In a Mysterious Way
Anne Warner

IN A MYSTERIOUS WAY

"THE ONLY REAL HOLE IS WHERE HE SAT DOWN ON AN ENGINE SPARK AT THE STATION." (Frontispiece [See p. 129)]

IN A MYSTERIOUS WAY

BY ANNE WARNER

AUTHOR OF "THE REJUVENATION OF AUNT MARY"
"SUSAN CLEGG AND HER FRIEND MRS. LATHROP"
"AN ORIGINAL GENTLEMAN," ETC.

Illustrated by

J. V. McFALL

BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1909

Copyright, 1909,
By Little, Brown, and Company.

All rights reserved

Published April, 1909

Electrotyped and Printed at
THE COLONIAL PRESS:
C. H. Simonds & Co., Boston, U.S.A.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

IN A MYSTERIOUS WAY

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCING MRS. RAY

"'He moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform,'" sang Mrs. Ray, coming in from the wood-shed and proceeding to fill up the stove, with the energy which characterized her whole person. A short, well-knit, active person it was, too,—a figure of health and compact muscular strength, a well-shaped head with a tight wad of neat hair on top, bright eyes, and a firm mouth.

Mrs. Wiley, a near neighbor, sat by the table and watched her friend with the after-nightfall passivity of a woman who has to be very active during daylight. Mrs. Wiley was not small and well-knit, neither was she energetic. Life for Mrs. Wiley had gone mainly in a minor key composed largely of sharps, and as a consequence she sighed frequently and sighed even now.

Mrs. Ray slammed the stove door and caroled louder than ever, as if to drown even the echo of a sigh in her kitchen. "'He moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform,'" she sang, and then, folding her arms on top of her bosom in a manner peculiarly her own, she spoke to Mrs. Wiley in that obtrusively cheerful tone which we use to those who sigh when feeling no desire to sigh with them: "That's my motto—that song—yes, indeed. It fits everything and accounts for everything and comes in handy anywhere any time, even if I never have wondered myself, but have been dead sure all along. Yes, indeed."

Mrs. Wiley sighed again, and her eyes moved towards a large, awkward parcel rolled in newspaper, which lay on the end of the table by her. "I'm so glad you feel able to undertake it, Mrs. Ray. I don't know how I ever could have managed it, if you'd said no. Mr. Wiley will have a new pig-pen this year, and the pigs never can pay for it themselves. So you were my only way to a new winter coat. I'm so glad you didn't say no. Besides it's father's suit, and I shall love to wear it for that reason, too."

"I never do say no to any kind of work, do I?" said Mrs. Ray, looking at the clock, and then all over the room; "this would be a nice time of life for me to begin to sit around and say no to work. What with Mr. Ray's second wife's children not all educated yet, and his first wife's children getting along to where they're beginning to be left widows with six apiece and no life insurance, I'm likely to want all the work I can get for some years, as far as I can see. Yes, indeed."

Mrs. Wiley sighed heavily.

"Mr. Wiley thinks we'd ought to insure our lives in favor of Lottie Ann," she said, feeling for her pocket-handkerchief at the thought; "she's so dreadful delicate—but I think it's foolish—she's so dreadful delicate."

"Why don't you insure Lottie Ann, then?" Mrs. Ray glanced at the clock again, frowned a little and puckered her lips. "If you don't mind taking that chair the cat's in, Mrs. Wiley, I believe I've got just about time enough to sprinkle the clothes before the mail comes in; it looks so to me."

Mrs. Wiley slowly and gravely exchanged seats with the cat. "Do you take much washing in now? I shouldn't think you had time."

"Time!" Mrs. Ray was dragging a clothes-basket from under the table and filling a dipper with water. "I never stop to think whether I have time or not, any more. 'He moves in a mysterious way—' there's where my motto comes in again. Yes, indeed. I move just the same way myself. I don't see how I get so much done, but I've no time to stop and study over it, or I'd be behind just that much. There's more than you wonder where I get time from, Mrs. Wiley. They asked me if I had time for the post-office. And I said I had. They asked first if I could read and write, and I said I could; and then they asked me if I had time, and I said I had. And that settled it."

"Why, Mrs. Ray," said Mrs. Wiley, watching the clothes-sprinkling, which was now going forward, attentively, "that's one of the waists from that girl at Nellie O'Neil's, isn't it?"

"Yes, indeed. She asked Nellie for a French laundress, and Nellie put her shawl right over her head and run up and asked me if I had time for that, too. I said I was willing to try, so I'm a French laundress too, now. 'He moves'—"

"What do you think of those two young people at Nellie's, anyway?" Mrs. Wiley dropped her voice confidentially. "I was meaning to ask you that, right at first."

"Well, if you ask me," said Mrs. Ray, "I can't make him out, and I think she's mooney. I'm a great judge of mooney people ever since I first knew Mr. Ray, and that girl looks very mooney to me. Look at her coming here and hiking right over and buying the Whittacker house next day—a house I wouldn't send a rat to buy—not if I had a real liking for the rat. And now the way she's pulling it to pieces and nailing on new improvements, with the trees all boxed up, as though trees weren't free as air—oh, she's mooney, very mooney—yes, indeed."

"Nellie don't think they act loving," said Mrs. Wiley; "and Joey Beall says they don't act loving even when they're alone together. He's been building a culvert for Mr. Ledge, and he's seen 'em alone together twice. Joey knows how people ought to act when they're alone together. He always knows when folks are in love, before they know themselves. He tells by seeing them alone together. Why, he knew when you was going to be married—he saw you and Mr. Ray alone together that day you walked to the Lower Falls."

"But it wasn't through our acting loving that he knew it," said Mrs. Ray, energetically ruminative between the dipper of water and the clothes to be sprinkled; "my, but I was mad that day! It was the first and last time anybody ever fooled me into walking to the Lower Falls. Yes, indeed. I like to of died! If Mr. Ray hadn't asked me to marry him, I'd never have forgiven him getting me to go on that walk. Those flights of steps! And those paths! All the way down I was wanting to turn round and go back. I made up my mind never to take Mr. Ray's word for nothing again. And I never did. He fooled me into that walk, but he never fooled me again. Yes, indeed. Never!"

"But Joey Beall saw you that day," said Mrs. Wiley, whose mind was of that strength which is not to be swept beyond its gait by any other mind's rapidity, "and he said right off that night you'd marry him."

"Maybe he saw Mr. Ray take his first and second wife down to the Lower Falls, and knew it from his looks with them—Mr. Ray took 'em both down there, and asked 'em each to marry him coming back. All the way down he was telling me what they each said to everything they saw. And coming back he showed me where he asked 'em each. Mr. Ray never made any secret of his first and second wife to me. I'll say that for him. Yes, indeed. And like enough Joey was around then. He's always round when people are alone together."

"But he doesn't think these young people act loving," Mrs. Wiley went on, recurring to the main issue under discussion. "Joey says they don't have the right way at all. He says they don't disagree right, either. They're on opposite sides of the dam, the same as if they were married folks, but they don't seem to feel interested in their discussing. Nellie says they're real pleasant, but she can't understand them; Nellie's very far from making them out."

"Oh, Nellie can't make nothing out. She and Jack is dead easy. Look at those other boarders they've got. She says she can't make them out, either. I should think not."

Mrs. Wiley's standpoint refused to stretch to the other boarders. She sighed again.

"She seems a very nice girl," she said, sadly.

"Oh, yes, nice enough—but mooney," said Mrs. Ray. "I know the kind as soon as I see 'em. I could almost tell 'em by their legs, when they get down from the train on the side away from me. She's got ideas about souls and scenery, that girl has; but that young man's got his living to earn, and he hasn't no time for any ideas. I like him! We both work for the United States Government, and that's a great bond. Yes, indeed. That young man knows if the dam goes through here, he'll be fixed for life digging it, and the girl's just the kind he wants, for he's practical and she's mooney—she's so mooney she's bought a house to live in while he digs the dam, and yet she's solemnly hoping there won't be no dam. She says so."

"Perhaps she don't mean it," suggested Mrs. Wiley.

"Yes, she does mean it," said Mrs. Ray; "yes, indeed, she means it. I'm a great judge of character and that girl means what she says."

"About the dam?"

"Yes, about everything. She's very friendly with me. She buys lots of stamps, and cancels up like a lady. I'm very fond of her."

"What did she say about the dam?"

"Oh, lots of things. She said it was a desecration for one thing, and then I was singing one day and she said I was very right, for the Lord did move in a very mysterious way, and He would save the falls."

"Was she as sure as that?" asked Mrs. Wiley, appalled.

"She seemed to be. Oh, but she's very mooney."

"She's expecting a friend on to-night's train," said Mrs. Wiley; "Nellie says it's a girl younger than she is."

"There'll be trouble then," said Mrs. Ray, with the calmness of all prophets of evil; "a girl younger than she is is going to make her look awful old."

"I wonder how long they'll stay!"

"I don't know. You never can tell how long any one will stay here. Some come and say 'Oh, it's so quiet,' and the next morning the express has got to be flagged to take 'em right away; and others come and say 'Oh, it's so quiet,' and send for their trunks and paint-boxes that night. You never can tell how this place is going to strike any one. Mr. Ray's first wife cried all the time, till she died of asthma brought on by hay-fever; and his second wife liked to be where she could go without her false teeth, and she just loved it here! Yes, indeed."

"It isn't so very long till the train now," said Mrs. Wiley; "I guess I'll go down to the station. I always like to see the train come in. It's so sort of amusing to think it's going to Buffalo. Lottie Ann says it's so funny to think of something being right here with us, and then going right to Buffalo. I wish Lottie Ann could travel more. Lottie Ann would be a great traveller if she could travel any."

Mrs. Ray took up the lamp. "Well, if you must go," she said, "I'll put the light in the post-office and get down cellar, myself. I'm raising celery odd minutes this year, and getting the beds ready to lay it under is a lot of work."

Mrs. Wiley rose and moved slowly towards the door. "I wonder how long those other two will stay at Nellie's," she said.

Mrs. Ray's lips drew tightly together. "I can't say I'm sure," she said; "I know nothing about them. Folks who never write letters nor get letters don't cut any figure in my life. Good night, Mrs. Wiley,"—she opened the door as she spoke—"good-by."

"They've been there—" murmured Mrs. Wiley, but the door closing behind her ended her speech.

CHAPTER II

THE COMING OF THE LASSIE

On that same evening Alva and Ingram, the main subject of Mrs. Ray's and Mrs. Wiley's discourse, sat in the dining-room of the O'Neil House, waiting for train time. They had the dining-room to themselves, except for occasional vague and interjectional appearances of Mary Cody in the door, to see "if they wanted anything." Ingram had been eating,—he was late, always late,—and Alva sat watching him in the absent-minded way in which she was apt to contemplate the doings of other people, while she talked to him with the earnest interest which she always gave to talking,—when she talked at all. The contrast between her dreamy eyes and the intentness of her tone was as great as the contrast between the first impression wrought by a glance at her colorless face and simple dress, and the second, when, with a start, the onlooker realized that here was some one well worth looking at, well worth studying, and well worth meditating later. Perhaps she was not beautiful—I am not quite sure as to that—but she was surely lovely, with the loveliness which a certain sort of life brings to some faces.

Ingram, on the other side of the table, was just the ordinary good-looking, professional man of thirty to thirty-five. Tall, straight, slightly tanned, as would be natural for a civil engineer who had spent September in the open; especially well-groomed for a man sixty miles from what he called civilization, fine to see in his knickerbockers and laced shoes, genial, jolly, and appreciative to the limit, apparently.

The contrast between the two was very great, and was felt by more than Mrs. Ray, for there had been many who had watched them during the week of Alva's stay. "He's a awful nice man," Mrs. O'Neil had said to Mrs. Ray, "but I don't see how she ever came to fancy him. They seem happy together, but it's such a funny way to be happy together."

This had been the original form of the statement which Mrs. Ray had later repeated to Mrs. Wiley.

It was true that they seemed very far apart, but were nevertheless apparently happy together. The week had been a pleasant week to both. Not, perhaps, as the town supposed, but pleasant anyway.

"I'm selfish enough to wish that it wasn't at an end to-night," Ingram said, as he took his piece of blackberry pie from Mary Cody; "you're a godsend in this place, Alva."

"But you'll like Lassie," his companion replied; "she's a charming little girl,—and I love her so. I always have loved the child, and just now it seemed to me as if it would do both her and me good to be together. Life for me is so wonderful—I don't like to be selfish with these days. My thoughts are too happy to keep to myself. I want some one to share my joy."

Ingram looked at her quizzically. "And I won't do at all?" he asked.

"You,—oh, you're away all day. And then, besides, you're still so material, so awfully material. You can't deny it, Ronald, you're frightfully material—practical—commonplace. Of the world so very worldly."

He laughed lightly. "Just because I don't agree with you about the dam," he said; "there, that's it, you know. Why, my dear girl, suppose all America had been reserved for its beauty, set aside for the perpetual preservation of the buffaloes and the scenery,—where would you and I be now?"

She looked away from him in her curious, contemplative way. "If you knew," she said, after a minute, "how silly and petty and trivial such arguments sound to thinking people, you'd positively blush with shame to use them. It's like arguing with a baby to try to talk Heaven's reason with the ordinary man; he just sees his own little, narrow, earthly standpoint. I wonder whether it's worth while to ever try to be serious with you. You know very well that the most of your brethren would be willing to wreck the Yellowstone from end to end, if they could make their own private and personal fortunes building railways through it."

Ingram laughed again. "Where would the country be without railroads?" he asked.

She withdrew the meaning in her gaze out of the infinite beyond, where it seemed to float easily, and centred it on him.

"Just to think," she said, with deep meaning, "that ten years ago I might have married you, and had to face your system of logic for life!"

"Is it as bad as that?"

"It might have been. We might have made it so before we knew better. That's the rub in marriage. Every one does it before he or she has settled his or her own views. I wasn't much of an idealist ten years ago, and you were not much of anything. But if I could have married any one then, I should have married you."

A shadow fell upon his face. He turned his chair a little from the table. "If I was not the right one, I wish that you had married some other man then,—I wish it with all my heart. You would have been so much happier. You're not happy now—you know that. It would have been so much better for you if you had married."

She smiled and shook her head. "Oh, no. It is much better as it is. Infinitely better. It's like coming up against a great granite wall to try and talk to you, Ronald, because you simply cannot understand what I mean when I say words, but nevertheless, believe me, I'm on my knees day and night, figuratively speaking, thanking God that I didn't marry then. I wasn't meant to marry then. I've been needed single."

He took out his cigarette case. "What were you meant for, then, do you think?" he queried; "nothing except as a convenience for others?"

"I was meant to learn, and then later, perhaps, to teach."

"To learn?" He looked his question with a quick intensity. "To teach?—" the question deepened sharply.

She smiled. "Yes. To learn so that I could teach. I feel some days that I was born to teach, and of course no one may hope to teach until he has learned first."

He shrugged his shoulders and laughed a little. She smiled again. "You great, granite wall, you don't understand a bit, do you? Never mind, light your cigarette, and then tell me what time it is. We must not forget Lassie, you know."

He looked at his watch. "Ten minutes yet."

"Dear child, how tired she'll be. Never mind, she'll have a good rest during the next ten days."

"Will she stay ten days? She'll be here as long as you will then, won't she?"

"Yes; I'm going when she does."

"You think that the house will be done by that time?"

"I know that it will be done. It must be done."

He took his cigarette up in his fingers, turned it about a little, and then looked suddenly straight at her. "Alva, tell me the mystery, tell me the story, please. What is the house for?"

She looked at him and was silent.

"Why won't you tell me?"

Still silence. Still she looked at him.

"You'll tell her when she comes. Why not me?"

She spoke then: "She'll be able to understand, perhaps. You couldn't."

Ingram compressed his lips. "And am I so awfully dense?" he asked, half hurt.

"Not so dense, but, as yet, too ignorant. Or else it is that I am still too little myself to be able to rise above some human sentiments. And there is one point where endurance of the world's opinion is such refinement of torture, that only the very strongest and greatest can go willingly forward to meet and suffer the inevitable. The inevitable is close to me these days; it is approaching closer hourly, and there is no possible way for me to make you or the world understand how I feel in regard to it all. And I shrink from facing the kind of thing that I shall soon have to face any sooner than is absolutely necessary. And so I won't tell you."

She stopped. Although her voice was firm, her eyes had again become far away in their expression, and she seemed almost to have forgotten him even while making this explanation for his sake. He was watching her with deepest interest, and the curiosity in his eyes burned more brightly than ever.

"But if it is all as terrible as you make out," he said, "how can you make that young girl understand what you suppose to be so far beyond me?"

"Because I can teach her."

"How?"

"She'll be with me night and day for ten days. We'll have a good deal of time together. And then, too, she is a woman. Women learn some lessons easily. Easier far than men."

"Is it right to teach her such a lesson as this?"

"Why do you ask that, when you do not know what my lesson will be? How can you dare fancy that it could possibly be wrong?"

Ingram paused for a minute, a little staggered. Then he said, bluntly: "The world is made up of reasonable men and women, and it seems to me best that all men and women should be reasonable. What isn't reasonable is wrong. Forgive me, Alva, but you don't sound reasonable."

"You think that I am not reasonable? Therefore I must be wrong. That's your logic?"

He hesitated. "Perhaps I think you wrong. I must confess that to me you often seem so."

She thought a minute, considering his standpoint.

"Ronald," she said then, "'reasonable' is a term that is given its meaning by those in power, isn't that so? 'Reasonable' is what best serves the ends of those who generally seek to serve no ends except their own. It's true that I don't at all care what a few selfish and near-sighted individuals think of me. I have thrown in my lot with the unreasonable majority, the poor, the suffering, and those yet to be born who are being robbed of their birthright. To leave my mystery and go back to our familiar difference, there's the dam to illustrate my exact meaning. The 'reasonable' use of the river out there is to build a dam, and so make a few more millionaires and give employment for a few years to a few thousands of Italians. The 'unreasonable' use to make of the river is to preserve it intact for tired, weary souls to flee to through all the future, so that their bodies may breathe God and life into their being again, and go forth strong. You know you don't agree with me as to that view of that case, so how can I expect you to disagree with the general opinion that the 'reasonable' thing for me to do personally is to take my life and get all the pleasure that I can from it? The 'unreasonable' view, the one I hold myself, is that I have elected to take it and give—not get—all the pleasure that I can with it. Of course you don't understand that unreasonableness, and so you don't agree with me; but I can tell you one thing, Ronald," she leaned forward and suddenly threw intense meaning into her words, "and that is this. My story—my mystery as you call it so often—is at once a very old mystery and a very new one. I have suffered, and I am to suffer, most terribly. The happiness to which I am looking forward is going to be an ordeal for which all that I have undergone until now will be none too much preparation. But in the hour of my keenest agony I shall be happier and more hopeful than you will ever be able to realize in your life. Unless you change completely. Take my word for that."

She rose as she spoke, and he rose, too, looking towards her with eyes that plainly subscribed to Mrs. Ray's opinion as expressed in the simple vernacular.

"Oh, no, I can't understand, and I don't believe," he said: "but I am able to meet trains, anyhow."

A large cape lay on an empty chair near by, and she took it up now.

"But I'm going alone," she said, as she slipped into it.

"What nonsense. Of course I am not going to let you go alone."

She looked at him, buttoning the woolen cross-straps upon the cape as she did so; then she threw one corner back over her forearm and laid that hand on his, speaking decidedly.

"I'm going alone to meet her. You know what I asked you to promise when I came here a week ago, and you know that you gave me your word that you'd never interfere with me. Lassie is almost a stranger to you, and after you have learned to know her as a young lady there will come years for you two to talk together, but for me this meeting is something that I don't want to share. Don't say any more."

"But what will she think," he queried, "when she and you return together, and here sits a cavalier who didn't trouble himself to accompany one lady through the dark night to meet another's train?"

"She will think nothing, because she will not see the cavalier. When we come in, we shall go straight up-stairs."

