neither did I doubt myself; Anna was safe, whatever
her sin might have been; whether the wife of one
husband or six, like the woman of Samaria, she surely
was forgiven.

“Mrs. West had now returned, her face as calm and
placid as ever, and her voice as low and sweet.

“`You have had a sad call, I fear,' she said. `Richard
would not like it if he knew how I had entertained you,
but I'll promise to do better next time, though I cannot
talk of Anna. Some day perhaps you may know all,
but I would rather it should be Richard who tells you.'

“She kept associating me with Richard, and though the
association was not distasteful, it puzzled me somewhat,
making me wonder if he had ever told her much of me.

“At that moment Mattie's new cook, Mrs. Felton, appeared,
curtseying with a great deal of humility to Mrs.
West, who did not seem especially pleased to meet

her. Still she greeted her kindly, and suffered her to
caress Robin, whom she called a `precious lamb,' a
`poor, little, stunted rosy,' and numerous other extravagant
names.

“`I'm back to the old place,' she said to Mrs. West,
when through with Robin, `but my, such a change!
'Tain't much such times as when you were there, I tell
you. Then we had a head; now we've none.'

“Mrs. West stopped her at this point by asking me to
come again, and saying she did not know Mrs. Randall or
she would call on me.

“`You might make the first advance,' I said. `You
have surely lived here longer than Mrs. Randall.'

“`Yes, I know,' and her pale face flushed up to her
soft grey hair. `But times have changed with me. I
do not go out at all.'

“`Come again,' Robin said, as I turned towards him;
`come again, lady; I likes you,' cause you seem some like
Papa Richard.'

“It grated harshly to hear the child say Papa Richard,
and involuntarily I asked, `Why he did not say Uncle
Richard? He is not your father,' I added, while the
child's eyes grew big with wonder, as he replied:

“`Then where is my father, I'd like to know?'

“Mrs. Felton laughed a hateful, meaning laugh, and
said:

“`Come, Miss Freeman, it's time we were going.'

“With another good-by for Robin I shook Mrs. West's
proffered hand, and was soon out in the street with Mrs.
Felton, who, when we were at a safe distance from the
house, remarked in a very disagreeable tone:

“`The cutest thing you ever did was to tell that child
not to call the doctor papa. I'd have broke him of it long
before this. It don't sound well, 'specially after all's
been said about Mr. Richard and Miss Anna.'

“I wouldn't question her, neither was there a necessity
for it, as she was bent on talking, and of the Wests, too.

“`I s'pose you know the doctor and his mother used to
own West Lawn?' was the next remark, which brought
to my mind the conversation between her and Mrs. West.

“`Used to own West Lawn!' I repeated, surprised out
of my cool reserve.

“`To be sure they did; but, for some unaccountable
reason which nobody ever knew, they sold it about the
time Anna died, and bought the place where they live
now. Of course when a person jumps right out of a good
nest with their eyes wide open, nobody but themselves is
to blame for where they land. Mrs. West held her head
as high as the next one, drove her carriage, and used
solid silver every day, and now its all gone. I lived with
her as chamber-maid for a whole year. I was Sarah Pellet
then.'

“I was too much interested to stop her, and suffered
her to go on.

“`I loved Miss Anna, even if she did turn out bad.
She was the sweetest-tempered, prettiest-wayed girl you
ever seen, and when they took her to the hospital I felt
as bad as if she'd died.'

“`To the hospital? The lunatic asylum? Did she go
there?' I asked; and Sarah Felton replied:

“`Oh yes; they hoped 'twould cure her. Seems's if
the trouble all come to once. First, there was Robert,
Richard's twin, who went off, or was murdered, and has
never been heard of since.'

“`Richard's twin brother ran off? When? How long
ago? How long before Anna died, I mean?' I asked,
stopping suddenly as a new light dawned upon me, only,
alas! to fade into darkness at the answer.

“`Oh, better than a year. Yes, a full year; for he'd
been gone a good spell before it was known to many. He
didn't live here; 'twas in New York, and he hardly ever
come home. He was a wild one, not much like Richard,
who was engaged to Anna, and that's what I can't make
out,—why he didn't marry her.'

“We were crossing a common now, where there were
rustic benches beneath the trees; and feeling that unless
I stopped I should fall, I was so faint and sick with what
I had heard, I said that I was tired; and seating myself
upon a bench, loosened my hat-strings and leaned against
a tree, listening, while my loquacious companion continued:

“`He was engaged for years, so I've heard, and I know
he thought a sight of her. It was fairly sickish to see
'em together, he with his arm round her and she a lettin'
her head, with them long curls, loll on his shoulder.
They was to be married the very day she died. 'Twas an
awful sight. I went away from them about the time
they sent her to the hospital; but I was back a spell, as
the chamber-maid was took sick, and so I was in it all.
Dr. Richard kissed her when she was dyin', and she whispered
something in his ear.'

“`But Robin,' I gasped; `Anna was surely married to
somebody.'

“Again the smile I had seen before and hated curled
her lip as she answered:

“`Yes, of course she was married, for she was a very
pious girl, runnin' Sunday-schools, belongin' to the
church, tendin' to the poor, and all that.'

“I knew that woman did not believe in Anna's piety,
but I did, and the belief gave me comfort as I gazed up
into the clear blue sky and said to myself, `She is
there.'

“Dimly I began to perceive why Mrs. West could not
tell Robin that his mother was in heaven sure; but I was
glad I had done so, without reasoning in the least upon
the matter. I exonerated Anna, and only wrote bitter
things against poor Richard, saying to the woman, `And
Richard kissed her when she was dying?'

“`Yes, up there where you sleep. That was Anna's
room, where she died, and where Robin was born. I
didn't see it, but them that told me did. Richard fell
as flat as if struck with lightning when he came up
from the office and heard what had happened, and six
hours after, when they said she was dyin' and had asked
for him, he had to be carried, he was so limpsy and
weak. She never noticed the child an atom, or acted as
if there was one, but would whisper, `Forgive,—I can't
tell,—I promised not. It's all right,—all right.' What
she meant nobody knows, for she died just that way, with
Richard's arm around her, and the doctor a-holdin' him,
for he was whiter than a rag, and after she was dead
he went into a ravin' fever, which lasted for weeks
and weeks, till the allopaths give him up. Then the
homopaths come in and cured him, and that's why
he turned into a sugar-pill doctor. He was one of the
blisterin' and jollup kind before his sickness, but after
that he changed, and they do say he's mighty skilful. As
soon as he got well they sold West Lawn, and Mrs. West
has never seemed like the same woman since. Folks
thinks they's poor, though what's become of the property
nobody knows. Anyways the doctor supports his mother,
sendin' her money every now and agen.'

“`But why,' I asked, `did Mrs. Randall and Bell Verner
never hear of all this?'

“`Easy enough,' was the reply. `Judge Verner only

moved here last fall, and Mr. Randall last spring. West
Lawn has changed hands three times since the doctor
owned it; so it's natural that his name shouldn't appear
in the sale. Then, it's seven years since it all happened,
and a gossiping place like Morrisville, where there are upwards
of three thousand folks, don't harp on one string
forever; only them that was interested, like me, remembers.'

“This was true in detail, and was a good reason why
neither Bell nor Mattie had ever heard of Anna West, I
thought, as I dragged my steps homeward, hardly knowing
when I reached there, and feeling glad that Mattie was
still confined to her bed, as this left me free to repair at
once to my own room,—Anna's room,—where she died,
with her head on Richard's arm, and he so weak that he
had to be supported. Poor Richard! I do pity him,
knowing now why he so often seems sad. But what was
it? How is it, and what makes my brain whirl so fast?
Anna said with her dying breath that it was all right,
and I believe her. I will not cast at her a stone. She is
in heaven sure; yes, Robin, sure. And Richard fell as
if smitten with lightning when he heard of it! That betokened
innocence on his part. Then why this horrid
feeling? Is it sorrow that he cared for and loved her?
I don't know; everything seems so far off that I cannot
find it. What is the record? Let me see.

“Richard once lived here in this grand house; he has

met with reverses, nobody knows what; he has a brother
somewhere, nobody knows where; he supports his
mother, and this accounts for what I termed his stinginess.
How I hate myself, and how noble Dr. West
would appear were it not for,—for,—I cannot say it,—the
horrible possibility, and I,—I guess,—I think,—I am very
sure I did care for him more than I supposed.

8. CHAPTER VIII.
JESSIE'S DIARY.

JULY 24th.—The richest thing has happened;
the best joke I ever heard of; and I give myself
great credit for having been the direct cause
of its happening! If there is any one thing which father
hates more than another, it is a homœopathic physician.

“`Quacks, humbugs, impositions, loggerheads, ignoramuses!'

“These are very mild names compared with what I've
heard him call them, declaring he would show the door
to the first one who should ever come round him with
their two goblets, two spoons, two little plates for covers,
and one pill dissolved in a hogshead of water, half a drop
to be taken once in six hours! That's the way he talked,
submitting to any amount of blistering, bleeding, drugging,
and torturing, and thinking it felt nice. But I've
played him a trick which will do him good for the remainder
of his natural life.

“When I came home last night from Mr. Randall's, I
found him groaning, sweating, and almost swearing with
the colic, brought on by too much fruit at dinner, followed
by two saucers of cream. He never was in such

pain in his life; he should die, he knew he should; and
somebody must go for the doctor. Of course every servant
was out of sight and hearing, and so I went myself
for Dr. Lincoln, who was off in the country miles away,
and would not be home for hours. Here was a dilemma;
and as I was wondering what to do next, I saw that paragon
of M.D.'s, Dr. West, coming down the street. Instantly
my decision was made; and looking as anxious
as I could, I accosted him at once, begging him to go and
prescribe for my father, Judge Verner. He looked at
me a little curiously, but acceded to my request, and in
less than five minutes I had ushered him into the room,
where father was enacting a round of colicky gymnastics,
and where Bell looked up in wonder, actually starting to
her feet when I introduced Dr. West.

“`Dr. Lincoln was gone, and I brought this one,' I
whispered to father, who was in too much pain to notice
particularly, and who thought it Dr. Lincoln's student.

“`I shall need some water, a spoon, and two goblets,'
the doctor said, and I hastened to execute the orders,
watching father as the stirring process went on, and almost
screaming when he swallowed the first spoonful.

“`I'm afraid it ain't strong enough, doctor. It hasn't
much taste,' he said, smacking his lips, as he missed the
flavor of Dr. Lincoln's bottles.

“`We'll see what effect it has,' was the doctor's reply;
and in a few moments down went another drop of the

sweetened water; then another, and another, until the
groaning and flouncing ceased, and father lay upon his
pillow as well-behaved a patient as one would wish to
see.

“He was very quiet, and after waiting half an hour the
doctor said he did not think he was needed any longer,
and would leave.

“`Should the paroxysms return,' he said to Bell, `give
him six of these pills,' and he placed upon the table a
tiny phial, which at once caught father's eye and set him
to raving like a madman.

“`Bell! Jessie!' he gasped, as the gate closed after
the doctor, `who was that chap?—what persuasion, I
mean? Was he a rascally—'

“He was in too great a rage to say the words, and so I
said it for him.

“`He was a homœopathist, father. Didn't he help you
quick? You never groaned a groan after the third
swallow.'

“`Third swallow be—no, I won't swear, but I will say
Thunder and Mars!' he roared; `have I been insulted
in my own house? I won't stand it! I'll gag, I'll
heave, I'll puke, but what I'll get rid of the stuff! Give
me water for the colic,—me!'

“`But if the water answered the purpose, why do you
care?' Bell asked, and father gave her a look very like,
`Et tu Brute.'

“He could not deny that he was better,—that something
had helped him; but it wasn't sweetened water; no indeed;
and I might heave it out of the window.

“I took up the goblet to do so, when he yelled:

“`Don't be a fool because you made one of me! Set
that glass down and bring me that phial.'

“I obeyed, and he read on the little yellowish paper:
`For Colic. For an adult, take six every hour. For
children from two to three, according to age. Prepared
by R. West, M.D., Beechwood.'

“He read it aloud twice, then asked, `Who the —
was R. West, M.D., and how the plague came he there?'

“The hurricane was over, and I ventured to explain,
asking if he were not very gentlemanly and pleasant.

“`He's well enough for a fool!' he replied, declaring
he should have been better without the truck; that had
nothing to do with it.

“This morning I missed the little phial, and when I
asked where it was, father told me to mind my business,
and then I knew he had it safe in his vest pocket, a charm
against future attacks of colic. How Bell scolded when
we were alone, and how I rolled on the floor and laughed.
Bell is smitten; I can see it in her face and manner.
She does nothing but think of Dr. West, who has returned
to Beechwood. Will I ever see him again? and
does Dora Freeman hate or like him, which?”

9. CHAPTER IX.
EXTRACT FROM DR. WEST'S DIARY.

“This is a judge's letter, and I rather like him for it.
He is not to be convinced in a hurry, but those little
pills will do the work. I'd like to know him better, and
his daughters too. There was something fascinating in
that haughty Bell's manner, while the mischievous
Jessie attracted me at once. I may some time improve
the acquaintance commenced under so very singular circumstances.”

10. CHAPTER X.
DORA'S DIARY.

IT seems to me a year since I last wrote, and yet
'tis only three short weeks. But in that time
so much has happened that I scarcely can realize
it at all. Morrisville was very lonely after the doctor
left, and but for that wild Jessie, who keeps one so constantly
stirred up, I could hardly have borne the loneliness.
She is so full of life, and she has made me laugh
so much as she described her father's conversion to
homœopathy, and then went off into ecstasies over Dr.
West.

“But there came a day when even the gleeful Jessie's
laugh was hushed, and her merry eyes were dim with
tears, as she helped me array a little crippled form for the
grave. Robin is dead! I can write about it now, can
speak of the darling composedly, but at first the thought
of him brought a great choking sob, and I could only
weep, so fast he grew in my love during the few days I
watched over him. He was worse I heard, and in spite
of Mattie's assertion that I was not able to endure it, I
went to see him. Nor was I sorry when I met the look

of love which beamed in his soft blue eyes, as folding his
arms around my neck, he said:

“`I knew you'd come, for I asked God would He send
you to little Robin, and He did. You'll stay, too, won't
you, till Robin's dead? and you'll tell me again of my
mother in heaven?'

“I might not have stayed with him to the last, but for a
dream I had that night, in which Anna came to me, her
robes all white and pure as are the robes of the redeemed,
a halo of glory round her head, and a look of love in her
eyes as she bent over me and said:

“`There's a little harp in heaven waiting for my boy,
and ere many days his baby hands will sweep its golden
strings; but till that time arrives, he wants you, Dora
Freeman,—wants you to lead him down into the river,
across whose waters I shall wait to meet him. For
Richard's sake, you'll go.'

“The beautiful vision faded from my view, and I awoke
from what seemed more reality than a dream.

“`Not for Richard's sake,' I said, `but for Anna's;'
and so next day I went again to where the little sick boy
lay, watching and waiting for me.

“`I don't call him Papa Richard now,' he said, when
my wrappings were removed, and I sat down beside him.
`I told him what you said, that he was not my father,
and he told me, “No, Robin, I am not,” but he wouldn't

say where papa was. Do you know, lady, is he in
heaven, too?'

“I could not tell, and I tried to divert his mind into
some other channel, getting him to speak of Richard, and,
vain girl that I was, laying ingenious snares for ascertaining
if Richard had mentioned me when he was home.

“`He talked of “Dora.” Is that you, and may I call
you so?' Robin said, in reply to my direct interrogation
as to what Richard had talked about; and so after that I
was Dora to the child, who would scarcely let another
wait upon him. `You seem like mother. You'll stay,'
he kept repeating, when Mattie came at nightfall after
me.

“I thought of Anna in my dream; thought of the little
golden harp, and stayed, while people talked, as people
will, wondering what kept me at that child's sick-bed, and
associating me at last with Richard, for whose sake they
said I had turned nurse to Robin. This piece of gossip
proved the resurrection of the old story, which was told
and retold in a thousand different forms, until madcap
Jessie Verner threatened to box the first one's ears
who should say Anna West to her again. This she told
me herself, watching with me by Robin, and that was all
that passed between us on the subject. It seemed to be
tacitly understood that neither Mattie, Bell, nor herself
were to speak of the story to me, and they did not.
Somehow it would have been a great relief to know just

what they thought, but I would not ask, and on this
point surrounded myself with so strong a barrier of reserve,
that they never tried to break it down.

“Jessie had come to Mrs. West's unsolicited, and it was
strange how the quiet, sad woman opened her heart at once
to receive the wild young creature, while Robin turned
to her trustingly, and whispered when she was gone:

“`I don't mind—her seeing my feet. She laughs at
most everything, but she wouldn't at my poor, twisted
toes.'

“Precious Robin! I would he could have seen the gush
of tears with which Jessie baptized those twisted toes
when first the shrivelled things met her view; but he
was then where the halt and maimed are made whole, and
the feet which here had never stepped a step were treading
the golden streets. It was strange that one so young
should be so sensitive about his deformity, but he had
been so from the time he first learned that he was lame,
and when, sitting in his chair upon the lawn, he would
often ask his grandmother if she supposed the passers-by
guessed that he was not like them.

“It is frequently the case that a deformity of the body
manifests itself in the expression of the face, but it was
not so with him. A more beautiful face I never saw, and
I loved to watch it as he lay sleeping upon his pillow,
wondering if the mother could have been as beautiful as
the child, and then speculating bitterly upon the father,

wherever he might be. I had said in my heart that I
exonerated Richard, but at times I experienced a feeling
which I called hatred for the man whom Mrs. West was
almost hourly expecting, and who, when he came, found
me with Robin on my lap, his head nestled upon my
bosom, while I sang to him of the Heavenly City, where
his mother waited for him.

“It was just at the setting of the sun that I heard the
coach stop before the gate, and a rapid step upon the
walk. My voice must have trembled, for Robin unclosed
his eyes as if to ask the cause, but I hushed him gently,
while in the adjoining apartment a low conversation was
carried on for twenty minutes or more. At last the
doctor started for the room where I was sitting, but I
gave no sign of consciousness until he was close beside
me and I met the glance of his eyes,—a glance in which for
an instant I fancied I read more than a friendly interest;
the blood surged hotly through my veins; but thoughts
of Anna, whom dying he had kissed, holding her as I had
held Robin, froze it back from my face, which must have
turned very white, for after his first words of greeting,
he said to me, `I cannot thank you enough for what you
have been to mother. She has told me of your kindness;
but Dora,' and his hand touched my hair lightly, `I fear
you are overtaxing your strength. You are very pale
to-night. Let me relieve you of Robin.'

“I was not tired, I said, and my manner was so chilling

that his hand slid from my hair, while he began speaking
to Robin, who only complained of weariness.

“`I am glad you have come, Uncle Richard,' Robin
said, putting out his thin fingers and playing with the
heavy beard of the doctor, who had knelt beside me the
better to see the child. `I call you uncle all the time
because Dora wanted me to.'

“Instantly our eyes met, and I saw his face crimson
with emotions whose nature I could not guess. I only
knew they hardened me into stone, and I was glad when
at last Jessie came in, for she relieved me from all necessity
of talking. Richard liked Jessie; her sprightly
manner amused and rested him, I could see, and it made
me half angry to hear how merrily he laughed at her remarks,
even when he knew that Robin's days were numbered.
How I clung to that child, refusing to give him
to the care of Mrs. West. He could not lie upon the
bed, and I felt a kind of fierce pleasure in holding him,
and in knowing that Richard knew what I was doing for
Anna's child.

“Slowly the summer night darkened around us, and
the August moon cast its beams across the floor, even to
where I sat singing the low lullaby. And out upon the
piazza Dr. West and Jessie talked and laughed together,
until the sick boy whispered moaningly, `It's very cold
and dark in here. Cover me closer, Dora, and light the
candles now.'

“I covered him up, and saw upon his face a shadow,
whose import I could not mistake, and half bitterly, half
reproachfully, I exclaimed:

“`Dr. West, if you can spend the time, I think Robin
needs you.'

“He was at my side in an instant, and so was Jessie;
her eyes filling with tears when she, too, saw and recognized
the shadow which had alarmed me. Robin was
dying! We all knew it now, and Robin knew it, too,
and still refused to leave me for the arms which Richard
stretched out to him.

“`It's nicer here,' he said, and there was a world of
love in the soft blue eyes as he nestled closer to me.
`I guess I'm dying. It's all so dark and queer. Is it very
far to heaven, and will I lose the way?'

“`No, darling, for Jesus will go with you,' Richard
answered, now pressing so close to Robin that his
shoulder touched mine, and I felt his breath upon my
hair.

“`And I won't be a cripple any more? I'll walk in
heaven, and mother's there sure?' was the next remark,
to which there came no response, except a moan
from Mrs. West, until I answered:

“`Yes, sure, Robin, sure.'

“`I'll tell her how good you was, and how much I
loved you, too. What shall I say for you, Grandma
West? What word shall I carry mother?'

“Mrs. West was weeping bitterly, with her head upon
the pillow, where Robin's had lain so long, and when he
thus addressed her, she answered:

“`Tell her, if you meet her, how I mourned for her till
my hair all turned white, and tell her how if in thought
I ever wronged her, I am so sorry now.'

“`I'll tell her,' Robin whispered; `and you, Uncle
Richard, what for you?'

“The doctor's frame shook, and his face was white as
ashes as he was thus appealed to for a message to the
dead, but he did not speak until Robin twice repeated,
`And what for you?'

“Then with a sob, he said:

“`Nothing, Robin; nothing from me.'

“`Why! didn't you love my mother?' the dying boy
asked, the look of surprise for a moment mastering the
look of death upon his face.

“`Yes, he did,' I said. `He loved her better than
his life. He loves her still. Tell her so.'

“Again my eyes met those of Dr. West, but in the expression
of his there was something which subdued all
my pride, and brought a rain of tears upon my face. I
did not longer refuse to let him take the child, nor did
Robin refuse to go; and I leaned back in my chair sick
and faint, while that great struggle went on between
death and the little life whose lamp had burned so
feebly.

“It was not long, but while it lasted I knew that Richard
was praying softly, and that his words were soothing
to the sufferer, who suddenly exclaimed:

“`I see my mother! She's like the picture in the
frame! She's waiting for me over there where the banks
are so green! She is in heaven sure; but I don't see
my father anywhere! He is not there! Oh, where is
my father?'

“That was the last; and two hours later, Robin lay
quietly upon his couch, his golden curls all smooth and
shining, just as Jessie had made them, his blue eyes
closed, his tiny hands folded upon his bosom, his poor,
crippled feet hidden from curious sight.

“That night I began to love Jessie Verner, and so I
fancied did Dr. West. All her levity was gone for the
time, and in its place there came a tender, motherly
manner, which brooded over and encircled all in its
careful forethought. Even Mrs. West became a very
child in the hands of this girl of eighteen, while Richard,
too, was brought within her influence. He was weary
with his long ride of a hundred and thirty miles, but no
one save Jessie seemed to think of this. She remembered
everything, and when I would have worried Mrs.
West with questions as to where Robin's clothes were
kept, she hushed me gently, going about the house in
quest of what was needed, with as much assurance as if
she had been the daughter instead of a perfect stranger.

It was Jessie who made Richard lie upon the lounge in
the quiet sitting-room; Jessie who arranged his pillows
for him, covering him up with his travelling-shawl, and
then brought him tea and toast she herself had made,
and which he so much needed after his wearisome ride.
I did not marvel that he followed her movements with
eyes in which I read, as I believed, more than an ordinary
interest; while at me, still keeping a useless watch by the
dead boy, he seldom glanced. There was a pang at my
heart which I suppose was jealousy, though I did not so
define it, and I rather enjoyed thinking that Anna, and
Robin, and myself, were in some way wronged by this
new interest of Richard's. I had cared for Robin to the
last, but with his life my usefulness had ceased. I was
not needed longer, I thought, and so next morning I
went home, saying to Mrs. West and Richard, when they
asked if I would soon be back:

“`I shall attend the funeral, of course. There in no
necessity for coming before. Jessie will do everything.'

“Mrs. West did not urge me to return, neither did
Richard, but he went with me to the gate, opening it for
me, and then, standing a moment as if there was something
he would say, `You do look tired, Dora,—more so
than I thought. You are not strong enough for all you
have gone through. I think I must prescribe,' and he
took my hand to feel the quickened pulse. `You are
feverish,' he continued. `You ought to rest, but we

shall miss you so much. It's a comfort to know you are
here.'

“I was very foolish, very nervous, and the tears started,
but I dashed them away, and taking the offered medicine,
answered back, `I leave to Jessie the task of comforter.
She will do better than I.'

