hev sot Lee-yander on ter evil ways 'twarn't me. My conscience be clear."

Nevertheless she was grievously ill at ease when one day there rode up to the fence a tall, gaunt, ill-favored man, whose long, lean, sallow countenance, of a Pharisaic cast, was vaguely familiar to her, as one recognizes real lineaments in the contortions of a caricature or the bewilderments of a dream. She felt as if in some long-previous existence she had seen this man as he dismounted at the gate and came up the path with his saddle-bags over his arm. But it was not until he mustered an unready, unwilling smile, that had of good-will and geniality so slight an intimation that it was like a spasmodic grimace, did she perceive how time had deepened tendencies to traits, how the inmost thought and the secret sentiment had been chiselled into the face in the betrayals of the sculpture of fifteen years.

"Nehemiah Yerby!" she exclaimed. "I would hev knowed ye in the happy land o' Canaan."

"Let's pray we may all meet thar, Sister Sudley," he responded. "Let's pray that the good time may find none of us unprofitable servants."

Mrs. Sudley experienced a sudden recoil. Not that she did not echo his wish, but somehow his manner savored of an exclusive arrogation of piety and a suggestion of reproach.

"That's my prayer," she retorted, aggressively. "Day an' night, that's my prayer."

"Yes'm, fur us an' our households, Sister Sudley—we mus' think o' them c'mitted ter our charge."

She strove to fling off the sense of guilt that oppressed her, the mental attitude of arraignment. He was a young man when he journeyed away in that snowy dawn. She did not know what changes had come in his experience. Perchance his effervescent piety was only a habit of speech, and had no significance as far as she was concerned. The suspicion, however, tamed her in some sort. She attempted no retort. With a mechanical, reluctant smile, ill adjusted to her sorrow-lined face, she made an effort to assume that the greeting had been but the conventional phrasings of the day. "Kem in, kem in, Nehemiah; Tyler will be glad ter see ye, an' I reckon ye will be powerful interested ter view how Lee-yander hev growed an' prospered."

She felt as if she were in some terrible dream as she beheld him slowly wag his head from side to side. He had followed her into the large main room of the cabin, and had laid his saddle-bags down by the side of the chair in which he had seated himself, his elbows on his knees, his hands held out to the flickering blaze in the deep chimney-place, his eyes significantly narrowing as he gazed upon it.

"Naw, Sister Sudley," he wagged his head more mournfully still. "I kin but grieve ter hear how my nevy Lee-yander hev 'prospered,' ez ye call it, an' I be s'prised ye should gin it such a name. Oh-h-h, Sister Sudley!" in prolonged and dreary vocative, "I 'lowed ye war a godly woman. I knowed yer name 'mongst the church-goers an' the church-members." A faint flush sprang into her delicate faded cheek; a halo encircled this repute of sanctity; she felt with quivering premonition that it was about to be urged as a testimony against her. "Elsewise I wouldn't hev gin my cornsent ter hev lef the leetle lam', Lee-yander, in yer fold. Precious, precious leetle lam'!"

Poor Laurelia! Were it not that she had a sense of fault under the scathing arraignment of her motives, her work, and its result, although she scarcely saw how she was to blame, that she had equally with him esteemed Leander's standpoint iniquitous, she might have made a better fight in her own interest. Why she did not renounce the true culprit as one on whom all godly teachings were wasted, and, adopting the indisputable vantage-ground of heredity, carry the war into the enemy's country, ascribing Leander's shortcomings to his Yerby blood, and with stern and superior joy proclaiming that he was neither kith nor kin of hers, she wondered afterward, for this valid ground of defence did not occur to her then. In these long mourning years she had grown dull; her mental processes were either a sad introspection or reminiscence. Now she could only take into account her sacrifices of feeling, of time, of care; the illnesses she had nursed, the garments that she had made and mended—ah, how many! laid votive on the altar of Leander's vigor and his agility, for as he scrambled about the crags he seemed, she was wont to say, to climb straight out of them. The recollection of all this—the lesser and unspiritual maternal values, perchance, but essential—surged over her with bitterness; she lost her poise, and fell a-bickering.

"'Precious leetle lam','" she repeated, scornfully. "Precious he mus' hev been! Fur when ye lef him he hedn't a whole gyarmint ter his back, an' none but them that kivered him."

Nehemiah Yerby changed color slightly as the taunt struck home, but he was skilled in the more aesthetic methods of argument.

"We war pore—mighty pore indeed, Sister Sudley."

Now, consciously in the wrong, Sister Sudley, with true feminine inconsistency, felt better. She retorted with bravado.

"Needle an' thread ain't 'spensive nowhar ez I knows on, an' the gov'mint hev sot no tax on saaft home-made soap, so far ez hearn from."

She briskly placed her chair, a rude rocker, the seat formed of a taut-stretched piece of ox-hide, beside the fire, and took up her knitting. A sock for Leander it was—one of many of all sizes. She remembered the first that she had measured for the bare pink toes which he had brought there, forlorn candidates for the comfortable integuments in which they were presently encased, and how she had morbidly felt that every stitch she took was a renunciation of her own children, since a stranger was honored in their place. The tears came into her eyes. It was only this afternoon that she had experienced a pang of self-reproach to realize how near happiness she was—as near as her temperament could approach. But somehow the air was so soft; she could see from where she sat how the white velvet buds of the aspen-trees in the dooryard had lengthened into long, cream-tinted, furry tassels; the maples on the mountain-side lifted their red flowering boughs against the delicate blue sky; the grass was so green; the golden candlesticks bunched along the margin of the path to the rickety gate were all a-blossoming. The sweet appeal of spring had never been more insistent, more coercive. Somehow peace, and a placid content, seemed as essential incidents in the inner life as the growth of the grass anew, the bursting of the bud, or the soft awakening of the zephyr. Even within the house, the languors of the fire drowsing on the hearth, the broad bar of sunshine across the puncheon floor, so slowly creeping away, the sense of the vernal lengthening of the pensive afternoon, the ever-flitting shadow of the wren building under the eaves, and its iterative gladsome song breaking the fireside stillness, partook of the serene beatitude of the season and the hour. The visitor's drawling voice rose again, and she was not now constrained to reproach herself that she was too happy.

"Yes'm, pore though we war then—an' we couldn't look forward ter the Lord's prosperin' us some sence—we never would hev lef the precious leetle lam'"—his voice dwelt with unvanquished emphasis upon the obnoxious words—"'mongst enny but them persumed ter be godly folks. Tyler war a toler'ble good soldier in the war, an' hed a good name in the church, but ye war persumed to be a plumb special Christian with no pledjure in this worl'."

Laurelia winced anew. This repute of special sanctity was the pride of her ascetic soul. Few of the graces of life or of the spirit had she coveted, but her pre-eminence as a religionist she had fostered and cherished, and now through her own deeds of charity it seemed about to be wrested from her.

"Lee-yander Yerby hev larnt nuthin' but good in this house, an' all my neighbors will tell you the same word. The Cove 'lows I hev been too strict."

Nehemiah was glancing