Ingram more than smiled now. "Forgive me, Alva, but you and I are such old, such near, such dear friends, that I can say to you frankly, as I do say to you frankly over and over again, I don't understand you."

She laughed at that, and turned towards the door.

"I know—I know. I'm very queer, most awfully queer, in the eyes of every one. But I can tell you, as I tell them, that the worst of it is only for a little while. Just a few brief weeks and I shall be again, in most ways, a normal woman. A woman just like all the rest again," her back was towards him now, "in most thing—in most things."

"Never! You never have been like other women,—you've always been different from other women; you always will be."

"Have I? Shall I? Well, perhaps it's so. I'm rather glad of it. Most women are stupid, I think. Poor things!" she sighed.

He followed her as she moved towards the door, half-vexed, half-laughing:

"And men, Alva, and men. Are they all stupid in your eyes?"

She had her hand on the knob, and her great cape was gathered about her in heavy folds.

"Oh, Ronald," she said, looking into his look, "if you had any idea how fearfully stupid they seem to me. Often and often in the last three years. Even yourself. And ten years ago, when we were eighteen and twenty-five, I thought you so interesting, too."

He burst out laughing at that,—it wasn't in him to take her seriously enough to really mind her "ways" long.

"But what are we to do, when we are such mere ordinary creatures? And you know, my dear, that if the transcendentals like to muse on bridges by moonlight, some well-educated, commonplace individuals must build them the bridges first."

"Ah, there you go again. Yes, that's true. One should never forget that, of course. Particularly when talking with a man who uses a man's logic."

Then she opened the door, passed quickly into the hall, and let it close after her.

A lantern was resting on the floor outside, as if in waiting, and she picked it up and went at once into the night—a dark night through which the station lights and signals, red and yellow, sparkled brightly.

It was a brisk October air that filled that outer world, and the superabundant vitality of God's country came glinting, storming, down, up, and across earth, sky, and ether in between.

"This glorious night!" she thought prayerfully. "If one might only realize just all it means to be existing right now." She held the lantern behind her, and saw her shadow spread forth into space and fade away beyond. "The train isn't in the block yet," she thought, glancing at the signal; "that means minutes long to wait." Quickly she ran down the cinder-path beside the tracks, and entered the little station where a crowd of men lounged.

"Is the train on time to-night?" she asked one.

He shook his head. "Half an hour late," he said; "wreck on the road. Wheel off a car of thrashing-machines at Kent's."

"A whole half hour?"

"Well, I heard Joey Beall say they was making it up," said the man; "the station agent's gone home to supper, or you could ask him."

"Thank you very much," Alva said, and turned and went out.

The night appeared even fairer than before. Her eyes roamed widely. She thought for a minute of going back to the hotel and bidding Ingram come out with her, but then her own mood cried for relief from the labor of his companionship. We do not give our spirits credit for what they learn through adapting themselves to uncongenial companionship. Alva felt hers craved a rest. "I'll go out on the bridge and wait there," she told herself; "that will be the right thing,—to stand above the gorge and say my evening prayers."

So, stepping carefully over the switch impedimenta, she walked on, following the embankment that led out to the Long Bridge.

It is very long—that Long Bridge—and very high as well. I believe that the first bridge, the wooden one, was close to a world's wonder in its days. Even now the skilfully combined network of iron, steel, joist and cable seems a species of marvel, as it springs across the great cleft that the glacier sawed through several million layers of Devonian stratum several million years ago. I forget how many tons of metal went into its structure, but so intricate and delicately poised is the whole, that while trains roar forth upon its length and find no danger, yet does it echo quick and responsive to the light step of a lithe treading woman or even of the littlest child. On this night Alva, wrapped close in her cape, fared fearlessly out into the black beyond. The high braces and beams creaked all along its vanishing length, and she smiled at the sound. "I wonder if sometime, years from now, I shall return and walk out here again, and find the bridge crying me a welcome!" she thought; "I wonder!" A narrow, boarded way led to the right of the rails, and she was soon directly over the gorge. It was far too dark to see the ribbon of river hundreds and hundreds of feet below, or the steep picture-crevasse that encased the water's way. Beyond and below, to the left, she could have seen the windows of Ledgeville, had she turned that way, but she did not do so. It was the gorge that always claimed her, whether by day or by night, and now she leaned upon the steel guard and stared below. "I can see it plainly, even in the dark," she murmured to herself. "I can see every rock and eddy down there, the great curve of whirlpool, and the place where the water slides so smoothly off and then goes mad and foams below. It is all distinct to me. I remember the day that I first saw it, years ago, when—right here, where I stand to-night—he came to me for the first time, and we knew one another directly. And I shall see it just so plainly in the years to come, when it will never enter into my daily life any more, and yet will be the background of all my living."

She stood there for a long time, wrapped in the depth of her own thoughts. The shadows below seemed to shift and drift in their variations of intensity, and her eyes found rest in their profundity. "It's like drawing water out of a well when one is very thirsty," she said, at last, straightening herself and sighing; "it's unexplainable, but oh, it's so good,—the lesson of darkness and water and trees and sky. How grateful I am to be able to spell out a little in that primer!"

Then she clasped her hands and said a prayer, and as she finished the signal flashed the train's entrance within the block. That meant only two minutes until its arrival, and so she turned herself back at once. The crowd at the station had perceptibly increased and began now to surge forth upon the platform. Mrs. Dunstall was there and Pinkie, and Joey Beall and Mrs. Wiley, and Clay Wright Benton, and old Sammy Adams, and Lucia Cosby.

"Been out on the Bridge, I suppose?" Mrs. Dunstall said pleasantly to Alva.

"Yes; it's lovely to-night," the latter replied.

Every one smiled. They all felt that any one who would go out on the bridge on a pitch black night must be mildly insane, but they looked upon Alva as mildly insane anyhow. Mrs. Ray had many beside Ingram to uphold her opinion.

"It's her that bought the old Whittacker house and is putting a bath-tub in it," Joey Beall whispered to a man who was waiting to leave by the last train out.

"IT'S HER THAT BOUGHT THE OLD WHITTACKER HOUSE."

"I know it," said the man; he was one of those men who never let Joey or anybody else feel that he had any advantage of him, in even the slightest way.

Just then the train charged madly in beside them.

Lassie, out on the Pullman's rear platform, preparatory to climbing down the steep steps the instant that it should be allowable, saw a well-known figure wrapped in a dark cloak, and gave a little cry of joy—

"Alva! Here I am—all safe."

Then she was enwrapped in the same dark cloak herself, for the space of one warm, all-embracing hug, her friend repeating over and over, "I'm so happy to have you—so happy to have you." And then they moved away through the little group of bystanders, and started up the cinder-path towards the hotel.

"I'm so happy to have you!" Alva exclaimed again, when they were alone. She did not even seem to know that she had said so before.

"It was so good of you to ask me! How did you come to think of it? And oh, Alva, what are you doing here, in this lonely place?"

"It will take me all your visit to properly answer those questions, dear; but I'll tell you this much at once. I asked you because I wanted to have you with me, and because I thought that you and I could help one another a great deal right now. And I am here, dear, because I am the happiest woman that the world has ever seen, and because the greatest happiness that the world has ever known is to be here in a few weeks."

Lassie stopped short, astonished.

Alva went on, laughing gaily: "Yes, it is so! Come on,—or you will stumble without my lantern to guide you. I'm going to tell you all about everything when we get alone in our room, but now, little girl, hurry, hurry. Don't stop behind."

So Lassie swallowed her astonishment for the time being, and followed.

The hotel stood on the crest of the hill above the station and the railway's path curved by it. They were there in a minute, and in another minute alone up-stairs in their room—or rather, rooms—for there were two bedrooms, opening one into the other.

"Why, how pretty you have made them," the young girl cried; "pictures, and a real live tea-table. And a work-stand! How cosy and dear! It's just as if you meant to live here always."

Her face glowed, as she absorbed the surprising charm of her new abode. One does not need to be very old or to have travelled very extensively to recognize some comforts as pleasingly surprising in the country.

Alva was hanging up her cloak, and now she came and began to undo the traveller's with a loving touch.

"Why, in one way I do mean to live here always, dear. I never am anywhere that I do not—in a certain sense—live there ever after. People and places never fade out of my life. Wherever I have once been is forever near and dear to me, so dear that I can't bear to remember anybody or anything there as ugly. The difference between a pretty room and an ugly one is only a little money and a few minutes, after all, and I'm beginning to learn to apply the same rule to people. It only takes a little to find something interesting about each. We'll be so happy here, Lassie; how we will talk and sew and drink tea in these two tiny rooms! I've been just feasting on the thought of it every minute since you wrote that you could come."

Lassie hugged her again. "I can't tell you how overjoyed I was to think of coming and having a whole fortnight of you to myself. Every one thought it was droll, my running off like this when I ought to be deep in preparations for my début, but mamma said that the rest and change would do me good. And I was so glad!"

Alva had gone to hang up the second cloak and now she turned, smiling her usual quiet sweet smile as she did so.

"It's a great thing for me to have you, dear; I haven't been lonely, but my life has been so happy here that I have felt selfish over keeping so much rare, sweet, unutterable joy all to myself,—I wanted to share it."

She seated herself on the side of the bed, and held out her hand in invitation, and Lassie accepted the invitation and went and perched beside her.

"Tell me all about it," she said, nestling childishly close; "how long have you been here anyway?"

"A week to-day."

"Only a week! Why, you wrote me a week ago."

"No, dear, six days ago."

"But you spoke as if you had been here ever so long then."

"Did I? It seemed to me that I had been here a long time, I suppose. Time doesn't go with me as regularly as it should, I believe. Some years are days, and the first day here was a year."

"And why are you here, Alva?"

"Oh, that's a long story."

"But tell it me, can't you?"

"Wait till to-morrow, dearest; wait until to-morrow, until you see my house."

"Your house!"

"I've bought a house here,—a dear little old Colonial dwelling hidden behind a high evergreen wall."

"A house here—in Ledge?"

"No, dear, not in Ledge—in Ledgeville. Across the bridge—"

"But when—"

"A week ago—the day I came."

"But why—"

Alva leaned her face down against the bright brown head.

"I wanted a home of my own, Lassie."

"But I thought that you couldn't leave your father and mother?"

"I can't, dear."

"Are they coming here to live?"

"No, dear."

"But I don't understand—"

"But you will to-morrow; I'll tell you everything to-morrow; I'd tell you to-night, only that I promised myself that we would go to a certain dear spot, and sit there alone in the woods while I told you."

"Why in the woods?"

"Ah, Lassie, because I love the woods; I've gotten so fond of woods, you don't know how fond; trees and grass have come to be such friends to me; I'll tell you about it all later. It's all part of the story."

"But why did you come here, Alva,—here of all places, where you don't know any one. For you don't know any one here, do you?"

"I know a man named Ronald Ingram here; he is the chief of the engineering party that is surveying for the dam."

"Is he an old friend?"

"Oh, yes, from my childhood."

Lassie turned quickly, her eyes shining:

"Alva, are you going to marry him?"

Her face was so bright and eager that something veiled the eyes of the other with tears as she answered:

"No, dear; he's nothing but a friend. I was looking for a house—a house in the wilderness—and he sent for me to come and see one here. And I came and saw it and bought it at once; I expect to see it in order in less than a fortnight."

"Then you're going to spend this winter here?"

Alva nodded. "Part of it at any rate."

"Alone?"

Alva shook her head.

Lassie's big eyes grew yet more big. "Do you mean—you don't mean—oh, what do you mean?"

She leaned forward, looking eagerly up into the other's face. "Alva, Alva, it isn't—it can't be—oh, then you are really—"

Two great tears rolled down that other woman's face. She simply bowed her head and said nothing.

Lassie stared speechless for a minute; then—"I'm so glad—so glad," she stammered, "so glad. And you'll tell me all about it to-morrow?"

"Yes, dear," Alva whispered, "I'll tell you all to-morrow. I'll be glad to tell it all to you. The truth is, Lassie, that I thought that I was strong enough to live these days alone, but I learned that I am weaker than I thought. You see how weak I am. I am weeping now, but they are tears of joy, believe me—they are tears of joy; I am the happiest and most blessed woman in the whole wide world. And yet, it is your coming that leads me to weep. I had to have some outlet, dear, some one to whom to speak. And I want to live, Lassie, and be strong, very, very strong—for God."

Lassie sat staring.

"You don't understand, do you?" Alva said to her, with the same smile with which she had put the same question to Ingram.

But Lassie did not answer the question as Ingram had answered it.

"You will teach me and I shall learn to understand," she said.

CHAPTER III

INTRODUCING LASSIE TO MRS. RAY

The next morning dawned gorgeous.

When Lassie, in her little gray kimono, stole gently in to wake her friend, she found Alva already up and dressed, standing at the window, looking out over the October beauty that spread afar before her. It was a wonderful sight, all the trees bright and yet brighter in their autumn gladness, while the grass sparkled green through the dew that had been frost an hour before. The view showed the radiance fading off into the distant blue, where bare brown fields told of the harvest garnered and the ground made ready for another spring.

Lassie pressed Alva's arm as she peeped over her shoulder, and the other turned in silence and kissed her tenderly.

Side by side they looked forth together for some minutes longer, and then Lassie whispered:

"I could hardly get to sleep last night—for thinking of it all, you know. You don't guess how interested I am. I do so want to know everything."

Alva turned to regard her with her calm smile.

"But when you did get to sleep, you slept well, didn't you?" she asked; "tell me that, first of all."

"Why, is it late? Did I sleep too awfully long? Why didn't you call me?"

"Oh, my dear, why? It's barely nine, and that isn't late at all for a girl who spent all yesterday on the train. I let you sleep on purpose. What's the use of waking up before the mail comes? And that isn't in till half-past under the most favorable circumstances; and even then it never is distributed until quarter to ten. I thought we'd get our letters after our breakfast, and then carry them across the bridge with us. Would you like to do that? I have to cross the bridge every morning."

"Cross the bridge? That means to go to your house?"

"Yes, dear."

"How nice! I'm crazy to see your house. Is it far from here to the post-office? Will that be on our way?"

"That is the post-office there—by the trees." Alva pointed to a brown, two-story, cottage-like structure three hundred yards further up the track.

"The little house with the box nailed to the gate-post?"

"It isn't such a little house, Lassie; it's quite a mansion. The lady who lives in it rents the upper part for a flat and takes boarders down-stairs."

"Does she take many?"

Alva laughed. "She told me that she only had a double-bed and a half-bed, so she was limited to eight."

"Oh!"

"I know, my dear, I thought that very same 'Oh' myself; but that's what she said. And that really is as naught compared to the rest of her capabilities."

"What else does she do?"

"I'm afraid I can't remember it all at once, but among other things she runs a farm, raises chickens, takes in sewing, cuts hair, canes chairs and is sexton of the church. She's postmistress, too, and does several little things around town."

Lassie drew back in amazement. "You're joking."

"No, dear, I'm not joking. She's the eighth wonder in the world, in my opinion."

"She must be quite a character."

"Every one's quite a character in the country. Country life develops character. I expect to become a character myself, very soon; indeed I'm not very positive but that I am one already."

"But how does the woman find time to do so much?"

"There is more time in the country than in the city; you'll soon discover that. One gets up and dresses and breakfasts and goes for the mail, and reads the letters and answers them, and then its only quarter past ten,—in the country."

Lassie withdrew from the arm that held her. "It won't be so with me to-day, at all events," she laughed. "What will they think of me if every one here is as prompt as that?"

"It doesn't matter to-day; we'll be prompt ourselves to-morrow. But you'd better run now. I'm in a hurry to get to my house; I'm as silly over that house as a little child with a new toy,—sillier, in fact, for my interest is in ratio with my growth, and I've wanted a home for so long."

"But you've had a home."

"Not of my very ownest own, not such as this will be."

The young girl looked up into her face. "I'm so very curious," she said, with emphasis; "I want so to know the story."

Alva touched her cheek caressingly, "I'll tell you soon," she promised, "after you've seen the house."

Lassie went back into her room and proceeded to make her toilet, which was soon finished.

They went down into the little hotel dining-room then for breakfast, and found it quite deserted, but neat and sweet, and pleasantly odorous of bacon.

"Such a dolls' house of a hotel," said Lassie.

"It's a cozy place," Alva answered. "I like this kind of hotel. It's sweet and informal. If they forget you, you can step to the kitchen and ask for more coffee. I'm tired of the world and the world's conventionality. I told Mrs. Lathbun yesterday that Ledge would spoil me for civilization hereafter. I like to live in out-of-the-way places."

"Mrs. Lathbun is the hostess, I suppose?"

"No, Mrs. O'Neil is the hostess, or rather, she's the host's wife. You must meet her to-day. Such a pretty, brown-eyed, girlish creature,—the last woman in the world to bring into a country hotel. She says herself that when you've been raised with a faucet and a sewer, it's terrible to get used to a cistern and a steep bank. She was born and brought up in Buffalo."

By this time Mary Cody had entered, beaming good morning, and placed the hot bacon and eggs, toast and coffee, before them.

"I'm going for the mail after breakfast, Mary," Alva said; "shall I bring yours?"

"Can't I bring yours?" said Mary Cody. "I can run up there just as well as not." Mary Cody was all smiles at the mere idea.

"No, I'll have to go myself to-day, I think. I'm expecting a registered letter."

"I'll be much obliged then if you will bring mine."

"If there are any for the house, I'll bring them all," Alva said; "will you tell Mrs. Lathbun that?"

"I'll tell her if I see her, but they're both gone. They went out early—off chestnutting, I suppose."

"Oh!"

"Who is Mrs. Lathbun?" Lassie asked, when Mary Cody had gone out of the room.

"I spoke of her before and you asked about her then, didn't you? And I meant to tell you and forgot. She's another boarder, a lady who is here with her daughter. Such nice, plain, simple people. You'll like them both."

"I thought that we were to be here all alone."

"We are, to all intents and purposes. The Lathbuns won't trouble us. They are not intrusive, only interesting when we meet at table or by accident."

"Every one interests you, Alva; but I don't like strangers."

Alva sighed and smiled together.

"I learned to fill my life with interest in people long ago," she said simply; "it's the only way to keep from getting narrow sometimes."

Lassie looked at her earnestly.

"Does every one that you meet interest you really?" she asked.

"I think so; I hope so, anyway."

"Don't you ever find any one dull?"

Alva looked at her with a smile, quickly repressed. "No one is really dull, dear, or else every one is dull; it's all in the view-point. The interest is there if we want it there; or it isn't there, if we so prefer. That's all."

There was a little pause, while the young girl thought this over.

"I suppose that one is happiest in always trying to find the interest," she said then slowly; "but do tell me more about the Lathbuns."

"Presupposing them in the dull catalogue?"

Lassie blushed, "Not necessarily," she said, half confusedly.

Alva laughed at her face, "I don't know so very much about them, except that they interest me. The mother is large and rather common looking, but a very fine musician, and the daughter is a pale, delicate girl with a romance."

Lassie's face lit up: "Oh, a romance! Is it a nice romance? Tell me about it."

"It's rather a wonderful romance in my eyes. I'll tell it all to you sometime, but that was the train that came in just now, and I want to get the mail and go on over to the house, so we'll have to put off the romance for the present, I'm afraid."

"I don't hear the train."

"Maybe not—but it went by."

"Went by! And the mail! How does the mail get off by itself?"

"Oh, my dear, I must leave you to learn about the mail from Mrs. Ray. She'll explain to you all about what happens to the Ledge mail when the train rushes by. It's one of her pet subjects."

"Do you know you're really very clever, Alva; you seem to be plotting to fill me full of curiosity about everything and everybody in this little out-of-the-way corner in the world? Nobody could ever be dull where you are."

A sudden shadow fell over the older's face at that; a wistful wonder crept to her eyes.

"I wish I could believe that," she said.

"But you can, dear. You've always seemed to me to be just like that French woman who was the only one who could amuse the king, even after she'd been his wife for forty years. You'd be like that."