“The next moment I was walking rapidly down the
street, never looking back until the corner was reached,
when, glancing over my shoulder, I saw the doctor still
standing where I had left him, leaning upon the gate. I
never remember a time when I was so childish, or more
unhappy, than I was that day and the following, which
last was the day of Robin's funeral. There was no parade,
no display,—only a few friends and neighbors, with
Jessie, presiding genius, telling everybody what to do,
while, stranger than all, Judge Verner himself was there
as director, his carriage bearing Mrs. West and Richard
to the grave where they buried Robin.

“There was something in the young man which he liked,
he said, even if he was a fool, and so he had offered no
objections to Jessie's proceedings, and was himself doing
what he could for the family. There was room in the
carriage for four, and greatly to my surprise the Judge
whispered to me:

“`That chap they call Doctor wants you to go with
them. He says, next to his mother, the child loved you
the best.'

“I was very faint for an instant, and then shrinking
back into the corner I answered no, so decidedly that the
judge hastened away, repeating his ill success to Richard,
who had risen, and with his mother on his arm was advancing
to the door. As he passed me he stopped, and
reaching his hand said gently, `Dora, come with us; for
Robin's sake.'

“I could not resist that voice, and I went forward taking
his other arm, and so out into the yard, past the
groups of people who speculated curiously as to why Miss
Freeman should go with the chief mourners. Behind us
came Mr. Randall's carriage, with Mattie, and Bell, and
Jessie, and that in a measure relieved me of my rather
awkward position.

“`Mother,' Richard said, as we drew near the cemetery,
`it is seven years to-day since Anna died. Do you remember?'

“`Yes,' she answered sadly, while I remembered that
seven years ago was also to have been his bridal.

“Did he think of it as we wound round the gravelled
road, past the willow and the cedar, past the box, the
pine, and fir, to where Anna lay sleeping? Did he look
back with anguish and regret to that other day, when,
with the August sunshine falling upon him as it was falling
now, he listened to the solemn words, `Ashes to
ashes, dust to dust,' and heard the cold earth rattle
down upon the coffin-lid? Yes, he did, I was sure, and

this was what blanched his cheeks so white and made his
lips quiver so, as we returned to the carriage and were
driven from the yard, leaving Anna and Robin there alone.

“That afternoon I was restless and wretched. I could
not remain quietly in any place, but wandered uneasily
about until near nightfall, when I stole out unobserved
and took my way to the burying-ground, where Anna
and Robin were. Just outside the iron railing which enclosed
their graves there was a rude, time-worn seat,
placed upon the grass-plat years ago, it would seem, from
the names and dates carved upon it. Here I sat down,
and leaning my face upon my hand, tried to think of all
that had transpired since I had come to Morrisville.
Had I known all I was to see and hear, would I have
wished to come? I asked myself; but could find no satisfactory
answer. I was glad I had known Robin, for his
memory would be a sacred thing to me, and I said I was
glad I had heard of Anna ere I learned to think too
much of Richard. Then thoughts of Jessie arose, and I
said aloud, `Can he ever forget Anna, who died in his
arms?'

“`No, Dora, I shall never forget her, neither can I
mourn for her always, as I mourned when we first laid
her here, and I sat nearly all the night just where you
are sitting, watching the stars as they held their first vigil
over Anna's grave, and almost impiously questioning
the Providence which had dealt so strangely with me.'

“I knew it was Richard's voice speaking to me, and I
gave a little start of surprise, but did not lose a word
which he had spoken.

“`I half believed I should find you here,' he said, sitting
down beside me, and drawing a little more about my
neck the shawl which had fallen off. `Something told
me I should find you, and so I came quite as much to
join the living as the dead. Dora, you will forgive the
familiarity,—I never called you so at home, but here,
where you have done me and mine so much good, you
will surely let me use a name which mother and Robin
adopted.'

“I bowed, and he went on.

“`You do not know how glad I am that you were with
us when Robin died, or how it lessens the smart to have
you sitting with me in sight of Robin's grave.'

“`And Anna's?' I said, looking at him for the first
time.

“`Yes, Anna's,' he continued in the same kind tone;
`and it is of her I would tell you, Dora,' and he spoke
hurriedly now. `How much do you know of Anna, and
who told you?'

“`Sarah Felton; and I know more than I wish I did,'
I answered, my voice full of tears, which I could not repress.

“`Felton!' he repeated in dismay. `Unless her reputation
for veracity has improved, I would not vouch for

the truth of what she might say, though she liked Anna.
Shall I tell you her history, Dora?'

“I knew it would cost him a mighty effort to do so, but
I must hear the story. I should never be happy till I
had, and I answered eagerly:

“`Yes, tell me of Anna.'

11. CHAPTER XI.
RICHARD'S STORY.

HE was very white, and his voice trembled, while
his eyes had in them the far-off look I had once
or twice observed before.

“`There are some things in our family history,' he began,
`which I shall omit, as they have nothing in particular
to do with Anna and myself. For instance, you
know, perhaps, that we once lived at West Lawn in different
circumstances from what mother is living in now, and
that we suddenly sold the place, purchasing a smaller one,
and living in a cheaper, plainer way. Why we did this I
need not say, except that Anna was in no way connected
with it.

“`She was my adopted sister; and she came to us when
only six years old. I was twelve, as was my twin-brother
Robert. He went from us years ago, and has never been
heard from since. We fear he is dead, and the uncertainty
is killing my mother. I shall soon be all alone.
But I was telling you of Anna, who grew so fast into our
hearts, my brother and I quarrelling for the honor of
drawing her to school. This was in her childhood, but as
she grew older Robert professed to care less for her than

I. “She was a doll-baby,” he said; “a compound of red
and white, and yellow curls.” He would not even acknowledge
that she was beautiful, but said she could not
compare with the maidens of New York, where he went
to live when Anna was fourteen and we were twenty.
His coldness troubled me at first, but when I came to
think of her as something dearer than a sister, I was
glad that he so seldom came to Morrisville, for he was far
finer-looking than I am. Put us side by side, and nineteen
out of twenty would have given him the preference.
But he did not care for Anna, and when she was sixteen
I asked her to be my wife. It was here, too, Dora, on
this very bench, where you are sitting with me, and it
was eleven years ago this very day.

“`Something most always happens to me on this day—
something which leaves its impress on my mind. One
year ago we went to that picnic by the lake. Do you remember
it, Dora?'

“`Yes,” I gasped, while my cheeks burned painfully.
`Yes, but go on with Anna.'

“He was silent a moment, and then continued:

“`We were in the habit of coming here to sit, she little
dreaming how near we were to the spot of earth where
she would ere long be lying. I have told you that I asked
her to be my wife, but I have not told you how much I
loved her, for I did—oh, so much, so much! And she
was worthy of my love. Whatever happened afterward

she was worthy then. You have seen her picture. It
hardly does her justice, for no artist can ever give a correct
idea of what that face was when lighted up with life,
and health, and love. I have never seen a face one-half
as beautiful as Anna's. She knew that she was beautiful,
but it did not make her vain, for she knew that God had
given her the dangerous gift of beauty, and she tried to
keep His gift unsullied, just as she tried to keep her heart
pure in His sight. I cannot think of a single fault she
had unless it were that she sometimes lacked decision, and
was too easily swayed by those in whom she had confidence.
But in all essential points she was right, serving
God with her whole soul, and dedicating herself early to
His service.'

“`Then why,' I exclaimed, `when Robin asked if she
was in heaven sure, why did you hesitate to tell him
yes?'

“A look of pain contracted his features as he replied:

“`I am speaking of Anna as she was when I asked her
to be my wife. We read of angels falling,—then why not
a mortal man? though Heaven knows that I cannot fully
believe that Anna fell. I could not live if I believed it.
Mother's religious creed and mine differ in one point,
although we profess the same holy faith. To me a child
of God is a child forever, just as no act of mine can make
me cease to be my mother's son. But to go on. I loved

her with my whole soul, and I told her so, while for a
moment she made no reply, except to lay her head upon
my arm and weep. Then lifting up her eyes she said she
was too young to know her own mind yet; that she loved
me, and always had,—like a brother at first, but latterly
in a different way, and if I would not require her to be
my wife at once, and would promise to release her should
she ever come to think that she could not be mine, she
would answer yes. And so we were engaged.

“`After that I seemed to tread on air, so happy and so
full of anticipation was my whole being. I had been
graduated the previous year, and I was then a student in
Dr. Lincoln's office, but I boarded at home, and saw
Anna every day, counting the hours from the time I left
her in the morning until I returned late in the afternoon
to our fashionable dinner, for we observed such matters
then. I shut my eyes at times, and those days come back
again, bringing with them Anna as she used to look when
she came out to meet me, her curls falling about her childish
face, and her white robes giving her the look of an
angel. I loved her too much. I almost placed her before
Him who has declared He will have no idols there,
and so I was terribly punished. We were to be married
on her twentieth birthday, and until about a year previous
to that time I had not the shadow of a suspicion that
Anna's love was not wholly my own. I well remember
the time, a dreary, rainy autumn day, when she came

nto my room, and leaning one hand on my shoulder,
parted my hair with the other, as she was wont to do.

““`Richard,” she began, “isn't it just as wicked to act
a lie as it is to tell one?”

““`I supposed it was,” I said, and she continued:

““`Then you won't be angry when I tell you what I
must. I was very young when I promised to be your
wife, and I am afraid I did not quite know what I was
doing. I love you dearly, Richard, but you seem more
like my brother; and, Richard, don't turn so white and
tremble so,—I shall marry you if you wish it; but please
don't, oh! don't—”

“`She was weeping bitterly now,—was on her knees
before me, my Anna, my promised wife. I had thought
her low-spirited for some days, but had no thought of
this, and the shock was a terrible one. I could not,
however, see her so disturbed, when I had the power to
relieve her, and after talking with her calmly, dispassionately,
I released her from the engagement and she was
free. I did not even hint at the possibility of her learning
to love me in time, because I fancied she would be
more apt to do so if wholly untrammelled; but that hope
alone kept my heart from breaking during the wretched
weeks which followed, and in which Anna's health
seemed failing, and her low spirits to increase. A
change of air was proposed, and she was sent to Boston,
where my mother has relatives. It was on the eve of

the new year when she came back to us, with a white,
scared look upon her face, which became at last habitual,
making it painful to look at her, she appeared so nervous
and frightened. It was as if some great terror were
continually haunting her, or some mighty secret, which
it was death to divulge and worse than death to cover
up. I supposed it to be a fear of what I might require
of her, and so I said to her one day that if the thing
preying upon her mind was a dread lest I should seek to
make her my wife, she might put that aside, as I should
not annoy her in that way.

“`Never to my last hour shall I forget the look in her
eyes,—a look so full of anguish and remorse, that I
turned away, for I could not meet it.

““`O, Richard,” she moaned, drawing back so I could
not touch her, “you don't know how wretched I am.
It almost seems as if God had forgotten that I did try to
serve Him, Richard. What is the unpardonable sin?
Is it to deceive?”

“`I thought she referred to her relations with me, and
I tried to soothe her agitation, telling her she had not
deceived me; that she had told me frankly how she felt;
that she was wholly truthful and blameless.

“`With a cry which smote cruelly on my ear, she
exclaimed:

““`No, no, you kill me! Don't talk so! I am not
blameless; but, oh! I don't know what to do! Tell me,

Richard, tell me, which is worse, to deceive, or break a
solemn vow?”

“`I had no idea what she meant, and without directly
answering her questions I tried to quiet her, but it was
a useless task. She only wrung her hands and sobbed
more passionately, saying God had cast her off, and she
was lost forever. This seemed to be the burden of her
grief for many days, and then she settled down into a
stony calm, more terrible than her stormy mood had
been, because it was more hopeless. She did not talk to
us now except to answer questions in monosyllables, and
would sit all day by the window of her chamber, looking
afar off as if in quest of some one who never came.

“We thought when she came home that we had as
much as we could bear, for a domestic calamity had overtaken
us, involving both ruin and disgrace, unless it
were promptly met; but in our concern for Anna, we
forgot the other trouble, else we had fainted beneath the
rod. At last the asylum was recommended, and the first
of March we carried her there, taking every precaution
that her treatment should be the kindest and most considerate.'

“`How long ago was that?' I asked, starting suddenly,
as a memory of the past swept over me.

“`Seven years,' he replied, and I continued:

“`Was it in Utica? If so, I must have seen her, for
seven years this summer Mrs. Randall and I visited a

schoolmate in Utica, and one day we went from curiosity
to the lunatic asylum, but I did not see a face like Anna's
in the portrait. Oh yes,' and I started again, `I remember
now a young girl with the most beautiful golden
hair, but her face was resting on the window-sill, and
she would neither look up nor answer my questions,—
that was Anna,' and in my excitement I could scarcely
control myself to listen, while Richard continued:

“`It is possible, and seems like her, as she would not
answer any one.

“`Every two weeks mother and I visited her, but after
the first time she never spoke to us, but tried to hide
away where we could not see her. She gave them no
trouble whatever, as she seldom left her chair by the
window, where she sat the live-long day, looking westward,
just as she did at home. She had written one
letter, they said, and when we asked to whom, the
matron could only remember that she believed it was to
California, adding that the attendant who then took the
letters to the office had sickened since and died. It was
to some imaginary person, no doubt, she said, and so
that subject was dismissed by my mother, but I could
not so soon forget it, and when next I visited her, I said
abruptly:

““`Anna, what correspondent have you in California?”

“`Instantly her face was pallid with fear, and she fell

at my feet senseless. This was a mystery upon which
I dwelt day and night, finding no solution whatever to
it, and forgetting it at last as the terrible tragedy drew
to a close.

“`Late in July mother went again to visit Anna, and
when she returned her hair was almost as white as you
now see it, while her whole appearance was indicative of
some great, crushing sorrow which had fallen suddenly
upon her. Anna had asked to be taken home, she said,
—had fallen on her knees, and clasping her dress had
kissed it abjectly, crying piteously, “Home, mother;
take poor Anna home; let her die there.”

“`It was the first time she had spoken to us in months,
and we could not refuse. So she came,—the seventh day
of August,—travelling by railroad to the station, and
coming the remainder of the way in our carriage. Her
last fancy was that she could not walk, and I met her at
our gate, carrying her into the house—and upstairs to her
old room, which had been made ready for her. As I
laid her upon the bed, she clasped her arms tightly
round my neck, and whispered, “God has forgiven me,
Richard, will you?”

“`I kissed her, and then went down to mother, who
needed my services more than Anna, and who lay all
that evening on the lounge as white and rigid as stone.
The next day I saw a good deal of Anna, and hope whispered
that she was getting better. The scared, wild

look was gone, and a bright, beautiful color burned
upon her cheeks. Her hair, which had been cut, was
growing out again more luxuriant than ever, and curled
in short ringlets about her head. She talked a little,
too, asking if we had ever heard from Robert, and bidding
me tell him, when he came back, that she spoke
kindly of him before she died. This was the eighth.
The next day was her birth-day, the one fixed upon for
our bridal. I do not know if she remembered it, but I
thought of nothing else as the warm, still hours glided
by, and to myself I said it may be some other day.
Anna is better. Anna will get well. Alas! I little
dreamed of the scathing blow in store for me; the
frightful storm which was to rage so fiercely round me,
and whose approach was heralded by the arrival of Dr.
Lincoln, who had been there before, holding private consultations
with my mother, and looking, when he came
from them, stern, perplexed, mysterious, and sorry.

“`Dora, you know what all this portended, but you
do not know, neither can you begin to guess, how heavy,
—how full of agony was the blow which awaited me,
when just at nightfall I came up from the office where I
had been for several hours. “Anna was dying.” This
was the message which greeted me in the hall, and like
lightning I fled up the stairs, meeting on the upper landing
with my mother, who had grown old twenty years
since morning.

““`Richard, my boy, my poor boy, can you bear it?
have they told you? do you know?”

““`Yes,” I said, “Anna is dying. I must see her; let
me go,” and I tore away from the hands which would
have held me back until I was to some extent prepared.

“`I did not heed her voice, for through the half-closed
door I caught a glimpse of Anna. She saw me, too, and
her hand was beckoning. I was half-way across the
room, when a sound met my ear which took all consciousness
away, and for the next three hours I was insensible
to pain. Then came the horrid waking, but the
blow had stunned me so, I neither felt nor realized as I
did afterwards. I went straight to Anna, for she was
asking for me, she from whom the rest stood aloof as
from a polluted thing. Through all the horror she had
never spoken a word, or made the slightest sound, and
this suppression of feeling was hastening her end. Nothing
but the words, “Tell Richard to come,” had passed
her lips since, and when I went to her she could only
whisper faintly, “Forgive me, Richard. It's all right,
but I promised not to tell. It's right, it's right.” Then
she continued, entreatingly, “Let me lay my head on your
arm as it used to lie, and kiss me once in token of forgiveness.”

“`Dora, you are a woman, and women judge their sex
more harshly than we do, but you would not have had
me refuse that dying request?'

“`I should hate you if you had,' I sobbed, while he
continued:

“`Mother made a motion of dissent. She was casting a
stone, but I did not heed her. I lifted Anna up; I held
her on my bosom; I pushed away the clustering curls;
I kissed the quivering lips sueing for forgiveness and assuring
me all was right. I forgave her then and there
as I hoped to be forgiven; I said I would care for her
baby; I received her last injunction; I kept her in my
arms until the last fleeting breath went out, and when I
laid her back upon the pillow she was dead!

“`Death wipes out many a stain, and Anna, by her
dying, threw over the past a veil of charity, which only
a few of the coarser, unfeeling ones ever tried to rend.
There was gossip and talk, and wonder, and pity, and
surmise, and something suspicious thrown upon me, the
more readily as people generally did not know that our
engagement had been broken; but I outlived it all, and
when, three months after Anna died, I rose from a sick-bed,
and went forth among people again, they gave me
only sympathy and friendly words, never mentioning
either Anna or Robin in my presence.

“`During that sickness, my opinion with regard to the
practice of medicine underwent a change, and greatly
to the horror of good old Dr. Lincoln, with whom I
studied, I became a homœopathist. This furnished me
with an excuse for leaving Morrisville, as I wished to

investigate that mode of treatment, and gain every possible
information from physicians whom I knew to be intelligent
and thorough. I went first to New York, and
after a few months commenced my new practice in
Boston; thence, as you know, I went to Beechwood.
Once I hoped mother might be persuaded to go with me,
but she said:

““`I would rather stay here, where people know all
about it. I could not bear to be questioned concerning
Robin.”

“`Women are different from men; it takes them longer
to rise above anything like disgrace, and mother has
never been what she was before Anna's death. She came
in time to love Robin dearly, but his misfortune added
to her grief, until her cup seemed more than full. Her
health is failing rapidly, and a change of place is necessary.
For a long time past I have had it in my mind to
sell the cottage and take mother to Beechwood. A friend
of mine stands ready to purchase at any time. I saw
him two hours since, and to-morrow the papers will be
drawn which will deprive us of our home.'

“`And your mother!' I exclaimed, `will she go to
Beechwood?'

“`Not at present. Not until she is better, Dora. I
am going with mother to California as soon as I can
arrange my affairs at home. I may not return for a long
time, certainly not for a year.'

“There was a tremulousness in the tone of his voice as
he told me this, while to me the world seemed changed,
and I felt how desolate his going would leave me. Still
I made no comment, and after a moment he continued:

“`And now, Dora, comes the part which to me is most
important of all. Men do not often lay bare their secrets
except to one they love! It has cost me a great
effort to go over the past, and talk to you of Anna, but
I felt that I must do it. I must tell you that the heart
I would offer you has on its surface a scar, but, Dora,
only a scar; believe me, only a scar. It does not quicken
now one pulse the faster when I remember Anna, who was
to have been my wife. I loved her. I lost her; and were
she back just as she used to be, and I knew you as I
know you now, I should give you the preference. You
are not as beautiful as Anna, but you are better suited
to my taste,—you better meet the requirements of my
maturer manhood. I cannot tell when my love for you
began. I was interested in you from the first. I have
watched and pitied you these four years, wishing often
that I could lighten the load you bore so uncomplainingly,
and when you came away this time, life was so dreary
and monotonous that I said to myself, “Whether Dora
hears of Anna or not, I'll tell her when she returns, and
ask her to be my wife.” At first I was a very coward in
the matter, and cautioned mother against revealing anything,
but afterward thought differently. If you are to

be mine, there should be no concealments of that nature,
and so I have told you all, giving you leave to repeat it
if you please. There is one person whom I would particularly
like to know it, and that is Jessie Verner.'

“The mention of that name was unfortunate, for it
roused the demon of jealousy, and when he continued:

“`Dora, will you be my wife? Will you give me a
right to think of and love you during the time I am absent?'

“I answered pettishly:

“`If I say no, would you not be easily consoled with
Jessie? You seem to admire her very much.'

“While he was talking to me he had risen, and now he
was leaning against the iron fence, where he could look
me directly in the face, and where I, too, could see him.
As I spoke of Jessie, an amused expression flitted over
his features, succeeded by one more serious as he replied:

“`I never supposed Jessie could be won even if I
wished to win her, flut now that I am at the confessional,
I will say that next to yourself Jessie Verner attracts
and pleases me more than any one with whom I have
met since Anna died. There is about her a life and
sparkle which would put to rout a whole regiment of
blues, while her great kindness to mother and Robin
show her to be a true, genuine woman at heart. I have
seen but little of her. I admire her greatly, and had I

never met you, Dora, I might have turned to Jessie.
Surely this should not make you jealous.'

“I knew it should not, but I think I must have been
crazy; certainly I was in a most perverse, unreasonable
mood, and I answered:

“`I am not jealous, but I have seen your great admiration
for Jessie, and if on so short an acquaintance you
like her almost as well as you do me, whom you have
known for years, it would not take long for you to like
her better, so I think it wise for you to wait until you
know your mind.'

“I wonder he did not leave me at once; he did move
away quickly, saying:

“`It is not like you, Dora, to trifle thus. You either
love me or you do not. I cannot give you up willingly.
You are tired, weak, excited, and you need not answer me
now, though I hoped for something different. I shall
think of you, love you, pray for you, while I am gone,
and possibly write to you; then, when I return, I shall
repeat the question of to-day, and ask you again to be my
wife.'

“He was perfectly collected now, and something in his
manner awed me into silence. The sun had already set,
and the night dews beginning to fall. He was the first
to notice it, and with tender care he drew my shawl a
second time about my neck, and then taking my arm in
his, led me away from Anna's grave out into the streets,

where more than one turned to look inquiringly after us,
whispering their surmise that we were really engaged.

“He stayed in Morrisville three days after that, and
Mattie invited him to tea, with Judge Verner's family
and Dr. Lincoln. He came, as I knew he would, but the
judge and the doctor kept him so constantly talking of
homœopathy that I hardly saw him at all till just as he
was going, when he held my hand in his own and looked
into my eyes so kindly that I could scarcely keep back
the tears which would have told him that I loved him
now, and he need not wait a year. A bad headache had
prevented Bell from coming, and as the judge was called
away on business, the doctor walked home with Jessie,
while I watched them as far as I could see, feeling myself
grow hot and angry when I saw how Jessie leaned upon
his arm, and looked up in his face as confidingly as a
child.

“Remembering that he wished her to know of Anna, I
tried one day to tell her, but she knew it already from
Mrs. West, and exonerated Richard from all blame.
She is at the cottage a great deal, and Mattie thinks her
greatly interested in Dr. West. I wish he had not said
that next to me he preferred Jessie, for it haunts me continually,
and makes me very unamiable.”

12. CHAPTER XII.
THE SHADOW OF DEATH.

THIS is the telegram which I received this morning,
and to-morrow I am going to poor Margaret.
God grant she may not be dead! Dear
sister, what would I not give if I had never written those
dreadful things of her in my journal. Poor Margaret!
her married life has not been very happy with all those
children born so fast, and if she lives how much I will
love her to make amends for the past. My trunks are
packed and standing in the hall, and I am looking, for
the last time it may be, on the woods and hills of
Morrisville, where the moonlight is falling so softly. I
can see a little of the cemetery in the distance, and I
know where Anna's grave is so well. I have been there
but once since that day, and then I found Jessie with
Mrs. West planting flowers over Robin. Mrs. West
loves that young girl, and so do I, in spite of what the
doctor said; but she does shock me with her boyish,

thoughtless manners, actually whistling John Brown
as she dug in the yellow dirt. Jessie is a queer compound.
She and her father and Bell are going on with
me to Saratoga. Oh, if Dr. West could be there too, he
would cure Margaret. I have been half tempted to telegraph,
but finally concluded that brother John would do
so if desirable. Poor John! what will he do if he is left
alone? and does Jessie remember the foolish thing she
said about his second wife? I trust not, for that would
be terrible, and Margaret not yet dead.

13. CHAPTER XIII.
AT BEECHWOOD.

The Author's Story.

