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Title: Opening a Chestnut Burr

Author: Edward Payson Roe

Release Date: July, 2004  [EBook #6028]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on December 10, 2002]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, OPENING A CHESTNUT BURR ***




Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.



[Illustration: "LET ME OPEN THE BURR FOR YOU."
Chestnut Burr. _Frontispiece._]

The Works of E. P. Roe
VOLUME FOUR


OPENING A CHESTNUT BURR

ILLUSTRATED





THIS BOOK

IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED TO MY WIFE




PREFACE



In sending this, my fourth venture, out upon the uncertain waters of
public opinion, I shall say but few words of preface. In the past I
have received considerable well-deserved criticism from the gentlemen
of the caustic pen, but so far from having any hard feeling toward
them, I have rather wondered that they found so much to say that was
favorable. How they will judge this simple October story (if they
think it worth while to judge it at all) I leave to the future, and
turn to those for whom the book was really written.

In fancy I see them around the glowing hearth in quiet homes, such as
I have tried to describe in the following pages, and hope that this
new-comer will be welcomed for the sake of those that preceded it.
Possibly it may make friends of its own.

From widely separated parts of the country, and from almost every
class, I have received many and cordial assurances that my former
books were sources not only of pleasure, but also of help and benefit,
and I am deeply grateful for the privilege of unobtrusively entering
so many households, and saying words on that subject which is
inseparable from happiness in both worlds.

I think the purpose of the book will become apparent to the reader.
The incidents and characters are mainly imaginary.

Observation has shown me that there are many in the world, like my
hero, whose condition can be illustrated by the following lines:


    Were some great ship all out of stores,
      When half-way o'er the sea,
    Fit emblem of too many lives,
      Such vessel doomed would be.

Must there not be something fatally wrong in that scheme of life which
finds an heir of eternity weary, listless, discouraged, while yet in
the dawning of existence? It is not in perishing _things_, merely, to
give back the lost zest. But a glad zest and hopefulness might be
inspired even in the most jaded and _ennui_-cursed, were there in our
homes such simple, truthful natures as that of my heroine; and in the
sphere of quiet homes--not elsewhere--I believe that woman can best
rule and save the world.

Highland Falls, N.Y., September, 1874.




CONTENTS



CHAPTER I
A HERO BUT NOT HEROIC

CHAPTER II
OPENING A CHESTNUT BURR

CHAPTER III
MORBID BROODING

CHAPTER IV
HOW MISS WALTON MANAGED PEOPLE

CHAPTER V
WAS IT AN ACCIDENT?

CHAPTER VI
UNEXPECTED CHESTNUT BURRS

CHAPTER VII
A CONSPIRACY

CHAPTER VIII
WITCHCRAFT

CHAPTER IX
MISS WALTON RECOMMENDS A HOBBY

CHAPTER X
A PLOT AGAINST MISS WALTON

CHAPTER XI
A DRINKING SONG AT A PRAYER-MEETING

CHAPTER XII
FOILED IN ONE DIRECTION

CHAPTER XIII
INTERPRETING CHESTNUT BURRS

CHAPTER XIV
A WELL-MEANIN' MAN

CHAPTER XV
MISS WALTON'S DREAM

CHAPTER XVI
AN ACCIDENT IN THE MOUNTAINS

CHAPTER XVII
PROMISE OR DIE

CHAPTER XVIII
IN THE DEPTHS

CHAPTER XIX
MISS WALTON MADE OF DIFFERENT CLAY FROM OTHERS

CHAPTER XX
MISS WALTON MADE OF ORDINARY CLAY

CHAPTER XXI
PASSION AND PENITENCE

CHAPTER XXII
NOT A HEROINE BUT A WOMAN

CHAPTER XXIII
GREGORY'S FINAL CONCLUSION

CHAPTER XXIV
THE WORM-INFESTED CHESTNUT--GREGORY TELLS THE WORST

CHAPTER XXV
THE OLD HOME IN DANGER--GREGORY RETRIEVES HIMSELF

CHAPTER XXVI
CHANGES IN GREGORY

CHAPTER XXVII
PLEADING FOR LIFE AND LOVE

CHAPTER XXVIII
WHAT A LOVER COULD DO

CHAPTER XXIX
DEEPENING SHADOWS

CHAPTER XXX
KEPT FROM THE EVIL

CHAPTER XXXI
LIVE! LIVE! ANNIE'S APPEAL

CHAPTER XXXII
AT SEA--A MYSTERIOUS PASSENGER

CHAPTER XXXIII
A COLLISION AT SEA--WHAT A CHRISTIAN COULD DO

CHAPTER XXXIV
UNMASKED

CHAPTER XXXV
A CHESTNUT BURR AND A HOME




CHAPTER I

A HERO, BUT NOT HEROIC



"Shall I ever be strong in mind or body again?" said Walter Gregory,
with irritation, as he entered a crowded Broadway omnibus.