Alva rose, laughing a little sadly. "God grant that it may be so," she said, "there are so many people who need amusing after forty years. But, dear, you know I told you last night that I sent for you to come and teach and learn, and you are teaching already."

"What am I teaching?" Lassie's eyes opened widely.

"You are teaching me what I really am, and that's a lesson that I need very much just now. It would be so very easy to forget what I really am these days. My head is so often dizzy."

"Why, dear? What makes you dizzy?"

"Oh, because the world seems slipping from me so fast. I could so easily quit it altogether. And I must not quit it. I have too much to do. And I am to have a great task left me to perform, perhaps. Oh, Lassie, it's hopeless to tell you anything until I have begun by telling you everything. You'll see then why I want to die, and why I can't."

"Alva!"

"Don't be shocked, dear; you don't know what I mean at all now, but later you will. Come, we must be going. No time to waste to-day."

They went up-stairs for hats and wraps, and then came down ready for the October sunshine. It was fine to step into the crispness and breathe the ozone of its glory. On the big stone cistern cover by the door a fat little girl sat, hugging a cat and swinging her feet so as to kick caressingly the brown and white hound that lay in front of her.

"A nice, round, rosy picture of content," Alva said, smiling at the tot. "I love to see babies and animals stretched out in the sun, enjoying just being alive."

"I enjoy just being alive myself," said Lassie.

They went up the path that ran beside the road and, arriving at the post-office, turned in at the gate and climbed the three steps. The post-office door stuck, and Alva jammed it open with her knee. Then she went in, followed by Lassie.

The post-office was just an extremely small room, two thirds of which appeared reserved for groceries, ranged upon shelves or piled in three of its four corners. The fourth corner belonged to the United States Government, and was screened off by a system of nine times nine pigeonholes, all empty. Behind the pigeonholes Mrs. Ray was busy stamping letters for the outgoing mail.

"You never said that she kept a grocery store, too," whispered Lassie.

"No, but I told you that I'd forgotten ever so many things that she did," whispered Alva in return.

The lady behind the counter calmly continued her stamping, and paid not the slightest attention to them.

They sat down upon two of the three wooden chairs that were ranged in front of a pile of sacks of flour and remained there, meekly silent, until some one with a basket came in and took the remaining wooden chair. All three united then in adopting and maintaining the reverential attitude of country folk awaiting the mail's distribution, and Lassie learned for the first time in her life how strong and binding so intangible a force as personal influence and atmosphere may become, even when it be only the personal influence and atmosphere of a country postmistress. It may be remarked in passing, that not one of the letters then being post-marked received an imprint anything like as strong as that frame of mind which the postmistress of Ledge had the power to impress upon those who came under her sceptre. She never needed to speak, she never needed to even glance their way, but her spirit reigned triumphant in her kingdom, and, as she carried her governmental duties forward with as deep a realization of their importance as the most zealous political reformer could wish, no onlooker could fail to feel anything but admiration for her omniscience and omnipotence. Mrs. Ray's governmental attitude towards life showed itself in an added seriousness of expression. Her dress was always plain and severe, and in the post-office she invariably put over her shoulders a little gray shawl with fringe which she had a way of tucking in under her arms from time to time as she moved about.

Lassie had ample time to note all this while the stamping went vigorously forward. Meanwhile the mail-bag which had just arrived lay lean and lank across the counter, appearing as resigned as the three human beings ranged on the chairs opposite. Finally, when the last letter was post-marked, the postmistress turned abruptly, jerked out a drawer, drew therefrom a key which hung by a stout dog-chain to the drawer knob and held it carefully as if for the working up of some magic spell. Lassie, contemplating every move with the closest attention, could not but think just here that if the postal key of Ledge ever had decided to lose its senses and rush madly out into the whirlwind of wickedness which it may have fancied existing beyond, it would assuredly not have gotten far with that chain holding it back, and Mrs. Ray holding the chain. It was a fearfully large and imposing chain, and seemed, in some odd way, to be Mrs. Ray's assistant in maintaining the dignity necessary to their dual position in the world's eyes.

The lady of the post-office now unlocked the bag and, thrusting her hand far in, secured two packets containing nine letters in all from the yawning depths. She carefully examined each letter, and then turned the bag upside down and gave it one hard, severe, and solemn shake. Nothing falling out, she placed it on top of a barrel, took up the nine letters, and went to work upon them next.

When they were all duly stamped, she laid them, address-side up, before her like a pack of fortune-telling cards, folded her arms tightly across her bosom, and, standing immovable, directed her gaze straight ahead.

Now seemed to be the favorable instant for consulting the sacred oracle. Alva and the third lady rose with dignity and approached the layman's side of the counter; Lassie sat still, thrilled in spite of herself.

Alva, being a mere visitor, drew back a little with becoming modesty and gave the native a chance to speak first.

"I s'pose there ain't nothing for me," said that other, almost apologetically, "but if there's anything for Bessie or Edward Griggs or Ellen Scott I can take it; and John is going down the St. Helena road this afternoon, so if there's anything for Judy and Samuel—"

"Here's yours as usual," said Mrs. Ray, rising calmly above the other's speech and handing Alva three letters as she did so; "the regular one, and the one you get daily, and then here's a registered one. I shall require a receipt for the registered one, as the United States Government holds me legally liable otherwise, and after my husband died I made up my mind I was all done being legally liable for anything unless I had a receipt. Yes, indeed. I'd been liable sometimes legally in my married life, but more often just by being let in for it, and I quit then. Yes, indeed. When they tell me I'm legally liable for anything now, I never fail to get a receipt, and I read every word of the President's message over twice every year to be sure I ain't being given any chance to get liable accidentally when I don't know it—when I ain't took in what was being enacted, you know. Here,—here's the things and the ink; you sign 'em all, please."

Alva bent above the counter obediently and proceeded to fill out the forms as according to law. Mrs. Ray watched her sharply until the one protecting her own responsibility had been indorsed, and then she turned to the other inquirer:

"Now, what was you saying, Mrs. Dunstall? Oh, I remember,—no, of course there ain't anything for you. Nor for any of them except the Peterkins, and I daren't give you their mail because they writ me last time not to ever do so again. I told Mrs. Peterkin you meant it kindly, but she don't like that law as lets you open other people's letters and then write on 'Opened by accident.' Mrs. Peterkin makes a point of opening her own letters. She says her husband even don't darst touch 'em. It's nothing against you, Mrs. Dunstall, for she's just the same when I write on 'Received in bad order.' She always comes right down and asks me why I did it. Yes, indeed. I suppose she ain't to blame; some folks is funny; they never will be pleasant over having their letters opened."

Alva bent closer over her writing; Lassie was coughing in her handkerchief. Mrs. Dunstall stood before the counter as if nailed there, and continued to receive the whole charge full in her face.

"But I've got your hat done for you; yes, I have. I dyed the flowers according to the Easter egg recipe, and it's in the oven drying now. And I made you that cake, too. And I've got the setting of hens' eggs all ready. Just as soon as the mail is give out, I'll get 'em all for you. It's pretty thick in the kitchen, or you could go out there to wait, but Elmer Haskins run his lawn-mower over his dog's tail yesterday, and the dog's so lost confidence in Elmer in consequence, that Elmer brought him up to me to take care of. He's a nice dog, but he won't let no one but me set foot in the kitchen to-day. I don't blame him, I'm sure. He was sleepin' by Deacon Delmar's grave in the cemetery and woke suddenly to find his tail gone. It's a lesson to me never to leave the grave-cutting to no one else again. I'd feel just as the dog does, if I'd been through a similar experience. Yes, indeed. I was telling Sammy Adams last night and he said the same."

"There, Mrs. Ray," said Alva, in a stifled voice, straightening up as she spoke, "I think that will set you free from all liability; I've signed them all."

"Let me see,—you mustn't take it odd that I'm so particular, because a government position is a responsibility as stands no feeling." She looked at the signatures carefully, one after the other. "Yes, they're right," she said then; "it wasn't that I doubted you, but honesty's the best policy, and I ought to know, for it was the only policy my husband didn't let run out before he died without telling me. He had four when I married him—just as many as he had children by his first wife—he had six by his second—and his name and the fact that it was a honest one, was all he left me to live on and bring up his second wife's children on. Goodness knows what he done with his money; he certainly didn't lay it by for the moths and rust, for I'm like the text in the Bible—wherever are moths and rust there am I, too. Yes, indeed, and with pepper and sapolio into the bargain; but no, the money wasn't there, for if it was where it could rust it would be where I could get it."

Alva smiled sympathetically, and then she and Lassie almost rushed out into the open air. When they were well out of hearing, they dared to laugh.

"Oh, my gracious me," Lassie cried; "how can you stand it and stay sober?"

"I can't, that's the trouble!" Alva gasped. "My dear, she felt strange before you, and was rather reticent, but wait till she knows you well—until to-morrow. Oh, Lassie, she's too amusing! Wait till she gets started about the dam, or about Niagara, or about her views on running a post-office, or anything—" she was stopped by Lassie's seizing her arm.

"Look quick, over there,—who is that? He looks so out of place here, somehow. Don't he? Just like civilization."

Alva looked. "That? Oh, that's Ronald—Ronald Ingram, you know, coming across lots for his letters. You remember him, surely, when you were a little girl. He was always at our house then. You'll meet him again to-night. I'd stop now and introduce you, only I want to hurry."

"I suppose that he knows all about it?"

"All about what?"

"The secret."

"Ronald? Oh, no, dear. No one knows. No one—that is, except—except we two. You will be the only outsider to share that secret."

"For how long?"

"Until I am married."

"Until you are married! Why, when are you to be married?—Soon?"

"In a fortnight."

"And no one is to know!"

"No one."

"Not his family? Not yours?"

"No one."

"How strange!"

Alva put out her hand and stayed the words upon her friend's lips. "Look, dear, this is the Long Bridge. You've heard of it all your life; now we're going to walk across it. Look to the left; all that lovely scene of hill and valley and the little white town with green blinds is Ledgeville; and there to the right is the famous gorge, with its banks of gray and its chain of falls, each lovelier than the last. Stand still and just look; you'll never see anything better worth looking at if you travel the wide world over."

They stopped and leaned on the bridge-rail in silence for several minutes, and then Alva continued softly, almost reverently: "This scene is my existence's prayer. I can't make you understand all that it means to me, because you can't think how life comes when one is crossing the summit—the very highest peak. I've climbed for so long,—I'll be descending upon the other side for so long,—but the hours upon the summit are now, and are wonderful! I should like to be so intensely conscious that not one second of the joy could ever fade out of my memory again. I feel that I want to grave every rock and ripple and branch and bit of color into me forever. Oh, what I'd give if I might only do so. I'd have it all to comfort me afterwards then—afterwards in the long, lonely years to come."

"Why, Alva," said her friend, turning towards her in astonishment, "you speak as if you didn't expect to be happy but for a little while."

A sad, faint smile crept around Alva's mouth, and then it altered instantly into its usual sweet serenity.

"Come, dear," she said; "we'll hurry on to the house, and then after you've seen it we'll go to my own dear forest-seat, and there I'll tell you the whole story."

"Oh, let us hurry!" Lassie said, impetuously; "I can't wait much longer."

So they set quickly forward across the Long Bridge.

CHAPTER IV

THE DIFFERENCE

On the further side of the Long Bridge the railway tracks swept off in a smooth curve to the right, and, as there was a high embankment to adapt the grade to the hillside, a long flight of steps ran down beside it into the glen below.

A pretty glen, dark with shadows, bright with dancing sun-rays. A glen which bore an odd likeness to some lives that we may meet (if we have that happiness), lives that lead their ways in peace and beauty, with the roar and smoke of the world but a stone's throw distant.

Lassie's eyes, looking down, were full of appreciation.

"Is it there that you are going to live?" she asked.

Alva shook her head. "Oh, no, not there; that is Ledge Park, the place that all the hue and cry is being raised over just now."

"Oh, yes," Lassie turned eagerly; "tell me about that. I read something in the papers, but I forgot that it was here."

"It is 'here,' as you say. But it concerns all the country about here, only it's much too big a subject for us to go into now. There are two sides, and then ever so many sides more. I try to see them all, I try to see every one's side of everything as far as I can, but there is one side that overbalances all else in my eyes, and that happens to be the unpopular one."

"That's too bad."

"Yes, dear," Alva spoke very simply; "but what makes you say so?"

"Why? Why, because then you won't get what you want."

Her friend laughed. "Don't say that in such a pitying tone, Lassie. Better to be defeated on the right side, than to win the most glorious of victories for the wrong. Who said that?"

Lassie looked doubtful.

Alva laughed again and touched her cheek with a finger-caress. "I'll tell you just this much now, dear;—all of both the river banks—above, below and surrounding the three falls—belong to Mr. Ledge, and he has always planned to give the whole to the State as a gift, so that there might be one bit of what this country once was like, preserved. He made all his arrangements to that end, and gave the first deeds last winter. What do you think followed? As soon as the State saw herself practically in possession, it appointed a commission to examine into the possibilities of the water power!" Alva paused and looked at her friend.

"But—" Lassie was clearly puzzled.

"The engineers are here surveying now. Ronald Ingram is at the head and the people of all the neighborhood are so excited over the prospect of selling their farms that no one stops to think what it would really mean."

"What would it really mean?"

"A manufacturing district with a huge reservoir above it."

"Where?"

"Back there," she turned and pointed; "they say that there was a great prehistoric lake there once, and they will utilize it again."

"But there's a town down there."

"Yes, my dear, Ledgeville. Ledgeville and six other towns will be submerged."

Lassie stopped short on the railroad track and stared. She had come to a calamity which she could realize now.

"Why, what ever will the people do then?"

"Get damages. They're so pleased over being drowned out. You must talk it over with Mrs. Ray. You must get Mrs. Ray's standpoint, and then get Ronald's standpoint. Theirs are the sensible, practical views, the world's views. My views are never practical. I'm not practical. I'm only heartbroken to think of anything coming in to ruin the valley. Mr. Ledge and I share the same opinions as to this valley; it seems to us too great a good to sell for cash."

"You speak bitterly."

"Yes, dear, I'm afraid that I do speak bitterly. On that subject. But we won't talk of it any more just now. See, here's the wood road that leads to my kingdom; come, take it with me."

They turned into a soft, pine-carpeted way on the left, and in the length of a bow-shot seemed buried in the forest.

"Lassie, wait!"

Turning her head, Lassie saw that Alva had stopped behind, and was standing still beside where a little pine-tree was growing out from under a big glacial boulder. She went back to her.

"Dear, look at this little tree. Here's my daily text."

"How?"

"Do you see how it has grown out and struggled up from under the rock?"

Lassie nodded.

"You know very little of what makes up life, dear. I've sent for you to teach you." She lifted her eyes earnestly to the face near hers, and her own eyes were full of appeal. "Lassie, try to understand all I say to you these days; try to believe that it's worth learning. See this little tree—" she touched her fingers caressingly to the pine branches as she spoke—"it's a very little tree, but it has taught me daily since I came, and I believe that you can learn of it, too."

Lassie's big eyes were very big indeed. "Learn of a tree!"

Alva lifted one of the little stunted uneven branches tenderly in her fingers. "This is its lesson," she said; "the pine-cone fell between the rocks; it didn't choose where it would fall, it just found itself alive and under the rocks; there wasn't much earth there, but it took root and grew. There was no room to give out branches, so it forced its way crookedly upward; crookedly because there was no room to grow straight, but always upward; there wasn't much sunlight, but it was as bravely green as any other tree; the big rock made it one-sided, but it put out thickly on the side where it had space. My life hasn't been altogether sunlit. I was born between rocks, and I have been forced to grow one-sided, too. But the tree's sermon came home to me the first day that I saw it. Courageous little tree, doing your best in the woods, where no one but God could take note of your efforts,—you'll be straight and have space and air and sunshine in plenty next time—next time! Oh, blessed 'next time' that is to surely right the woes of those who keep up courage and continue fighting. That's the reward of all. That's the lesson."

Lassie listened wonderingly. "Next time!" she repeated questioningly, "what next time? Do you believe in a heaven for trees?"

"I am not sure of a heaven for anything," said Alva, "not an orthodox heaven. But I believe in an endless existence for every atom existing in the universe, and I believe that each atom determines the successive steps of its own future, and so a brave little pine-tree fills me with just as sincere admiration as any other species of bravery. 'Next time'! It will have a beautiful 'next time' in the heaven which means something so different from what we are taught, or here again on earth, or wherever its little growing spirit takes form again. I'm not wise enough to understand much of that, but I'm wise enough to know that there is a next time of so much infinitely greater importance than this time, that this time is really only of any importance at all in comparison just according to how we use it in preparation. That's part of the lesson that the tree teaches. But you can't understand me, Lassie, unless you are able to grasp my belief—my fixed conviction—that this world is only an instant in eternity. I couldn't live at all unless I had this belief and hope, and it's the key to everything with me; so please—please—give me credit for sincerity, at least."

Lassie looked thoroughly awed. "I'll try to see everything just as you do," she said.

Alva pressed her hand. "Thank you, dear."

Then they went on up the road.

Presently the sound of hammer and saw was heard, and the smell of wet plaster and burning rubbish came through the trees.

"Is it from your house?" Lassie asked, with her usual visible relief at the approach of the understandable.

"Yes, from my house," Alva answered. "They are very much occupied with my house; fancy buying a dear, old, dilapidated dwelling in the wilderness, and having to make it new and warm and bright and cheerful in a fortnight! Why, the tale of these two weeks will go down through all the future history of the country, I know. Such a fairy tale was never before. I shall become the Legend of Ledge, I feel sure."

The road, turning here, ended sharply in a large, solid, wooden gate, set deep in a thick hedge of pine trees.

"It is like a fairy tale!" Lassie cried delightedly; "a regular Tourangean porte with a guichet!"

"It is better than any fairy tale," said Alva; "it is Paradise, the lovely, simple-minded, Bible-story Paradise, descending upon earth for a little while." She pushed one half of the great gate-door open, and they went through.

A small, old-fashioned, Colonial dwelling rose up before them in the midst of dire disorder. Shingling, painting, glass-setting, and the like were all going forward at once. Workmen were everywhere; wagons loading and unloading were drawn up at the side; mysterious boxes, bales and bundles lay about; confusion reigned rampant.

"Not exactly evolution, but rather revolution," laughed Alva, ceasing transcendentalism with great abruptness, and becoming blithely gay. "And oh, Lassie, the joy of it, the downright childish fun of it! Don't you see that I couldn't be alone through these days; they are too grand to be selfish over. I had to have some one to share my fun. We'll come here and help every day after this; the pantries will be ready soon, and you and I will do every bit of the putting them in order. Screw up the little hooks for the cups, you know, and arrange the shelves, and oh, won't we have a good time?"

Lassie's eyes danced. "I just love that kind of work," she said, fully conscious of the pleasant return to earth, "I can fit paper in drawers beautifully."

"Which proves that after all women stay women in spite of many modern encouragements to be men," Alva said. "You know really I'm considered to be most advanced, and people look upon me as quite intellectual; but I'm fairly wild over thinking how we'll scrub the pantries, and put in the china—and then there's a fine linen-closet, too. We'll set that in order afterwards, and put all the little piles straight on the shelves."

By this time they had gone up the plank that bridged over the present hiatus between ground and porch, and entered the living-room, which was being papered in red with a green dado and ceiling.

"How pretty and bright!" Lassie exclaimed.

"It's going to be furnished in the same red and green, with little book-shelves all around and the dining table in the middle," Alva explained. "Oh, I do love this room. It's my ideal sitting-room. It has to be the dining-room, too, but I don't mind that."

"Won't the table have to be very small?"

"Just big enough for two."

"But when you have company?"

"We shall never have any company."

"I mean when you have friends with you here."

"I shall never have any friends with me, dear."

"Alva! Why—I can come—can't I?—Sometime?"

Alva shook her head.