THE great house at Beechwood was closed, and
the first September sunshine which lay so
warmly on the grassy lawn and blooming
flower-garden, found no entrance through the doors and
curtained windows of what had been Margaret Russell's
home, and whither they were bringing her lifeless form.
During the past week there had been hot, passionate
tears wept in that desolate home, and touching childish
prayers made that God would spare the sick mother till
her broken-hearted boy could tell how sorry he was for the
angry words spoken to her, and for the many acts of disobedience
which came thronging around him like so
many accusing spirits. Poor Johnnie's heart was almost
crushed when he heard that his mother must die, and
calling Ben and Burt to him, he bade them kneel with
him, and ask that God would give her back to them
alive. And so with concern for Johnnie on their baby
faces, rather than concern for their mother, the two little

boys prayed that “God would make mamma well, and
not let her die, or anyway send home Auntie Dora.”

This was Ben's idea, and it brought a world of comfort,
making him ask Johnnie “if it wouldn't be nicer
after all to have Auntie than mamma.”

“Perhaps it would, if I hadn't been so sassy to her
that morning, twitting her about not caring for us like
Auntie, and telling her to dry up. Oh, oh!” and the
conscience-smitten boy rolled on the floor in his first real
sorrow.

To Ben, looking on in wonder, there came a thought
fraught, as he hoped, with comfort to his brother, and
pursing up his little mouth, he said:

“Pho! I wouldn't keel over like that 'cause I'd said
dry up. 'Taint a swear. It's a real nice word, and all
the boys in the street say so.”

Still Johnnie was not comforted, and in a state of terrible
suspense he waited from day to day until the fatal
morning when there came a telegram which he spelled
out with Burt and Ben sitting on the doorstep beside him,
their fat hands on his knee, and their little round dirty
faces turned inquiringly towards him as he read:

There was at first no sudden outburst, but a compressed

quivering of the lip, a paling of the cheek, a hopeless
look in the eyes, which closed tightly as Johnnie began to
realize the truth. Then, with a loud, wild cry, he threw
himself upon the grass, while Ben and Burt laughed gleefully
at the contortions of body which they fancied were
made for their amusement. At last, however, they too
understood it partially, and Ben tried to imitate his
brother's method of expressing grief by also rolling in the
grass, while Burt, thinking intently for a moment, said,
with a sigh of relief:

“I'm plaguy glad Aunty isn't dead too.”

And this was all the consolation there was in that
home at Beechwood. Dora was not dead. She was
coming home and would bring sunshine with her. With
a desire to have everything done in accordance with her
taste, and also with a view to honor his mother's memory,
Johnnie, roused at last, and without a word of consultation
with any one, sought the old colored sexton, bidding
him toll the bell, and adding with a quivering lip:

“It's for my mother, and if you'll toll it extra for an
hour I'll give you half a dollar now, and a bushel of shag-barks
in the fall.”

It did not occur to the negro that possibly some higher
authority than Johnnie's was needful ere he proceeded to
toll for a person dead in Saratoga, but love of gain and
shag-barks predominated over other feelings, and for a
full hour and a quarter the bell from the old church-steeple

rang out its solemn tones, tolling till the villagers
wondered if it would never stop, and repaired, some of
them, to the spot, where Johnnie sat like a second Shylock,
holding the sexton's watch and keeping accurate
note of time as the old man bent to his task, and tolled
that long requiem for Margaret Russell. This done
Johnnie wended his way to a dry-goods store, and before
night-fall there were streamers of crape hanging from the
gate and from every door-knob, while a band of the same
was tied around the arms of Ben and Burt, who wore
them quietly for a time and then made what they called
horse blankets for their velocipede. Poor little babies
of four and five, they knew no better, and only acted as
other children do when left wholly to themselves. Years
hence they will weep for the mother scarcely remembered,
but now her death was nothing to them, except as
they saw the deep distress of Johnnie, who, long after
they were sleeping in their cribs, sobbed passionately
upon his pillow, sorrowing most of all for the angry words
spoken to the mother who would never know his grief.
How long to him were the hours of the next day, when
they waited for the dead. It was also a day of peace and
quiet, for owing to Johnnie's continual efforts there was
only a single fight between the little boys, who otherwise
comported themselves with admirable propriety, asking
often when Aunt Dora would come, and if Johnnie
was sure she was not dead too?

At last the train came screaming in, and shortly after
the hearse stopped before the gate, while the coffin was
brought slowly up the walk and placed in the darkened
parlor. With a great sobbing cry Johnnie sprang
towards Dora, but suddenly checked himself, as there
flashed upon his mind that to his father belonged the first
greeting of sorrow. And who that has passed through
such a scene that knows not the comfort there is in the
sympathy of a warm-hearted child! Squire Russell felt
it keenly, as he held his first-born in his arms and heard
his boyish attempts at consolation.

“We'll love each other more, father, now our mother's
gone. Poor father, don't cry so hard. If you'll stop I'll
try to do so too. We've got Aunt Dora left and all the
children. Benny, come and kiss poor father, because
mother is dead.”

Such were Johnnie's words, and they fell soothingly on
the father's heart, making him think he had not lost everything
which made his life desirable. He had his children
still, and he had Dora too. She was in the nursery now,
with Ben and Burt clinging to her neck, and asking why
she cried when they were so glad to have her back, asking,
too, what made mamma so cold, and why she was
sleeping in that long queer box on the parlor table. They
did not know what death meant, and continued their
questionings until their eyelids closed in slumber, and

they forgot the long box on the parlor table, with the
mother sleeping in it.

The night was hot and sultry, and as Dora lay tossing
restlessly, she fancied she heard a sound from the parlor,
which was just beneath her room, and throwing on her
dressing-gown she went noiselessly down the stairs to the
parlor door, which was open, and saw a little form
kneeling by the coffin and talking to the unconscious
dead.

“O mother, maybe you can hear me; I'm Johnnie,
and I'm so sorry I was ever bad to you, and made your
head ache so! Poor mother, I used to think I loved
Aunt Dora best, but now I know I didn't! There's
nothing like a mother, and I was going to tell you so
when you got home, but you're dead and I can't! O
mother! mother! will you never know?”

“She does; she did know, Johnnie, for I told her,”
Dora said, advancing into the room and taking the child
in her arms; “I told her you were sorry, and she forgave
you freely, sending you messages of love, and bidding me
cut her longest, brightest curl for you. I did so, Johnnie;
it is in my room, and to-morrow you shall have it.”

“Why not to-night?” Johnnie pleaded, and so his
aunt brought him the lock of hair cut from Margaret's
head, the mother's last memento, which Johnny took with
him to his room, sleeping more quietly because of that
tress of hair upon his pillow.

It was a long procession which followed Margaret to
her grave, and for the sake of Johnnie the sexton again
tolled for the dead, until the husband and the sister
wished the sad sounds would cease. Sadly they returned
to the house, leaving Margaret behind them, and missing
her more than one month ago they would have thought
it possible. But as the days went by the family gradually
resumed its wonted cheerfulness, for Dora was there still:
their head, their blessing, and comforter. Many lonely
hours Squire Russell experienced, it is true, but there was
always a solace in knowing that Dora would welcome him
home after a brief and necessary absence; that Dora
would preside at his table, and keep his children in order;
that Dora, in short, would do everything which the most
faithful of sisters could do. The children, too, clung to
Dora even more than they were wont to do; and little
Daisy, taught by Clem, the nurse-maid, called her mamma,
a name which Ben and Burt were quick to catch,
and which Dora did not like to hear, especially if the
father chanced to be present.

At Dora's heart there was a constant dread of some
impending evil, and when, three weeks after Margarets'
death, she stood one night alone with Dr. West, listening
to his farewell, she felt again a longing to throw herself
on his protection, and thus she might be saved from danger.
But the doctor, though treating her with the utmost
tenderness, had never broached the subject of his

love since that time at Anna's grave, where she answered
him so indifferently. Her foolish words had hurt him
more since than they did then, causing him sometimes to
wonder if she did really care for him. If not, or if the
germ of her affection was as yet very small, it was better
not to press the matter, but let it take its course; and so,
trusting that absence would do all that he wished done,
he only said good-by as he would have said it to a dear
sister, and hardly so, for when he would have kissed the
sister, he left Dora unkissed, fancying she would be
better pleased with such a parting. His caresses had
wearied Anna, and he would not err this way again, so
he never touched the lips which would have paid him
back so gladly, but merely pressed the little hand which
trembled in his, as he said to her, “A year is not very
long, Dora. It will pass sooner than we think, and you
must not forget me.” Another pressure of the hand, and
he was gone, leaving the maiden far more desolate than
he dreamed. Could he have known how fast the tears
came, when alone in her room she went over with the
parting and said to herself, “He does not love me now.
My waywardness has sickened him;” could he have
seen her when in the early dawn she watched him as he
left the house for the last time, he would have turned
back, and by taking her with him, or staying himself with
her, would have saved her from the dark storm which
would bear her down with its mighty force.

But this he did not know, and he went his way to
Morrisville, where his mother waited for him, and where
Jessie, just returned from Saratoga, sparkled, and flashed,
and flitted around him, asking him to write occasionally
to her father, and tell them of California.

“Why not write to you?” he replied, and Jessie responded
at once:

“To me, then, if you like; I shall be delighted.”

Judge Verner, and Bell, and Mattie Randall all heard
this conversation, and so there could be no harm in it,
Jessie thought, while the others thought the same, knowing
that the light-hearted girl was already corresponding
with at least ten gentlemen, for not one of whom did she
care in the least. She was a merry little creature, and
she made the doctor's stay at Morrisville much pleasanter
than it would otherwise have been, and after he was
fairly on the sea, she wrote to Dora a glowing account
of “the perfectly splendid time she had with Doctor
West, the best and most agreeable man in the world.
We are going to correspond, too,” she added in a postscript,
“and that will make the eleventh gentleman on
my list. I want it an even dozen, and then I'll be satisfied.”

Dora knew Jessie was a flirt, but this did not lessen
the pang with which she read that Jessie, and not herself,
was to be the recipient of the doctor's letters. Never
had the autumn seemed so dreary to her before; and

when the first wintry snows were falling she shrank, with
a nervous dread, from the coming months, with the long,
long evenings, when there would be nothing to occupy
her time, except, indeed, the children, or the game of
chess which she played nightly with her brother.

For one who at first mourned so sorely for the dead,
the squire had recovered his spirits wonderfully, and the
villagers even hinted that, as is usual with widowers, his
dress had undergone a change, being now more youthful
and stylish than in former days when Margaret was alive.
Young girls blushed when he appeared at any of the social
gatherings, while the older ones grew very conscious
of themselves, and the mothers were excessively polite
and gracious to the squire. He was happier than he
used to be, notwithstanding that he went twice a week
to Margaret's grave, and always spoke of her as “my dear
wife.” It soothed his conscience to do this, particularly
as he felt how much he enjoyed going home from Margaret's
grave, and finding order and quiet and pleasant
words, where once there had been confusion and fretful
complaints. Dora was very pretty in her mourning garb,
with the simple linen band about her neck and wrists,
for she would relieve the sombre aspect of her dress with
a show of white, even if it were not the fashion. There
was not much color in her cheeks, and her eyes were
larger than usual, but to the squire and the children she
was very beautiful, moving among them as their household

goddess, and always speaking so lovingly and
kind.

Once, and only once, there came a letter from Dr.
West,—a friendly letter, which any one might read, and
which said that he was at Marysville, with his mother,
whose health was greatly improved.

“I like the country much,” he wrote, “and if I had
with me a few of my Eastern friends I should be willing
to settle here for life; but, as it is, I find myself looking
forward eagerly to the time when I shall return and meet
you all again.”

This passage Squire John read twice, and then glanced
again at the “My Dear Dora” with which the letter
commenced.

“The doctor is very affectionate,” he said, “calling
you `Dear Dora,' though perhaps he has a right, for I
remember thinking he admired you.”

Dora was bending over Daisy, whom she was rocking
to sleep, and he did not see her blushes as she replied:

“That is a very common way of addressing people, and
means nothing at all.”

Perhaps the squire believed this, but he was quite
absent-minded the remainder of the day, and in the
evening was twice checkmated by Dora, when his usual
custom had been to checkmate her.

Dora's first intention was to answer the doctor's letter

at once, but sickness among the children prevented her
from doing so, and when she was at last free to write, the
disposition had in a measure left her, and so the answer
for which the doctor waited so anxiously was not sent.

14. CHAPTER XIV.
IN THE SPRING.

ABOUT the house at Beechwood the May flowers
were blooming, and in the maple-trees the birds
were building their nests, cooing lovingly to
each other as they did so, and seeming all unconscious of
the young heart which within the doors felt that never
before had there come to it a spring so full of sorrow and
harrowing dread. Jessie and Bell Verner were both
there now, and Jessie had brought two immense trunks
and a hat-box, as if her intention was to spend the entire
summer. She was just as merry and hoydenish as of old,
romping with the children in the grass and on the nursery
floor, herself the veriest child among them, while her
ringing laugh woke all the echoes of the place and made
even the Squire join in it, and try to act young again.

Both Jessie and Bell noted the change in Dora, and
Jessie asked her outright what it was that made her
look so frightened, as if constantly in fear of something;
but Dora could not tell what she feared, for she had
scarcely dared to define to herself the meaning of Squire
Russell's manner toward her. A stranger would have

perceived no difference in his treatment of her now and
when his wife was living, but Dora felt the change, and it
almost drove her wild, making her one day sharply rebuke
the little Daisy for calling her mamma.

“I am not your mother,” she said fiercely. “Your
mamma is dead, and I am only Auntie.”

The child looked up in surprise, but called her mamma
just the same, while Dora's eyelids closed tightly over
the hot tears she thus kept from falling. That day
when Johnnie came home from school at dinner-time he
showed unmistakable marks of having been in a fight,
and when questioned by his father as to the cause of his
black eye, broke out furiously:

“I've been a lickin' Bill Carter, and I'll do it again if
he ever tells such stuff about you! Why, he said you're
a going to get married to that ill-begotten, shoulder-shotten
snap-dragon of a Miss Dutton! I told him 'twas the
biggest lie, and then he said it wasn't, that it was true,
and she was coming here to be our step-mother; that she
would cut off 'Tish's curls, spank Ben and Burt twice a
day, shake Daisy into shoe-strings, and make Jim and me
toe the mark,—the hateful!”

“She ain't, she shan't,—old nasty Dutton,” and fiery
Ben shook his tiny fist at an imaginary bugbear who was
to spank him twice a day.

Jessie laughed aloud. Bell looked amused, Dora disturbed,
and the Squire very red, as he said to his son:

“You should not mind such gossip, or allow yourself
to get into a passion. Time enough to rebel when
the step-mother comes. Now go to your room and bathe
your eye.”

Johnnie obeyed, muttering as he went:

“There's only one person I'd have for a step-mother
any how, and that's Aunt Dora. Guy, wouldn't
I raise hob with anybody else!”

“John, leave instantly!” the Squire said sternly, while
his face colored crimson, as did Dora's also, making Bell
and Jessie glance curiously at each other, as both thought
of the same thing.

In their own room, after dinner, they discussed together
the possibility of Dora's becoming what Johnnie
wished her to be, Bell scouting the idea as preposterous,
and Jessie insisting that a girl might love Squire Russell
well enough to take him with all his children.

“Not that I think Dora will do so,” she said, “for I
fancy he is not as much to her taste, even, as he is to
mine; and I guess I'd jump in the creek sooner than
marry an old widower with half a dozen children.”

What the two sisters were discussing privately in
their room was talked openly in the village, some of
the people arguing that Dora could not do better,
while all agreed that for the Squire it would be a match
every way desirable both for his own and his children's
sake. To the Squire himself the story was told one day,

the teller hinting that the matter was entirely settled,
and asking when the marriage would take place.

With some jocose reply, the Squire rode away, going
round to Margaret's grave, and thence back to his home,
where the evening lights were shining, and where Dora,
with Daisy in her arms, sat alone in the back parlor,
Bell and Jessie having accepted an invitation which she
was obliged to decline on account of a bad headache.

There were strange thoughts stirring in the Squire's
breast that night, thoughts which had haunted him for
weeks and months, aye, since Margaret died, for he could
not forget her words.

“You need not wait long. You and Dora are above
people's gossip, and it will be so much better for the
children.”

This was what Margaret had said to him that night
when misapprehending her sister just as she was misapprehended,
she had told him:

“I have talked with Dora, and she has promised to
take my place.”

At first he had been satisfied with matters as they
were, and had said that he never could marry and love
again. But gradually there had crept into life another
feeling, which prompted him to watch Dora constantly
as she moved about his house; to miss her when she was
away,—to think of her the last at night as well as first in
the morning,—to wonder, with a harassing jealousy, if Dr.

West cared for Dora, or if she cared for him. No, she
did not, he thought, and made himself believe it, else he
had never said to her what he did that night, when, with
Daisy in her arms, she sat wholly in his power, and was
obliged to listen to what was not unexpected, but which,
nevertheless, fell like a thunderbolt upon her, turning her
into stone, and making her grow faint and sick, just as
she did at Saratoga, when the first suspicion dawned upon
her that some day John Russell would speak to her what
he was speaking now, with one hand on her shoulder and
the other on Daisy's golden head. It was a kind, true,
fatherly heart he offered her, and she felt that he meant
it all. He cast no reflections upon his departed wife,—
he merely said:

“You knew Margaret as well as I. She was not, perhaps,
as even-tempered as a more healthy person would
have been, but I loved her, remembering always what she
was when I took her from her home. You were a little
girl, then, Dora, and I never dreamed that I should
some time be sueing for your hand just as I had sued for
Margaret's.”

Then he pleaded for his children, who loved her so
much; would she be their mother, just as she had promised
Margaret she would? Then Dora roused herself,
and the face which met the Squire's view made his heart
beat faster as he doubted what it portended.

“I did not think Margaret meant what you ask,” Dora

said, her words coming gaspingly. “I thought she meant
care for them as I have tried to do, and will do still. I'll
stay with you, John. I'll be your housekeeper, but don't
ask me to be your wife. I can't; I'm too young for
you; I'm,—O John! O Margaret!” and here the
voice broke down entirely, while Dora sobbed convulsively.

Margaret, too, had said she could not be his wife when
he asked her. She, too, had said she was too young, and
cried, but hers was not like Dora's crying, and Squire
Russell saw the difference, feeling perplexed, but never
suspected the truth. It was natural for girls to cry, he
thought, when they received an offer of marriage, and so,
with both hands on her shoulder, he pleaded again, but
this time for himself, telling her in words which his true
love made eloquent, how dear she was to him, dearer, if
possible, than his early choice, the beautiful Margaret.
And Dora believed him, for she knew he was incapable of
deception, and that made her pain harder to bear.

“If I had supposed you cared for any one else,” he
said, “I should not have sought you, but I did not. Dr.
West wrote to you, I know, and I was foolish enough to
wish he had not called you his dear Dora, but you did
not answer him, and of course there is but one conclusion
to be drawn from that. You do not care for him, nor he
for you?”

He put this to her interrogatively, but Dora could not

speak. Once she thought to tell him what there was between
her and Dr. West, but something kept her silent,
and so in perfect good faith, kind, honest, truthful John
kept on until she answered:

“Please leave me now; I must think, and I am so
stunned and bewildered. I'll answer another time.”

Squire Russell was far too good-natured to stay longer
if she did not wish it, and stooping down he kissed his
sleeping child, and said:

“Let me kiss baby's auntie, too?”

Dora offered no resistance, and he touched her forehead
respectfully, and then quitted the room. He had kissed
her many times when Margaret was living, but no kiss
had ever burned her as this one did, for she knew it was
not a brother's kiss, and with a sensation of loathing she
passed her hand over the place, and then wiped it with
her handkerchief, just as a rustling sound met her ear, and
the next moment there was another pleader kneeling at
her feet, Johnnie, who had overheard a part of his father's
wooing, and who took it up just where his sire had
left it; his stormy, impetuous arguments bearing Dora
completely away from herself, so that she hardly knew
what she did or said.

“You will be father's wife, Aunt Dora; you will, you
must!” Johnnie began. “I've prayed for it every single
day since I heard that stuff about old Dutton. I've
gone to mother's grave and knelt down there, asking that

it might be. Jim and 'Tish pray so, too, for I told 'em
to, and I should make Ben and Burt, only I knew they'd
tell you; and Auntie, you will! Father's older than you
a lot, I s'pose, but he is so good, and was so kind to
mother, even when she plagued him. I never told, but
once after you went to Morrisville, she got awful, and
lammed him the wust kind,—told him he was fat, and
pussy, and awkward, and she was always ashamed of him
at watering-places, and a sight more. At last she left
the room, and poor papa put his head right in my lap
and cried out loud. I cried too, and said to him:

“`Let's lick her: I'll help.'

“But he wouldn't hear a word. Says he:

“`Hush, my boy; she's your mother and my wife.
She is not as she used to be. She's sick and nervous.'

“And when I asked the difference between ugly and
nervous, he made me stop, and was just as kind to her at
supper-time as ever. Tell me such a man won't make a
good husband! He'll be splendid, and he's handsomer
than he was,—he has lost that look as if he was afraid
something was after him, a henpecked look, Clem called
it. Poor father; he has had so little comfort, you must
make him happy, Auntie; you will, and you'll make
us all so good. You know how like Cain we behave without
you, and how we all mind when you tell us what is
right. Will you be father's wife and help us grow up
good?”

He had her face between his warm hands, and was
looking at her so earnestly, that for his sake Dora could
almost have answered yes, but thoughts of what being his
father's wife involved chilled her through and through,
and she answered him:

“Johnnie, I do not believe I can.”

For an instant the boy's black eyes blazed fiercely at
her, and then he angrily exclaimed, “I'll go to ruin, just
as fast as I can go! I'll smoke to-morrow, if I live, and
teach Jim and Ben to do so too! I'll swear, and when
the circus comes next week I'll run away to that, and
take 'Tish with me; I'll gamble; I'll drink, and when
I'm brought home drunker'n a fool, you'll know it is your
work!”

He looked like a young tiger as he stood uttering
these terrible threats, and Dora quailed before his flashing
eyes, feeling that much he had said was in earnest.
She did not fear his swearing, or gambling, or drinking,
for the present, at least, but he might not always act his
best; he might grow surly and hard and unmanageable,
even by her, unless she yielded to his request, and this
she couldn't do.

“Johnnie,” she began, and something in her voice
quieted the excited boy, “would you have me marry your
father when I do not love him, and just the thought of
being his wife makes me almost sick?”

Johnnie was not old enough to comprehend her

meaning. He only felt that it was not a very bad thing
to be the wife of a man as good as his father, and he answered
her, “You do love him well enough, or you will,
and he so affectionate. Why he used to hug and kiss
mother every day, even when she was crosser than fury.
Of course then he'll hug you most to death.”

“Oh—h,” Dora groaned, the tone of her voice so indicative
of disgust that even Johnnie caught a new idea,
which he afterwards acted upon; but he would not yield
his point: Dora should be his mother, and he continued
the siege until, wearied out with his arguments, Dora peremptorily
bade him leave her while she could think in
quiet.

Oh, that long, terrible thinking which brought on so
racking a headache that Dora was not seen in the parlor
on the day following, but lay upstairs in her own room,
where, with the bolted door between her and the world
outside, she met and battled with what seemed her destiny!
One by one every incident connected with Margaret's
death came back to her, and she knew now what
the questionings meant, far better than she did then,
while she half expected the dead sister to rise before her
and reproach her for shrinking from her duty. Then the
children came up, a powerful argument swaying her in
the direction of Squire Russell. She could do them good;
she could train them so much better than another, and
John, if she refused him, would assuredly bring another

there to rule and govern them. These were the arguments
in favor of John's suit, while on the other side a
mighty barrier was interposed to keep her from the sacrifice.
Her love for Dr. West, and the words spoken to
her at Anna's grave; and was she not virtually engaged
to him?

“Yes,—oh yes, I am!” she cried, and then there
came over her all the doubts which had so tortured her
since that time in the Morrisville cemetery.

Had he not spoken hastily and repented afterwards?
His continued silence on the subject would seem so; and
why did he not write to her just as did he to Jessie, who,
since coming to Beechwood, had received a letter from
him which contained no mention of her, but was full of
the light, bantering matter in which he knew Jessie delighted.
Dora had heard Jessie say she was going to
answer the letter that very day; and suddenly, like a
dawn of hope, there flashed over her the determination
that she, too, would write and tell him of Squire Russell's
offer; and if he loved her still he would come to
save her, or he would write, telling her again how dear
she was to him, and that he alone must call her his wife.

“Yes, I'll do it,” Dora whispered; “I know he is at
San Francisco, for Jessie directs there; I'll write to-day.
It shall go in the same mail with hers. I'll wait
two months for his reply, and then, if he answers Jessie
and ignores me, I'll—”

Dora set her teeth firmly together, and her breath
came hurriedly, as she paused a moment ere she added,
“I'll marry John.”