The person thus querying so despairingly with himself was a man not
far from thirty years of age, but the lines of care were furrowed so
deeply on his handsome face, that dismal, lowering morning, the first
of October, that he seemed much older. Having wedged himself in
between two burly forms that suggested thrift down town and good cheer
on the avenue, he appears meagre and shrunken in contrast. He is tall
and thin. His face is white and drawn, instead of being ruddy with
health's rich, warm blood. There is scarcely anything remaining to
remind one of the period of youth, so recently vanished; neither is
there the dignity, nor the consciousness of strength, that should come
with maturer years. His heavy, light-colored mustache and pallid face
gave him the aspect of a _blase_ man of the world who had exhausted
himself and life at an age when wisely directed manhood should be just
entering on its richest pleasures.

And such an opinion of him, with some hopeful exceptions and
indications, would be correct. The expression of irritation and self-
disgust still remaining on his face as the stage rumbles down town is
a hopeful sign. His soul at least is not surrounded by a Chinese wall
of conceit. However perverted his nature may be, it is not a shallow
one, and he evidently has a painful sense of the wrongs committed
against it. Though his square jaw and the curve of his lip indicate
firmness, one could not look upon his contracted brow and half-
despairing expression, as he sits oblivious of all surroundings,
without thinking of a ship drifting helplessly and in distress. There
are encouraging possibilities in the fact that from those windows of
the soul, his eyes, a troubled rather than an evil spirit looks out. A
close observer would see at a glance that he was not a good man, but
he might also note that he was not content with being a bad one. There
was little of the rigid pride and sinister hardness or the conceit
often seen on the faces of men of the world who have spent years in
spoiling their manhood; and the sensual phase of coarse dissipation
was quite wanting.

You will find in artificial metropolitan society many men so
emasculated that they are quite vain of being blase--fools that with
conscious superiority smile disdainfully at those still possessing
simple, wholesome tastes for things which they in their indescribable
accent characterize as a "bore."

But Walter Gregory looked like one who had early found the dregs of
evil life very bitter, and his face was like that of nature when
smitten with untimely frosts.

He reached his office at last, and wearily sat down to the routine
work at his desk. Instead of the intent and interested look with which
a young and healthy man would naturally enter on his business, he
showed rather a dogged resolution to work whether he felt like it or
not, and with harsh disregard of his physical weakness.

The world will never cease witnessing the wrongs that men commit
against each other; but perhaps if the wrongs and cruelties that
people inflict on themselves could be summed up the painful aggregate
would be much larger.

As Gregory sat bending over his writing, rather from weakness than
from a stooping habit, his senior partner came in, and was evidently
struck by the appearance of feebleness on the part of the young man.
The unpleasant impression haunted him, for having looked over his
letters he came out of his private office and again glanced uneasily
at the colorless face, which gave evidence that only sheer force of
will was spurring a failing hand and brain to their tasks.

At last Mr. Burnett came and laid his hand on his junior partner's
shoulder, saying, kindly, "Come, Gregory, drop your work. You are ill.
The strain upon you has been too long and severe. The worst is over
now, and we are going to pull through better than I expected. Don't
take the matter so bitterly to heart. I admit myself that the
operation promised well at first. You were misled, and so were we all,
by downright deception. That the swindle was imposed on us through you
was more your misfortune than your fault, and it will make you a
keener business man in the future. You have worked like a galley-slave
all summer to retrieve matters, and have taken no vacation at all. You
must take one now immediately, or you will break down altogether. Go
off to the woods; fish, hunt, follow your fancies; and the bracing
October air will make a new man of you."