"That's part of the story, Lassie, part of the story that I am going to tell you in a few minutes now. But be a little patient, dear; give me a few minutes more. Come in here first; see—this was the dining-room, but it has been changed into—I don't know what. A sort of bedroom, I suppose one would call it. I've had it done in blue, with little green vines and birds and bees and butterflies painted around it. Birds and bees and butterflies are always so lively and bright, so busy and cheerful. All the pictures here are going to be of animals, either out in the wild, free forest or else in warm, sunshiny farmyards. I have a lovely print of Wouverman's 'Im Stall' to hang in the big space. You know the picture, don't you?—the shadowy barn-room with one whole side open, and the hay dripping from above, and the horses just ridden in, and the chickens scratching, and some little children playing in the corner by the well. It's such a sweet gemuthliche picture—so full of fresh country air—I felt that it was the picture of all others to hang in this room. There will be a big sofa-bed at one side, and my piano, and pots of blooming flowers. And you can't think, little Lassie, of all that I look forward to accomplishing in this room. I expect to learn to be a very different woman, every atom and fibre of my being will be altered here. All of my faults will be atoned for—" she stopped abruptly, and Lassie turned quickly with an odd impression that her voice had broken in tears.

"Alva!" she exclaimed.

"It's nothing, dear, only that side of me that keeps forgetting the lesson of the tree. Don't mind me,—I am so happy that you must not mind anything nor must I mind anything either; but—when I come into this room and think—" her tone suddenly turned dark, full of quivering emotion, and she put her hand to her eyes.

"Alva, tell me what you mean? I feel frightened,—I must know what's back of it all now. Tell me. Tell me!"

"I'm going to tell you in just a minute, as soon as I've shown you all over the house." She took her handkerchief, pressed it to her eyes, made a great, choking effort at self-control, and then managed to go on speaking. "See," pushing open a door, "this is a nice little dressing-room, isn't it? And then around and through this narrow back hall comes the kitchen. There is an up-stairs, but I've done nothing there except make a room comfortable and pleasant for the Japanese servant who will do the work, that is, all that I don't do myself."

"Won't you want but one servant?"

"I think so. A man from outside will take the extras, and really it's a very small house, dear. The laundry will be sent out. Dear me, how I do enjoy hearing that kind of speech from my own lips. 'The laundry will be sent out!' That sounds so delightfully commonplace, so sort of everyday and like other people. I can't express to you what the commonplaces, the little monotonies of ordinary lives, mean to me here. You'll divine later, perhaps. But fancy a married life where nothing is too trivial to be glorified! That is how things will be with us."

"Are you so sure?" Lassie tried to smile and speak archly. Tried very hard to do both, because an intangible atmosphere of sorrow was beginning to press heavily on her spirits.

"Very sure,—really, quite confident. You must not think that, because I sob suddenly as I did just now, I am ever weak or ever doubt myself or any one else. I never doubt or waver. It is only that no matter how hard one tries, one can hardly rise completely out of the thrall of one existence into the freedom of another at only a week's notice."

"Is that what you are trying to do?"

"Dear, I'm not only trying to do it, but the greater part of the time I do do it. It's only very seldom that my soul faints and the tears come. I am really happy! You are not going to be able to comprehend how happy I am. Every one who wants anything in this world always wants it in such a narrow, finite way,—no one can understand joy too limitless to be finite. The difficulty is that occasionally I get blind myself, or else in mercy God sometimes veils the splendor for a few minutes. When I faint or struggle, it is just that my soul is absent; you must not mind when you see me suffer, for the suffering has no meaning. It's just a sort of discipline,—it doesn't count." She smiled with wonderful brightness into Lassie's troubled face, and then, pushing open the outer door,—"You don't quite see how it is, but be patient with yourself, dearie; it will come. All things come to him who waits."

"Oh, but I don't understand, not one bit," Lassie cried, almost despairingly.

They were in the yard now; Alva looked at her and took her hand within her own. "Come," she said, "we'll go down through the woods to a certain lovely, bright spot where the view is big and wide, and there I'll tell you all about it."

"I so want to know!"

"I know you do, dear, and I want to tell you, too. I'm not purposely tormenting you, but there is no one else to whom I can speak. And that human, sobbing part of me needs companionship just as much these days, as the merry, house-loving spirit, or the beatifically blessed soul. Can't you see, dear, that with all my affection for you, I dread telling you my story, and the reason for that is that it will be too much for you to comprehend at first, and that I know perfectly well that it is going to shock and pain you." The last words burst forth like a storm repressed.

"Shock and pain me!" Lassie opened mouth and eyes.

"Yes, dear, of a certainty."

They were in the woods, quite alone.

Involuntarily Lassie drew a little away; a common, cruel suspicion flashed through her head. "Alva, is it—is it that you do not mean to marry the man?"

Alva laughed then, not very loudly, but clearly and sweetly. "No, Lassie, it isn't that. I am going to be married in the regular way and, besides, I will tell you in confidence that I fully believe that I have been married to the same man hundreds of times before, and shall be married to him countless times again. Does that help you?"

"Alva!"

"There! I told you that you wouldn't understand, and you don't."

"No, I certainly don't, when you talk like that."

"It's natural that you shouldn't, dear; but at the end of the week you will, perhaps. We'll hope so, any way. Oh, Lassie, how much we are both to live and learn in the next week."

Lassie turned her eyes to the eyes of the other.

"It's queer, Alva; you talk as if you were crazy, but I know you're not crazy, and yet I'm worried."

"You don't need to be worried,—"

"I'll try not to be." She raised her sweet eyes to her friend's face as she spoke, and her friend bent and kissed her. "Don't keep me waiting much longer," she pleaded.

They were passing through the little, tree-grown way which led out on the brow of the hill. All the wide, radiant wonder of that October morning unrolled before them there. For an instant Lassie stood entranced, forgetting all else; and then:

"Tell me now!" she cried.

"Let us sit down here," Alva said, pointing to a rough seat made out of a plank laid across two stumps. They sat down side by side.

"Alva, it seems as if I cannot wait another minute; I must know it all now. Tell me who he is, first; is it some one that I know?"

Alva's eyes rested on the wide radiance beyond.

"You know of him, dear," she replied quietly.

"Who is it?"

The woman laid her arm around the girl and drew her close and kissed her gently. Then she whispered two words in her ear.

With a scream, Lassie started to her feet. "Oh—no!—no!—no!"

Alva looked straight up at her where she stood there above her and smiled, steadily.

"No, no,—it can't be! I didn't hear right."

"Yes, you heard quite right."

The girl's hands shook violently; tears came fast pouring down her face. "But, Alva, he is—he can't—"

Tears filled the other's eyes, too, at that, and stole thickly out upon her cheeks. "I know, my dear child, but didn't I tell you how to me—to us—this life is only a small part of the whole?"

"Oh, but—but—oh, it's too horrible!" She sank down on the seat again and burst out sobbing.

"No, dear," Alva exclaimed, her voice suddenly firm, "not horrible, just that highest summit of life of which I spoke before—the point toward which I've lived, the point from which I shall live ever afterwards,—my point of infinite joy,—my all. For he is the man I love—have always loved—shall always love. Only, dear, don't you see?—he isn't a man as you understand the word; the love isn't even love as you understand love. It's all so different! So different!"

A long, keenly thrilling silence followed, broken only by the sound of the younger girl's repressed weeping.

It was one of those pauses during which men and women forget that they are men and women, that the world is the world, or that life is life. Every human consideration loses weight, and one is stunned into heaven or oblivion, according to his or her preparation for such an entry to either state.

The two friends remained seated side by side, facing the wonderful valley in all its rich beauty of varied colorings; but neither saw valley or color, neither remembered for a little what she was or where she was. Alva, with her hands linked around her knees, was out and away into another existence; Lassie, her eyes deadened and darkened with a horror too acute for any words to relieve, sat still beside her, and knew nothing for the time being but a fearful throbbing in her temples—a black cloud smothering her whole brain—and tears.

It was Lassie who broke the silence at last, trying hard to speak evenly. "But, Alva, I never knew ... when did you learn to love him ... why—" her voice died again just there, and she buried her face on the other's shoulder.

Alva laid her hand upon the little hand that shook under a fresh stress of emotion, and said gently, her tone one of deepest pity: "Shall I tell you all about it? Would you like to know the whole story?"

"Oh, yes, yes,—so much."

"You'll try to be patient and give yourself time to really see how things may be to one who is altogether outside of your way of thinking, won't you, dear? You won't pass judgment too quickly?"

"I'll try. Indeed, I will, as well as I can—"

Alva pressed the hand. "Dear little girl," she said, very tenderly, "you see I look at even you with quite different eyes from those with which the ordinary person sees you. If you could only see things as I do, you'd see everything so much more clearly. How can I put it all straight for you? When even my love for you is not at all what any other gives you."

Lassie lifted up her head. "How do you mean?"

"There are two Lassies to me, dear,—the pretty, sweet-looking girl, and the Lassie who loves me. Most people confuse the two, and think them one and the same; I don't. No matter what happened to you, the Lassie whom I love could never alter—she is unchangeable. She is not subject to change; she doesn't belong to this world; she cannot die. And just as I feel about you, I feel about everybody. What I can see and touch in those I love is what I love least in them."

"Oh, Alva!" it was like a little moan—the girl's voice.

"That is my earnest belief. Bodies and what they suffer don't count. That has come to me bit by bit under the pressure of these last years. But it has come in its completest form in the end. I am entirely satisfied as to the only truth in the universe being the fact that only Truth is eternal. Please try to remember all this, while you listen to my story; try not to forget it. You will, won't you?"

"I'll try, but it isn't clear to me."

"No, I don't suppose so—" Alva sighed—"but do your best, my dear;" she paused a moment, then drew the hand that she held close between her own two, and went on slowly; "I must tell you first of all that I have never seen him but three times in my life. Just think—only three times!"

"Only three—" Lassie looked up in surprise.

"Only three times. And hardly any one knows that I saw him even those times. No one knows to-day that we love one another, or that we are to be married, except the surgeons and nurses, who had to be told, of course. It's a very great secret."

"Tell me how it all began, Alva."

"I don't know when I first heard his name. It all began here, dear, five years ago. When I stopped off for a few days to visit the Falls. I've always loved this country, and from the time that I was born I've always been here for a few days now and then. I always had a queer feeling that something drew me here. I have those queer feelings about things and places and people, you know, and out there on the bridge has always seemed to me a sort of pivot in my life. Every time I go there, the clock seems to strike some hour for me—" she stopped.

Lassie opened and shut her free hand with a sensation of being very uneasy; the suspicion that Alva was not quite sane just lightly crossed her mind. It certainly was not sane to talk as she did.

"So I came here again, on my way home from New York, just five years ago now. And he was here then, staying at Ledge Park, and I saw him for the first time; we met out there on the bridge;" she stopped for just a second or so, then went steadily on. "I think I read about him in the papers. I had learned to admire him intensely—who could help it?—but of course I'd never for one instant thought of loving him. He was like a sort of a story-hero to me; he never seemed like a man; I never thought of any woman's loving him. He just seemed to be himself, all alone—always alone. He had seemed quite above and apart from all other men to me. He interested me; I wanted to learn all that I could about him and his work, and I did learn a great deal, but I'd never dreamed of meeting him face to face, of really speaking to him, of having his eyes really looking at me; he seemed altogether beyond and away from my existence. As if he lived on another world. And then I met him that evening on the bridge, in just the simplest sort of way. Oh, it was very wonderful."

"Did you know him right off?"

"Yes, he looked just like his picture; but then I knew him in another way, too. I can't describe it; it was all very—very strange. It doesn't seem strange to me now, but it would seem almost too strange to you."

"Won't you try to tell me?"

"I will some day, dear, perhaps. I can't tell you now, I couldn't explain it all to you; but, anyway, we met and I looked at him and he looked at me—" she pressed the hand within her own yet closer, adding simply, "I believe that love—real love—comes like that, first of all that one look, and then all the past rushes in and makes the bridge to all the future. Oh, Lassie," her voice sank to a whisper, "when I think of that meeting and of all that it brought me, I am so happy that I want to take the whole wide world into my confidence, and beg every one not to play at love or to take Love's name in vain; but to be patient, and wait, and starve, or beg, or endure anything, just so as to merit the joy which may perhaps be going to be. I never had thought of what love might be; at least I had never been conscious of such thinking. My life all these years had been bound so straitly and narrowly there at home. How could I think of anything that would take me from those duties! And yet I see now that it was all preparation, all the getting ready. If I had only known it, though,—if I had only known it then! It would all have been so much easier."

The whisper died away; she sat quite still looking out over the hills. Lassie's eyes gazed anxiously upon her; nothing in her own spirit tuned to this key; instead, flashes of recollection kept lighting up the present with forgotten paragraphs out of the newspaper accounts of the accident. She shivered suddenly.

Alva did not notice. After a while she went on again.

"Some day you'll learn to love some one, and then you'll know something of what I feel. I don't want you to suffer enough to know all that I feel. But, believe me, whatever one suffers, love is worth it. In that first instant I learned—that first look showed me—that it can mean all, everything, more even than happiness itself; oh, yes, a great, great deal more than happiness itself. In one way they're not synonymous at all, love and happiness. I have been happy without love all my life, and now I shall love without being what the world calls 'happy'; but I shall be happy—happy in my own way, just as I am happy now in something that makes you tremble only to think of."

She paused; her eyelids fell over her eyes and the lashes quivered where they lay on her cheeks, but her hand continued to hold Lassie's, warm and close. There was another long pause. And then another sigh.

"So in that first hour—it was only one hour—I learned the beginning of life's biggest lesson—what life may be, what love may be, and also what for me could never be. For just as soon as I really saw him, I saw why he had remained alone. It was perfectly plain to me. It was that he didn't live for himself; he lived to carry out his purpose. One reads of such people, but I never had met any one who was unable to see himself in his own life before. It was a tremendous lesson to me. It was like opening a door and looking suddenly out upon a new order of universe. Everything whirled for the first minutes, and then I saw that my own life had been sufficiently unselfish to have made me capable of comprehending his. It rose like a flood through my soul, that everything has a reason, and that my blind, stupid, hopeless years there at home had all been leading straight up to that minute. It was such a revelation, and such a new light on all things. I was born anew, myself; I have never been the same woman since. Never, never!"

Lassie's brows drew together; the revelation did not appeal to her personal reason as reasonable.

"We talked for quite a while—not about ourselves—we understood each other too well to need do that. It seems to me now that we were almost one then, but I didn't know it. All I knew was that I could measure a little of what he was, and that there was a bond between us of absolute content in working out God's will rather than our own. I believe now that that is really the only true love or the only true basis for any marriage, and that when that mutual bond is once accepted, nothing can alter, not even an ocean rolling between—not even ten oceans. He spoke of the Falls, and he spoke of his own work. I listened and thanked God that I knew what he meant, and comprehended what it meant to me. At the end of the hour we parted, and I came back to the hotel and started for home the morning after.... He went away, too, and it was later—when we began to write letters—that our life together, our beautiful ideal life together, began. You can't realize its happiness any more than you can measure all that my words really mean. I can't explain myself any better, either. After a while it will all come to you, I hope. I went on with the work at home, and he continued his labors which allowed him neither home nor family. Nobody knew and nobody would have known, even if he or she thought that they knew. The very best and loveliest things lie all around the most of us, and the best and loveliest of all treasures are within our own hearts—and yet very few of us know anything about them. Perhaps better that the world in general shouldn't understand the joy of my kind of love, anyhow; it isn't time for that yet."

"How, Alva?"

She smiled almost whimsically, "Dearest, as soon as the whole world understands that sort of life, its own mission will be fulfilled, and then there will be no more of this particular world. You see!"

"Oh!"

"So then, dear, time went on and on, and I was happy, very happy. And he was very happy, also. There was something truly childlike in his happiness; he had never expected love in his life, because he had never thought of meeting any one who would be able to adapt herself to his circumstances. We never met, because it didn't seem best or wise. We just loved, and I don't believe that any two people have ever been happier together than we were, apart, for these five years—these happy, happy five years."

Lassie felt a deepening misery; the last horrible part must be going to come now.

Alva passed her hand over her eyes and drew a long breath.

"It's so difficult to be different from other people, and then to bear their way of looking at things. It's so hopeless to try to translate one's feeling into their language all the time. How can I go on, when I know just how it all looks to you. It's fearfully hard for me."

"I won't say a word,"—the girl's cry was pitiful.

Alva threw both arms quickly about her and held her close. "Bless you, darling, I know it. But you'll suffer and I know that, too; and I feel your suffering more than you guess. I know just how it all seems to you. There is that within me which shudders too, sometimes, and would shrink and weep only for the strong, divine power that fills me with something better than I can describe, something big enough and high enough to fight down the coward. You have that same divinity within you, dear, and you can't tell when or where it will be called out, but once it is called out, you never will be weak in the face of this earth's woes."

Lassie was weeping softly again.

"One morning—you know when—I opened the paper to read it to papa after breakfast, and I saw on the first page, across the top in bright red letters, that he had been killed."

There was a little sharp cry—"But he wasn't?"—and then a great sob.

"No, dear, but that was the first report."

"And you thought—"

"Yes, of course I believed it. But, Lassie, try to calm yourself—because it wasn't to me what you think. I was calm; I had learned so much, he had taught me so much, during the five years, that I astonished myself with my strength; really, I did. I went about all that day just as usual, only thinking with a white sort of numbness how long the rest of life would seem; and then, in the evening, the paper said that he was still alive. Then I telegraphed and the next day I went to him. I knew that I must go to him and see him once more, so I arranged things and went. I was surprised all the journey at my own courage; it was like a miracle, my power over myself. It was a long journey, but I knew that I should see him again at the end. I knew that he would not leave me without saying good-bye, now that he was conscious that he was going. I was sure of that. So confident can love and strength be in love and strength.

"I arrived—I went to the hospital—they had the room darkened because—well, you can guess. I went to where the bed stood and knelt down beside him, and laid my hand on his bosom. I felt his heart beating—ever so faintly, but still beating,—and I heard his voice. Only think, I had not heard his voice for five years! To you or to any one else it might have all been frightful, because, of course, the reality was frightful. The man, as you understand men, was mangled and dying, and could not possibly be with me except for a few brief days. But, oh, my dearest,—with me it was so different; it was all so absolutely different. The man that I loved was unhurt, and the evil chance had only made us nearer and dearer forever. I don't say that I was not trembling, and that I was not almost unnerved by the shock; but I can say, too, and say truly, that the Something Divine which had filled me from the first day, filled and upheld me and made me know that all was good even then, even in that dark hour and in that dark room, where he whom I held dearest on earth was chained to pain beneath my hand. The nurses were very kind. They left me there beside him while he was conscious and unconscious for some hours. They saw very quickly that it was different with us from most people; and when I went out two of the surgeons took me into a room alone and told me the truth.

"I think that then was the greatest moment of my life—when I comprehended that one who was not killed outright by such a shock might live even months until—until—Well, if a man so injured has vitality enough to live at all, he may—live—"

"Don't go on, Alva, please,—I don't want to know how long he may live."

"No, dear, I won't go into that. Only you must think that to me it was such unexpected heaven. Instead of death, he was alive. Instead of separation for this life, we were to have some days of absolute companionship. It was something so much more than I had ever thought of hoping. A life—even for a day—together! Companionship! Not letters, but words. I to be his nurse, his solace, to have him for my own. I stayed awake all night thinking. I knew what being swept suddenly away meant to him. I knew of his life plans, and what made death hardest to him. It came to me that I might ease that bitterness. That his need could go forth through the medium of my love and interest. That his work would pass on into other hands through mine. That all the golden web of Fate had been woven directly to this end."

Lassie continued sobbing.

"I saw what we could do. In the morning I went to the surgeons, and they said that each day added a week of possible life, and that although it would be many days before anything could be done, after that, he could be moved and wait for the end—with me. I went to him then, and again I knelt there by the bed, and this time I told him how I was going to spend the weeks, and what he must look forward to. He was unable to talk, but he looked at me and—like the first time—we understood one another absolutely. He accepted the happiness that was to be as gratefully as I did myself. As I said before, it was so much more—so much more—than we had ever expected! He took up his burden of agony as cheerfully and courageously as he had taken everything in life, and I came away. There was no use in my remaining there, as he would be either unconscious or—I could not remain there; the surgeons forbade it.