And so with a throbbing head Dora wrote to Dr.
West, telling him of the proposal and asking what he
thought of it. This was all she meant the letter to
mean, for her maidenly reserve would not suffer her to
betray her real motive if she knew it, but it was more
like a pleading cry for help, more like a wail of anguish
for one she loved to save her from a fate she had not
strength to resist alone, than like a mere asking of advice.
The letter was finished, and just after dark, when
sure no one could see her, Dora stole from the house
unobserved, and hastening to the office, dropped into the
box the missive of so much importance to her.

“It is sure to go with Jessie's,” she said, as she
wended her way back, “so if hers is received I shall
know that mine was also.”

Alas! Jessie's had been written the previous night,
after that young lady's return from her visit, and while
Dora's letter was lying quietly in the box at Beechwood
awaiting the morning mail, Jessie's was miles on its way
to New York and the steamer which would take it to
California a week in advance of the other. But Dora
did not know this, neither did she know that it contained
the following paragraph:

“There is no news, except the rumor that Squire

Russell will marry his pretty sister-in-law. Bell won't
believe a word of it, but some things look like it. Dora
is so queer. I had picked her out for you, and believe
now that she likes you, though when your name is mentioned,
she bites her words off so short and crisp that I
am confounded. She is a splendid girl, and will make a
grand wife, to say nothing of step-mother.”

Little did Jessie suspect the harm these few comparatively
harmless lines would cause, and little did Dora
suspect it either, as with a load of pain lifted from her
heart and consequently from her head, she sat down by
her open window and followed with her mind her letter's
course to far-off California, and then imagined the quick
response it would bring back, and which would make her
so happy.

“Johnnie must be the medium between Squire Russell
and me,” she said. “I'll tell him to-morrow that
his father must wait for my definite reply at least six
weeks, and possibly two months. At the end of that
time I shall know for sure, and if the doctor does not
care, there will be a kind of desperate pleasure in marrying
my brother.”

15. CHAPTER XV.
WAITING FOR THE ANSWER.

AS Dora reached this conclusion there came a
well-known knock upon the door, and unfastening
the bolt she admitted Johnnie, who had
been up many times that day, but had not before been
permitted to enter.

“O Auntie,” he cried, “you are better and I'm glad.
I didn't mean what I said about swearing, and drinking,
and smoking, and I was so mad at myself that I teased
Ben and Burt on purpose till they got hoppin', and then
I lay still while both little Arabs pitched into me. My!
didn't their feet fly like drumsticks as they kicked and
struck, and pulled my hair; but when Ben got the big
carving-fork, I concluded I'd been punished enough, and
so deserted the field! But, Auntie, I do wish you could
love father. He has looked so sorry to-day, kind of
white about the mouth, and his hand trembled this noon
when he carved the turkey. Won't you, Auntie? I've
prayed ten times this afternoon that you might, and I
begin to have faith that you will. Dr. West, who used
to talk to me so good last summer when I was in his

Sunday-school class, said we must have faith that God
would hear us.”

Dora drew a long, sad sigh, as she wished she too had
been taught of Dr. West to pray differently from what
she knew she did. Smoothing back John's soft, dark
hair, she said:

“Johnnie, girls cannot make a love in a minute, and
this came so suddenly upon me, I must have time to think,
—six weeks or two months, and then I will decide. Will
you tell your father this for me? Tell him I'm sorry to
make him feel badly,—that I like him and always shall,
even if I am not his wife—that I know how good, how
generou she is,—that he will wait until I know my own
mind better, and then if I cannot be his, he must not
mind it.”

“I'll tell him,” Johnnie said, while Dora continued:

“And Johnnie, perhaps it had better be understood
that nothing is to be said about it in the mean time,—
nothing to me by your father.”

“Yes, I know, I see. I'll fix it,” Johnnie answered.
“I'll go to father now,” and stooping down, he kissed his
aunt tenderly, then suddenly asked, as he looked into her
eyes, “You don't mind my kissing you, do you? That
don't make you sick?”

“No, oh no!” she answered, and Johnnie departed on
his strange errand.

Squire Russell sat in his office or reading-room, pretending

to look over his evening paper, but his thoughts
were really upstairs with Dora, whom he had not seen
that day, and whose illness troubled him greatly, for he
rightly associated it with his proposal of the previous
night. Squire Russell loved Dora with a great, warm,
sheltering love, which would shield her from all harm,
and unselfishly yield to her everything, but he had not
the nice, quick perception of Dr. West, and had he been
younger he could never have satisfied the wants of her
higher nature as could the rival whose existence he did
not suspect. But he loved her very much. He must
have her. He could not live without her, he thought,
and womanish man that he was, a tear was gathering in
his eyes when Johnnie entered the room abruptly, and
locking the door, came and stood beside him.

“What do you wish, my boy?” the Squire said
kindly, for he was never impatient with his children.

Johnnie hesitated, beginning to feel that his father's
love affair was a delicate matter for him to meddle with.

“Confound it,” he began at last, “I may as well spit
it out, and then let you knock me down, or lick me, or
anything you like. Father, I heard what you said to
Auntie last night, and what she said to you, and after
you was gone I took the floor and beat you all to smash.
I said she must be my mother,—she should be my mother,
and all that, and set you up, I tell you, till you'd hardly
know yourself from my description. To-night I've seen

her again,—have just come from her room to tell you
something she bade me tell.”

Squire Russell had turned very white at first, feeling
indignant at his son for presuming to interfere, but this
feeling had disappeared now, and he listened eagerly while
Johnnie continued:

“She says its sudden; that she can't make a love in a
minute; that she must have six weeks or two months to
decide, and then she will tell you sure, and, father, you'll
wait; I know you will, and,—and,—well, I guess I'd hold
my tongue,—that is, I wouldn't keep teasing her, nor say
a word; just let her go her own gait, and above all I
wouldn't act lovin' like, for fear she'd up and vomit.
She don't mind me kissing her, because I've no beard, I
don't shave, nor carry a cane. I'm a boy, and you are a
whiskered old chap. I guess that's the difference between
us. Father, you'll wait?”

Squire Russell could not forbear a smile at his son's
novel reasoning, but he was not angry, and it made his
child seem nearer, now that both shared the same secret,
and were interested in the same cause. Yes, he would
wait two, three, or four months if Dora liked, and meantime
things should continue as usual in the household.

“And afterward, father?” Johnnie asked. “How
about that? If auntie says no, she'll mean it, and you
won't raise a rumpus, will you? You'll grin and bear it
like a man?”

Yes, the Squire would do all his son required, and before
Dora retired for the night, a bit of paper was pushed
under her door, on which was written:

It was rather embarrassing next morning at the breakfast
table, but Johnnie threw himself into the gap, talking
loudly and rapidly to his father of the war meeting to be
held that night, wishing he was a man, so he could enlist,
and predicting, as did many a foolish one at that period,
the spring of '61, that the immense force of 75,000,
called for by the President, would subjugate the South
at once.

The Squire talked very little, and never once glanced
at Dora, who in her heart blessed both Jessie and
Johnnie, the latter for engaging his father's attention and
the former for talking so constantly to herself and
Bell.

Dora was very white and nervous, but this was imputed
to her illness of the previous day, and so neither Bell nor
Jessie dreamed of what had passed between her and their

host, or how her heart was aching with the terrible fear
of what might be in store for her.

It had been arranged that the Misses Verner should
remain at Beechwood for a long time, and as Bell thought
four weeks came under that definition she began to talk
of returning home as early as the first of June; but with
a look of terror which startled both the girls, Dora
begged of them to stay.

“Don't leave me alone!” she cried, clasping Bell's
hand pleadingly. “I shall die if you do! Oh, stay,—
you would if you knew—”

She did not say what, and Bell gazed at her wonderingly,
but decided at last to stay a few weeks longer.
Nothing could please Jessie better, for she did not particularly
like Morrisville, and she did like Beechwood
very much. She liked the lake view, the hills, and the
people, and she liked the six noisy, frolicsome children,
with their good-humored sire, who treated her much as
he would have treated a playful, teasing child not his
own, but a guest. Many were the gambols she had with
Ben and Burt, and little Daisy, who loved her almost as
much as they loved Dora, while upon the matter-of-fact
Squire she played off many a saucy trick, keeping him
constantly on the alert with plots and conspiracies, and
so making the time seem comparatively short, while he
waited for Dora's decision. But to Dora there was
nothing which brought comfort or diverted her for a

moment from the agonizing suspense which grew more
and more dreadful as the days went swiftly by, bringing
no answer to the letter sent to Dr. West.

“Is it anything in particular you are expecting?”
Johnnie asked one day, when she turned so white and
shivered, as he returned from the post-office, with letters
for all except herself.

“Yes,—no! Oh, I don't know what I expect,” she
answered, and leaning her head on Johnnie's shoulder,
she wept silently, while the boy tried to comfort her,
and became from that moment almost as anxious that she
should have a letter as she seemed herself.

Regularly each day at mail-time he was at the office,
and if there chanced to be a letter for Dora, as there
sometimes was, running to her eagerly, but saying always
to himself as the weary, disappointed look remained the
same:

“The right one has not come.”

No, the right one had not come, and now it was more
than seven weeks since the night when Dr. West had
been written to.

Bell and Jessie were really going home at last, and
their trunks stood in the hall ready for the early morning
train. Dora had exhausted every argument for a longer
stay, but Bell felt that they must go.

“They would come again in the autumn, perhaps, or
Dora should visit them. She would need rest by that

time, sure,” Bell said, and Dora shuddered as she thought
how she might never know rest or happiness again, save
as she found them in the discharge of what she was beginning
to believe was her imperative duty.

“Letters! letters!” shouted Johnnie, running up the
walk, his hand full of documents, one of which he was
closely inspecting. Spelling out the place where it was
mailed, he exclaimed, as he entered the room, “That's
from the doctor, for it says `San Francisco.”'

Instantly both Jessie and Dora started forward to
claim it, the hot blood dyeing the cheeks of the latter, but
subsiding instantly, and leaving only a livid hue as Jessie
took the letter, saying:

“It is for me.”

Sinking back in her chair, Dora pressed her hands
tightly together, as Jessie broke the seal and read, partly
to herself and partly aloud, that message from Dr.
West.

“Is still in San Francisco, at the hotel, which is
crowded with guests, and will compare very favorably
with the best houses in New York City. Begins to
think of coming home in the autumn. Mother's health
improved. Was pleased to get my letter,” and so on.

This was the substance of what Jessie read, until she
reached a point where she stopped suddenly, and seemed
to be considering; then turning to Johnnie, she asked
him to do for her some trifling service, which would take

him from the room. When he was gone, she said to
Dora:

“Maybe you'll scold, but it cannot now be helped. In
my letter to Dr. West, I said, or hinted, at what everybody
is talking about,—that is, you know, about your
marrying Squire Russell, and this is the doctor's reply:
`What you wrote of Miss Freeman took me by surprise,
but it will be a grand thing for the Squire. Tell her that
if she decides to mother those six children, she has my
best wishes for her happiness. You say you had picked
her out for me. She would probably tell you differently,
as she has seemed to dislike rather than like me,
and according to your own story, bites her words off
crisp and short when I am mentioned.”'

“O Jessie, how could you? What made you tell
him that? It was cruel of you, when I do like him,”
Dora cried, her face for an instant crimsoning with passion
and then growing deathly white as she felt her destiny
crushing down upon her without a hope of escape.

“Because you do,” Jessie retorted, anxious to defend
herself. “You are just as spiteful as can be when I
tease you about him, and I don't care!”

Jessie was vexed at herself for having told Dr. West
what she had, and vexed at Dora for resenting it; but
she never dreamed of the terrible pain throbbing in
Dora's heart, as with a mighty effort she forced back the

piteous, despairing cry rising to her lips, and brought
there a smile instead, saying pleasantly:

“Well, never mind it now. It does not matter; only
Dr. West has been so kind to us in sickness that I ought
to like him, and do. Does he say what time he will be
home?”

Jessie was thoroughly deceived, and after ascertaining
that he merely spoke of coming in the autumn, went to
her room, as there were a few things she must yet do for
her morrow's journey.

16. CHAPTER XVI.
THE ENGAGEMENT.

Extract from Dora's Diary.

IS it I? Is it I? Oh, IS IT I, sitting here to-night
with this pressure on my brain, this tightness
about my eyes, this anguish in my heart, this
feeling of desperation urging me on to meet anything,
everything, even death itself? If he received Jessie's
letter, he did mine, of course, for they went together;
and why not answer me, instead of sending that cold,
mocking message? If people ever die of shame surely I
ought to die, for did I not almost beg of him to say
again what he said at Anna's grave,—to tell me that he
loved me and would save me? Yes, it all comes to me
now,—all that I wrote and what it meant. And he does
not respond. If he ever cared, he does not now, and he
spurns my offered love. He wishes me happiness; aye,
and why should I not be happy? Many a woman would
gladly be the mother of Margaret's six children; and
shall I, her sister, who promised so solemnly, refuse?
No, John; no, Johnnie; no, Margaret; I will grant
your wish. Dr. West, when he comes home, shall have

no reason to believe that Dora Freeman ever thought of
him, or spoke of him, except in the `crisp, cross manner'
which Jessie has described. John must wait a year
from the time Margaret died, but I can give him my decision
now, and I will then go to Bell and Jessie, and ask
them to be my bridesmaids.”

There was a pause made in the diary, and leaning her
aching head upon her hands, Dora thought and thought
until the hardness softened, when, resuming her pen, she
wrote as follows:

“I believe it is my duty to be John's wife, and the
mother of Margaret's children. It is true I did not so
understand her, but that was what she meant, and I
promised solemnly. I can love John, or at least I can
keep myself from hating him, knowing how happy I
make him, and I do love his children, especially Johnnie.
O Johnnie, I should die if it were not for you!”

The pen dropped from the trembling fingers, and
again the face was buried in the hands, while Dora
nerved herself to do what she vainly imagined was her
duty. Squire Russell she knew was in the library, Bell
and Jessie in their room, Johnnie in the street, and the
other children in bed. There was nothing in the way,
and she would go at once, so that the worst might be
over as soon as possible. Without a moment longer in
which to consider, she rose, and gliding down the stairs,
knocked at the library door.

“Come in,” the Squire said, his voice and manner
changing at once when he saw who his visitor was.

“O Dora, is it you?” he said, rising to his feet, while
his face glowed with pleasure.

“Yes, John,” and Dora spoke hurriedly. “It is most
seven weeks since I said you must wait for my answer.
I can give it now as well as any time. I will be your
wife.”

Not a muscle changed as she said this, neither did her
voice tremble, but rang out clear and decided, and it may
be a little sharp and unnatural. Dora was very calm,
far more so than the Squire, who, taken by surprise,
started, and trembled, and blushed, and stammered like
some guilty school-boy. This state of things, however,
lasted only for a moment, and then rousing himself,
Squire Russell drew the unresisting girl to his side, and
kissing her forehead, said tenderly:

“God bless you, Dora. You have made me very
happy. I was beginning to think it could not be, and
was learning to live without you, but that makes my joy
the greater. God bless my Dora, and show me how to
make her happy!”

Had the Squire followed the promptings of his nature
he would have caressed her lovingly, just as he did Margaret
when she stood thus beside him; but remembering
Johnnie's warnings, he desisted, and it was well he did,
else Dora had hated him. Now she suffered him to wind

his arms around her, while he told her again how happy
she had made him, and blessed her for it.

“Dora,” he said, and now he smoothed her hair, “a
man of forty is not called old, and I am only that, but I
am fourteen years your senior, while my six children
make me seem older still, but my heart is young, and I
will try so hard to stay with you till you too are old.
I'll go with you wherever you wish to go, do anything
you like, and never frown upon the things which I know
young girls love. I will not be an ogre guarding my
girlish wife, but a proud, happy husband, doing that
wife's bidding.”

Dora could not repress her tears, he spoke so kindly,
so earnestly, and she knew he meant all he was saying,
while she was deceiving him. She did not think either
that she was doing very wrong in thus deceiving him.
It was her duty to be his wife, and it was not her duty
to analyze her feelings in his sight, unless he asked her
for such analysis, which he was not likely to do, for his
was not a mind quick to perceive, while suspicion was
something to which he was a total stranger. He had always
admired Dora, and latterly he had learned to love
her devotedly, feeling now that his affection was in part
returned, else she had not deliberately come to him and
said, “I will be your wife.” It made him very happy to
know she had said so, and in his happiness he failed to
notice the pallor of her face, the drooping of her swollen

eyelids, and her apparent wish to get as far from him as
possible. Margaret had never been demonstrative, and
he hardly expected Dora to be different, so the poor, deluded
man was satisfied, and when Dora, who would have
everything settled at once, said to him:

“We will wait a year,—till next autumn,” he knew
what she meant, and answered readily.

“Yes, if you like, though Margaret said it did not
matter how soon, the earlier the better for the children's
sake.”

“I'd rather it should be a year,” was Dora's quiet reply,
to which the Squire assented, and then, though he so
much wished her to stay, he opened the door for her to
pass out, as he saw that she desired it.

Half an hour later and Bell Verner, who was just falling
to sleep, was startled by a knock, and Dora asked
permission to enter.

“What is it? Who's come?” Jessie asked in a
dreamy tone, lifting her curly head from the pillow, just
as Bell unlocked the door, and Dora stepped into the
room.

She was very calm now and decided. The matter was
fixed now beyond recall, and she felt a great deal better.
Sitting down upon the foot of the bed, she said to Bell
and Jessie:

“I could not let you go home without telling you
something which may perhaps surprise you.”

“Oh, I know. I can guess. You are going to marry
Mr. Russell,” Jessie cried, and Dora answered:

“Yes. It was Margaret's wish, expressed to both of
us, but that is nothing. I begin to feel old; oh, so old,”
and Dora shuddered as she said it. “John is good and
will make me a kind husband. It is true that once, when
a very young girl like Jessie, I had in my mind another
idea for a husband. All girls do in their teens, I guess,
but when we get to be twenty-six we begin to lose the
fancy man and look for something solid.”

This she said to Bell, as if expecting her concurrence
rather than that of madcap Jessie. But the contrary
was the fact, for Jessie approved the match far more than
her sister. Squire Russell was splendid, she said, and
would let a body do just as she had a mind, which was
a great deal nicer than a dictatorial, overbearing fellow of
twenty-eight. Yes, she'd give her consent, and she began
to whistle, “Come haste to the wedding,” as she
nestled back among the pillows, wondering how she
should feel to be engaged to Squire Russell. Bell on the
contrary saw things in their true light, and she merely
replied:

“I am somewhat surprised, I will acknowledge, but if
you love him that is all that is necessary.”

She was looking directly at Dora, but in the dim
moonlight the white, haggard face was not plainly discerned,
and Bell continued:

“I did think you liked Dr. West, and was positive he
liked you.”

“Oh, fie,” and Jessie sprang up again, “Dora hates
him, while he,—well, I guess he likes all the girls,—that
is, likes to talk with and flatter them; any way, he has
said a great many complimentary things to me, and I
knew he meant nothing. They say his heart is buried in
that grave in Morrisville. I picked him out for Dora
once, you know, and that's all the good it did. Marry
the Squire, and let me be bridesmaid.”

“Will you?” Dora asked. “Will you and Bell both
officiate?”

Jessie assented eagerly, but Bell hesitated. She could
not make it seem real that Dora Freeman was to become
the wife of Squire Russell. Something would prevent it.
At last, however, as Dora urged a reply, she said:

“Perhaps I will, if when the time arrives you still
wish for two.”

The clock was striking eleven when Dora quitted the
apartment of the Misses Verner, but late as it was Johnnie
was waiting for her by her door. He had heard the
glad news from his father, and he caught Dora round the
neck, exclaiming:

“I know, I've heard,—the governor told me. You
are,—you are my mother. I never was so happy in my
life, was you?”

They were now in Dora's room, where the gas was

burning, disclosing to Johnnie a face which made him
start with fear, it was so unnaturally white.

“Auntie,” he exclaimed, bending over her, as, reclining
upon the bed, she buried her head in the pillows, “what
makes you so white, when I'm so glad, and father, too?
I never saw him so pleased. Why, the tears danced in
his eyes as he told me, while I blubbered like a calf; and
you are crying, too, but not as father did, or I. O
my! what is it? This is so different. Auntie, Auntie,
you are in a fit!” and Johnnie gazed awe-struck upon
the little form which shook convulsively as Dora tried to
smother her deep sobs. “I'll go for father,” Johnnie continued,
and then Dora looked up, telling him to stay
there where he was.

“But, Auntie, what is the matter?” he asked. “Do
girls always cry so when they are engaged? What
makes your tears run so like rivers, and so big? It
must hurt awfully to be engaged. O dear, dear! I am
crying, too!” and then the excited boy wound both arms
around Dora's neck and drew her head upon his shoulder,
where it lay, while Dora's tears literally ran in rivers
down her cheeks.

But the weeping did her good, and she grew very quiet
at last, and listened while Johnnie told her how good he
was going to be, and how he would influence the others
to be good, too.

“We will all be so happy,” he said, “that mother, if

she could look at us, would be so glad. Father will read
to us winter nights, or you'll play chess with him and
sing to us youngsters, and summers we'll go to lots of
places, and you shall have heaps of handsome dresses.
You're not so tall as mother, and it won't take so many
yards, so you can have more. I mean to buy one anyhow,
with some money I've laid up. I guess it will be
red silk, like Jessie's, and you'll have it made low-neck,
like hers, with little short sleeves. You've got nice,
pretty arms, whiter than Jessie's.”

Remembering how much his mother had thought of
dress, Johnnie naturally concluded it to be the Open
Sesame to every woman's heart, and so talked on until
she sent him away, for she would rather be alone with
her own tumultuous thoughts.

17. CHAPTER XVII.
EXTRACT FROM DR. WEST'S JOURNAL.

18. CHAPTER XVIII.
POOR MAX.

THAT was what they called him at the hotel,
which had been to him a home for years, and
you would know by the intonation of their
voices that he was a favorite with all. He was very sick,
burning with fever, and talking at intervals of his
mother, of Dick, and of another whose name the attendants
could not well make out. It was of his sweetheart,
the chamber-maid surmised, for in the pocket of his vest,
which she hung away, she had found a daguerrotype of a
young girl, whose marvellous beauty she had never seen
excelled.

“Poor Mr. Max! he must have loved her so much!
I wonder where she is to-day?” she said, softly, as she
continued to scan the lovely face smiling upon her from
the worn, old-fashioned case.

Alas! the original of that picture had for many a
year been mouldering back to dust, and poor Max, who
had loved and wronged her so much, was whispering her
name in vain. He was growing worse, his nurse feared,
and so at last she sent for Dr. West, of whose skill she

had heard so much, and who in a few minutes stepped
into the closely darkened room.

“It seemed as if the light worried him,” the nurse
said, in a whisper, as she saw the doctor glance towards
the curtained windows.

“Very likely; but I should like to see him for
once,” was the doctor's reply, as he took the hot hand in
his.

Max's face, which, within a day or two, had grown
very thin and was now purple with fever, was turned
away from the doctor, who counted the rapid pulse, while
the nurse admitted a ray of light, which shone full upon
the sick man's pillow, and made Dr. West start suddenly,
and turn whiter even than the broad forehead round
which the damp brown hair was curling. Then he bent
anxiously over his patient, turning him more to the light,
where he could see him distinctly. Did he recognize
anything familiar in that sunken face, where the beard
was growing so heavily,—anything which carried him
back to his Northern home, where in his childhood every
pastime had been shared by another, and that other his
twin brother? Did he see anything which brought to
him thoughts of Anna, dead so long ago, or of Robin,
who died when the last summer flowers were blooming?
Yes; and kneeling by the bedside he whispered, “Robert,
Robert, is it you?”

The bright eyes were open and fixed upon him, but

with a vacant stare, while a second look at the flushed
face brought a doubt into the doctor's mind.

“He is like my brother Robert, and yet he is not like
him,” he thought, as he continued to scrutinize the features
which puzzled him so much.

“Mother will know,” he said at last; and going to his
mother, he said to her hurriedly, “Come with me, and
tell if you ever saw this Max before.”

He was greatly excited, but not more so than his
mother, who felt intuitively the shock awaiting her.

“Open that blind wide, and put back that heavy curtain,”
the doctor said to the frightened nurse, who quickly
obeyed his orders, and then waited to see what would
happen next.

Max was talking and counting on his fingers till he
came to twenty.

“Yes, twenty, that's it,” he said; “that's the way the
paper read; just twenty years of age, and Dick and I are
six years older. Dick loved her, too; he ought to have
married her. Dick was a trump.”

“What does he say? What does he say? O Richard,
what does he say?” Mrs. West almost screamed, as
she bent down so low that the hot fever breath lifted her
silver hair.

Richard made no answer, nor was there need, for
the mother instinct recognized the boy, the wayward,
wandering Robert, mourned for as dead during so many

dreary years, while the mother love, forgetting all the
past, cried out, “My boy, my boy, my Robert, my child!
God has given you back to me at last! Praised be His
name!”