"Then I had to find a place quickly, a place where no one would come or would see. A place where he and I could share life and God, who is Life, without any outsiders breaking in to stare and wonder."

Her voice suddenly became broken and hurried. "Of course I thought of Ledge, where we had first met, and I wrote to Ronald at once. He found me that dear little nest back there, and—" she stopped, for Lassie had suddenly started to her feet. "What is it, dear?"

"Oh, I can't bear it at all. To me it is horrible—horrible! Why, he can never stand up again—he—Oh, I want to be alone. I must be alone. I'll—I'll come back—in time—"

She did not wait to finish; she gave one low, bitter cry, and wrung her hands. Then she ran down the steep, little path that led to Ledgeville, leaving her friend on the hilltop, with the October sun pouring its splendor all about her.

CHAPTER V

THAT DISPASSIONATE OBSERVER, MRS. RAY

THERE never was the human tragedy, comedy, or melodrama, yet, which did not have one or more dispassionate observers. This is strictly true because, even if a man goes off into the wilderness to fight his fight out utterly alone, there are moments when one part of his own spirit will dissever itself from all the rest and, standing forth, tell him of his progress or retrogression with a pitiless, unbiassed truth. The wilderness is advisable for that very reason, but no one makes a greater mistake than when he or she goes to a small far-away village and pleasantly terms it "the wilderness," supposing soul-solitude an integral part thereof. It is very right, proper, and conventional to view life from one's own standpoint, but the real facts of the case are old and trite enough to warrant me in repeating the statement that all doings in this world have their dispassionate observer.

Mrs. Ray was the natural observer for the town of Ledge. The town was not quite aware that added to her keen powers of observation she was also the Voice of the community. People never expressed themselves fully, without first knowing what she said. Public opinion simmered all over the township, so to speak, and then finally boiled over in Mrs. Ray.

It will be quite impossible to impress upon the ordinary reader the importance of such Public Opinion, unless a few paragraphs are devoted to the town of Ledge and its history. If one fails to properly appreciate the town of Ledge, the tale might just as well have been located in North Ledge, South Ledge, Ledgeville, Ledge Centre, or any of the other Ledges.

Therefore on behalf of the lovely little hamlet of Ledge itself, I will state in as few words as possible that it lies upon a hill overlooking one of the most beautiful and picturesque scenes in all Northeastern America; that it took its name and being from a great and noble-hearted man, who, passing that way by chance, half a century since, paused near its site to sadly contemplate the denuded banks of the little river winding its way amidst the débris and desolation left by the lumber barons of the period. Time was when the same banks had been smiling terraces covered thick with primeval pines, but "civilization" had demanded their downfall and they fell. Fell without warning, and also without discretion. Fell forever, flinging the riches of all the future aside for the plenty of one man's day. Blackened stumps, great beds of unsightly chips, waste which would never have been called waste in any other land, ruthless destruction,—all this disfigured the landscape that stretched before that visitor of fifty years ago. His heart was heavy, for he was one who loved everything good, and trees and beauty are two of man's best gifts from above; but while he gazed over what to him and many others was almost as much desecration as desolation, he saw, forever flowing—however choked—the little river below. Like the thread of idealism which illuminates the most despairing situation, so flowed the silvery stream down through the scene before him. Its bed was clogged with drift, its banks covered with rotting rubbish, yet the promise of its beauty remained; and then and there the traveller formulated a plan for its redemption to the end that unborn generations might revel in the realization of that of which he alone seemed then conscious.

The town of Ledge was a part of what resulted. There had to be a town, and Ledge came into existence. Where there is work to be done, come the workers, and with them come towns. Ledge came and grew. To the call of prosperity many other Ledges gathered a little later; but they never enjoyed the dignity of the one and original. The first Ledge was tenacious of its priority. It held to its privileges as rigidly as any medieval knight held to his. Castled upon the hill above, it simulated power in more ways than one. For many years all the others had to go to Ledge for their mail. Ledge also owned the sheriff, the blacksmith, and the lawyer, and kept a monopoly on the summer excursionist; the express office was its natural perquisite; a bend of the canal took it in, and when the canal went the railroad came to console the losers. Mr. Ledge's plans, which had turned his private estate into a public park for the gently disposed, also held Ledge in high honor. To visit Ledge Park from any of the other Ledges was rendered well-nigh impossible. The little town stood like a sentinel at the end of the Long Bridge, and at the top of the First Fall. Every picnicker had to go through it, had to check such articles as could not conveniently be carried all day, in its hotel; had to get whatever he might feel disposed to drink in the same place. During the summer, visitors were so plenteous that it became the fashion in Ledge to despise them, and that right heartily, too. The people who brought the town most of its means of livelihood received much that species of sentiment with which an irritating husband and father is frequently viewed. It was the fashion in Ledge to despise city people and their ways in all things; even their coming to see the Falls was referred to as special proof of their singularly feeble minds, while the way in which the visitors climbed and walked was the favorite topic of mirthful criticism, all summer long. Criticism is a strange habit. It is contagious, thrives in any soil or no soil at all, and is far more destructive to him or her who gives it birth than it can possibly be to any other person. Not that it really is destructive, but that the weight of criticism rarely falls where it is supposed to be most needed.

The summer visitors evoked so much comment between May and November that a great longing to have something to talk about between November and May followed. It therefore became the fashion in Ledge to talk of everything and everybody, and as the summer visitors were rated low, the rest of the world was pretty freely given over to the same cataloguing. It was usual to rate Ledgeville and all the other Ledges particularly low, and this opinion held firm, until a biting edge was given it by a second railroad which came down the valley's bottom to the unspeakable wrath of the hills on either side and of Ledge in special. It took several years to assimilate the second railroad, and resume the even tenor of life. But the adjustment was finally made, and at the date of this story Ledge was a wee country idyll set like a pearl amidst the beautiful environment of that fairest of country counties. He who was responsible for town and environment lived on his own estate near by, and came in for his share of consideration from the tongues of his namesake. The great philanthropist was busily engaged in his battle to preserve intact, for the good of the many to come, that matchless picture with its open Bible of Nature's Own History. Of the picture and its practical value, Ledge had its own opinion. It had its own opinion of the dam, too. It had its own opinion of Alva. And of Lassie. And of Ingram. And all these opinions flowed freely forth through the medium of Mrs. Ray. As that lady herself put it: "Whether I'm picking chickens or digging fence-posts, or carting the United States mail down to the train in the wheelbarrow that I had to buy and the United States Government won't pay for,—I never am idle; I'm always taking in something."

And it was quite true. Whatever Mrs. Ray was working at, her brain was never idle; it was always absorbing something. It was not uncommon to see a neighbor walking with her while she ploughed, conversation going briskly on meanwhile. She swept the church with company, and she almost never sat alone between mail times. It was a full, busy life, and an interesting one. It was full of importance and responsibility, too. Mrs. Ray liked to be responsible and was naturally important. Her opinions were in the main correct, but sometimes she did draw wrong conclusions. For instance, when she looked down the road the morning after Lassie's arrival, and saw the two friends departing over the Long Bridge.

"Oh, dear," she said to whoever was near by at the minute, "I smell trouble for that oldest one if she's planning to keep that pretty girl here long. That man is going to fall in love with that pretty girl. He never has cared much for her, anyway. He don't even seem to like to go over to their house with her; she goes alone mostly. Yes, indeed."

The somebody sitting near by at the minute was Mrs. Dunstall. And Pinkie, of course. They had dropped in to see if they had any mail, and had found Mrs. Ray cutting the hair of the three youngest children left her, first by her predecessor and then by Mr. Ray himself.

"Sit down," she had said cordially; "the second train isn't in yet, and it's got to come in and go out and let the mail-train come in, even if the mail ain't late, on account of the wreck."

"Oh, is there a wreck?" Mrs. Dunstall asked anxiously.

"Yes. Forty-four run into a open switch up at Cornell. If the switch is open, I never see why the train don't just run on out the other end and keep right along; but all the accidents is as often open switches as anything, so I guess there's a reason. At any rate, the wrecking-train's gone up and the second mail's going to be late. Tip your head a little, Billy. Yes, indeed."

"I wonder if we'd better wait," said Mrs. Dunstall, unwrapping her shawl somewhat and taking a chair. "What do you say, Pinkie?"

Pinkie was already seated. She weighed two hundred pounds and never stood up when she could help it. "I say 'Wait,'" said Pinkie.

Mrs. Dunstall thereupon sat down, too, and after ten minutes of a most solemn silence Mrs. Ray finished her task and dismissed the children. She faced her callers, then, folding her little gray shoulder-wrap tightly across her bosom as she did so, and tucking the ends in close beneath her armpits. The little gray shawl was one of the first signs of winter in Ledge; Mrs. Ray always donned it at the beginning of October, and never took it off before the last day of May.

"Well!" she said now; "anything new come up?"

"Millicent come on the same train with that girl," Mrs. Dunstall began at once. "I wasn't really expecting any mail this morning, but I thought I might as well come down about now and tell you how Millicent come on the train with her. You know who I mean, of course?"

"She knows," said Pinkie.

"I s'posed you would. And so Millicent come on the same train with her. Seems too curious of Millicent coming on the same train with her, when Millicent hasn't been on a train but twice in her life before, and then to think that she would come back with that girl. Things do fall out queer in this world. She sit right in the seat behind her, too. That was awful curious, I think."

Mrs. Ray gave the ends of her shawl a fresh tuck, and drew in some extra breath.

"You never can tell," she began; "things do come about mighty strange in this world. Yes, indeed. It's the unexpected that has happened so much that it's got to be a proverb in the end. I always feel when a thing has been coming about till it gets to be proverb, it's no use me disputing it. Dig around in smoking ashes long enough, and I've never failed to find some sparks yet. And what you just said is all true as true can be. It's the unexpected as always happens. Look at me, for instance. Look at how the post-office fell out of a clear sky on me, and Mr. Ray much the same, too. I never had any idea of either of 'em beforehand, and now here I am stamping letters morning and night to keep up the payments on his tombstone. Things do work in circles so in this world. I always say if I hadn't been postmistress no one would have expected to see my husband have a fringed cloth hang on a pillar over his dead body, and if I hadn't been postmistress I never could have paid for such a thing. But where there's a will there's a way, which is another proverb as I've never found go wrong, unless your way is to stay in bed while you're willing."

"Oh, but you never could have put anything plain on Mr. Ray—not in your circumstances, and him passing the plate every Sunday and you the sexton yourself." Mrs. Dunstall looked almost shocked at the mere fancy.

"Couldn't I! Well, I guess I could if I'd had my own way. But I wasn't allowed my own way. Nobody is. That's what holds us back in this world; it's the being expected to live up to what we've got; and in this country, where the garden is open to the public, most of us has to live up to a good deal more'n we've got. If America ever takes to walls, it'll show it's going to begin to economize. It'll mean we're giving up tulips and going in for potatoes. And you'll see, Mrs. Dunstall, that just as soon as we really have to economize we'll begin to build walls. There's something about economy as likes walls around the house—high ones."

"You was raised with walls, wasn't you?" said Mrs. Dunstall.

"I should think I was. I'm English-born—I am."

"How old was you when you come to this country, Mrs. Ray?"

"I've lived here thirty-eight years; that's how old I was."

"You wasn't here before Mr. Ledge?"

"No, I wasn't, nor before the Falls, neither."

"Why, the Falls was here before Mr. Ledge," said Mrs. Dunstall, enlarging her eyes. "Oh, I see, you're making a joke, Mrs. Ray."

"I do occasionally make a joke," said Mrs. Ray, giving her shawl another tuck.

"Well, to go back to the girl," said Mrs. Dunstall, "she sit right behind Millicent too, and what makes it all the stranger, is, she asked Millicent the name of the next station. Millicent told her it was going to be Ledge, and asked her if she was for Ledge, because if she was for East Ledge she ought to stay on one station more. You know, Mrs. Ray, how folks are always getting off here for East Ledge, and having to stay all night or hire a buggy to drive over—two shillings either way; and Millicent asked her, too, if she was for Ledge's Crossing, because if she was for the Crossing the train don't stop there, and Millicent always was kind-hearted and wanted her to know it right off. You know how Millicent is, Pinkie; the last time she rode on a train she threw the two bags off to the old lady who forgot them, and they weren't the old lady's bags; they were the conductor's, and he had to run the train way back for them; he did feel so vexed about them, Millicent said."

"So vexed," said Pinkie.

"And so then Millicent asked her if maybe she was for Ledgeville, because if she was for Ledgeville she was on the wrong train, and had ought to have took the Pennsylvania, unless she telegraphed from Ledge Centre for the omnibus to come up, which nobody ever knows to do; and then it come into Millicent's head as maybe she was going to visit Mr. Ledge, in which case goodness knows what she would do, for although he gets his mail at Ledge, he gets his company at Castile, and here was that poor child five miles of bridge and walk out of her way, and Millicent's heart just bleeding for her, she looked so tired. But she said she was for Ledge."

"Yes, I could have told you she was for Ledge," said Mrs. Ray; "there was two letters for her here. When I have letters for people without having the people for the letters, it always means one or two things,—either the people are coming or the letters are addressed wrong. I learned that long ago. Yes, indeed."

"Millicent says she liked her looks from the first," pursued Mrs. Dunstall, "only her hat did amuse her. I must say the hats folks from town wear is about the most amusing things we ever see here. One year they pin 'em to their fronts and next year to their backs, and Millicent says this one was on hindside before with a feather duster upside down on top. She never saw anything like it; but she said the girl was so innocent of what a sight she was that she wouldn't have let her see her laughing behind her back for anything. What do you think of city people anyhow, Mrs. Ray?"

"City people are always mooney," responded Mrs. Ray; "such mooney ideas as come into their heads in the country always. Seems like they save all their mooney ideas for the country. Yes, indeed. They take off their hats and their shoes and carry stones around in their handkerchiefs; and when I see 'em slipping and scrambling up and down that steep bank all the hot summer long, and taking that walk to the Lower Falls that's enough to kill any Christian with brains, I most humbly thank our merciful Father in heaven that I've stayed in the country and kept my good senses. Yes, indeed. And then what they lug back to town with them! That's what uses me all up! Roots and stones! Why, I saw some one bring a root from the Lower Falls last year, yes, indeed."

"That walk to the Lower Falls is terrible," said Mrs. Dunstall, meditatively. "I took it once,—and you, too,—didn't you, Pinkie?"

"Twice," said Pinkie.

"I took it once, too," said Mrs. Ray, who was never loath to discuss that famous promenade. "Mr. Ray and me took it together. It was when we first met. He took me, and we walked to the Lower Falls. It was a awful walk; I never see a worse one, myself. They say it isn't so bad now. Of course, the time I went with Mr. Ray was while he was still alive. It was harder then. He asked me to marry him coming back. Oh, I'll never forget that awful walk!"

"It's bad enough yet," said Mrs. Dunstall. "Mr. Ledge has done all he could to build things to catch hold of where you'd go head over heels to heaven if he hadn't, but it's a awful walk still. And then the steps! Why, Nathan and Lizzie was there last summer, and Lizzie says all the way down she was thinking how she was ever going to be able to get back, and all the way back she was thinking just the same thing. Going, you go down steps till it seems like there never would come the bottom, and coming back you come up steps till you're ready to move to Ledgeville and live on the bottoms for life. You know how that is, Pinkie?"

"Yes," said Pinkie.

"It wouldn't do any good to move to Ledgeville to get rid of the Lower Falls," said Mrs. Ray, "because the dam is going to do away with the Lower Falls and drown Ledgeville entirely. That's the next little surprise the city folks will be giving us."

"I shall like to stand on the bridge the day they let the water in over the dam the first time," said Mrs. Dunstall. "It'll be a great sight to see the valley turn into a lake, and South Ledge and Ledgeville go under."

"I wouldn't look forward to it too much if I was you," said Mrs. Ray; "it's going to take three or four years to dig that dam, they tell me. You can't lay out a lake and break up three sets of falls in a minute."

"They haven't got to do something to all the Falls," said Mrs. Dunstall. "Josiah Bates was holding stakes for one of the surveyors yesterday, and he heard him say as the Lower Falls wouldn't need a thing, for it was a mill-race already."

"Well, it's a blessing if there's one thing ready to their hands," said Mrs. Ray, "for I must say the way the State has took hold of us, since Mr. Ledge set out to give it something for nothing, is a caution. If he'd offered to sell the Falls at cost price, we'd of had a petition and our taxes increased and been marked 'keep off the grass,' in all directions; but just because he offered to give it to 'em all cleared up and in order, they must tear around and build a dam and drown five villages and go cutting up monkey-shines generally. Yes, indeed."

"They do say that the dam will keep the Falls, instead of spoiling them," said Mrs. Dunstall; "they say the Falls is stratifying backward, and is most through being falls, anyway, and if the dam is built, we'll all have that to look at always."

"It'll be all one to me," said Mrs. Ray; "I never get time to look at nothing, anyway, unless it's folks waiting for their mail, and goodness knows they've long ceased to interest me."

Mrs. Dunstall looked a bit uncertain as to how to receive this outburst of confidence. "It does you good to take a little rest," she said at last; "you work too hard for a woman of your time of life, Mrs. Ray."

"Well, I'd like to know how I can help it, with my farm and my chickens and my grocery business, not to speak of the boarders and the children and the post-office. When one's a mother and a farmer and a sexton and an employee under bond to the United States Government one has to keep on the jump."

Mrs. Dunstall rearranged the set of her lips slightly. "The mail's very late, ain't it?" she asked.

"Late! I should think it was late. I guess that open switch has settled Forty-four for to-day. But that train's always late. It isn't in the block yet, and the mail-train follows it."

"If it don't come soon, I can't wait," said Mrs. Dunstall; "this is one of my awful days, and speaking of awful days, what do you think of the doings over at the old Whittaker house, Mrs. Ray?"

"I've heard she's wrecking it completely."

"Josiah Bates' been doing some carting there. He says it's enough to make old Grandma Whittaker shiver in her grave. He says they've turned the house just about inside out. That girl must be crazy."

"She is crazy," said Mrs. Ray with decision; "she's in love."

"Oh!" said Mrs. Dunstall, "with him, you mean?"

"Of course. But she's crazy two ways, I think, to go bringing that pretty girl here, and she so thin and white herself. You can't tell me that that man doesn't know a pretty girl when he sees her, even if he ain't seen her yet—which he hasn't, for he didn't see 'em this morning. I know that, for I was watching."

"That's the train now, isn't it?" said Mrs. Dunstall, listening.

Mrs. Ray pricked up her ears. "Yes, that's the train, rushing along and sprinkling soot over everything. Picking hops used to be such nice clean work, but now they're all over soot."

"The canal was better, I think," said Mrs. Dunstall.

Mrs. Ray made no answer; she was absorbed in looking out of the window.

"It was cleaner, anyhow," Mrs. Dunstall continued; "but they do say the men swore most awful locking boats through in the night. I never lived on the canal, myself, but you did, Pinkie; did they swear much or not?"

"They swore," said Pinkie.

"Well," said Mrs. Ray, now facing about and making certain active preparations for the reception of the mail, "it must be nice to spend your days ways that lets you lay awake nights listening to anything swear. I've never had time nor money to lay awake nights. I leave that for those who can, but I can't. Walking to the Lower Falls and laying awake nights is pleasant, I've no doubt, but I need my days other ways. Summer folks is always coming in here and saying, 'Oh, have you seen the gorge this morning, Mrs. Ray,' and me like enough out ploughing in the opposite direction since sun up. I haven't got any time to lay awake or to look at views. If the weeds grew up all around my fence-posts while I was hanging over the bridge looking at the gorge, I guess you'd hear of it, and since I've taken to raising chickens, there's hen-houses to spray and me busier than ever. If I was a hen, my day's work would be over when I'd laid my egg and I could run out with a free mind and look at the gorge, but as it stands now, I ain't got time to look at nothing,"—in testimony whereof she disappeared into the kitchen.

"I'll tell you who's got time," said Mrs. Dunstall as soon as she reappeared; "it's those Lathbuns down at Nellie's. How long are they going to stay around here, do you suppose?"

"I don't know; I don't know anything about them. They don't get any mail, so I've no way of knowing a thing. My own opinion is that if I was Nellie I'd keep a sharp eye on my shawls, for folks who come walking along without baggage, can go walking off without baggage, too. Those are her shawls they're wearing, you know; they haven't got so much as a jacket between them of their own."

"Nellie says they're very nice people," said Mrs. Dunstall; "and the girl has got a love affair. She don't mind their wearing her shawls."

"Why don't he write her, then," said Mrs. Ray; "that's the time even the poorest letter-writer writes letters. Mr. Ray wrote me the first Thursday after he was in love. I've got the letter yet."

"What did he write you for, when you was keeping house for him, anyway?" asked Mrs. Dunstall.

"He was gone to Ledge Centre for the license."

"I never see why you married him," said Mrs. Dunstall; "he paid you for keeping house for him before that, didn't he?"

"Yes, but he had his mind set on marrying some one, and I thought I'd better marry him than any one else. And I was fond of the children, and I didn't know nothing about the mortgages. I always say we was real fashionable. I didn't know nothing about the mortgages, and he thought I had some money in the bank. Well, it was an even thing when it all came out. I guess marriage generally is. Everything else, too."

"I don't see why the mail don't come, if it's in," said Mrs. Dunstall.

Mrs. Ray went to the window and looked out.

"It'll come soon now," she declared, hopefully.

"But I can't wait any longer," said Mrs. Dunstall, rising, "I wasn't expecting anything, anyway. Come, Pinkie."

They both rose and started to go out together.

But just at the door they met one of the surveyors.

"Oh, that reminds me why I come," said Mrs. Dunstall, stopping; "young man, do you know Sallie Busby?"

The young surveyor looked startled.

"Chestnuts in a blue and white sunbonnet, mainly?" said Mrs. Dunstall.

"I don't recollect."

"Well, you might not have noticed, or she might not have had it on, but either way she's been most amused watching your young men pegging those little flags all through her meadow, but she says that when you got through last night you forgot seven, and she saw 'em when she went out to pick the two trees up the cow-path this morning, and run down and got 'em, and has 'em all laid by for you whenever you want to send for 'em."

The young man stood speechless.

Finally he said: "But they were meant to be left there."

"Were—were they?" said Mrs. Dunstall, in great surprise; "well, you ought to have told her so then. She saw you pull some up, so she thought you meant to pull them all up. Too bad! Now you'll have to get your machine and go peeking all over her land again, won't you?"

"We will if she's pulled up the flags, certainly."

"Well, she's pulled up the flags. If Sallie set out to pull them up, they'd up, you can count on that! How's the dam coming on, anyway?"

The young man laughed. "Why, there's no question of the dam yet. You all seem to think that we're here to build it. We have to make a report to the commission first, and the commission will lay the report before the legislature. That's how it is."

Mrs. Ray folded her arms and joined in suddenly, "So—that's how it is, is it? Well, I don't wonder it's difficult to run a post-office, when anything as plain as a dam has to be fussed over like that. By the way, you're one of the surveyors and you ought to know,—is it true that if they do build the dam, it may get a little too full and run over into our valley or burst altogether and drown Rochester? I'm interested to know."

"That's what we want to know, too," said Ingram's assistant; "that's what we're surveying for."

"How long will it take you to tell? I've got a friend—maybe you know him, Sammy Adams?—and he owns most of the valley back here. He's the worrying kind, and he's worried. Yes, indeed."

"It wouldn't make so much difference about Rochester," said Mrs. Dunstall; "it's a deal easier to go for our shopping to Buffalo from here; but wouldn't it be awful for Sammy Adams! Why, his house is right in the valley."

"Yes," said Mrs. Ray, "and as a general thing Sammy's right in his house. It's bad enough now, with the freshets scooping sand all over the farm every other spring, but if the dam goes and scoops Sammy Adams, the legislature'll have something else to settle besides the Capitol at Albany. Sammy Adams looks meek, but he'd never take being drowned quietly; he's got too much spirit for that. Yes, indeed!"

"We're going to do away with the freshets, Mrs. Ray," the young man said; "the dam—if it comes—will be the biggest blessing that ever came this way, let me tell you. In the summer you'll have a beautiful lake to sail on, and no end of excursions."

"Why, I thought they were going to store up the water in spring, and draw it off in the summer," said Mrs. Dunstall. "A man told my husband that that was what they wanted the dam for,—to save the high water in the spring so as to use it in the summer. Wasn't that what Ebenezer said, Pinkie?"

"Yes, it was," said Pinkie.

"How do you explain that?" asked Mrs. Ray, turning an inquisitorial eye sternly on the surveyor. "Where's your beautiful lake going to be by July? Marsh and mosquitoes, that's what we'll have left. Don't tell me; I've seen too many kind thoughts about making folks happy end that way, and I've seen one or two reservoirs, too. The dam'll drown Sammy Adams, that's what it'll do, and Ledge'll be left high and dry with a lot of dead fish lying all over the fields. I know!"

"Well, we'll see!" said the young man, laughing.

"But I thought you was all for the dam, Mrs. Ray," said Mrs. Dunstall, a little surprised. "Whatever has changed you so?"

Mrs. Ray shut her mouth tightly and then opened it with a snap. "I've been thinking," she said abruptly; "and I don't mind changing my opinion when I must. Any one who wants to hold a position under the United States Government has got to have brains and use 'em freely in changing their opinion."

"But you said—" began Mrs. Dunstall.

"What if I did? Like enough I'll say it again. I will, if I feel like it. Yes, indeed. 'He moves in a mysterious way,' you know, and I'm one of His ways, and I've got a right to keep my own counsel about my own work. But—speaking of work—the mail-train was in before you come up. I wonder what's become of the bag!" She went to the window and looked down towards the station. "I do have such trouble to get hold of that bag. That's one of the hardest things about keeping a post-office, is the getting hold of the bag. They don't have any sort of understanding of what a United States Government position means, down at our station; they kick the mail-bag around like it was a crate of hens. Once they asked me if they couldn't have the key at the station, and open the mail because there's always more inhabitants in the station than in the post-office. They seemed to think that was a glory to the station, and a reflection on me. But I don't want to have men sitting around here. I won't have it. The only man who has any legal right to sit around me is in heaven, and just because I'm the postmistress is no reason why I should take chances. If you don't want men sitting around, you can easily keep 'em from doing it by having no chairs for them to sit on. I never have."

"Don't you want me to go down and get the mail?" suggested the young surveyor, somewhat uneasily.

Mrs. Ray turned a severe eye his way. "Have you go down and get the mail! Well, young man, I guess you don't know that it's a penitentiary offence to lay hands on a mail-sack, unauthorized by the United States Government! Yes, indeed. It is, though, and I've had such hard work getting it into people's heads that it is, that I wouldn't authorize no one. No one! Why, when we first was a post-office, I had the most awful time. Everybody coming this way brought the bag with 'em. It's a penitentiary offence to touch the bag, and here Sammy Adams forgot he had it in his buggy one night, and drove home with it. It was when Mrs. Allen's cousin Eliza was dying, and she was so anxious, and no mail-bag at all that night. I tell you I took a firm stand after that; I made the rule and made it for keeps, that no matter if there wasn't but one postal, and all the men in the station had felt the bag to see that there wasn't, the bag must come up to me just the same. You'll find, young man, that if you hold a United States Government position, you'll be expected to uphold the United States Government, and if you're building the dam and employ the men around here, you'll find that to impress them you must keep a bold front. That's why I have my arms folded most of the time."

The young surveyor listened with reverent attention.

"Whose business is it to bring the bag, anyway?" asked Mrs. Dunstall. "I can't wait much longer."

"It isn't anybody's business,—that's what's the trouble. The United States Government don't provide nothing but penalties for touching the mail-bag. That's another hard thing about holding a government position when your hands are as full as mine. At first I couldn't get the mail-bag respected, in fact they used it to keep the door to the station open windy days; and then, when I got it respected by explaining what we was liable to if we didn't respect it, I couldn't get no one to touch it any more. I had to wheel it up and down in the baby-carriage for a while, and then I looked up the law and found I could delegate my authority; so since then Mr. Hopkins has delegated for me except when he goes to Ledge Lake, and when he does that I take it in a wheelbarrow. I give the baby-carriage to Lucy. She had that baby, you know. Well, of course a baby needs a carriage, so I give her ours."

"A baby's lots of trouble," said Mrs. Dunstall, thoughtfully.

"Yes, but we're here for trouble," said Mrs. Ray, cheerfully. "I've got the post-office, Lucy's got the baby, and poor Clay Wright Benton's got his mother and the parrot. Everybody's got something!"

"Well, I can't wait any longer," said Mrs. Dunstall; "good-bye. Come, Pinkie."

They went out.

"Who is Pinkie?" the young man asked, when he was alone with Mrs. Ray. "I d'n know," said Mrs. Ray, "she don't, either. They adopted her when she weighed six pounds and named her Pinkie, and that's what come of it."

"I see." Just then the mail-bag was brought in.

CHAPTER VI

WHEN DIFFERENCES LEAD TO WHAT IS EVER THE SAME

Lassie fled down the path. Not even that primeval river which once rushed wildly across the old Devonian rocks just here was more thoughtless as to whither it was going. All that she was conscious of in that instant was irresistible revolt against the horror of what she had just heard, and which bred in her a sudden and utter rebellion. A vivid imagination will have already pictured the possible effect of Alva's story upon her friend, and that vast majority whose imaginations are not vivid will be happy to be spared such details. It is sufficient to say that tears, pain, groans, and a coffin suspended, like Damocles' sword, above all the rest, was Lassie's background to her friend's romance; and the picture thus held in her mind was so benumbing to her other senses that as she ran she tripped, stumbled, almost fell, down the hill, so blind and careless of all else had she become. The restraint of Alva's presence was now removed; nothing stood between the young girl and her sensation of appalling wretchedness. As she ran she shook, she shuddered; the path was steep, and her knees seemed to crumble beneath her; twice she almost went headlong, and at the minute she felt that a broken neck was but a trifle in comparison to coming face to face with anything like what she had just been told. "Of course he was a great man," she gasped half aloud; "but he'll never be able to even feed himself again—it said so in the paper. Why, at first it said his back was broken. Oh, oh, if Alva can be so crazy as that, who is sane, and what can one believe? Oh, dear—oh, dear—oh, dear! And she calls it love, too!"

The village of Ledgeville lay below, and a few more minutes of precipitous flight brought Lassie in sight of its houses. Still a few more minutes, and she was in the middle of the village—a very small village, consisting of two streets composing the usual American town cross, and half a dozen stores. Every one whom she met knew just who she was (for had she not arrived upon the evening previous?), and they all regarded her with earnest scrutiny. The inhabitants of Ledgeville themselves were never in the habit of coming down from the Long Bridge with tear-stained faces, heaving bosoms and a catch in their breath, but that Lassie did so, caused them no surprise. Was she not of that unaccountable multitude called "city folks?"

Lassie herself neither thought nor cared how she appeared to the ruminative gaze of Ledgeville at first, but as soon as she did notice the attention which she was attracting, she wanted to get away from it as quickly as possible, eyes being quite unbearable in her present distress. She stopped and asked a kindly looking old man where the bridge—the lower bridge—might be, knowing that it would take her to solitude again. The kindly old man pointed to where the bridge could be seen, a block or so beyond, and she thanked him and hurried on. It was a wooden bridge, very long; and the river here glided in wonderful contrast to that other aspect of itself which plunged so furiously from cataract to cataract, a quarter of a mile further down the course. How curious to think that all smooth-flowing rivers have it in them to foam and rage and gnaw and rend away the backbone of the globe itself, if driven in among narrow and hard environment. Is there ever any simile to those conditions in human lives, I wonder! And then to consider on the other hand that there is no volume of watery menace which, if spread between banks of green with space to flow untrammeled, will not become the greatest and most beneficial of all the helpers of need and seed! That is also a simile—one more cheerful and happy than the former, praise be to God.

The river by Ledgeville is one of those flowing smoothly and broadly between banks of green. So smoothly and sweetly does it flow just there that it might well have brought some quieting mood, some gracious, even current of gently rippling peace, into poor Lassie's throbbing heart, had she but been able to receive any comfort at that moment. But meditation was as far from her at this juncture as her mental attitude was from Alva's, and more than that cannot be said for either proposition.

So the river carried its lesson unread, while the girlish figure traversed the bridge as quickly as it had flown through the town, and, hurriedly turning at the forking of the road beyond, started up the hill. She knew that that way must lead to Ledge, and eventually her own little hotel bedroom, that longed for haven where she would be able to sit down quietly, away from the sunlight and omnipresent people, away from everything and everybody. Oh, but it was freshly awful to think of Alva, her beautiful Alva, and of what Alva was going to do! Marry that man! Why, he would never even sit up again; he could hardly see, the paper had said—the newspapers had said—everybody had said.

She stopped suddenly and stood perfectly still. A choking pain gripped her in the throat and side. Her spiritual torment had suddenly yielded to her physical lack of breath.

Beyond a doubt there is nothing that will curb any sentiment of any description so quickly as walking up hill. Without in the slightest degree intending to be flippant, I must say that in all my experience, personal and observed, I have never yet felt or seen the emotion which does not have to give way somewhat under that particular form of exercise. In Lassie's case she found herself to be so suddenly and completely exhausted that she could hardly stand. Her knees, which had seemed on the verge of giving out as she hurried down the opposite bank, now really did fail her and, looking despairingly about and feeling tears to be again perilously near, she turned off of the road into the woods that stretched down the bank and, treading rapidly over soft turf and softer moss, came in a minute to a solitude sufficiently removed to allow of her sinking upon the ground and there giving out completely.

Oh, how she cried then! Cried in the unrestrained, childish way that gasps for breath, and chokes and then sobs afresh and aloud. She thought herself so safely alone in the depths of the wood that she could gasp and choke and sob to her heart's uttermost content, not at all knowing that Fate, who does indeed weave a mesh of the most intricate patterning, had even now begun to interweave her destiny with that of—well, let us say—of the dam at Ledgeville.

Alva's talk about the dam had gone in one ear and out the other; Alva's words regarding Ingram had been driven into the background of Lassie's brain by the later surprises; but now things were to begin to alter. We never can tell, when we weep over the frightful love affair of a friend, what delightful plans that same little Cupid may have for our own immediate comforting, or how deftly he and the dark-veiled goddess may have combined in future projects.

Sorrow is sorrow, but sometimes it comes with the comforter close upon its heels, and when the sorrow is really another's, and the comforter is unattached and therefore may quite easily become one's own!—

Ah, but all this is anticipating. It is true that disinterested parties (like Joey Beall) always know everything before those most interested have the slightest suspicion of what is going on; but still it seems to me unfair to take any advantage of two innocent people as early in the game as the Sixth Chapter.

Therefore it shall only be said here that the party of surveyors had employed that morning in sighting and flagging up and down the banks beneath the Long Bridge, and Ingram, having spent two hours in their company, was now climbing the hillside for pure athletic joy, being one of those who prefer a scramble to a smooth road any day. As he came lightly up the last long swing that measured the bank for him, he surely was looking for nothing less in life than that which he found at the top,—and yet that which he found at the top was not so disagreeable a surprise, after all. For Lassie, even now when indubitably miserable, pink-eyed and wretched, was still a very pretty girl. A pretty girl is very much like a rose in the rain—a few drops of water only add to its charm; and so when Ingram came suddenly upon her, crying there under a tree, and caused her to look up with a little scream at the man crashing out of the bushes with such a force of interruption as made her jump to her feet and shrink quickly away—why, really it was all far less startling and alarming than it sounds to read about. For he at once exclaimed, "Surely you remember me." And she saw who it was, stared at him dazedly for an instant, and then dropped her face in her hands again, realizing that he was the first of the big world that "hadn't been told," and that he would ask what was the matter, and that she must not tell him. And so—and so—there was nothing to do but hide her face—and collect her wits—and listen.

"SURELY YOU REMEMBER ME."

"What is it?" he said, and as she felt for her handkerchief she could but think how hard it was to resist sympathy when one's dearest friend was doing such unheard-of things, and one had just learned about them. Not that she would tell him why she was crying, of course.

"What is it?" he asked again then—he was very near now. "You know who I am. I used to know you when you were a little girl. You remember?"

She was still feeling for her handkerchief, and he put a great white one into her seeking hand. She wiped her eyes with it and thought again that he must not be told, and so said, with quivering lips:

"Oh, please leave me, please go away. Nothing is the matter, but I must be alone. I want to be alone. Please go away and leave me."

Ingram looked down upon her and, laying his hand on her arm with a grasp that was so firm as to feel brotherly (to one not yet a débutante), said in a tone of fascinating authority (to one not yet a débutante):

"What is it? What is the trouble? You've had a letter with bad news?" In his own mind he set it down that she and Alva had had a misunderstanding of some sort, but that opinion he would not voice.

"Oh, no," sobbed Lassie; "it isn't a letter—it is Alva!" She paused and Ingram had just time enough to reflect how quickly a man could see straight through any woman, when Lassie could bear the burden of reserve no longer, and with a wild burst of accelerated woe cried: "She has told me her secret, and I listened 'way through to the end and then—then when I really understood and realized what it all meant, then I could not bear it, and so—and so—I ran away from her and down the hill and across the bridge and came here to be alone. And I wish you would go away and leave me alone; oh, I want to be alone so very, very much, for I cannot keep still unless I am alone; I am too unhappy over it all. Too unhappy. And I have promised her not to tell."

Ingram looked his startled sympathy. "What is the trouble?" he asked. "Tell me; perhaps I can help you. Why should you keep 'it' a secret? I'm her friend, too, you know."

"But it isn't my secret, it's hers," Lassie sobbed; "and I've promised; and, anyway, nobody or nothing can help her. Nothing! Nobody!"

"Is it really as bad as that?" said the man, looking very serious.

Lassie was wringing her hands. "Oh, it's ever so much worse than that; it's the very worst thing I ever heard of. And that shows how bad I am; for Alva is good, and it makes her happy!"

Naturally Ingram could not follow the reasoning which caused her terminal phrase to serve as a sort of mental apology for her way of looking at the affair, but he was not alarmed by the breadth of her confession of guilt, only unspeakably distressed by her distress, and its mysterious cause.

"But what is it?" he asked. "What has Alva done?"

"I musn't tell."

"Alva's not in any difficulty across the river there, is she?" he hazarded.

"Oh, no; she isn't in any difficulty; she is very, very happy. That's what seems so awful about it."

"What? I can't understand."

"I can't explain, either. And I musn't tell you. It's going to drive me crazy to keep still, but I must not tell."

"You can tell me;" his tone was suddenly authoritative again (quite thrilling its young listener).

"No, I can't. I can't tell any one," but her tone was wavering, with a catch in its note.

Ingram became instantly imperious.

"Yes, you can tell me! You must tell me! It will relieve your mind, and perhaps I can help Alva."

"No, you can't help her; she doesn't want to be helped."

"Well, I can help you, anyway. Just telling me will help you."

Lassie choked.

"Tell me at once," said Ingram, sternly; "I insist upon knowing."

She looked up at him.

"Don't stop to think," he commanded; "tell me."

Oh, the intense relief of having a burdensome secret torn from your keeping! Lassie felt that when in trouble, a man was the friend to find—even before one's début.

"You won't ever let her know that I told?" she faltered.

"Of course not."

"She didn't ask me really to promise; she only said that I should be the only one to ever know."

"Never mind, I don't count. Go on."

"Well, she is going to marry—" and then she told him, with many halts and gasps, who; and then she told him further, when.

Ingram listened, silent, turning white all about his mouth. "She can't do it," he said, after a minute. "That man may die any hour. It said so in last night's paper."