For an instant something like reason flashed over the
wasted face, but it passed away, and to the mother's continued
murmurings of love there came only incoherent
mutterings of the mountains, the mines, and stocks which
seemed to have been substituted for the thoughts of
the twenty years and the trump of a Dick, now ministering
to the mother, who had fainted and was carried from
the room. But she did not stay away long. Her place
was by Robert, she said, and she went back to his side,
saying to those around her, “He is my boy: he left me
years ago, but I have found him at last.”

People gossip in California as well as elsewhere, and
the hotel was soon full of surmises and wonder, as people
repeated to each other that the man known as Max
was Robert West, who had taken another name and come
among them, for what reason none could guess. The
doctor and his mother knew the people would talk, but
they did not heed it during the days when with agonizing
suspense they hung over the bed of the prodigal, watching
for some token of amendment, and praying that the
erring one might not be taken from them now and leave
the past a darker mystery than ever. He did not talk a

great deal, but when he did it was mostly of home scenes
in which Anna and Dick were always associated.

Once when they sat alone and Mrs. West was resting
in her room, Richard said to Robert, who had spoken of
Anna as of some one there with him, “You mean your
wife, Anna West; you know you married her privately.”

For an instant the wild eyes flashed in Richard's face,
and then the delirious man replied, “Did she tell you
so?”

“Not exactly, but I inferred as much, for when she
lay dying, she said, `Call my baby for his father,' and
when I whispered `Robert,' she nodded assent. They
are both dead now, Anna and little Robin. Your wife,
your baby, which never saw its father,” Richard continued,
wishing to impress some idea upon his brother's
mind.

But in vain, for Robert did not take the sense of what
he heard, except indeed the word baby, which he kept repeating
to himself, laughing insanely as he did so,
“Anna's baby; very funny,—very queer, when she was
only a child herself,” he would whisper, and that was all
which Richard achieved by speaking of the dead.

But there came a day when the stupor passed from
brain and head, leaving the latter free from pain and the
former clear and bright. He had been sleeping, and
when he woke only Richard was with him, and he was
sitting where he did not at first observe the eyes fastened

so curiously upon him, as Robert West's heart alternately
beat with hope and fear. He could not be mistaken, he
said to himself. It was no dream that his brother had
been there with him,—aye, was there still, looking older,
sadder, but his brother all the same. Dick, the kindest,
best brother in the world.

“Richard,” he said at last very softly, and Richard
started, and bent over the sick man, whose eyes read his
face for an instant, and then filled with great hot tears,
as, winding his arms around the doctor's neck, he sobbed,
“It is my brother, 'tis Dick; and you will forgive me.
I've got the money safe, honestly earned, too, every cent;
more than enough to pay the debt, which I heard you
were paying for me. Dear old Dick, we will be happy
yet, but tell me first that you forgive me, tell me second
how you found me, and tell me third of mother, and
all—”

He did not mention Anna, and Richard, in his reply,
only answered the questions directly put.

“Call mother,” Robert said, when told that she was
there, and in a moment she was weeping on the pillow of
her erring, but, as it would seem, deeply repentant child,
for he repeated to her what he had said to Richard about
the money, adding, “And this fall I was coming home to
buy back the dear old place, if possible; I was, mother,
I was; I've been so bad and wicked, but you will forgive
me now, for since I left New York I have not been guilty

of a single dishonorable act. Ask the people here, they
know. They will tell you that among them all there is
no one more popular than Max; I go by that name,”
and Robert's face crimsoned as he said this last.

In his anxiety that his mother should forgive and think
well of him, he grew so much excited that all she and
Richard could do was to soothe him into quiet by assurances
of forgiveness and love. He was too weak to talk
longer, and he lay perfectly still, holding his mother's
hand and gazing into the dear face which bent so fondly
over him. Once his lips quivered with some deep emotion,
and when Richard asked what he would say, he answered:

“Mother has changed so much,—her hair has all
turned white. Was it for me, mother?”

“Not wholly, Robert; it turned about the time when
we lost Anna,” was Mrs. West answer.

Instantly the sick man's eyelids closed, and one after
another the big tears rolled down his sunken cheeks, leaving
a red, shining track, such as bitter, scalding tears always
leave, but he made no comment, and Anna was not
mentioned again until two days had passed, and he was
so much better that he sat up in bed, propped on pillows,
with his mother at his side, half supporting him. Then
suddenly breaking a silence which had fallen upon them,
he exclaimed:

“It was an unfortunate hour that saw me installed as

our great Uncle Jason's book-keeper and confidential
clerk. He trusted me so entirely, and there were such
large sums of money daily passing through my hands,
that the temptation was a great one to a person of my
expensive tastes and habits. I cannot tell just when I
took the first five dollars, replacing it as soon as possible,
and then finding the second sin so much easier than the
first. It was not a sin, I said then, as did others of my
companions who were in the habit of doing the same
thing, and who led me on from bad to worse, while all
the time my uncle believed me a pattern of honesty. If
I had not heard that a part of Uncle Jason's fortune rightfully
belonged to us, I do not believe I should have fallen
so low. As it was, I made myself think that what I took
was mine, and after I learned to gamble it was ten times
worse. There is a fascination about those dens of
iniquity which you cannot understand, and it proved my
ruin. I played every night, sometimes losing, sometimes
winning, and gradually staking more and more,
until at last I bet so heavily that forgery was the consequence.
I don't know what made me do it, for I knew
I could not replace that 20,000 dollars, and when the
deed was done there was no alternative but to run
away. Assuming the name of John Maxwell, I went to
England first, and then to California. Uncle Jason had
so much faith in me that you know he believed me murdered,
until the fraud was discovered, when it seems he
behaved most generously, suppressing the facts, and
after an interview with you, my brother, consented to
keep the whole thing still, provided the money was in
time refunded.”

“Who told you this?” both Richard and his mother
exclaimed, but Robert only replied:

“I heard it, and resolved, if possible, to earn that
money and pay it back myself. The voyage out sobered
me into a better man, for, mother, your prayers, said
over me when I was a child, rang continually in my
ears, until I, too, ventured to whisper each day the
words, `Lead us not into temptation,' saying them at
first more from habit than anything else, and afterwards
because I learned to have faith in them, learned to believe
there was something in that petition which did
keep me from falling lower. I was not good as you
term goodness, and had I died I should assuredly have
been lost; but within a few short months there has been
a change, so that what I once was doing for your sakes I
now do, I trust, from higher, holier motives; and oh! I
had so much need of forgiveness, for had I not wronged
everybody, and you, my brother, most of all?”

There was a mutual pressure of hands between the
brothers, and then they who listened hoped to hear of
Anna next, but of her Robert was still silent, and they

suffered him to take his own course, following him with
breathless interest as he told of his life in the mines, and
how he had been successful beyond his most sanguine
hopes,—how friends had sprung up around him, and all
things had conspired to make him happy, were it not for
the dreadful memories of the past which haunted him
continually.

“I should have written when I learned that I was
safe from a felon's doom,” he said, “but with this information
came news of so terrible a nature that I was
stunned for many months, so that I cared little what
became of me, and when feeling came back again, I said
I'll wait until I have the money as a sure peace offering.
I had it almost earned once, two years ago, but by a
great reverse I lost so much that I was compelled to
wait yet longer,—wait, as it seems, till you came here to
find me. It is all a dream to me yet that you are here,
and that I, perhaps, shall breathe again my native air,
and visit the old home. Is it greatly changed?”

“Many would think West Lawn improved,” Richard
replied, “but to us who loved Anna it can never be the
same.”

There was another silence, and then Richard, who
could no longer restrain himself, exclaimed:

“Robert, if you know aught which can throw a ray of
light on Anna's dark face, in pity tell us what it is!

You do know,—you must know!—Was Anna your
wife?”

Richard could hear the beatings of his own and his
brother's heart as he waited for the answer, which, when
it came, was a decided “Yes, Anna was my wife!”

19. CHAPTER XIX.
ANNA.

THE summer moonlight was shining into the
sick-room, where, with Richard and his mother
beside him, Robert West was summoning nerve
and courage to tell the story they were waiting so anxiously
to hear. With the assertion that “Anna was my wife,”
he had fainted, and since then a night and a day had intervened,
during which no word of the past had escaped
his lips. But now that he was stronger, he had said to
his mother and brother, “Sit beside me, and if I can I
will tell you of Anna.”

They needed no second bidding, but gathered closely
to him, and there, in the quiet room, Robert West began
the story, in which there was a slight recapitulation of
what he had before told, but which will help to enlighten
the reader with regard to Robert's past.

“I cannot remember the time when I did not love
Anna,” he said, fixing his eyes upon the ceiling. “As
a boy I made no secret of it, but as I grew older I pretended
not to care for her more than for any other, and
called her a little doll, you know, but it was mere pretense,

for I loved the very air she breathed; and when I
heard she was engaged to Dick, I cried as young men of
twenty-two seldom cry. You know I had then been in
New York two years, and that soon after this I was received
into Uncle Jason's employ, and trusted by him
with everything. For my father's sake, he trusted me,
he used to say, never dreaming how unlike the father was
the son.

“After losing Anna I cared little for my self-respect,
and then first commenced the process of taking five or ten
dollars, as I chanced to need it. This I always replaced,
and so conscience was satisfied, particularly after I found
that other young men, who stood as well as myself, did
the same. I cannot account for it, but I now believe
that my apparent indifference to Anna attracted rather
than repelled her, for when I was at home I used to try
the experiment of being very attentive, just to see how
she would brighten with pleasure, but it was not until
my last visit, made the August before I ran away, that
the idea entered my brain of taking her from Richard.
He was gone for two weeks, you will remember, and I
improved my time to so good advantage that when I
finally left Morrisville, I had won a half promise from
Anna that she would talk with him and ask to be released.
She did not promise this willingly, for her strong
sense of right made her question the justice of such an
act, and all my arguments were necessary to wring that

promise from her. We were out in the graveyard, Dick
on that little bench,—you know where.”

“Yes, I know;” and Richard's reply was like a
groan, as Anna and Dora came up before him, connected
with that rustic bench.

“It was a moonlight night, and we stayed there a long,
long time, mother thinking we were at some neighbor's
house, while you, my brother, were away, never dreaming
how falsely I was dealing with you. But Anna
thought of you, pleading most for you, even while she
confessed her love for me, and saying that daily interviews
with you made you more like her brother. And
there I had the advantage; I was comparatively a
stranger, while the city air and manner I had studied to
acquire were not without their effect on Anna. She was
almost an angel, but human still, and so the old story
was again repeated. The city fop, with sin enough upon
his soul to have driven that pure young girl from his
sight forever, could she have known it, was preferred to
the country boy. But it was hard work, and more than
once I gave up in despair, as, wringing her little hands,
she cried:

“`O Robert, don't tempt me so. I do love Richard,
or I did before you came, and he is so good, so noble.
God will never forgive me if I deceive him so dreadfully.
Please, Robert, don't tempt me any more.'

“You can imagine how I answered her. There were

kisses and caresses, and assurances that you would rather
give her up than take her when her heart was not your
own, and so the victory was won, and I acted a most
cowardly part. I made Anna promise not to speak of
me when talking with you, Richard, or hint in any way
that I was the cause of her changed feelings toward you.
I then returned to New York, while she asked to be released
from her engagement. She wrote to me once, bitterly
condemning herself for her deception, as she termed
it, and earnestly begging permission to tell you all, but I
refused, and held her to her promise; and so matters
stood when you decided upon sending her to Boston.
You know she came first to New York to Uncle Jason's,
whose wife is both deaf and half blind, so she was not in
my way at all. After you returned home, Dick, I was
there every night, and as Uncle Jason nodded over his
paper in his study, while Aunt Eliza nodded over her
knitting in the parlor, I had every opportunity for pressing
my suit, rejoicing when I saw how I could sway
Anna at my will. She was easily influenced by those
she loved and trusted—”

Here Robert's voice trembled, and he paused a moment
ere he resumed:

“She believed that I was good, and this belief, more
than anything I could say, lead her to listen to me. She
was to leave on Monday for Boston, and on Saturday I
took her for a drive through the city, and when she returned

at night she was my wife. How I accomplished
it I can hardly tell, for at first Anna refused ontright, but
she was finally persuaded, and at the house of a clergyman
whom I knew by reputation the ceremony was performed.
It was the original plan that when her visit was
over I should accompany her home and announce our
marriage, after which she should return with me to New
York, but subsequent events made this impossible. My
uncle had commissioned me to telegraph to the friends in
Boston that I would be there on Monday with Anna, and
he kindly gave me permission to remain a few days, or
even longer if I liked. This I professed to have done,
but it was a lie I told my uncle, who, believing Anna to
be Dick's betrothed, had no suspicion that I cared for her
in the least except as my sister. After leaving her at his
door on Saturday night, I purposely did not see her again
until Monday, when, according to arrangement, I went
ostensibly to accompany her to Boston. Anna knew
nothing of my real intentions, and it was some time before
she understood that we were going to Albany instead of
New Haven. In much surprise she questioned me, turning
very white and bursting into tears when the truth
dawned upon her, and she saw how she was becoming
more entangled in the deception. We stayed in Albany
at the City Hotel until Thursday morning, and in those
three days I was, I believe, as perfectly happy as is possible
for mortal man to be. And Anna was happy too.
In her love for me she forgot all else, and I tasted fully
of the bliss it was to call that lovely, gentle creature wife.
I remained in Boston one night, but Friday found me
again in New York, while one week from the next Satururday
night,—O, mother! if I could only blot out that
Saturday night from the past, but I cannot, and I must
tell you how low your boy fell. Knowing how good and
pure Anna was I resolved that henceforth my life should
be such as she could approve, and to this end I would
avoid all my old associates, I said, and never again frequent
their haunts or come in contact with them. Chief
among these associates was a Stanley, who had first taught
me to play, and who had constantly hovered near me as
my evil genius. On Saturday, he came into my office,
and told me of a rare specimen from Cincinnati who was
terribly conceited, but whom I could beat so easily. `He
has heaps of money,' he said, `and if you choose you can
make a fortune in an hour. Come to-night, and you are
sure to win.'

“Instantly there flashed over me the thought `if
Anna could only dress and live like the ladies of Madison
Square,' but with it came the knowledge of how she would
disapprove, and I hesitated. The temptation was a
strong one, and as I continued to listen I felt my good
resolutions giving way. Just for once, and that should be
the last, I said, consenting to join my comrade, who evidently
believed all he said of the stranger. Ten o'clock

found me at Stanley's rooms, opposite my antagonist,
whom I at once pronounced a fool. Eleven found me
the winner of a considerable amount. Twelve o'clock,
my lucky star was still in the ascendant, but when two
o'clock of that Sunday morning struck, I was ruined, and
my opponent held my note for $20,000.

“Desperate, distracted, what could I do but forge
my uncle's name for the amount, taking the precaution
to draw from three or four banks where he had funds deposited,
and this I did without a thought of the consequences;
but when I woke to the peril of my situation I
was mad with fear, and determined to run away. But
first I wrote to Anna, telling her I was going, but withheld
the reason why. After the letter was sent I was
seized with a terror lest she by some means should betray
me, and so I be brought to justice. My love for her
was strong, but dread of a prison life was stronger. Of
Uncle Jason I asked and received permission to visit
Morrisville for a week, and when I left him he thought
I was going home, but I went instead to Boston, reaching
there in the night, and next morning hiring a boy to
take a note to Anna. She was alone when it was delivered,
as the family were out on some shopping expedition.
In much alarm she came to the Revere, where I
was to meet her, and there the horrible truth was revealed
that she was the wife of a felon. She had not received
my letter, and what I told her was wholly unexpected.

She did not faint, nor scream, nor even reproach
me with my sin. She merely sank upon her knees and
prayed that I might be forgiven, while into her eyes and
face there stole a look which I know now to have been
the germ of insanity which afterwards came upon her.

“`Anna,' I said, when her prayer was ended and she
sat with her face upon the table, `I am going to England
in a vessel which sails to-night, and from there to California,
assuming the name of John Maxwell, and you
must not betray me.'

“`Betray you! O Robert!” and the face she lifted
up looked as grieved as if I had struck her.

“`I know you will not do it voluntarily,' I said, `but
you must not make yourself liable to be questioned. No
one knows I am here. No one knows you are my wife,
and no one must know it. Not yet, at least not till it is
settled somehow, and I come back to claim you, or send
for you to join me.'

“Again she looked wistfully at me, and I continued:
`If Uncle Jason knew you were my wife, he would question
and cross-question you until he frightened it out of
you, and I should be captured. I deserve to go to prison,
I know, but Anna, darling, think how terrible for one so
young to be shut out from this world, wearing my life
away. Promise, Anna, and I will be a better man; I
will earn enough to pay it back. Promise, if, indeed, you
love me.'

“I was kneeling at her feet, sueing almost for my life.
I was her husband, and she loved me, erring as I was, and
she promised at last to keep her marriage a secret until I
said she might tell. I ought to have been satisfied with
her word, but each moment the dread of arrest grew
greater, and taking the Bible which lay upon the table, I
said, `Swear with your hand on this.'

“Then she hesitated, but I carried my point, and with
her hand on the book she loved so much, she took an oath
not to tell, and fell fainting to the floor. I restored her
as soon as possible, and led her through obscure streets
back to Mr. Haverleigh's dwelling. I dared not kiss her
as I parted with her at the gate, for it was broad day, but
I shall never forget the look in her eyes as they rested on
my face, while she said, `Good-by, Robert. Ask God
daily to forgive you as I shall do.'

“I wrung her cold, damp hand, and hurried away,
seeing the Haverleigh carriage drive up the street just as I
turned into another, and knew that Anna must have been
safe in her room when the family returned.”

“Poor Anna,” sobbed Mrs. West. “That was the
time when Rosa Haverleigh found her upon the floor
totally unconscious. She was never herself after that,
and as they could not rouse her to an interest in anything,
they sent her back to us, a white-faced, frightened, half
crazed creature even then. O Robert, my son, how
much sorrow you have wrought,” and the poor mother

wept piteously as she remembered the young girl whom she
in thought had wronged, and who she now knew had died
for the erring Robert, and kept silence even when to do
so was to bring disgrace and death upon herself.

“Truly Anna died a martyr's death,” Richard murmured,
feeling now how glad he was that he had held her
in his arms and kissed her quivering lips with the kiss of
forgiveness, when all else stood aloof as from a sinful
thing.

“Yes, a martyr's death,” Robert repeated sadly; “and
some time you will tell me how she died and about her
child, but now I hasten on with the part which concerns
myself. I went to England and then to California, working
in the gold mines like a dog, and literally starving
myself for the sake of gain. I would pay that debt, I
said, and I would yet be worthy of Anna. It was some
time in October that I stumbled upon a Boston paper in
which was a notice of Anna's death, put in by the Haverleighs,
I presume, as they were greatly attached to her. I
knew it was my Anna, and that I had killed her, and for
a time reason and life forsook me. I was sick for weeks,
and when I came back to life, Stanley, the man who first
taught me to sin, was taking care of me. He, too, had
come to the land of gold, finding me by mere chance, and
knowing at once that I was not John Maxwell, as I had
given out. But he betrayed no secrets, and since then
has proved the old adage that there is honor even among

thieves. By some means he had ascertained that in consideration
of a sum of money paid by you, together with
your promise of the whole, Uncle Jason had concluded
to say nothing of my forgery. He had also heard that
West Lawn was sold, and I knew well what prompted
this sacrifice, and cursed myself for the sinful wretch
I was. Stanley did not remain in California longer than
spring, but returned to New York, from which place he
has occasionally written and given me tidings of home.
At my request he has at four different times been to
Morrisville, and reported to me what he learned. In this
way I heard of Robin, and I know that thoughts of him
have helped to make me a better man.

“By some strange chance Stanley was there when
Robin died, and mingling with those who followed my
child to the grave, he saw you, mother, and Dick, and a
young lady was with you, he said, a fair young girl, whom
Dick called Dora. Is she to be your wife?” and he turned
towards Richard, who, with a half moan, replied, “I
hoped so once, but I have lost her now.”

Robert pressed the hands of his brother in token of
sympathy, and then continued: “I never saw my boy, but
I wept bitterly when I heard he was dead, while my desire
to return was materially lessened; but this feeling
wore away, and I came again to look eagerly forward to
the time when with the gold in my hand I could go back
and pay the heavy debt I owe you.”

“Did you never hear directly from Anna?” Richard
asked, remembering the letter sent to California.

“Yes, once; and it made me for a time almost as mad
as my darling. I was up in the mountains when I read
it, and the livelong night I lay upon the ground, crying
as men are not apt to cry. I have that letter now. It is
in my wallet. Would you like to see it?”

A moment after Dr. West held in his hand a worn,
yellow paper, on which were traced the last words ever
written by the unfortunate Anna, words which made the
doctor's chest heave with anguish as he read them, while
his mother sobbed hysterically. A part of this letter we
transcribe for the reader:

* * * “I am in a mad-house, darling, where are
so many, many crazy people, and they say that I am crazy
too. It's only the secret in my head and heart which
makes them burn so cruelly. Richard and mother
brought me here. Poor Richard looks so white and
sorry, and speaks so kindly of you, wondering where you
are, that once I bit my tongue until it bled, to keep from
telling what I knew. If I had not promised with my
hand upon the Bible, I am sure I should tell, but that
oath haunts me day and night, and I dare not break it,
so now I never talk, and I was glad when they brought
me here, for it was safer so. It was dreadful at first, and
sometimes I most wished I could die, but God is here
just as He is in Morrisville, and at last I prayed to Him

as I used to do. You see I forgot to pray for a while, it
was so terrible, and I thought I was lost forever, but I've
found God again, and I don't mind the dreadful place.
Everybody is kind to me, everybody says `poor girl,' and
you need not worry because I am here. I pray for you
every minute, and God will hear and save you, because
He has promised, and God never lies. Dear, darling
Robert, if I dared tell you something, it might perhaps
bring you home to spare me from the shame which is
surely coming, unless I tell, and that I've sworn not to
do. It makes me blush to write it, and so I guess I
won't; but just imagine, if I was your wife before all the
world, and we were living somewhere alone, and Richard
did not love me, as I know he does, and folks called me
Mrs. West instead of poor Anna, and you always hurried
home at night to see me, wouldn't it be nice if we had a
little baby between us to love, you because it was Anna's,
and I because it was Robert's! But now, O Robert,
what shall I do, with you away, and that Bible oath in
my heart. God will help me, I hope, and perhaps take
me home to him, where they know I am innocent. Poor
Richard, I pity him most when he comes to know it, but
God will care for him, and when I am gone he will find
some other one more worthy than I for him to love.

“There came a young girl here yesterday, not to stay,
for her brains all were sound, but with some more to look
at us, and as they reached my door I heard the attendant

whisper something of me, while the stranger came up to
me and said:

“`Poor girl, does your head ache very hard?' and she
put her hand so gently on my hair; but I would not look
up, and she went on with her companion, who called her
Dora. I don't know why her voice made me think of
Richard, but it did, it was so soft and pitiful, just like
his when he speaks to me. It made me cry, and I prayed
carefully to myself, `God send to Richard another love,
with a voice and manner like Dora.”' * * *

Richard could read no farther, but dropping the letter
upon the bed, he buried his face in his hands and
moaned:

“Darling Anna, your prayer will never be answered,
but I thank you for it all the same, and I am so glad
that I never forsook nor quite lost faith in you. O
Anna! O Dora! Dora!”

The last name was wrung from him inadvertently,
but Robert caught it up and said:

“Was the Dora who was with you at Robin's grave
the same of whom Anna speaks?”

“I think so,—yes, I am sure, for she once told me of a
visit made to the asylum, and related an incident similar
to this which Anna mentions.”

“Then Dick,” and Robert spoke reverently but decidedly,
“then she will be yours. Anna prayed for it
once, and I have implicit faith in Anna's prayers. They

followed me over land and sea, bringing me at last to the
fountain of all peace.”

Richard made no reply to this, but asked reproachfully
why his brother did not hasten home after receiving that
touching message from Anna.

“The letter was a long time coming,” Robert said.
“And as I was not expecting it, I never inquired at the
post-office until I saw it advertised. It was then the
first of September, and Anna was already dead, but this
I did not know, and I was making up my mind to brave
even a prison for her sake, when I saw that paper which
told me of her death. The rest you know, except, indeed,
the debt of gratitude I owe to you and mother for
all your kindness to my wife and boy, and for the love
with which you have ever cherished me. If I get well, I
trust my life will show that a wretch like me can reform.
I have money enough to pay the debt with interest, and,
Richard, it is all yours, earned for you, and hoarded as
carefully as miser ever hoarded his gains. But now tell
me of Anna at the last. Did no one suspect she was my
wife?”