"She is going to do it," Lassie said; "she doesn't mind his dying—that is, she doesn't mind his dying as most people do."

"Oh, but that's horrible," he said then; "you were right—it is awful. No wonder you were frightened and ran away. She must be insane. I never heard of such a thing." He went to the edge of the bank and looked off for a little, standing there still, and then, after a while, "Oh, my God!" he said; and then again "Oh, my God!" and came back beside her. His action, his evident emotion, quieted her own strangely.

"Isn't it terrible?" she asked, almost timidly, when he was close again; "it seems to me the most terrible thing that I ever knew about."

"Very terrible," said the man, briefly. "We will walk on up the hill," he added, after a little; "it's near dinner time." She did as he said.

"You won't tell Alva that I told you?" she asked.

He shook his head. "No, indeed," and then both were silent.

Towards the top, he asked: "How long shall you be with her?"

"A week."

"That means until she leaves to marry him?"

"Yes."

"That's good; I am glad that you can stay."

She tried to say something then, and her voice died in one of those same strange gasps, but she tried a second time and succeeded. "I suppose that nothing could be done?" she questioned.

"What would you do?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said.

He smiled a little oddly. "I am afraid that we should be fools," he said; "those fools that rush in, you know. It is beginning to come back to me how Alva looked and how she spoke when I took her to see the house. It all had no meaning to me then, but it has meaning now. It comes back to me more and more. Perhaps you and I are—are—not up to seeing it quite as she does. Perhaps. It's possible."

"That is what she says over and over—that I cannot understand," Lassie said, faintly.

"I can't understand either, but—perhaps she does. I can understand that."

"I am glad that you know, anyway;" her tone was sweet and confiding. He looked down into her pretty eyes.

"I am, too," he said, heartily.

"But I hope that it wasn't very wrong for me to tell you; it seemed as if I could not bear it alone!"

"Don't worry about that; Alva shall never know. And now, if you cannot bear it (as you say) again, you know that you can come to me and say what you like. We shall have that comfort."

She smiled a little. "You don't seem like a stranger; you seem like an old, old friend."

"I'm glad. Because I am an old, old friend in reality, you know."

"But, if—if I—when I want—" she hesitated.

"Oh, you don't know where to find me if you want me?" He laughed. "It's true that I am an uncertain quantity, but I take supper at the hotel every evening, and sometimes I go to the post-office afterwards." He smiled roundly at that, and she smiled, too. "We must go to the post-office together, sometimes," he added; "it's the great social diversion of Ledge." He was glad to see her face and manner getting easier. That was what he was trying for—to lift the weight from her.

"Alva took me there this morning," she said.

They came now to the Soldiers' Monument and the tracks.

"I hope that she isn't going to mind the way that I left her!" the young girl exclaimed suddenly, smitten with anxiety. "I ran away, you know; I couldn't bear it another minute."

"She won't mind that," said Ingram; "all the little things of life won't cut any figure with her any more, if she's the kind that has made up her mind to do such a thing. That's what I've been thinking all the time that we were coming along; a woman who has decided to marry in the way that Alva has, must of course look at everything in life by a different light from that of the rest of us; I don't know really that we have the right even to criticize her. We don't understand her at all; that's all it is."

Lassie looked astonished. "You don't mean to say that you think that she isn't crazy?" she said.

Ingram smiled again, "I mean that I hardly think it possible to judge what one cannot measure; savages reverence the Unknown, you know, and I'm not sure that reverence is not a fitter attitude towards mystery than condemnation or ridicule, although of course it isn't the civilized or popular standpoint."

"But do you think it's—it's—it's the thing, to do—" Lassie could not get on further.

"I think it's just as awful as you do," he said quietly; "but I've had time since you told me to see that just because it seems awful to me, it's very plain to me that I see it differently from the way in which she does. She isn't a girl, she's a woman; and she's a very good and sweet and true woman at that. If she is making this marriage, the really awful part isn't the part that you or I or the world are going to think about, it's something else."

Lassie's glance rose doubtfully upward. "You think that it's all right for her to do it, then?" she asked miserably.

"I think that we aren't wise enough to talk about it at all," said Ingram with determined cheerfulness. "Let's change the subject. I am going to be here on and off for a year, likely, and digging holes to hold little flags, and drilling to keep track of what one drills through isn't the liveliest fun in the world to look forward to; so when Alva doesn't need you, do give me some of your time and make me some jolly memories to live on later, when I'm alone—will you?"

"You won't ever be able to go and see Alva in her house afterwards, will you?" said Lassie, her mind apparently unequal to changing the subject on short notice; "because no one is ever to go there, she says."

"I shall never go unless she asks me, surely."

They were now quite near the little hotel.

"Before we part, let us be a little conventional and say that we are glad to have met one another," Ingram suggested; "will you?"

"I'm glad that I met you," she said; "it will be a great comfort—as you said."

Ingram was looking at her and that turned his face towards the gorge. "I see Alva coming across the bridge," he exclaimed; "go and meet her. Go to her quite frankly, openly,—as if nothing had happened. That will be easiest—and kindest—and best all around."

She flashed a grateful glance to his eyes, and ran at once down the tracks and out upon the bridge.

Alva came towards her, with a rapid step, her open coat floating lightly back on either side. She smiled sweetly as she saw the girlish figure. "You beat me home," she called out, gaily.

Lassie swallowed the lump in her throat and smiled, too. "It's such a beautiful day, and I'm so happy and so glad that you are happy!"

The pretty young voice rang fresh and true. The next instant they were close, side by side.

Alva stood still. What Ingram had said proved most truly true; she did not seem to hold any recollection of that parting an hour before. She drew Lassie close beside her and pointed over the bridge-rail. A rainbow was spanning the Upper Falls, and its brilliant, evanescent promise seemed to reflect in the face above. What is so fragile, illusive, uncertain as a rainbow? And yet it is the mirrored mirage of all the Eternal Purpose's immutable law. Form is there, and color; hope is there, and the will-o'-the-wisp of human struggles evolving continually and, in their evolution, fading to human eyes as they take their place up higher. From the foaming, dashing water, which during the centuries was strong enough to eat into the rock, arose the light, lovely mist that in cycles of time was in its turn strong enough to wear it away. Through the mist floated the impalpable radiance that, in æons to come, when rock should again flash fiery through unending space, and water should have evaporated to await fresh form, would still continue to illuminate the Divine Will.

CHAPTER VII

THE LATHBUNS

Mrs. Wiley, dropping into the post-office that evening along about seven, was frankly disappointed at finding her newspaper bundle still undisturbed on the table in the adjoining kitchen.

"Why, I made sure you'd have laid 'em out, anyhow," she said, looking at Mrs. Ray, who was busily beating batter; "you haven't even made a start." And she sighed, seating herself in unwilling resignation.

"Made a start," said Mrs. Ray, glancing at her placidity with an air of tart exasperation, "made fifty starts, you mean. This has been what I call a day. Mrs. Catt came in early this afternoon to ask me to make Sally's wedding-cake, and Clay Wright Benton was here about the parrot. He's awful tired of that parrot 'cause it keeps his mother so tired and cross from getting up nights to wait on it. It routs her up at all hours for things, and if she don't hurry it calls her names in Spanish that it learned on the ship coming from Brazil, and, oh, they're having an awful time of it. And then Sammy Adams was here too; he was here from four o'clock on, asking me to marry him again. I don't know as anything gives me a lower opinion of Sammy than the way he sticks to wanting to marry me. The older I get, the worse he wants to marry me, which shows me only too plainly as it ain't me at all he wants—it's just my work."

"You ain't even unrolled it," said Mrs. Wiley, fingering the bundle sadly. "I've been fixing onion-syrup for Lottie Ann and thinking of you unrolling all day. And you wasn't ever unrolling, even."

"He set right where you're setting now," said Mrs. Ray, beating briskly. "I was stoning raisins, so he wasn't in my way, but I do get tired of being asked to marry men. They don't make no bones about the business any more, and even a woman of my age likes a little fluff of romance. Sammy always goes into how we could join our chickens and our furniture. Like they was going to be married, too. Oh, Sammy's very mooney—he's very much like Mr. Ray. Most men are too much like Mr. Ray to please me. There was days when Mr. Ray 'd sit all day and tell me how he had yellow curls and blue eyes before he had smallpox. Those were his mooney days. When Mr. Ray wanted to be specially nice, he always used to tell me how pretty he was when he was a baby. Men are so awful silly. It's too bad I ever married. I had so many pleasant thoughts about men before. But now all I think is they're all spying round for women to work for 'em."

"I never shall know no peace till I know whether you can get my two backs out of these legs," said Mrs. Wiley, handling the bundle. "Father was such a sitter the last year, his legs was very wore at the top." She sighed.

"Mr. Catt was here this afternoon, too," continued Mrs. Ray, never ceasing to beat; "he wants to get up a petition about the dam. He's afraid they won't pay him for his orchard. He's against it. He says Mr. Ledge is right. He says if he's going to lose money, he'd rather see the Falls preserved for the blessings of unborn generations. He says he doesn't believe we think enough about unborn generations in this country. He says his orchard is worth a lot."

"If they're too wore out to cut over, I suppose we'll have to give it all up," said Mrs. Wiley. "Oh, Mrs. Ray, Lottie Ann's so thin! I don't know what to do! I say to her 'Lottie Ann, do eat,' and then she tries and chokes. I think she ought to go to Buffalo and be examined with a telescope. Rubbing her in goose-grease don't do a bit of good, and it does ruin her flannels so."

"I was sorry for Clay Wright Benton," pursued Mrs. Ray; "he kind of wants me to take his mother and the parrot for the winter. He says besides the nights, his mother and the parrot quarrels so days that he's afraid Sarah just won't have 'em in the house much longer. She's losing all patience."

"If you can't get my fronts out of his legs, do you suppose there'll be any way to get them out of his fronts?" Mrs. Wiley propounded.

"I told Clay I'd see," continued Mrs. Ray. "I'm pretty full now, but there's a proverb about room for one more, and if I can't do nothing else my motto'll help me out. 'He moves in a mysterious way' you know, and maybe I can put her in my room with Willy and move into the kitchen myself with the parrot. Yes, indeed. Only I won't get up and wait on it. I don't care what I get called in Spanish, if I'm once asleep for the night, that parrot won't get me up again; or there'll be more Spanish than his around."

"You'll be able to use the same buttons, anyhow," mused Mrs. Wiley. "Oh, Mrs. Ray, we've had a letter from Uncle Purchase and the colt didn't die. It'll be lame and blind in one eye, but anyway it's alive and it's such a valuable colt. The father cost six thousand dollars, and if it lives to have grandchildren maybe they'll race. Uncle Purchase does so want a race-horse in his stock. He says a race-horse even raises the value of your pigs and cattle."

"Does a parrot sleep on its side or sit up all night, do you know? I forgot to ask Clay."

"Oh, that reminds me, speakin' of sleepin'," exclaimed Mrs. Wiley, suddenly arousing to the realization of other woes than her own, "do you know Cousin Granger Catterwallis was over this morning, and he says those Lathbuns stayed at Sammy's the night afore they came here. You know they come in a pourin' rain. Did Sammy ever tell you about it?"

Mrs. Ray stopped her beating. She stood seemingly transfixed.

"Cousin Granger says they wanted to stay all night, with him, but he's too afraid of a breach of promise suit since his wife died, so he wouldn't keep them, but he took his spy-glass and watched them through the gap and they clum Sammy's fence," (Mrs. Ray's face was a sight), "and then he went up to his cupalo and watched them through a break in the trees, and he says he knows they went in the house!"

Mrs. Ray folded her arms firmly. "Well," she said, "I never heard the beat! Sammy never said one word to me!"

"And Cousin Catterwallis says he doesn't believe they've got any trunks or any money or any real love affair, except what they may manage to pick up along the way. He says he wouldn't trust the young one as far as you can throw a cat, and he says he wouldn't trust the old one as far as that. Hannah Adele, indeed! He says he don't believe she's even Hannah."

Mrs. Ray drew a long breath. "Oh, well, I wasn't meaning to marry him, anyhow," she said, a little absent-mindedly. "I told him that to-day. Sammy's mooney, and I've been married to one mooney man. There were days when Mr. Ray would upset everything, from the beehives to his second wife's baby—those were his mooney days. I don't want to have no more of that!"

"Cousin Catterwallis says it wasn't just proper taking them in that way, either," Mrs. Wiley continued; "he's going to see Jack O'Neil this afternoon, and tell him his opinion. Cousin Catterwallis says the dam is bringing very queer folks our way. He doesn't take no interest in the dam because he's so far inland, but he says when the canal was put through the Italians stole one of his father's hens, and he hasn't any use for any kind of improvements since then."

Mrs. Ray began slowly beating her batter again. Her lips were firm and her attitude painfully decided.

"The old lady says she's Mrs. Ida Lathbun," Mrs. Wiley went on; "I wonder if their name is really Lathbun."

"I d'n know, I'm sure."

Mrs. Wiley turned her eyes on the bundle.

"When do you think you can get at my coat, Mrs. Ray?" the tone was sadly earnest.

"To-morrow, I guess. I haven't much on hand to-morrow, except to sweep out the church and do some baking. I was planning to dig potatoes and go to South Ledge to fit a dress, but I'll leave that till early Monday. Think of his keeping them all night and never telling me!"

"I guess I'll go down to Nellie's," said Mrs. Wiley, rising slowly; "the Lathbuns sit in her kitchen evenings, and I'll just throw a few hints about and see how they take it."

"I wish I could go, too," Mrs. Ray's eyes suddenly became keenly bright, "but I can't. The mail's due."

Mrs. Wiley shook her head with the air of understanding the weightiness of her friend's excuse. "I'll stop in on my way back, and tell you what I find out," she said, kindly.

She went away and was absent all of an hour. When she returned, Mrs. Ray's duties, both as postmistress and stepmother, were over for that day, her cake was safe in the oven, and she sat by the lamp, knitting.

"What'd you find out?" she said, as the door yielded to Mrs. Wiley's push.

"Well, not much." Mrs. Wiley came in and sat down. "They was both there in the kitchen, and there's no use denying it's hard to find out anything about folks when they're looking right at you. But I did hear one thing you'll like to know, Mrs. Ray?"

"What was it?"

"Why, those two girls went off walking this morning, and the young one came back with the man."

"Don't surprise me one bit," said Mrs. Ray. "I've been saying that was what would happen from the minute I knew she was coming."

"I'm sort of sorry for the older one," said Mrs. Wiley; "she's real nice. I'm sorry for any one who's thinnish—Lottie Ann's so thin."

"Those kind of blind-eyed people always have trouble, and nobody can help it for 'em," said Mrs. Ray; "they make their own troubles as they go along—if they don't come bump on to them while they're stargazing. That girl's made for trouble; you can see it in her eyes. But didn't you ask anything about Sammy?"

"I just couldn't—with them right there. The old lady sits with her feet in the oven the whole time. I don't see how Nellie cooks."

"Feet in the oven! I should say so! Well, I'll ask Sammy just as soon as I see him—I know that! Did you hear anything new about the dam?"

"No; Nellie says the surveyors say it'll be six months before any one can tell anything."

"Huh!" Mrs. Ray's note was highly contemptuous.

"Why, Mrs. Ray, don't you believe the surveyors?"

"I never say what I believe, Mrs. Wiley, it's enough for me to say what I think; but I will say just this, and that is that if we get the dam, it's precious little good it'll ever do us here in Ledge. It's fine work talking, but the legislature and the Dam Commission aren't working day and night for our good. It's men in Rochester and Buffalo who'll get the good out of the dam, and we'll be left to find ourselves high and dry as usual."

"Why, Mrs. Ray, you talk as if you was against the dam, or is it only because Sammy took those women in that night?"

Poor Mrs. Wiley! She had inadvertently hit the bull's-eye. Mrs. Ray laid down her knitting and rose at once.

"No, Mrs. Wiley, it isn't because Sammy took those women in that night. As if I'd care whether Sammy took two women in or not! Did I ever care about Mr. Ray's other two wives? or about their children? I guess if I can stand all I've stood from Mr. Ray's first wife's children, I won't care who Sammy Adams takes in out of the wet. I'm surprised at you, Mrs. Wiley."

Mrs. Wiley got up in great confusion. "I hope you'll excuse what I said, Mrs. Ray; you see I wasn't really thinking what I did say. And it may not have been them, anyhow. I must be goin', I guess; I don't like to leave Lottie Ann alone like that. Good-by, Mrs. Ray."

Mrs. Ray folded her arms severely.

"Good-by, Mrs. Wiley," she said, with reserve.

CHAPTER VIII

MISS LATHBUN'S STORY

Curiously enough, just as Mrs. Wiley abruptly terminated her call on her friend Mrs. Ray, owing to the unpleasant twist given their conversation by the Lathbun family, Lassie and Alva were speaking of the same two ladies, whom Lassie had met in the dining-room an hour before. Alva had introduced her to both with that pleasant courtesy which was given to none too careful social scrutiny. It was Alva's habit to deal with all humanity on a broad footing of equality—a habit which her well-born friends politely termed a failing, and which those of other classes accepted as the thirsty accept water, just with content.

"Well, I'm glad I've seen them; now I feel as if I'd seen everything, except the Lower Falls." Thus spoke Lassie, when the bedroom door was shut, and she and her friend seemed well away from all the rest of the world for the next ten hours, at least. Lassie, be it said, en passant, had now sufficiently digested her first shock of surprise over her friend's future, to be able to be pleasantly happy again.

"What did you think of them?" Alva answered, half absent-mindedly. She held in her hand a letter which the belated mail had brought, and her thoughts seemed to quit it with difficulty.

"I thought that they were rather common," said Lassie, frankly. Lassie was well-born, and had judged Mrs. Lathbun and her daughter by no higher standard than that of their blouses.

"Do you know, I thought so, too,—at first," her friend replied, putting the letter down and going to the window where she remained with her back to Lassie, looking out into the dark. "I thought at first that Mrs. Lathbun looked like a cook—"

"She dresses exactly like one," interposed Lassie.

"But I've come to like them very much, indeed. Of course so few days are not enough to really know any one, but the night before you came such a curious thing happened. You know I told you that the daughter had a love affair? Well, that was the night that I learned about it. I never had anything come to me more strangely. Do you know, dear, I am continually more and more convinced that nothing happens by chance, never."

"What did she tell you?"

Alva turned from the window and sat down by the lamp-table. "I'll tell you; only you mustn't misjudge Miss Lathbun for confiding in me. People become friends very quickly in a lonely place like this, you know."

"I won't misjudge her; I'll be glad to change my opinion of her. She looks so like a restaurant girl."

"Lassie, you're incorrigible."

"But that dress, with that black cotton lace over that old red silk."

"I never even noticed it."

"Do you mean to say you've never noticed that dirty red silk front?"

Alva shaded her eyes with her hand. "Lassie," she said, almost sadly, "why does nothing count in this world except the front of one's frock?"

Contrition smote the young girl. "Oh, forgive me, forgive me," she pleaded; "I didn't think. I am interested! Play I didn't speak in that way; I won't again. Indeed, I won't."

"Of course I'll forgive you, dear; it's nothing to forgive, anyway; but it makes it so hard to tell anything serious when one sets out in such a way. I wonder how many good and beautiful thoughts have died unexpressed, just because their first breath was met with mocking!"

"Don't say that; I won't be that way—I'll never be that way again. I do like Miss Lathbun—truly I do; I think she has sort of a sweet face, and she must be clever to have been able to make a front of any kind out of that lace. See, I'm quite serious now; and so interested. Do go on!"

Alva looked at her for a minute with a smile.

"You can't possibly overlook the front, can you?" she said; "but I will go on, and you will learn never to judge again, as I learned myself; for I must tell you, Lassie, that all you feel about them, I felt at first—until I learned to know better. I didn't notice the front, but I noticed some other things—little things like grammar; but American grammar isn't a hard and fast proposition, anyway, you know."

"They just call it 'dialect' in so many places," said Lassie, wisely.

Alva smiled again. "Yes, they do," she assented.