“No one but myself, and I did not till she was dying,”
Richard replied. “No one dreamed of questioning her
of you, and so she was spared that pain.”

And then he told Robert the sad story which our
readers already know, the story of Anna's death, of
Robin's birth, and his short life, while Robert, listening

to it, atoned for all the wrong by the anguish he endured
and the tears he shed, as the narrative proceeded. At
last, when it was finished, he sank back upon his pillow,
wholly exhausted with excitement and fatigue.

For weeks after that he hovered so near the verge of
death that even the mother despaired, and looked each
day to see the life go out from her child, who in his boyhood
had never been so dear to her as now. But youth
and a strong constitution triumphed, and again the fever
abated, leaving the sick man as weak and helpless as a
child, but anxious for the day when he would be able to
make the homeward voyage.

20. CHAPTER XX.
RICHARD.

SO absorbed was Mrs. West in Robert that she
seldom noticed Richard, and so she paid no heed
when he one day came into the sick-room, looking
whiter even than his brother, by whose side he sat
down as usual, doing for him the many offices he had
been accustomed to perform, and except for his suffering
face, giving no token of the terrible pain which wrung
his heart when he that morning read in Jessie's letter that
the worst he had feared was true, and that Dora was to
be married in September.

“For a person just engaged she acts very strangely,”
Jessie wrote, “and Bell will insist that she does not love
her future lord, but is marrying him from some mistaken
sense of duty. What do you think?”

Dr. West could not tell what he thought, he only knew
that his brain grew giddy, and his soul faint and sick as
he realized that Dora was lost to him forever. Never
even when Anna died had he suffered so keen a pang as
now, when in the solitude of his chamber he tried to pray,
while the words he would utter died away in unmeaning

sounds. But God, who readeth the inmost secrets of the
heart, knew what his poor sorrowing child would ask, and
the needed strength to bear was given all the same.

It was very tedious now, waiting in that sick-room, for
there crept into Richard's mind the half conviction that
if he would see Dora for only one brief moment, he could
save her from the sacrifice. But Robert's improvement
was slow, and day after day went by, until at last there
came a morning when there was put into Richard's hand
a soiled, worn-looking letter, whose superscription made
his heart for an instant stop its beatings, for he recognized
Dora's handwriting, and involuntarily pressed the missive
to his lips ere he broke the seal. It had been weeks and
weeks upon the road, lying for a long time in another
office, but it had come to him at last; he had torn the
envelope open; he was reading Dora's cry for help, written
so long ago, a cry to which he gave a far different interpretation
from what she had intended.

“Oh, why did I not speak to her again!” he exclaimed;
“why was I permitted to form so wrong an estimate of
woman's character? But it is not yet too late. The
wedding is to be the 15th of September, Jessie wrote.
A steamer sails from here in a few days, and Robert
must be able by that time to leave California, or if he is
not I shall leave him behind with mother and fly to
Dora. Oh if I could go to-day!”

An hour later, and Robert knew all there was to know

of Dora as connected with his brother, and warmly approved
the plan of sailing in the Raritan. I shall grow
stronger on the sea, he said, and the result proved that
he was right, for when at last the Raritan was loosened
from her moorings and gliding swiftly over the blue
waters of the Pacific, he lay on her deck, drinking in new
strength and vigor with each freshening breeze. But
with Richard it was different. Now that they were
really off, and Robert needed comparatively little of his
help, he sank beneath the load of anxiety and excitement,
and taking to his berth, scarcely lifted his head from the
pillow while the ship went gliding on towards home and
Dora Freeman.

21. CHAPTER XXI.
THE NIGHT BEFORE THE WEDDING.

NEVER had a summer passed so slowly to Dora
Freeman as had the last, and yet now that it
was gone, it seemed to her scarcely more than a
week since the night she had said words from which resulted
all the busy preparations going on around her: the
bridal dresses packed away in heavy travelling trunks, for
they were going to Europe too,—the perfect happiness of
Johnnie, who, twenty times each day, kissed her tenderly,
whispering, “I am so glad that you are to be my
mother”—the noisy demonstrations of the younger ones,
and the great joy which beamed all over the Squire's honest
face each time he looked at his bride-elect and thought
how soon she would be his. Gradually the pressure
about Dora's heart and brain had loosened, and she did
not feel just as she had done when she first promised to
be Squire Russell's wife. She had accustomed herself
to the idea, until each thought did not bring a throb of
pain, while the excitement of getting ready, and the anticipated
tour to places she had never expected to see,
had afforded her some little satisfaction. She knew that

the world generally looked at her in wonder, while Bell
and Mattie totally disapproved, both framing some excuse
for not being present at the wedding. But as is
usually the case opposition only helped the matter by
making her more determined to do what she really believed
to be her duty. Besides this she was strengthened
and upheld by Johnnie, who was to be the companion of
her travels, and who always came between her and every
sharp, rough point, smoothing the latter down and making
all so bright and easy that she blessed him as her
good angel. Owing to his constant vigilance, his father
was not often very demonstrative of his affection, except
by looks and deeds done for her gratification, but still there
were times when, Johnnie being off guard, the father
acted the fond lover to the pale, shrinking girl, who, shutting
her teeth firmly together, suffered his caresses because
she must, but gave him back no answering token of
affection. Sometimes this quiet coldness troubled him,
particularly as Letitia and Jimmie both asked him at
different times why Auntie cried so much,—“did everybody
just before they were married? Did mother?”

After Jessie came, Dora felt a great deal better, for
Jessie made the future anything but gloomy. Jessie was
like a brilliant diamond, flashing and sparkling, and singing
and dancing and whistling until the house seemed like
a different place, and even Squire Russell wished he
could keep her there forever.

And now it was the day before the bridal. Every
trunk was packed, and everything was ready for the ceremony,
which was to occur at an early hour in the morning,
as the bridal pair were to take the first train for
New York. Jessie upon the grassy lawn was romping
with the children, and occasionally addressing some saucy,
teasing remark to the bridegroom-elect, who was smoking
his cigar demurely beneath the trees, and wishing Dora
would join them. But Dora was differently employed.
With the quiet which had suddenly fallen upon the household,
a terrible reaction had come to her, and as if waking
from some horrid nightmare, she began to realize her position,
to feel that only a few hours lay between herself
and a living death. Vaguely, too, she began to see how,
with every morning mail, there had come a shadowy hope
that something might be received from Dr. West, that in
some way he would yet save her from Squire Russell
But for months no news had been received of him by any
one, and now the last lingering hope had died, leaving
only a feeling of despair. She could not even write a
line in her journal, and once she thought to burn it, but
something stayed the act, and 'mid a rain of tears, she
laid it away, resolving never to open its lids again until
her heart ached less than it was aching now.

“I shall get over it, I know,” she moaned, as she
seated herself by the window. “If I thought I should
not, I would go to Squire Russell before the whole world,

and on my knees would beg to be released; but I am tired
now, and excited, and everything looks so dark,—even
my pleasant chamber is so close that I can scarcely
breathe. I wonder if the breeze from the lake would not
revive me. I'll try it,—I'll go there. I'll sit where
Richard and I once sat. I'll listen to the music of the
waves just as I listened then, and if this does not quiet
me, if the horror is still with me,—perhaps—”

There was a hard, terrible look in Dora's eyes as the
evil thought first flashed upon her, a look which grew
more and more desperate as she began to wonder how
deep the waters were near the shore, and if the verdict
would be “accidental drowning,” and if Dr. West would
care.

Alas for Dora! the tempter was whispering horrible
things to her, and she, poor, half-crazed girl, was listening to
him as she stole from the back door, and took her way across
the fields to where the waters of the lake lay sparkling in
the September sun now low in the western horizon.

22. CHAPTER XXII.
DOWN BY THE LAKE SHORE.

THE shadowy woods which skirt the lake shore
tell no tales of what they see, neither do the
mossy rocks, nor yet the plashing waves kissing
the pebbly beach, and so Dora was free to pour out her
griefs, knowing there was no listening human ear, and
forgetting for a time that there was an eye which kept
watch over her, as with her face upon the yielding
sand she moaned so piteously. She could not sit where
she and Richard sat, and so she chose the projecting
trunk of a fallen tree, and sat where her feet could
touch the water below if she should wish it so, as once
she did, dipping the tip of her thin slipper, and holding
it there till it was wet through to see what the feeling
was!

Dora did not try to pray. She never thought of that,
but only remembered how desolate, how miserable she
was, vainly imagining that to rest beneath the waters
lying so calmly at her feet was to end all the pain, the
misery, and woe.

The sun was going down the west now very fast, and

out upon the bosom of the lake, at some distance from
the shore, it cast a gleam like burnished gold, and Dora,
gazing wistfully upon it, fancied that if she could but
reach that spot, and sink into that golden glory, it would
be well with her. No thoughts of the hereafter crossed
her disordered mind, and so she sat and watched the
shining spot, until there came to her a memory of the
night when Robin died, and the time when the sunshine
round Anna's picture looked like the bed of fire upon
the lake.

“They are in heaven,” she said; adding mournfully,
“and where is that heaven?”

“Not where they go who take their lives in their own
hands,” seemed whispered in her ear, and with a shudder
she woke to the great peril of her position.

“Save me, O God!” she sobbed, as she moved cautiously
back from her seat upon the tree, breathing freer
when she knew that beneath her there was no dark, cold
water into which she could dip her feet at pleasure.

She had dipped them there until both hose and slippers
were dripping wet, but this she did not heed, and
once off from the tree, she sat down where Richard sat,
and tried to look the present calmly in the face,—to see if
there were not some bright, happy spots, if she would but
accept them. With her head bowed down, she did not
hear the footstep coming through the woods, and drawing
near to her; but when a strange voice said interrogatively,

“Miss Freeman?” she started and uttered a nervous
cry, for the face she saw was the face of a stranger.
And yet it was so like to Dr. West, that she looked
again to reassure herself.

“I am Robert West,” the man began, abruptly. “I
am Richard's brother. He sent me here,—he sent me to
his Dora, and you are she.”

For an instant a tumultuous throb of joy shot through
Dora's heart, but it quickly passed, as she answered
Robert:

“You are mistaken, sir. I am to be Squire Russell's
wife to-morrow.”

Sitting down beside her, Robert repeated rapidly a
part of what the reader already knows, telling her of
Anna, of his own sin, and exonerating Richard from all
blame. Then he told her of the meeting in California,
of his long illness,—of Richard's anguish when he heard
that she was to be married,—of the reaction when that
letter so long in coming was received,—of his haste to
embark for home, and his illness during the voyage,—
illness which made him so weak that he was brought
from New York on pillows, and partly in his brother's
arms.

“But he has reached here in safety,” Robert continued.
“He arrived perhaps an hour ago. He is at
his old boarding-place, Miss Markham's, and mother is
there with him. He knows you are not married yet, and

would have come to you himself, but for his illness,
which made it impossible, and so he sent me to say that
even as he loves you, so he believes that you love him,
and to beg of you not to sacrifice your happiness to a
mistaken sense of duty. You could not be found when
I inquired for you, but a servant said she saw you going
towards the lake, and as she pointed me the way, I came
on until I found you. Miss Freeman, you know my
brother, and know that there lives no better, more upright
man, or one who will make you happier as your
husband. You have heard my errand, and now what
word shall I take back to Richard, or will you go yourself
and see him?”

Dora had sat like one stunned as Robert told his
story; hope, joy, and despair alternately succeeding each
other in her heart as she listened. At a glance, too, she
took in all the difficulties of her position, and saw how
impossible it was for her to overcome them. This was
in her mind when Robert asked if she would go to Richard,
and with a bitter moan she answered:

“No, no; oh no! he has come too late. I cannot
break my word to John, and he trusting me so fully.
Tell Richard it might have been, but cannot be now.”

Again Robert West pleaded for his brother, and for
the poor heart-broken girl beside him, but her answer
was just the same:

“It might have been, but cannot be now.”

At last as it grew darker around them, and the night
dew made Dora shiver, Robert gave up the contest, and
said:

“You must go home, Miss Freeman. It is imprudent
to stay here longer in the damp night air. I am
satisfied that you do not know what you are saying, and
so I shall see Squire Russell, and acquaint him with the
whole.”

In an instant Dora was on her knees, begging that her
betrothed might be spared this pain.

“Think of the sorrow, the disappointment, the disgrace,—for
to-morrow morning early is the wedding, and
everybody knows. Why, our passage to Europe is secured,
and we must go.”

“Not if I have the power to prevent it,” was Robert's
reply, as he led her across the fields, still insisting that
he should see Squire Russell.

At last, when she saw how much in earnest he was, she
said, “I will tell him myself; I can do it more gently,
and it will not hurt so much. Don't go to him, but
leave it with me.”

“Will you tell him all and ask to be released?” Robert
said, making her stand still while she replied, “I'll
tell him all, how I love Richard best; but I shall not ask
to be released.”

Robert was satisfied, for from what he had heard of

Squire Russell he believed he would never require of
Dora so great a sacrifice.

“I shall be here with the early dawn,” he said, as he
left her at the gate.

Dora did not reply, but stood with her eyes riveted
upon the house across the street, where she knew was
Dr. West. There was a light shining from the windows
of the upper room, while the figure of a woman wearing
a widow's cap was occasionally seen passing to and fro.

“That is Richard's room,” she whispered, feeling an
intense desire to fly at once to his side and assert her
right to stay there.

Then, remembering her promise to Robert, she walked
slowly to the house, meeting in the door with Johnnie,
who, wild with excitement, exclaimed, “Hurrah, guess
who has come! Dr. West,—and I have been in to see
him. He's whiter than a ghost, and what is funny, his
chin fairly shook when I told him I was to have a new
mother to-morrow, and what do you think, that woman,
his mother, put me out of the room and said too much
talking hurt him. Did you know he was here?”

“Yes, I knew, Johnnie; where's your father?” Dora
asked, feeling that if she waited longer her courage would
give way.

“Father's in the library, and he's ordered us youngsters
to keep out. I guess he's expecting you, for he
asked lots of times where you was, and nobody knew.

Jessie's over there,” and Johnnie jerked his shoulder in
the direction of the doctor's window.

Very slowly, as if going to her grave, Dora walked on
till she came to the library door. It was shut, and as
she stood there trembling, she caught the sound of a voice
praying within, a voice which trembled with happiness
and gratitude as John Russell thanked the God who had
given to him Dora.

“I can't; oh, I can't,” Dora sighed, as, faint and
sick, she leaned against the wall, while that prayer proceeded.

Then, when it was finished, still feeling that she could
not talk with him that night, she went up to her room,
and in the garments all damp and stained with night dew,
and the slippers wet with the waters of the lake, she sat
down by the open window and watched the light across
the way, until she heard Jessie coming and knew that
Robert was with her. They were talking, too, of her,
for she heard her name coupled with Dr. West's, while
Jessie said, “It's dreadful, and I do so pity Squire Russell,—he
is such a nice, good man.”

And Jessie did pity him and Dora, too, hardly knowing
what was best, or what she ought to advise. She
had been present when Robert returned from his interview
with Dora, and as Richard could not wait till she
was gone she came to know the whole, expressing great
surprise, and wounding Richard cruelly by saying, “It

has gone so far that I do not believe it can be prevented.”

But Robert thought differently, and repeated Dora's
promise to talk with Squire Russell that night.

“Then he will give her up,” Jessie exclaimed, “he is
so generous and so wholly unselfish. Oh, how I do pity
him!” and in the heat of her great pity Jessie would almost
have been Dora's substitute, if by that means she
could have saved the Squire from pain.

She did admire and like him, and appreciated his kind,
affable, pleasant ways, all the more because they were so
exactly the opposite of her father's quick, brusque, nervous
manner. The door of the library was open now,
and she saw him sitting there as she passed, and longed
so much to go and comfort him if the blow had fallen, or
prepare him for it if it had not. I'll see Dora first, she
thought, and she hastened up to Dora's door, but it was
locked, while to her whispered question, “Have you told
him yet?” Dora answered, “No, no, not yet; I can't
to-night. Please leave me, Jessie; I want to be alone.”

It was the queerest thing she ever heard of, Jessie
thought, as she turned away,—queerer than a novel ten
times over. Then, as she spied Johnnie in the parlor,
the little meddlesome lady felt a great desire to see if he
suspected anything; but Johnnie did not, and only
talked of Europe and the grand things he should see.
Not a hint or insinuation, however broad, would he take,

and mentally styling him stupid and dull, Jessie left him
in disgust, and walked boldly into the library, apologizing
for her call by saying she had been to see Dr. West,
and thought the Squire might wish to hear directly from
him. The Squire was very glad to hear, and glad also to
see Jessie, who amused and interested him.

“I have been thinking of calling myself, with Dora,
but have not seen her this evening. Where is she?” he
said.

“Locked in her room,” Jessie replied, as she took the
chair he offered her, and continued: “Dora acts queerly,
but I suppose that is the way I shall do the night before
I am married. Wouldn't I feel so funny, though! Do
you know you and Dora seem to me just like a novel, in
which I am a side character; but to keep up the romance
some tall, handsome knight ought at the last
minute to appear and carry her off.”

“And so make a tragedy so far as I am concerned,”
the Squire said, playfully, as he smoothed the little black
curly head moving so restlessly.

“Oh, I guess you would not die,” Jessie replied; “not
if Dora loved the knight the best. You would rather
she should have him, and some time you would find another
Dora who loved you best of all.”

Jessie was growing very earnest, very sympathetic,
very sorry for the unsuspecting bridegroom, and as his
hand still continued to smooth her curls, she suddenly

caught it between her own, and giving it a squeeze
darted from the room, leaving the Squire to wonder at
her manner, and to style her mentally “a nice little girl,
whom it would not be hard for any man to love.”

23. CHAPTER XXIII.
THE BRIDAL DAY.

THE morning was breaking in the east,—a bright,
rosy morning, such as is usual in early September,—a
morning when the birds sang as gayly
among the trees as in the summer-time, and when the
dew-drops glittered on the flowers just as they had done
in the mornings of the past. All night the gas had
burned dimly in the sick-room across the street, and all
the night the sick man had prayed that he might be prepared
for what the future had in store, whether of joy
or sorrow. All night Jessie and Johnnie had slept uneasily,
dreaming, one of the Roman Forum, where he
repeated the speech made at his last exhibition, and the
other that she, instead of Dora, wore the bridal wreath
and stood at John Russell's side, and found it not so
very terrible after all. All night Squire Russell had lain
awake, with a strange, half sad, half delicious feeling of
unrest, which drove slumber from his pillow, but brought
no shadow of the storm gathering round his head. All
night, too, Dora,—but over the scene of agony, contrition,
remorse, terror, hope, and despair which her chamber

witnessed, we draw a veil, and speak only of the results.

With the dawn the household was astir, for the elaborate
breakfast was to be served before the ceremony,
which was to take place at half past seven. In the children's
room there was first the opening of sleepy little
eyes, as Clem called out, “Come, come, wake up. This
is your father's wedding-day.” Then there was a scampering
across the floor, a patter of tiny feet, a chorus of
birdlike voices, mingled occasionally with wrathful exclamations
as Ben's antagonistic propensities clashed
with those of Burt, who declared that “Aunt Dora was
going to be father's mother, too, as well as theirs.”
Then there were louder tones, and finally a fight, which
was quelled by Jessie, who appeared in dressing-gown,
with her brush in hand, and seemed in no hurry to finish
a toilet which she intuitively felt would be made for
naught.

Across the yard came Squire John from visiting Margaret's
grave, where he had left a tear and a bouquet of
flowers. Up the walk, from the front gate, came Robert
West, a look of determination on his handsome face,
which boded no good to the bridegroom-elect, who, guessing
at once that he was the doctor's brother, greeted him
cordially and bade him sit down till the breakfast was
announced. Up the same gravel walk came the woman
who was to dress the bride, and just as Robert West was

stammering some apology for being there unbidden, she
asked if Miss Freeman had come down.

Nobody had seen her yet; nobody had heard her
either, though Jessie had been three times to her door,
while Clem had been once, but neither could get an
answer.

“Would she be apt to sleep so soundly on this morning?”
Squire John asked, just as Jessie, who had again
tried the door, came running to the head of the stairs,
her brush in her hands, and her dressing-gown flying
back as she breathlessly explained to the anxious group
in the hall below how she was positive she had heard a
moan as if Dora was in distress.

“Burst the door,” the Squire ordered, his face white
as ashes, as he hurried up the stairs, followed by Robert
West.

Yes, there was a moan, a faint, wailing sound, which
met the ears of all, and half crazy with fear Squire
John pressed heavily against the bolted door until it
gave way, when he stood modestly back while Jessie,
stooping under his arm, darted into the room, exclaiming:

“Dora, O Dora! what's the matter? What makes
her so sick?” and she cast an appealing glance at her
companions, who stood appalled at the change a few
hours had wrought in Dora, the bride of that morning.

In her soiled garments, damp and wet, she had sat or

lain the entire night, but the burning fever had dried
them and stained her face with a purplish red, while her
eyes, bloodshot and heavy, had in them no ray of intelligence.
She was lying now upon the bed, her hands
pressed to her forehead, as if the pain was there, while
she moaned faintly, and occasionally talked of the light
on the wall which had troubled her so much.

“It would not go out,” she said to Jessie, who gently
lifted up the aching head and held it against her bosom.
“It was there all the night, and I know it burned for
him. Does he know how sick I am?”

A glance of intelligence passed between Robert West
and Jessie, for they knew that the light from Richard's
room had shone into Dora's through the darkness, and
this it was which troubled her. Squire John had no
such suspicions, and when she asked, “Does he know how
sick I am?” he bent over her tenderly, and smoothing
her brown hair, said, “Poor child, poor darling, I do
know, and I am so sorry. Is the pain very hard?”

At the sound of his voice Dora started, while there
came into her face a rational expression, and as he continued
to caress her, her lip quivered, her eyes filled with
tears, and she said, pleadingly, as a child would beg forgiveness
of an injured parent:

“Dear John, don't be angry, I could not help it. I
tried to come to you last night when everybody was
asleep and the clock was striking twelve. I tried to

come, but I could not find the way for the light on the
wall. I can't, I can't. The trunks are all packed too,
and the people are coming. Tell them I can't.”

“Poor little girl, never mind. I know you can't, and
it don't make one bit of difference, for I can wait, and
I will tell the folks how sick my Dora is,” John said,
kissing her softly. Then in an aside to Jessie, he added,
“She thinks I'll be disappointed because the wedding is
deferred, and it troubles her. There's the door-bell now.
I must go down to explain,” and he hurried away to
meet the guests, who were arriving rapidly, and who,
as they turned their steps homeward, seemed more disappointed
than the bridegroom himself.

Blessed Squire John! He was wholly unselfish, and as
in his handsome wedding-suit he stood bowing out his departing
guests, he was not thinking of himself, but of
Dora and how she might be served.

“Margaret believed fully in homœopathy,” he said to
the last lady, who asked what doctor he would call; “but
Dr. West is sick, and what can I do?”

“He might prescribe,” returned the lady, who was also
one of Dr. West's adherents. “You can tell him her
symptoms, and he can order medicine.”

“Thank you; I never thought of that. I'll go at once,”
John said; and bareheaded as he was, he crossed the
street, and was soon knocking at Mrs. Markham's door.

“The doctor's worse,” she said, in reply to his inquiry.

“He seems terribly excited, and acts as if he was possessed.”

“But I must see him,” Squire John continued. “Miss
Freeman is very sick, and he must prescribe.”

“Ain't there no wedding after all? Wall, if that don't
beat me!” was Mrs. Markham's response, as she carried
to Dr. West the message which roused him from the
hopeless, despairing mood into which he had fallen.

He had insisted upon sitting up by the window, where
he could watch the proceedings across the street, and as
Robert did not return, while one after another the invited
guests went up the walk into the house, he gave up all as
lost, and sick with the crushing belief, went back to his
bed, whispering sadly:

“Dora is not for me. But God knows best!”

He did not see the bridegroom coming to his door, but
when the message was delivered it diffused new life at
once.

“Yes, show him up; I must talk with him,” he said, and
a moment after Squire John stood before his rival, his honest
face full of anxiety, and almost bedewed with tears as
he stated all he knew of Dora's case. “If I could see her
I could do so much better,” Richard said; “but that is
impossible to-day, so I must send,” and with hands which
shook as they had never shaken before, he gave out the
medicine which he hoped might save Dora's life.

“If you were able to go,” the Squire said, as he stood

in the doorway, “I would carry you myself; but perhaps
it is not prudent.”

He looked anxiously at the doctor, who replied:

“If she gets no better, I'll come.”

And then as the door closed upon the Squire, he gave a
great pitying groan as he thought how trustful and unsuspicious
he was.

Holding fast to the medicine, and repeating the direction,
Squire Russell hastened back to the house, finding
that Dora had been divested of her soiled garments, and
placed in bed, where she already seemed more comfortable,
though she kept talking incessantly of the light on the
wall which would not let her sleep.