"And now for Miss Lathbun's story?" suggested the girl.

"Yes, certainly. Well, my dear, you see, I was sitting here alone one evening, and she came to the door and—and somehow she came in and we fell to talking. You know how easy it is for any one to talk to me, and after a while she told me her romance."

Lassie's eyes opened. "To think of a girl like that having a romance! Please go on."

Alva hesitated, then smiled a little. "I suppose I can trust you to keep a secret?" she asked.

Lassie began: "Why, of—" and then stopped suddenly, remembering the morning's betrayal, and blushed crimson.

Alva leaned forward and touched her cheek with one petting finger.

"Dear," she said, "don't feel distressed. I know that you told Ronald and I don't mind."

"You know!" cried Lassie, astonished.

"Yes, dear, I know. I saw it in both your faces when I came across the bridge. I don't mind—I think it's better so. Truly, I do."

"Oh, Alva—" the young girl's tone was full of feeling.

"But you mustn't tell him Hannah Adele's love affair," Alva went on, smiling; "remember that, my dear."

"I promise. Now tell me all about it." Lassie drew close, her face full of eager curiosity mixed with content over being pardoned so simply.

"It's just like a story," Alva said, thoughtfully; "it's more wonderful—almost—than my own. I never heard anything quite so wonderfully story-like before. Tell me, did you notice at supper how Mrs. Lathbun watched every one that came off of the train? She can see the station through the window from where she sits, you know."

"No, I didn't notice. Does it matter?"

"Oh, no; only I used to notice it and now I know why she does it."

"Is she looking for the lover?"

"She's afraid of him, dear."

"Afraid!"

"Yes, afraid he'll find them."

"Goodness, are they hiding from him?"

"Mrs. Lathbun thinks that they are."

"And aren't they?"

Alva lowered her voice to a whisper. "He watches outside of this house every night!" she said impressively.

Lassie quite jumped. "Watches! Outside this house! Oh, is he there now?"

"I don't know, perhaps so."

"What fun! Who does he watch for?"

"For Miss Lathbun, of course."

"But why does he do it?"

"She doesn't know; she only knows that he watches there."

"And her mother doesn't know that he is there?"

"No."

"How perfectly thrilling! Do go on!"

"It's really a very long story."

"I'll be patient."

"It taught me a big lesson, Lassie; it taught me not to judge. Just see how quiet and simple these two look to be, and yet that plain, ordinary appearing woman is trying to hide her daughter from a rich man."

"A rich man!"

"He's a millionaire."

"Who told you so?"

"She did."

Lassie stared. "Alva!—you don't believe that! That woman's never hiding that girl from a millionaire. It isn't possible!"

"But she is, my dear. She's a true, good mother; she doesn't want her daughter to marry him, because he is so dissipated."

"But I should think that they would run away and get married. I'd marry a man, anyway, if I loved him."

"Ah, Lassie, you don't know what you'd do if you were in the position of that poor girl. Her mother has taken her away and is stopping here in this very quiet and unassuming way to avoid all notice or being found out."

"But he has found them out!"

"Yes, but Mrs. Lathbun doesn't know it."

Lassie looked almost incredulous. "Mrs. Lathbun doesn't look a bit like a woman who would hide her daughter away from a millionaire," she said, obstinately.

"You see how easy it is to misjudge any one, Lassie; because that's what she's doing."

"Mrs. O'Neil says they haven't any trunks or any clothes. She said so this afternoon."

"I know; I've heard her say that before."

"Well, tell me the whole story."

Alva looked at her for a long dozen of seconds and then her lips curved slightly. "I'm going to tell you," she said; "but, do you know, it just comes over me that you are surely going to disbelieve it."

"Why do you think so?"

"Because it's so strange."

"But you believed it?"

"But I can believe anything. Believing is my forte. Once 'heretic' and 'unbeliever' meant the same thing; well, I am a believer."

Lassie laughed a little. "Go on and tell me the story," she said, "I'll try to believe;" then, her face changing suddenly, she added, "it can have a happy ending—can't it? Sometime?"

Alva flashed a quick, sad flash of understanding at her. "All stories will have that some day," she said, gently. It was the first reference on the lips of either to that morning's revelation.

"Do tell me the story," Lassie begged, after a minute's pause; "tell me the whole. Do you think that perhaps he is out there now?"

Alva shook her head in protestation of ignorance as to that. "It seems very medieval and devoted for him to be out there at all, don't you think? And these nights are so cold, too."

"I should think that some one would see him sometimes?"

"I should, too."

"Well, go on. Has she known him always?"

"No; it seems that he lives in Cromwell where her mother was born, and she met him there two years ago when they went there to visit."

"Did he fall in love with her at first sight?"

"I think so. She said the first thing that she knew he was talking about her all the time, and then he began watching outside of their house at night."

"Didn't he ever talk to her, or come inside the house?"

"Oh, Lassie, what makes you say things like that? They make the story seem absurd; and I began it by telling you that her mother was bitterly opposed to him on account of his reputation."

"I forgot," said Lassie, contritely; "is he so very bad?"

"I'm afraid so. He drinks and gambles and does everything that he shouldn't, she says."

"But if he's rich he can afford it, can't he?"

Alva turned quickly. "How can you say a thing like that? As if money can condone sin. Don't you know that a thoroughly bad man is a soulless thing, and that to marry a man like that is either heroic or deeply degrading, just according to whether one does it for love or for money."

"But you said that she loved him."

"Yes; but you said he could afford to be wicked!"

Lassie clasped her hands meditatively. "To think of that girl having a millionaire watching outside her window, nights! And Mrs. O'Neil says she hasn't even a nightgown with her, so she can't possibly get up in the cold to peep out through the blinds."

"I suppose she couldn't do that, anyway," said Alva; "you see her mother doesn't know he's there, so she couldn't get up to look."

"How does she know herself that he is there, then? perhaps he tells her he watches and really stays in bed at some hotel."

"Lassie!"

"What's the use of his watching, anyway? Does it do any good? I should think that she'd be afraid that he'd take cold. I—"

"Lassie, don't you see that it's his only way to prove his devotion? He can't write her, so he watches outside her window, nights. She says that he takes a handful of sand and throws it against the side of the house, and she hears it and knows that he's there."

"Do you believe that?"

"I believe the whole story."

Lassie regarded her friend with amazement.

"I don't see how you can;" she said; "why, those two women would go almost wild for joy if any man wanted to marry either of them."

"No, dear," Alva said, smiling; "no, they wouldn't. The world isn't altogether worldly; there are simple, true, wholesome natures in it that look at life in a straightforward way without any illusions. And Mrs. Lathbun is one of those. Poor she may be, but she knows very well that no possible happiness can come to her child from marrying a bad man who has money."

"But her daughter wants to marry him, and he wants to marry her."

Alva paused before replying; then she said slowly:

"Lassie, there's the puzzle. Does he want to marry her?"

Lassie looked startled. "Doesn't he?" she asked.

"She doesn't know," said Alva; "you see, they have hardly ever exchanged a word."

"Well," said the young girl, "this is the craziest love story I ever heard in my life. Do you mean to say that you believe that a man who had never heard a girl speak would go and stay outside her window, all night long? What does he do all night, anyhow; walk about, or sit down? Alva, you can't believe that story? Not possibly!"

"Yes, I believe it," said Alva, cheerfully. "I believe it for two or three very good reasons. One is that there is no reason why the girl should construct such a silly lie for my benefit; another is that truth is always stranger than fiction; and the third is that she has a little picture of him, and as soon as I saw the picture I saw why Fate brought the Lathbuns and me together, and why the man waited outside her window all night."

"Why?" Lassie's tone became suddenly curious.

"My dear, the man is the image of the man that I love. They might be twin brothers. And men of such strength put through whatever they lay their hands unto."

Lassie appeared dumbfounded.

"He looks like—" she stammered and halted.

"Yes, dear," Alva said, simply; "he looks exactly like him! Now you see why I am interested. Now you see why I find it easy to believe. A bad man—a thoroughly bad man—is a creature that for some reason has not come into his heavenly birthright. If that girl, plain and pale and unassuming as she looks, has the power to draw him from nights of dissipation to nights in the cold outside her window, she has the power to call a soul to him or waken his own that is but sleeping. It takes a great deal of living and learning to attain to the faith which I have, but I have it and I am firm in it, and I believe the story and I believe that good is brewing for that man. I'm sure of it."

Alva spoke with such energetic earnestness, such dominating force, that Lassie was silenced for the minute.

"I suppose that I am just stupid," she said, after a little; "I've had so much that was different to try and learn to-day."

There was a pathos in her tone that led the older girl to lean quickly near and take one of her hands, drawing her close as she did so. "I know it, dear, I know it. And I appreciate it all more than you guess. We won't talk of Miss Lathbun any more just now, and, dear, believe me when I say that I'm truly very glad that you met Ronald just as you did this morning and told him what I had told you. I see all this from all its sides, and the views that differ from mine don't hurt me—believe me, they don't. I understand exactly how Ronald's fine, robust manhood would revolt quite as you yourself revolted; but, you and he, with all the possibilities of your gorgeous, glorious youth, can no more measure the joy of these days to my love and myself, than the gay little birds measure what life is to you. To us, you two and your ideas are very much like the birds; we are glad to see you enjoy the sunshine, and our better gladness we know is quite beyond you."

Lassie turned her face upward to the earnest look and tender kiss, and then they sat still for a little until Alva rose and began to make ready for bed.

"Tell me," she said, as she loosened her hair; "it was like this, wasn't it? At first Ronald was almost angry; and then his feeling changed and he felt that because it was I, it was rather a different thing from what it would have been if it had been any one else."

"Yes," said Lassie, in an awestruck tone, "it was just like that. How did you know?"

Alva laughed. "Not because I am a witch," she said, "but just because I know Ronald. You see, Lassie, I am much stronger than Ronald; I am stronger than Ronald, just as Ronald is stronger than you. He could not condemn me; he has to own I am right. Right is a might so great that wherever it holds good it rules its kind. Ronald gives me my due; you will, too, after a while. Only I must not drive either of you forward too quickly." She laughed a little. "I must give you time," she added.

Lassie was taking down her own hair. She shook it apart now, and looked forth from between the parted waves, her expression one of deeply stirred interest. "I believe that this is going to be the most wonderful time in my life," she said; "I feel as if everything were getting deeper around me."

"Ah, dearest," said her friend, with a sigh that was not sad—only a long breath; "that's very true. I should not have sent for you, only that I knew that when you came to leave me and go back to the world to wear your white gown and make your début, you would have become a stronger, better, wiser, sweeter woman all your life through, for this experience. You see, dear child, the rarest thing in the world of to-day is sincerity—absolute truth. I am not especially gifted or very remarkable in any way, but I have learned the value of being sincere. It isn't a small thing to learn in life, Lassie, and it isn't a small privilege to live for a few days with one who has learned the lesson. When you see what truth really is, and what it may really do for one, you won't be revolted by my marriage; you will never wonder over me any more, and you'll learn to look at strange stories with a new light of comprehension."

Lassie went close to her, put up her lips and kissed her.

"And I can tell Mr. Ingram about Miss Lathbun, too?" she asked very simply; "or must I keep that secret, as you said at first?"

Alva put her arms fondly about the pretty young thing. "Lassie," she said, "you are a dear, and I don't mind how much you discuss me with Ronald; but you musn't tell him Miss Lathbun's secret. It wouldn't be right."

"Very well, then, I won't," said Lassie; "and I will keep my word, too."

"Thank you," Alva said, patting her face caressingly; "thank you, and heaven bless you and give you a good understanding."

Lassie looked up with a smile. "You think I may learn to look at things in your way?"

"I think so," said Alva; "looking at things in my way has made me a very happy woman, and so I desire the same for you."

Then she kissed her good night.

CHAPTER IX

PLEASANT CONVERSE

"Well, what did I tell you?" said Mrs. Ray to Mrs. Catt, a day or so later, when that lady had dropped in for a little call. "Those two young people up at Nellie O'Neil's have fallen in love just as sure as beans are beans. Not that he's so young, either, but a man's always able to fall in love whenever he gets a chance. Age don't matter. There was Mr. Ray. He was always in love unless he was married. Yes, indeed."

"If he's engaged to that other one, I shouldn't think he'd find it very easy to fall in love right under her nose, so to speak," said Mrs. Catt.

"She wouldn't notice," said Mrs. Ray, adjusting her shawl, and turning the needlework in her hands; "she's the kind who don't even see the things they go headlong over. She's the mooney kind. I know. Yes, indeed. Mr. Ray had mooney days. There were days when Mr. Ray called me by his first wife's name all day. Those were his mooney days."

"My cousin Eliza thinks she's crazy too. She says she's seen her time and again setting on stumps in the woods, and she turns out in the road for sparrows. And then that house. They're at it tooth and nail from dawn to dark. I never see nothing like it."

"Yes," said Mrs. Ray; "there's others say that, too. She is queer! Nellie says she often doesn't eat breakfast—nor any meat either. And she talks about the dam as if we was all heathens laying the axe at the root of our own mothers. She says all the trees ought to belong to the United States Government. As if we wasn't singing 'Pass under the rod of the Republican party' from dawn to dark now. Such a country!"

"She goes down to see Mr. Ledge, too," pursued Mrs. Catt; "of course he don't want the dam, and he makes her more so. Josiah Bates was driving home from Castile the other day, and he saw her coming from there. Josiah said he was sure she'd been to see Mr. Ledge, 'cause she wasn't ten feet from the house, and they was waving their hands to her from the window. You can always depend on Josiah Bates knowing what he's talking about."

"Yes," said Mrs. Ray, turning her work about; "yes, Josiah Bates is a very careful observer. He'll never die of no fish-bone in his throat for want of watching the fish."

"Speaking of fish-bones," said Mrs. Catt, "have you seen Lottie Ann Wiley lately? There's a bag of bones for you!"

"Not for a week or so. Why? Is she thinner than she was?"

"Thinner! Well, I should say so. I don't know what the Wileys will do with that girl if she keeps on getting thinner and paler."

"She isn't any paler than that girl at Nellie O'Neil's."

"Which one?"

"That Lathbun girl. Do you know anything about them?"

"That's what every one's asking."

Mrs. Ray threaded her needle. "They're a queer pair," she remarked.

"Well, I should say so. They don't eat any breakfast, either; make it up on chestnuts. They're picking chestnuts all over. Lizzie says she never saw people making so free. Folks don't know what to say, but it riles a good many. They pick that little gray bag they've got full three or four times a day."

"Well, I declare," said Mrs. Ray; "do you suppose they eat 'em all?"

Mrs. Catt rose. "I only stopped for a minute," she said. "Oh, I don't know, I'm sure. Chestnuts is hearty, but seems to me they ought to ask at the houses, anyway. Mrs. Wiley says if they come to her trees again, she'll turn the bull in the lot."

"Must you go?" Mrs. Ray asked. "I thought Mrs. Wiley was afraid of the bull."

"Yes, I must. What you making?"

"I'm putting a new lining in this vest for Elmer Hoskins. His dog chewed it up, while he was asleep."

"Did he have it on?" Mrs. Catt asked in great surprise.

"No; he had it on the chair and it fell off."

"Fell off! I s'pose you've heard about Gran'ma Benton's parrot falling off?"

"Falling off what? No, I haven't heard."

"Fell off the perch. I saw poor Clay this morning, and he's half mad. The parrot and Gran'ma Benton have been discussing most all night lately, and the parrot gets so mad he hops all over and last night he got in a rage and fell off the perch. Broke the perch, too."

"Well, I declare," said Mrs. Ray; "why don't Clay show some spirit and put a stop to all that? I would."

"He can't. Gran'ma Benton's so fond of discussing, and if she didn't have the parrot she'd soon wear them all out."

"I thought she was wearing them out as it is."

"Well, yes—" Mrs. Catt looked cornered, "but, anyhow, they don't have to do the talking now—the parrot does it. I'd like to see my husband's mother have a parrot—that's all!" Mrs. Catt twitched her shawl expressively.

"Poor Clay Wright Benton," said Mrs. Ray. "Just to look at him you'd know it all. I do despise men who haven't got any spirit; but if they have spirit of course they're almost worse to get on with. Yes, indeed."

"Yes, indeed!" said Mrs. Catt with meaning; "well, good-by, Mrs. Ray."

"Oh! Good-by."

Mrs. Catt went out.

It was only a few minutes later that Mrs. Wiley arrived, with another large bundle wrapped up in newspaper.

"Don't stop your work," she said, putting it down with a sigh. "Oh, you ain't sewing on my coat," she added, in a tone of deep disappointment, evidently seeing interruption in a changed light at once.

"No, but I've cut it out. What you got there?"

"I've got another suit of father's."

Mrs. Ray eyed the bundle with thoughtfully compressed lips, and gave her shawl a fresh tuck.

"What you want made out of this one?"

Mrs. Wiley hesitated. "It's such a handsome piece of cloth," she said, "I'm willing to leave the cut to you, but I thought maybe you could get a winter jacket for Lottie Ann out of this one?"

Mrs. Ray compressed her lips more, and frowned. "I don't know about that," she said, shaking her head. "I've had trouble enough with the last."

"This was his new when he died. After he reached three hundred. And it isn't worn anywhere. You can get her big sleeves out of the hips, I think."

"There's a good deal to a coat beside the sleeves," said Mrs. Ray; "that coat of yours has most drove me mad. I never thought of your bringing me another. Well, unroll it and let me look at it."

Mrs. Wiley began to unfasten the package.

"Any moth-holes in this one?" Mrs. Ray asked, with professional interest.

"None to speak of. The only real hole is where he sat down on a engine spark at the station, the day of his last shock."

"It isn't the suit he had on when the oil-tank exploded, then?"

"No," said Mrs. Wiley; "that was the last but one. The oil-tank was the middle one of his three shocks."

She unfolded the garments and spread them out. Mrs. Ray watched her, and continued her work at the same time.

"How's Lottie Ann?" she asked, presently.

"Oh, she's poorly," said Mrs. Wiley. "We're getting awful worried over Lottie Ann. I thought maybe you could get her fronts out of his fronts; you see, she's slimmer than I am."

"But her big spread will come lower than yours," said Mrs. Ray; "is there any up and down to the cloth? How much does she weigh, anyhow?"

"Yes, there is an up and down. Ninety-six last time. That's mighty little for her height. She only wanted it short, anyway."

"It'll have to be short. Yes, indeed. Why you must have weighed most double that at her age. It's too bad men always have pockets."

"He would have them; you know how father always set store by pockets. There, that's the engine spark. I don't know, I'm sure, what we'll do about her. Mr. Wiley says his grandmother went just so—" Mrs. Wiley's voice broke suddenly; she took out her handkerchief and dried her eyes. "Do you see any way to getting the fronts out?" she asked, falteringly, after a minute.

"You musn't look to the worst that way," said Mrs. Ray, soothingly; "those thin girls pick up wonderfully. The only way I see is if you've got braid. If you've got any braid, I can piece it back of the braid. She may marry and be as well as any one. Look at her great-grandmother you just spoke of. Yes, indeed."

"I haven't got any braid. But I can buy some. Judy was up from the St. Helena road yesterday, and she said to give her milk—all she'll drink."

"Turn it over so I can see the back," said Mrs. Ray; "will she drink it, though? That's the question. She was up for the mail two nights ago, and I thought she looked pretty well-willed. That's a nice piece of cloth. My, but you were lucky he didn't have it on when the oil-tank exploded. Yes, indeed. It's better cloth than the other."

"Yes, that's what I think. That's just the trouble, Mrs. Ray; she will not drink it."

"You never was severe enough with her. Not but what if it hadn't burnt through you could get the oil out, maybe."

"I know it, but she's my only girl. I thought you could use the same buttons. Eleven boys, and then that one girl. She's named for Mr. Wiley's mother and my mother. Charlotte, you know. See, Mrs. Ray, there's six of each size, one on each cuff, too. And all so stout but her. The boys and their father got together on the hay scales the other day, and they went up over two thousand pounds. Did you hear about it?"