“It's perfectly dreadful, isn't it?” Jessie said to Robert,
who, ere going home, stepped to the door of Dora's
room. “I'm sure I don't know what to do. I wish Bell
was here.”

Dora heard the name, and said:

“Yes, Bell; she knows, she understands,—she said I
ought not to do it. Send for Bell.”

Accordingly Robert was furnished with the necessary
directions, and left the house for the telegraph office, just
as the Squire entered.

Johnnie was nearly frantic. At first he had seemed
to consider that his trip to Europe was prevented, and,
boy like, only was greatly disappointed; but when he was
admitted into the room and saw Dora's burning cheeks and

bright, rolling eyes, he forgot everything in his great distress
for her.

“Auntie must not die! Oh, she must not die!” he
sobbed, feeling a keener pang than any he had known
when they brought home his dead mother. Intuitively
he seemed to feel that his father's grief was greater than
his own, and keeping close to his side he held his
hand, looking up into his face, and whispering occasionally:

“Poor father, I hope she won't die!”

The father hoped so too, but as the hours wore on and
the fever increased, those who saw her, shook their heads
doubtingly, saying with one accord:

“She must have help soon, or it will come too
late.”

“Help from where? Tell me. Whom shall I get?
Where shall I go?” John asked, and the answer was
always the same. “If Dr. West could come, but I suppose
he can't!”

“He can! he shall!!” Johnnie exclaimed, as the house
seemed filled with Dora's delirious ravings. “Father and
that Mr. West can bring him in a chair! He shall!”
and Johnnie rushed across the street, nearly upsetting Mrs.
West in his headlong haste, and bursting upon Richard
with the exclamation, “She'll die! she is dying, and you
shall go! You must,—you will! We'll take you in this
big chair!” and Johnnie wound his arm around the doctor's

neck, while he begged of him to go and save Aunt
Dora.

At first the doctor hesitated, but when his brother also
joined in the boy's request, he said, “I'll go.”

24. CHAPTER XXIV.
THE SHADOWS OF DEATH.

IT was a novel sight to see the little procession
which half an hour later left Mrs. Markham's
house and moved across the street. Wrapped
in a blanket and reclining in the huge arm-chair which
Squire John, his coachman, and Robert West were carrying
was Dr. West, while behind him walked his mother,
with Johnnie and Jim and Burt and Ben bringing up the
rear.

“I think I had better go in alone. Too many may
disturb her,” Richard suggested, as, supported by his
brother and the Squire, he reached the upper hall and
turned towards Dora's chamber.

All saw the propriety of this, and so only Jessie was
present when Richard first sat down by Dora's side, and
taking her hot hand pressed it between his own, calling
her by name and asking if she knew him.

“Yes, Richard, and you have come to save me; I am so
glad, and the night was so long, with the light on the
wall,” Dora replied, and over her cheeks the tears fell refreshingly.

“You have done her good already,” Jessie whispered

to the doctor, who, repressing his intense desire to hug
the sick girl to his bosom, proceeded carefully to examine
every symptom and then to prescribe.

She was very sick, he said, and the utmost quiet was
necessary; only a few must be allowed to see her, and no
one should be admitted whose presence disturbed her in
the least. This was virtually keeping Squire Russell
away, for his presence did disturb her, as had been apparent
all the day, for she grew restless and talkative and
feverish the moment he appeared. It smote the doctor
cruelly to see how meekly he received the order.

“Save her, doctor,” he said, “save my Dora and I will
not mind giving you all I'm worth.”

But the power to save was not vested in Dr. West.
He could only use the means, and then with agony of
soul pray that they might be blessed, that Dora might
live even though she should never be his. It was unnecessary
for him to return to Mrs. Markham's, and
yielding to what seemed best for all, he remained at
Squire Russell's during the dreadful days of suspense
when Dora's life hung on a thread, when Bell and Mattie,
both of whom came in answer to Robert's telegram,
bent over her pillow, always turning away with the feeling
that she must die, when Jessie, yielding her place as
nurse to more experienced hands, took the children to
the farthest part of the building, where she kept them
quiet, stifling her tears while she sang to them childish

songs, or told them fairy stories; and when Squire Russell,
banished from the sick-room, sat in the hall all the
day long watching Dora's door with a wistful, beseeching
look, which touched the hearts of those who saw it, and
who knew of the blow in store for him even if Dora lived.
It was no secret now, to five at least, that Dora could
never be Squire Russell's wife. Mrs. West, Bell, Mattie,
Jessie, and Robert all knew it, and while four approved
most heartily, Jessie in her great pity hardly
knew what she should advise. She was so sorry for him
sitting so patiently by the hall window, and she wanted
so much to comfort him. Sometimes, as she passed near
him, she did stop, and smoothing his hair, tell him how
sorry she was, while beneath the touch of those snowy
fingers, his heart throbbed with a feeling which prompted
him to think much of Jessie, even while he kept that
tireless watch near Dora.

It was strange how the doctor bore up, appearing better
than when he first came to Dora. It was excitement,
he knew, and he was glad of the artificial strength which
kept him at her side, noting every change with minuteness
which went far toward effecting the cure for which
he prayed.

Two weeks had passed away, and then one night, just
as the autumn twilight was stealing into the room, Dora
woke from a long, heavy sleep, which Richard had
watched breathlessly, for on its issue hung her life or

death. It was over now, and the hand Richard held was
wet with perspiration. Dora was saved, and burying his
head upon her pillow, the doctor said aloud:

“I thank thee, O my Father, for giving me back my
darling.”

Richard was alone, for Bell and Mattie had both left
the room to take their supper, and there was no one
present to see the look of unutterable joy which crept into
his face, when, in response to his thanksgiving, a faint
voice said:

“Kiss me once, Richard, for the sake of what might
have been, then let me die,—here, just as I am, alone
with you.”

He kissed her more than once, more than twice, while
he said to her:

“You will not die; the crisis is past; my darling
will live.”

Neither thought of Squire Russell then, so full, so perfect
was that moment of bliss in which each acknowledged
the deep love filling their hearts with joy. Dora was the
first to remember, and with a moan she turned her face
to the wall while the doctor still held and caressed the
little wasted hand which did not withdraw itself from his
grasp. There was joy in the household that night, for
the glad news that Dora was better spread rapidly, while
smiles and tears of happiness took the place of sorrow.
Squire Russell was gone; business which required attention

had taken him away for several hours, and when he
returned it was too late to visit the sick-room; but he
heard from Johnnie that Dora would live, and from his
room there went up a prayer of thanksgiving to Heaven,
who had not taken away one so dear as Dora.

25. CHAPTER XXV.
BREAKING THE ENGAGEMENT.

POOR Squire Russell,” Jessie kept repeating to
herself, as she saw him next morning going up
to Dora, who would far rather not have seen
him until some one had told him what she knew now
must be.

But there was no longer a reason why he should not be
admitted to her presence, and so he came, his kind face
bathed in tears, and glowing all over with delight as he
stooped to kiss “his lily,” as he called her, asking how
she felt, and whispering to her of his joy that she was
better.

“I knew the doctor would help you,” he said, rubbing
his hands complacently. “You would have died but for
him. We will always like Dr. West, Dora, for he saved
your life.”

“I guess I would not talk any more now,—it tires her,”
Jessie said, in a perfect tremor of distress; and taking his
arm, she lead him away; then, closing the door upon him,
she went back to Dora, who was weeping silently.

“It seems dreadful to deceive him any longer,” Jessie

said, and as Dr. West just then came in she appealed to
him to know if it were not a shame for that nice man to be
kept so in the dark. “If you and Dora love each other,
as I suppose you do, why, you'll have each other of course,
and Squire Russell must console himself as best he can.
For my part, I pity him,” and Jessie flounced out of the
room, leaving Dr. West alone with Dora.

For a long time they talked, Dora weeping softly
while the doctor soothed and comforted, and told her of
the love cherished so many years for the little brown-eyed
girl, who now confessed how dear he was to her,
but cried mournfully when she spoke of Squire Russell.
It was cruel when he trusted and loved her so much.
Perhaps, too, it was wrong, she said. It might be her
imperative duty to take charge of those children, and
then she startled the doctor by saying:

“You know how much I love you. I am not ashamed
to confess it, but I am most afraid that when the time
comes to talk with John, I shall tell him that I will
marry him.”

“Not by a jug full! I'll tend to that myself. I
know now what has been the matter!” was almost
screamed in the ears of Dr. West and Dora, as Johnnie
rushed into the room.

He had started to come before, he said, but had been
arrested at the door by something Dora was saying to
the doctor.

“I know it's paltry mean to listen,” he continued,
“but I could not help it, and so I stood stiller than a
mouse, and heard all you had to say. That's why Aunt
Dora has looked so white and cried so much, and didn't
want father to kiss her. I understand. She didn't like
him, but she's pesky willing to have you slobber over
her as much as you want to,” and the boy turned fiercely
toward the doctor. “I counted, and while I stood there
you kissed her fourteen times! It was smack, smack,
till I was fairly sick, and sort of mad with all the rest.
I know auntie always has done right, and so I s'pose she
is right now, but somehow I can't help feeling as if the
governor was abused, and me too! How, I'd like to
know, am I ever going to Europe if you don't have
father? O Auntie, think again before you quit entirely!”
and overmastered with tears, Johnnie buried
his face in the bed-clothes, begging of Dora “to think
again, and not give poor father the mitten!”

“You are making her worse! You had better go
out!” the doctor said kindly, laying a hand on Johnnie's
shoulder; but the boy shook it off, savagely exclaiming:

“You let me be, old Dr. West. I shall stay if I have
a mind to!” But when Dora said:

“Johnnie, Johnnie, please don't,” he melted at once,
and sobbed aloud.

“I was mad, Auntie; and I guess I'm mad yet, but I
do love you. O Auntie, poor father! I'm going right

off to tell him. He shan't be fooled any longer!” and
the excited child darted from the room ere Dora had
time to stop him.

Rushing down the stairs and entering the library, he
called loudly for his father, but he was not there. He
had gone into the village, Jessie said, asking if it was
anything in particular which he wanted. “Yes, of
course. I want to tell him how it's all day with him
and Auntie. She don't like him, and she does like
Dr. West. Poor father! was there ever anything so
mean?”

Here at last was one who in part expressed her own
sentiments, and the impulsive Jessie replied:

“It is mean, I think, and I am so sorry for your
father. Of course Dora intends to do right, and likes
the doctor best, because he is not so old as your father;
but young as I am, I should not think it so awful to
marry a man of forty. Why, I think it would be rather
jolly, for I could do just as I pleased with him. Yes, I
blame Dora some—”

“I won't have Aunt Dora blamed,” Johnnie roared, a
reaction taking place the moment any one presumed to
censure her. “No, I won't have her blamed, so you
just hush up. If she don't want father she shan't have
him, and I'll lick the first one who says she shall.”

Here Johnnie broke down entirely, and with a howling
cry fled away into the garden, leaving Jessie perfectly

amazed as she thought “how very unsatisfactory
it was to meddle with a love-affair.”

Meanwhile Johnnie had seated himself beneath a tree
in a sunny, quiet spot, where he was crying bitterly, and
feeling almost as much grieved as when his mother died.
Indeed, he fancied that he felt worse, for then there was
hope in the future, and now there was none. Hearing
the sound of the gate, and thinking his father had returned,
he rose at last, and drying his eyes, repaired to
the house, finding his conjecture true, for Squire Russell
had come, and was reading his paper in the library.
With his face all flushed with excitement, and his eyes
red with weeping, Johnnie went to him at once, and
bolting the door, began impetuously, “I would not mind
it a bit, father. I'd keep a stiff upper lip, just as if I
did not care.”

“What do you mean?” the Squire asked, in surprise,
and Johnnie continued: “I mean that you and Aunt
Dora have played out, and you may as well hang up
your fiddle, for she don't want you, and she does want
Dr. West, and that's why she has grown poor as a shark
and white as chalk. I just found it out, standing by the
door and hearing the greatest lot of stuff,—how he asked
her to marry him once, and she got into a tantrum and
wouldn't say yes, though she wanted to all the time.
What makes girls act so, I wonder?”

Squire Russell was too deeply interested to offer any

explanation with regard to girls' actions, and Johnnie
went on:

“Then he went off to California, and didn't write, as
she hoped he would, and you and I asked her to have
you, and she did not want to, but thought it was her
duty, and wrote to ask the doctor, and he didn't get the
letter for weeks and weeks, and when he did he was
most distracted, and cut stick for home; and Aunt Dora
didn't know it, and went off to the Lake, and sat with
both feet in the water, and Mr. Robert West found her
there and told her, and got her home, and she most had
a fit, and, O thunder! what a muss they have kicked up!”

Here Johnnie stopped for breath, while his father
grasped the table with both hands, as if he thus would
steady himself, while he said slowly, with long breaths
between the words, “How—was it—my son? Tell me
—again. I—I do not—think—I understand.”

Briefly then Johnnie recapitulated, telling how he happened
to find it out, and adding, “Such kissing I never
heard! Fourteen smashers, for I counted; and don't
you know, father, how, if you even touched her hand or
her hair, she would wiggle and squirm as if it hurt her?
Well, I peeked through the crack of the door, and instead
of wigglin' she snugged up to him as if she liked it, and
I know she did, for her eyes fairly shone, they were so
bright, when she looked at him. But, father, she talked
real good about you, and said that if you insisted she

should marry you just the same; but you won't father,
will you?”

“No, my son, no. O Dora!”

The words were a groan, while the Squire laid his face
upon the table. Instantly Johnnie was at his side comforting
him as well as he was able, and trying manfully
to keep down his own choking sorrow.

“Never mind, father, never mind; we will get along,
you and I. And I'll tell you now what folks say, and
that is, that no chap has a right to marry his wife's sister,
which I guess is so. Don't cry, father, don't. Somebody
will have you, if Aunt Dora won't. There,—there,” and
Johnnie tried in vain to hush the grief becoming rather
demonstrative as the Squire began to realize what he had
lost.

Noisy grief is never so deep as the calm, quiet sorrow
which can find no outlet for its tears, and so Squire Russell
was the more sure to outlive this bitter trial; but
that did not help him now, or make the future seem one
whit less desolate. It was an hour before Johnnie left
him, and went into the hall, where he encountered Jessie,
to whom he said, “I've told him and he'll do the handsome
thing, but it almost kills him. Maybe you, being
a girl, can talk to him better than I,” and Johnnie went
on up to Dora's chamber, while Jessie, after hesitating a
moment, glided quietly into the library, where Squire
Russell still sat with his head upon the table.

Jessie was a nice little comforter, and so the Squire
found her as she stood over him, just as she did when
Margaret died, smoothing his hair, her favorite method
of expressing sympathy, and saying to him so softly, “I
pity you, and I think you so good to give her up.”

He could talk to Jessie; and bidding her to sit down, he
asked what she knew of Dora's love-affair with the doctor,
thereby learning some things which Johnnie had not told
him.

“It is well,” he said at last; “I see that Dora is not
for me; I give her to Dr. West; and, Miss Verner,—
Jessie,—I thank, you for your sympathy with both of us.
I am glad you are here.”

Jessie was glad, too, for if there was anything she especially
enjoyed, it was the whirl and the excitement
going on around her. Bowing, she too quitted the library,
and went up to corroborate what Johnnie had already
told to Dora.

After that Squire Russell sat no more in the upper
hall watching Dora's door, but stayed downstairs with his
little children, to whom he attached himself continually,
as if he felt that he must be to them father and mother
both. Now that the crisis was past, the doctor thought
it advisable to go back to Mrs. Markham's, his boarding-place,
but he met Squire Russell first, and heard from his
own lips a confirmation of what Johnnie had said. There
was no malice in John Russell's nature, and he treated

the doctor as cordially and kindly as if he had not been
his rival.

“God bless you both,” he said; “I blame no one,—
harbor no ill-feeling towards any one. If Dora had told
me frankly at first it might have saved some pain, some
mortification, but I do not lay it up against her. She
meant for the best. It is natural she should love you
more than me. God bless her; and doctor, if you like,
marry her at once, but don't take her away from here
yet; wait a little till I am more settled,—for the children's
sake, you know.”

Dr. West could not understand the feeling which
prompted Squire Russell to want Dora to stay there, but
he recognized the great unselfishness of the man whose
sunshine he had darkened, and with a trembling lip he,
too, said, “God bless you,” as he grasped the hand most
cordially offered, and then hurried away. It was a week
before the Squire could command sufficient courage to
have an interview with Dora, as she had repeatedly asked
that he might do. With a faltering step he approached
her door, hesitating upon the threshold, until Jessie, coming
suddenly upon him, said to him, cheerily, “It will
soon be over, never mind it; go in.”

So he went in, and stayed a long, long time, but as
they were alone, no one ever knew all that had I assed between
them. The Squire was very white when he came
out, but his face shone with a look of one who felt that

he had done right, and after that the expression did not
change except that it gradually deepend into one of content
and even cheerfulness, as the days went by, and
people not only came to know that the wedding between
himself and Dora would never be, but also to approve the
arrangement, and to treat him as a hero who had achieved
a famous victory. As for Dora, Jessie and Bell found
her after the interview weeping bitterly over what she
called her own wicked selfishness and John's great generous
goodness in giving her up so kindly, and making her
feel while he was talking to her that it really was no matter
about him. He was not injured so very much, although
he had loved her dearly. He still had his children,
and with them he should be happy.

“Oh, he is the best man!” Dora said; “the very best
man that ever lived, and I wish he might find some suitable
wife, whom he could love better than he did me, and
who would make him happy.”

“So do I! I guess I do!” retorted Jessie, industriously
cutting a sheet of note-paper in little slips and scattering
them on the floor. “I've thought of everybody
that would be at all suitable, for I suppose he must be
married on account of the children; but there is nobody
good enough except—” and Jessie held the scissors and
paper still a moment, while she added, “except Bell. I
think she would answer nicely. She is twenty-nine,—almost
that awful thirty,—which no unmarried woman ever

reaches, they say; and I'd like to be aunt to six children
right well, only I believe I should thrash Jim and Letitia,
—who, by the way, is not very bright. Did you ever
discover it, Dora?”

Dora had sometimes thought Letitia a little dull, she
said, and then she turned to Bell to see how she fancied
the idea of being step-mother to all those dreadful children;
but Bell did not fancy it at all, as was plainly indicated
by the haughty toss of her head as she replied
that:

“Thirty had no terrors for her, but was infinitely preferable
to a widower with six children.”

Jessie whistled, while Dora smiled softly as she caught
the sound of a well-known step upon the stairs, and knew
her physician was coming.

Bell and Jessie always left her alone with him, and
when they were gone he kissed her pale cheek, which
flushed with happiness, while her sunny eyes looked
volumes of love into the eyes meeting them so fondly.

“My daring has been crying,” the doctor said.
“Will she tell me why?”

And then came the story of her interview with John,
who had proved himself so noble and good.

“Yes, I know; he came from you to me!” the doctor
replied, and into Dora's eyes there crept a bashful,
frightened look, as she wondered if John had said to
Richard what he did to her.

He had in part, viz., that he wished matters to proceed
just as if he had never thought of marrying Dora; that as
soon as she was able he would like to see her the doctor's
wife, and then if there were no objections on the part of
either, he would like to have her remain at Beechwood
awhile, at least until he could make some other arrangement
for his children.

“I told him you might,” Richard said, as he imprisoned
the hand which was raised to remonstrate. “I
said I knew you would be willing to stay, and that I
should like my new boarding-place very much; and now
nothing remains but for you to get well as fast as possible,
for the moment the doctor pronounces you convalescent
you are to be his wife. Do you understand?”

He did not tell her then of the plan which was maturing,
and for the furtherance of which Robert was sent
away, viz., the purchase of the homestead whose loss
Dora had so much deplored.

There was an opening in the town for a new physician,
the doctor had ascertained; and though he would dislike
to leave his many friends in Beechwood, still, for Dora's
sake, he could do so, and he had sent Robert to open
negotiations with the present proprietor of the place once
owned by Colonel Freeman, and for which there was
ample means to pay in the sum brought by the prodigal
from the mines of California.

But this was a secret until something definite was

known, and Richard willingly acceded to the Squire's
proposition that he and Dora should remain there until
something was devised for the children.

Of this Dora was not much inclined to talk, and as
she was tired and excited, the doctor left her at last,
stopping on his way from the house to look at little
Daisy, whom Jessie held in her lap, and who seemed
feverish and sick. The doctor did not then say what he
feared, but when later in the day he came again, the
child's symptoms had developed so rapidly, that he had
no hesitancy in pronouncing it the scarlet fever, then
prevailing to an alarming extent in an adjoining town.

Squire Russell had thought his cup full to overflowing,
but in his anxiety for Daisy, he forgot his recent disappointment,
and, as a father and mother both, nursed his
suffering child, assisted by Jessie, whose services there,
as elsewhere, were invaluable. It was indeed a house of
mourning, and for weeks a dark cloud brooded over it as
one after another, Ben and Burt, Letitia and Jim, were
prostrate with the disease which Daisy had been the
first to take, and from which she slowly recovered.
When Letitia was smitten down Jessie was filled with
remorse, for she remembered what she had said of the
quiet child, and with a sister's tenderness she nursed the
little girl, who would take her medicine from no one else.
From the first Ben and Burt were not very ill, but for a
time it seemed doubtful which would gain the mastery,

life or death, in the cases of Letitia and Jim. With regard
to Letitia that question was soon settled, and one
October morning Jessie put gently back upon the pillow
the child who had died in her lap, kissing her the last
of all ere she went the dark road already trodden by the
mother, who in life would have chosen anybody else than
Jessie Verner to have soothed the last moments of her
little girl.

But Jessie's work was not yet done, and while the sad
procession went on its way to the village graveyard,
where Margaret was lying, she sat by Jimmie's side fanning
his feverish cheeks, and carefully administering the
medicines which were no longer of avail.

Two days after Jimmie, too, died in Jessie's lap, and
as she gave him into his father's arms the weeping man
blessed her silently for all she had been to him and his,
and felt how doubly desolate he should be without her.

26. CHAPTER XXVI.
GIVING IN MARRIAGE.

THERE were two little graves now by Margaret's,
and in the house two vacant chairs, and
two voices hushed, while Squire Russell
counted four children where he had numbered six, and
yet the unselfish man would hear of no delay to Dora's
marriage.

“Let it go on the same,” he said. “It will make me
feel better to know that there are around me some perfectly
happy ones.”

And so the day was appointed, and Bell and Mattie
were summoned again from Morrisville, whither the latter
had gone during the children's illness. Judge Verner
was lonely with both of his daughters absent, and as of
the two he was most accustomed to Bell, he would have
been quite content with having her back again if she had
not told him how Jessie had turned nurse to Squire Russell's
children, and was consequently in danger of taking
the disease. This roused him, and in a characteristic
letter to Jessie he bade her “not make a fool of herself
any longer by tending children with canker-rash and feeding

them with sweetened water, but to pack up her traps
and come home.”

To this the saucy Jessie replied that “she should not
come home till she was ready; that the Judge could shut
up, and what he called sweetened water was quite as
strong as the medicine which once cured his colic so
soon.” Then, in the coaxing tone the Judge could never
resist, she added, “You know I'm just in fun, father,
when I talk like that, but really I must stay till after
Dora is married, and you must let me, that's a dear, good
old soul,” and so the “good old soul” was cajoled into
writing that Jessie might stay, adding in postscript,
“Bell tells me you say all sorts of extravagant things
about that widower, and this is well enough as long as
they mean nothing, but for thunder's sake don't go to
offering yourself to him in a streak of pity. A nice wife
you would make for a widower with six children,—you
who don't know how to darn a pair of stockings, nor make
a bed so that the one who sleeps the back side won't roll
out of the front. Mind, now, don't be a fool.”

“I wonder what put that idea into father's head,”
Jessie said, as she read the letter. “I would not have
Squire Russell, let alone offering myself to him. And I
do know how to darn socks. Any way, I can pull the
holes together, which is just as well as to put in a ball and
peek and poke and weave back and forth, and make lace-work
of it just as Bell does. It's a real old-maidish

trick, and I won't be an old maid anyhow, if I have to
marry Squire Russell,” and crushing the letter into her
pocket Jessie went dancing down the stairs, whistling
softly for fear of disturbing the sick children.

That afternoon Dora found her, with her face very red
and anxious, bending over a basket of stockings and
socks, which she was trying to darn after the method
most approved by Bell. “Clem had so much to do that
day,” she said, “that she had offered to help by taking
the darning off her hands.” But it was a greater task
than Jessie had anticipated, and Johnnie's aid was called
in before it was finished, the boy proving quite as efficient
as the girl, and as Clem secretly thought, succeeding
even better. This was before Letitia and Jimmie
died, and since their death the Judge had made no effort
to call her home, but suffered her to take her own course,
which she did by remaining in Beechwood, where they
would have missed her so much, and where, if she could
not darn socks neatly, she made herself generally useful
as the day for the wedding approached. It was arranged
to take place on Christmas Eve, and it was Jessie who
first suggested that the house should be trimmed even
more elaborately than the little church upon the common,
where the ceremony was to be performed. With Johnnie
as her prime minister, Jessie could accomplish almost
anything, and when their work was done, every one
joined heartily in praise of the green festoons and

wreaths, on which were twined the scarlet berries of the
mountain ash, with here and there a blossom of purest
white, purloined from the costly flowers which Squire
Russell ordered in such profusion from the nearest hothouse.
Dora took but little part in the preparations.
She was very happy, but her joy was of that quiet kind,
which made her content to be still and rest, after the
turmoil and wretchedness through which she had passed.
The doctor was with her constantly, and to Jessie, who
saw the look of perfect peace upon his face and Dora's,
they seemed the impersonation of bliss, while even Bertie
noted the change in Dora, saying to her once as she sat
with the doctor:

“You don't look now, Auntie, as you did when you was
married to pa.”

Dora could only blush, while the doctor laughingly
tossed the little fellow upon his shoulder and carried him
off to the office. If Squire Russell suffered, it was not
perceptible, and Jessie thought he had recovered wonderfully,
while Dora, too, hoped the wound had not been so
deep as even to leave a scar. He was very kind and
thoughtful, remembering everything that was needful to
be done, and treating Dora as if she had been his daughter.
He wished her to forget the past; wished to forget
it himself; and by the cheerful, active course he took,
he bade fair to do so. He should give the bride away,
he said, and when Mattie Randall, to whom he was a

study, asked kindly if he was sure he was equal to it, he
answered, “O yes, wholly so. I see now that Dora
would never have been happy with me. I should have
laid her by Madge in less than a year. I am glad it has
all happened as it has.”

He did seem to be glad, and when, on the night of the
24th, the little bridal party stood waiting in the parlor
for the carriages which were to take them to the church,
his face was as serene and placid as if he had never hoped
to occupy the place the doctor occupied. Through much
sorrow he had been tried and purified, until now in his
heart, always unselfish and kind, there was room for the
holier, gentler feelings which only the peace of God can
give. Not in vain had he in the solitude of his chamber
writhed and groaned over the crushing pang with which
he gave Dora up, while the tears wept over his dead
children were to him a holier baptism than any received
before, washing him clean and making him a noble-minded
Christian man. Margaret's grave had during
those autumn months witnessed many an earnest prayer
for the strength and peace which were found at last, and
were the secret of his composure. Just before the sunsetting
of Dora's bridal day, he had gone alone to the
three lonely graves and laid upon the longest the exquisite
cross of evergreen and white wax berries which Jessie's
fingers had fashioned for this very purpose, Jessie's
brain having been the first to conceive the plan. There

was also a bouquet of buds for each of the smaller graves,
and Squire Russell placed them carefully upon the sod,
which he watered with his tears; then, with a whispered
prayer, he went back across the fields to where Dora, in
her bridal dress, was waiting, but not for him. He was
not the bridegroom, and he stood aside as the doctor
bounded up the stairs, in obedience to Jessie's call that
he should come and see if ever anybody looked so sweetly
as his bride, but charging him not to touch her lest some
band, or braid, or fold, or flower should give way.

“It won't be always so,” he said, standing off as Jessie
directed. “By and by she will be all my own, and then
I can hug her,—so!” and in spite of Jessie's screams, he
wound his arms around Dora's neck, giving her a most
emphatic kiss as his farewell to Dora Freeman. “When
I kiss you again you will be Dora West,” he whispered,
as he drew the blushing girl's arm in his, and led her
down the stairs.

The church was crowded to its utmost capacity, and it
was with some difficulty that the colored sexton had kept
a space cleared for the bridal party, which passed slowly
up the aisle, while the soft notes of the organ floated on
the air. Then the music ceased, and only the rector's
voice was heard, uttering the solemn words, “I require
and charge you both,” etc.; but there was no need for
this appeal, there was no impediment, no reason why
these two hearts, throbbing so lovingly, should not be

joined together, and so the rite went on, while amid the
gay throng only one heart was heavy and sad. Robert
West, leaning against a pillar, could not forget another
ceremony, where he was one of the principal actors, while
the other was Anna, beautiful Anna, over whose head
the snows of many a wintry eve had fallen, and who but
for him might have been now among the living. He had
visited her grave and Robin's, had knelt on the turf
which covered them, and sued so earnestly for pardon,
had whispered to the winds words of deepest love and
contrition, as if the injured dead could hear, and then he
had gone away to seek the man whom he had so wronged,
and who for the brother's sake had kept his sin a secret.
Uncle Jason had forgiven him, had said that all was
right, that every trace of his error was destroyed, and
Robert had mingled fearlessly again among his fellowmen,
who, only guessing in part his guilt, and feeling intuitively
that he had changed, received him gladly into
their midst.

Summoned by his brother's letters, he had returned to
Beechwood, and now formed one of the party, who, when
the rite was over, went back to the brightly illuminated
house, where the Christmas garlands, the box, and the
pine, and the fir were hung, and where the marriage festivities
proceeded rationally, quietly, save as Jessie's birdlike
voice pealed through the house, as she played off her
jokes, first upon one and then another, adroitly trying to

coax Bell and the young clergyman, Mr. Kelly, under
the mistletoe bough, and then screaming with delight as
her father and Mrs. David West were the first to pass
within the charmed circle. Jessie was alive with fun
and frolic, and making Bell sit down at the piano, she
declared that somebody should dance at Dora's wedding
if she had to dance alone.

“Take Johnnie,” Dora said, and the two were soon
whirling through the rooms, the boy's head coming far
above the black curls of the merry little maiden, who
flashed, and gleamed, and sparkled among the assembled
guests till more than one heart beat faster as it caught
the influence of her exhilarating presence.

Robert West dreamed of her that night; so did Mr.
Kelly, the rector; and so did Squire Russell; but the two
first forgot her again next morning, as each said good-by
to the handsome, stately Bell,—a far more fitting match
for either than the black-eyed sprite who for a moment
had made their pulses quicken. But not so with the
Squire. To him the house was very desolate when he
returned to it, after having accompanied the bride, and
groom, and guests to the cars, which all took for Morrisville,
whither they were going. It was Dora he missed,
the servants said, pitying him, he looked so sad, while he
too believed it was Dora; and still as he knelt that day
in church, there was beside him another face than Dora's,
—a saucy, laughing, face, which we recognize as belonging

to Jessie,—who, at that very moment, while keeping
her companions in a constant turmoil and her father in
a constant scold, was thinking of him and saying mentally:

“Poor Squire Russell! how I pity him,—left there all
alone! and how I wonder if he misses me!”

27. CHAPTER XXVII.
MORE OF MARRIAGE.

THE homestead where Dora's childhood had been
passed “could not be bought for love nor
money;” so Robert, the negotiator, had reported
to his brother on the morning following the latter's
marriage, and so Richard reported to Dora, as he
sat with her at Mattie Randall's, up in the chamber
which Dora called hers, and where Anna had died.
Mattie had wished to give the bridal pair another room,
but Dora would take no other; and as Richard was satisfied,
they occupied the one whose walls had witnessed
so much sorrow in the days gone by. But there was no
grief there now, nothing but perfect bliss, as Richard
held his darling to his heart and told her for the thousandth
time how dear she was to him, and how he
thanked the Father of all good for giving her to him at
last. In all his joy he never forgot his God, or placed Him
second to Dora, who listened and smiled and returned
his fond caresses until he told her of his plan to buy the
homestead, and how that plan had been defeated by the
refusal of the present proprietor. Then Dora hid her

face in his bosom and wept softly to the memory of her
old home, which Richard had tried so hard to buy back
for her.

“You are so good, so kind,” she said, as he asked her
why she cried, and pitied what he thought was her disappointment.
“It is not that,” she continued, as she
dried her tears. “It is your thoughtful love for me. I
should be very happy at the old place, but, Richard, I am
not sure that I should not be happier in Beechwood,
where I have lived so long, and where you have so
many friends. There John's children would be nearer
me, and I must care for them.”

And so it was arranged that Richard should buy the
fine building spot to the right of Squire Russell's, and
that until the house he would erect should be completed,
Dora should remain at home and care for the children.

This plan, when submitted to the Squire, met his
hearty approval, and made the future look less dreary
than before. He should not be left alone entirely, for
Dora would be near to counsel and advise, and his face
was very bright and cheerful as he welcomed the travellers
back from their long trip, which lasted until February.

Towards the latter part of April, Jessie accepted of
Dora's cordial invitation to visit them again, and came
to Beechwood, the same bright, laughing, gleeful creature
as ever, the sunshiny being in whom, the moment he saw

her seated again by his fireside, Squire Russell recognized
the want he had felt ever since she left him the winter
previous. He was so glad to have her back,—his eldest
child he called her,—and treated her much as if he had
been her father, notwithstanding that she made ludicrous
attempts at dignity, on the strength of being twenty her
next birthday, which was in June. Jessie was very
pretty this spring, Squire Russell thought when he
thought of her at all, and so thought the Rector of St.
Luke's, Mr. Kelly, who came nearly every day, ostensibly
to talk with Mrs. Dr. West about some new plan for
advancing the interests of the Sunday-school, but really
to catch a glimpse of Jessie's sparkling beauty, or hear
some of her saucy sayings. But always, when he left the
house and went back to his bachelor rooms, he said to
himself, “It would never do. She is a frolicsome, pretty
little plaything, who would amuse and rest me vastly, but
she would shock my parishioners out of all the good
I could ever instill into their minds. No, it won't
do.”

Robert West, too, whose pulse had beaten a little
faster at the sight of Jessie Verner, had given himself to
his country, so there was no one to contest the prize with
Squire Russell, into whose brain the idea that he could
win it never entered until Johnnie put it there. To
Johnnie it came suddenly, making him start quickly from
the book he was reading, and hurry off to Dr. West,

asking if Deacon Bowles was not a great deal older than
Mrs. Bowles, whom the villagers still called Amy, making
her seem so youthful. The doctor thought he was,
but could not tell just how many years, and as this was
the point about which Johnnie was anxious, he conceived
the bold plan of calling on Mrs. Amy to ascertain, if
possible, her exact age, and also that of her husband.
He found her rocking her baby to sleep and looking very
pretty and girlish in her short hair, which she had taken
a fancy to have cut off. Amy was fond of Johnnie, and
she smiled pleasantly upon him, speaking in a whisper
and keeping up a constant “sh-sh-sh” as she moved the
cradle back and forth.

“What a nice baby,” Johnnie began, as if he had never
seen it before; “but it seems funny to see you with a
baby, when you look so like a girl. You can't be very
old.”

“Turned thirty. Sh-sh—” was the reply.

A gratified blush mounting Amy's cheek, while Johnnie
continued:

“Mother was thirty-two, and father was thirty-nine.
He is most forty-one now. Is the deacon older than
that?”

“Going on fifty-one. Sh-sh—” Amy replied, her
“sh-sh's” being more decided as baby showed signs of
waking.

Johnnie had learned what he wished to know, and bidding

Mrs. Bowles good morning, he ran home, repeating
to himself:

“Turned thirty,—going on fifty-one. Ought from one
is one, three from five is two. That makes twenty-one.
Most twenty,—most forty-one. Ought from one is one,
two from four is two. That makes twenty-one. Jemima!
It'll do, it'll do!” and Johnnie ran on with all
his might till he reached home, where he found Jessie,
whom he astonished with a hug which almost strangled her.

“It will do! it will do!” he exclaimed, as he kissed
her, and when she asked what would do, he answered, “I
know, I know, but I shan't tell!” and he darted off, big
with the important thing which he knew and should not
tell.

That night, as Squire Russell sat in his library, Johnnie
came in and startled him with the question:

“Father, who will take care of us when Aunt Dora is
gone? Her new house will be done in September.”

“I don't know, my son;” and the Squire laid down his
paper, for the question which Johnnie asked had also been
troubling him.

There was silence a moment, during which Johnnie almost
twisted a button from his jacket, and then he broke
out abruptly:

“Why don't you get married?”

“Married! To whom?” the Squire exclaimed; and
Johnnie replied:

“You know. The nicest girl in all creation after Aunt
Dora. She isn't too young, neither. Amy Bowles is
twenty-one years younger than the deacon, and Jessie
ain't any more.”

“Jessie! Jessie Verner!” the squire gasped, and
Johnnie continued:

“Yes, Jessie Verner; I most know she'll have you.
Any way, I'll make her. You break the ice, and I'll
pitch in! Will you, father? Will you have Jessie?”

“It would be better to ask first if she'll have me,” the
father replied, rubbing his head, which seemed a little
numb with the sudden shock.

“I hear her. I'll send her in! You ask her, father!”
Johnnie exclaimed, darting to the door, as he heard Jessie
in the upper hall whistling “three hundred thousand
more.”

As he reached the threshold he paused, while he
added:

“I guess Jessie will stand a huggin' better than Aunt
Dora, so you might come that game on her!” and Johnnie
rushed after Jessie ere his father had time to recover
his breath.

Jessie could not at once be found, and as Johnnie
would not tell her what his father wanted of her, she
was in no particular hurry to answer the summons, so
that Squire Russell had time to collect his thoughts, and
to discover that little Jessie Verner was very dear to him,

and that though he had never entertained an idea of
making her his wife till Johnnie suggested it, the idea
was by no means distasteful, and if she were willing, why
of course he was. But would she come? Yes, she was
coming, for he heard her in the hall calling back to
Johnnie:

“Mind, now, if you have played me a trick you will
be sorry. I don't believe he wants me.”

“Yes he does; you ask him,” was Johnnie's reply,
and advancing into the library, Jessie began innocently:

“Johnnie said you wanted me. Do you, Squire Russell!”

“Yes, Jessie, I do want you very much. Sit down
while I tell you.”

He drew her chair near to himself, and wholly unsuspicious,
Jessie sat down to listen, while he told her
how he wanted her.

28. CHAPTER XXVIII.
DORA'S DIARY.

MAY 31st, 1863.—I did not think when last I
closed this book, that I could ever be as
happy as I am now,—happy in everything,
happy in Richard's love, happy in the love of God, for
my precious husband has been the means of leading me
to the source of all happiness. He says I was a Christian
before, but I cannot believe it. At least, it was a
cold, tame kind of Christian, such as I never wish to be
again! Dear Richard, how good and true he is, and
how he tries to make me happy. Every day I see some
new virtue in him, and the tears often come as I wonder
why God should have blessed me above the generality of
womankind. I know I have the kindest, and best, and
dearest husband in the world. He has gone for a few
days to Fortress Monroe, where Robert is at present with
his men, while Mother West has gone into the hospital
as nurse. She felt it was her duty, and we did not oppose
her, knowing how much good she would do to the
poor, suffering soldiers. My heart bleeds for them, and
yet I cannot feel it the doctor's duty to go. Somebody

must stay at home, and when I see how his patients
cling to him, and how useful he is here, I think it is his
place to stay. If I am wrong and selfish, may I be forgiven.

“In the autumn our new house will be completed, and
then I shall leave Margaret's family, but not alone, for
Jessie is actually coming to be John's wife, and is now
at home making her preparations. Does Margaret know?
If so, she surely feels kindly now toward the little girl,
who will make the best of mothers to the children.

“It was very strange, and though Richard and I had
laughed together over the possibility, it took me wholly by
surprise. I was sitting in my room one night last April,
waiting for Richard, when Jessie came rushing in, her
eyes red with weeping, and her frame quivering with
emotion. I was startled, particularly as she threw herself
on the floor beside me, and exclaimed:

“`O Dora, I've done the silliest thing, and father
will scold, I know, and call me a fool, and say I proposed,
when I didn't, though I am afraid I said yes too quick!
Do you think I did? Tell me, do.'

“Then I managed to get from her that she was engaged
to Squire Russell; that Johnnie inveigled her in by saying
his father wanted her; that she asked if he did, and he
told her, `Yes, he wanted her for his little wife; wanted
to keep her always!' and she was so frightened.

“`Oh, you don't know anything about it!' she said.

`I felt just as I did once when I took chloroform to
have a tooth out, and acted just so, too, foolish like, for
I talked everything and told him everything; how I was
a little bit of a body who did not know anything, who
had never learned anything, but had always done as I
pleased and always wanted to; how I could not be sober
if I tried, and would not if I could; how I was more
fit to be Johnnie's wife than his; how father was not as
rich as some thought, but had two apoplectic fits ever so
long ago, and might have another any time and die, while
Bell and I would have to take care of ourselves,—go out
governesses, or something; and, maybe, if he knew that
he would not want me, but if he didn't, and I ever had
to be a governess, perhaps he would let me come here to
teach his children, and that was so silly for me to say,
and I knew it all the time, just like chloroform. And
then, O Dora, how ridiculous the next thing was. He
only laughed at the governess, and held me tighter, and
I guess,—I am most sure,—he kissed me; and I am
awfully afraid I kissed him back! Do you think I did?'

“I thought it quite likely, I said, and with a groan
Jessie continued:

“`The very silliest thing of all was my telling him I
could not darn his socks, nor make his shirts, and he
would have to wear big holes in them or go without;
and,—oh, do you believe, he laughed real loud, and said
he would go without? Do you think he meant it?'

“`Yes, Jessie, undoubtedly he meant it,' and Richard's
merry laugh broke in upon us.

“So absorbed had I been in Jessie that I had not heard
the doctor, who entered in time to hear the last of Jessie's
confession, and who at the recital of John's magnanimity
could restrain himself no longer, but laughed long and
loud, while Jessie wept silently. At last, however, we
managed to draw from her that in spite of all her faults,
every one of which she acknowledged, even to the fact
that sometimes when going to parties she powdered her
arms, and that four of her teeth were filled, John had
persisted in saying that he loved her, and could not live
without her; that as to powder, Margaret always used it;
that he knew a place on Broadway where he could get
the very best article in use; that most everybody's teeth
were either false or filled by the time they were twenty,
and he guessed she was quite as genuine as any of the
feminine genus.

“`Did you tell him about the cotton?' Richard asked,
wickedly, but Jessie innocently replied:

“`I don't know what you mean, but if it's the sheets
and pillow-cases I am expected to furnish, Bell bought
four pieces just before the rise, and I know she will let
me have some. Any way, I shall not ask Squire Russell
to buy them,' and thus Richard was foiled and I was glad.

“`And so it is finally settled, and you are to be my
little sister?' Richard said, and Jessie replied:

“`Yes; that is I told him to ask my father, and please,
Dr. West, will you write too and tell him how I did not
do the courting, or ever think of such a thing? Father
will scold, I know, and maybe swear. He always does,
but I don't care, I—'

“There was a call for Dr. West, who went out leaving
us alone; and then winding my arm around Jessie, I
said:

“`And are you sure you love Squire Russell well enough
to be his wife?'

This question threw Jessie into another impetuous outburst,
and she exclaimed:

“`That is just what he asked me, too; and if I had not
loved him before I should have done so when he said, “I
wish you to be certain, Jessie, so there need be no after-repentance.
I have borne one disappointment,” and he
looked so white and sad. “A second would kill me. If
I take you now, and then have to give you up, my life
will go with you. Can you truly say you love me, Jessie,
and are perfectly willing to be mine?”

“`I was foolish then, Dora, for I told him straight out
how it was very sudden; but the knowing he loved me
brought into life a feeling which kept growing and growing
so fast, that even in a few minutes it seemed as if I
had loved him all my life. He is so good and kind, and
will let me do just as I please. Don't you believe he
will?”

“I had no doubt of it, and I smoothed her short curls
while she told me how sorry she was that she ever thought
Letitia stupid, or Jimmie less interesting than the others.

“`It seems as if they died just to be out of my way,
and I do so wish they were back.'

“Then she said that the wedding was to be the 25th of
June, her twentieth birthday, that is, if her father consented;
that John had promised to take her to Europe some
time, but not this year, and they were going instead to the
White Mountains, to Newport, and lots of places, and
Johnnie was going with them. Then she settled her bridal
trousseau, even to the style of her gaiters, declaring
she would not have those horrid square toes, if they were
fashionable, for they made one's foot so clumsy, and she
put up her fairy little feet, which looked almost as small
as Daisy's. Dear little Jessie, of whom I once was jealous!
What a child she is, and what a task she is taking
upon herself! But her heart is in it, and that makes it
very easy. Had I loved John one half as well as she
seems to love him, I should not now be Richard's wife,
waiting for him by the window as I wait for him many
nights, knowing that though he chides me for sitting up
so late, he is usually pleased to find me so, and kisses me
so tenderly as he calls me a naughty girl, and bids me
hurry to bed.

“June 28th.—The house is very still these days, for
John and Johnnie are gone, and with them all the bustle,

the stir, and the excitement which has characterized our
home for the last few weeks. I invited Bell to return
with me from the wedding, but her father said no, he
could not spare both his daughters; and so she stayed, her
tears falling so fast as she said to me at parting: `You
cannot guess how lonely I am, knowing Jessie will never
come home to us again, just as she used to come.'

“Poor Bell, I pity her; but amid her tears I saw, as I
thought, a rainbow of promise. As the clergyman at
Morrisville chanced to be absent, Mr. Kelly went down
with us to perform the ceremony, and if I am not mistaken
he will go again and again until he brings Bell
away with him. The wedding was a quiet affair, save as
Jessie and Johnnie laughed and sported and played.
The bride and groom were, however, perfectly happy,
I know, which was more than could be said for the
Judge. At first he had, as Jessie predicted, said all kinds
of harsh things about the match, but Bell and Jessie won
him over, until he was ready to receive his son-in-law
with the utmost kindness, which he did, acting the polite,
urbane host to perfection, and only breaking down when
Jessie came to say good-by. Then he showed how much
he loved his baby, as he called her, commending her so
touchingly to her husband's patient care, because `she
was a wee, helpless thing,' that we all cried, Richard and
all, while the Squire could not resist giving his fairy
bride a most substantial hug, right before us all, as he

promised to care for her as tenderly as if she were his
little Daisy instead of his little wife. I have no fears for
them. It is a great responsibility which Jessie has assumed,
but her sunny nature, which sees only the brightest
side, and the mighty love which her husband and
Johnnie have given her, will interpose between her and
all that otherwise might be hard to bear. God bless her.
God keep her in all her pleasant journeyings, and bring
her safely back to us, who wait and watch for her as for
the refreshing rain.

“December 24th, 1863—Christmas Eve.—Just one
year I have been Richard's wife, and in that time I cannot
recall a single moment of sadness, or a time when
Richard's voice and manner were not just as kind and
loving as at first. My noble husband, how earnestly I
pray that I may be worthy of him, and make him as
happy as he makes me. We are in our new home now,
and I cannot think of a single wish ungratified. Everything
is as I like it. The furniture is of my own and
Richard's selecting, and is as good as our means would
afford,—not grand and costly like Mattie's and Jessie's,
but plain and nice, such as the furniture of a village doctor's
wife ought to be. And Richard's mother is with us
now, resting from the toils of life as nurse in the hospital.
We would like so much to keep her, but she says
`No, not till the war is over; then if my life is spared,
I will come back to live and die with my children.'

“Captain Robert is coming to-night and to-morrow all
take their Christmas dinner with me; I said all, meaning
John and Jessie, with their four children, and Mr.
Kelly, with his bride, Isabel. She has been here just a
week in the parsonage, which the people bought and fitted
up when they heard their clergyman was to bring his wife
among them. Judge Verner, too, is there, or rather at
Squire Russell's, where the children call him grandpa,
and where he seems very fond of staying. He will
divide his time between his daughters, and if that apoplectic
fit of which Jessie spoke ever does make its appearance,
Richard will be near to attend him, for the
Judge will have no other physician. `Homœopathy is all
a humbug,' he says, `but hanged if he will take any other
medicine.' He has great pride now in Mrs. Squire Russell,
who certainly has developed into a wonderfully domestic
woman, so that Richard even cites her for my example.
Perfectly happy at home, she seldom cares to
leave it, but stays contentedly with the children, to whom
she is a mother and a sister both. Johnnie calls her
Jessie, but to the others she is mamma to all intents and
purposes, and could Margaret know, she would surely
bless the whistling, hoydenish girl, who is all the world
now to husband and children both.

“Dear Jessie! I might write volumes in her praise, but
this is the very last page of my journal, kept for so many
years. The book is filled; whatever there was of romance

in my girl history is within its pages, and here at
its close I write myself a happy, happy woman. From
the church-tower on the common the clock is striking
twelve, and Richard, coming in from his long cold ride
across the snow-clad hills, bids me a merry Christmas;
then glancing at what I have written, he says, `Yes, darling,
God has been very good to us. Let us love Him
through the coming year more than ever we have done
before.'

“With a full heart I say Amen, and so the story is
done.”