"I thank you very much," Gregory began. "I suppose I do need rest. In
a few days, however, I can leave better--"

"No," interrupted Mr. Burnett, with hearty emphasis; "drop everything.
As soon as you finish that letter, be off. Don't show your face here
again till November."

"I thank you for your interest in me," said Gregory, rising. "Indeed,
I believe it would be good economy, for if I don't feel better soon I
shall be of no use here or anywhere else."

"That's it," said old Mr. Burnett, kindly. "Sick and blue, they go
together. Now be off to the woods, and send me some game. I won't
inquire too sharply whether you brought it down with lead or silver."

Gregory soon left the office, and made his arrangements to start on
his trip early the next morning. His purpose was to make a brief visit
to the home of his boyhood and then to go wherever a vagrant fancy
might lead.

The ancestral place was no longer in his family, though he was spared
the pain of seeing it in the hands of strangers. It had been purchased
a few years since by an old and very dear friend of his deceased
father--a gentleman named Walton. It had so happened that Gregory had
rarely met his father's friend, who had been engaged in business at
the West, and of his family he knew little more than that there were
two daughters--one who had married a Southern gentleman, and the
other, much younger, living with her father. Gregory had been much
abroad as the European agent of his house, and it was during such
absence that Mr. Walton had retired from business and purchased the
old Gregory homestead. The young man felt sure, however, that though a
comparative stranger himself, he would, for his father's sake, be a
welcome visitor at the home of his childhood. At any rate he
determined to test the matter, for the moment he found himself at
liberty he felt a strange and an eager longing to revisit the scenes
of the happiest portion of his life. He had meant to pay such a visit
in the previous spring, soon after his arrival from Europe, when his
elation at being made partner in the house which he so long had served
as clerk reached almost the point of happiness.

Among those who had welcomed him back was a man a little older than
himself, who, in his absence, had become known as a successful
operator in Wall Street. They had been intimate before Gregory went
abroad, and the friendship was renewed at once. Gregory prided himself
on his knowledge of the world, and was not by nature inclined to trust
hastily; and yet he did place implicit confidence in Mr. Hunting,
regarding him as a better man than himself. Hunting was an active
member of a church, and his name figured on several charities, while
Gregory had almost ceased to attend any place of worship, and spent
his money selfishly upon himself, or foolishly upon others, giving
only as prompted by impulse. Indeed, his friend had occasionally
ventured to remonstrate with him against his tendencies to
dissipation, saying that a young man of his prospects should not
damage them for the sake of passing gratification. Gregory felt the
force of these words, for he was exceedingly ambitious, and bent upon
accumulating wealth and at the same time making a brilliant figure in
business circles.

In addition to the ordinary motives which would naturally lead him to
desire such success he was incited by a secret one more powerful than
all the others combined.

Before going abroad, when but a clerk, he had been the favored suitor
of a beautiful and accomplished girl. Indeed the understanding between
them almost amounted to an engagement, and he revelled in a
passionate, romantic attachment at an age when the blood is hot, the
heart enthusiastic, and when not a particle of worldly cynicism and
adverse experience had taught him to moderate his rose-hued
anticipations. She seemed the embodiment of goodness, as well as
beauty and grace, for did she not repress his tendencies to be a
little fast? Did she not, with more than sisterly solicitude, counsel
him to shun certain florid youth whose premature blossoming indicated
that they might early run to seed? and did he not, in consequence, cut
Guy Bonner, the jolliest fellow he had ever known? Indeed, more than
all, had she not ventured to talk religion to him, so that for a time
he had regarded himself as in a very "hopeful frame of mind," and had
been inclined to take a mission-class in the same school with herself?
How lovely and angelic she had once appeared, stooping in elegant
costume from her social height to the little ragamuffins of the street
that sat gaping around her! As he gazed adoringly, while waiting to be
her resort home, his young heart had swelled with the impulse to be
good and noble also.

But one day she caused him to drop out of his roseate clouds. With
much sweetness and resignation, and with appropriate sighs, she said
that "it was her painful duty to tell him that their intimacy must
cease--that she had received an offer from Mr. Grobb, and that her
parents, and indeed all her friends, had urged her to accept him. She
had been led to feel that they with their riper experience and
knowledge of life knew what was best for her, and therefore she had
yielded to their wishes and accepted the offer." She was beginning to
add, in a sentimental tone, that "had she only followed the impulses
of her heart"--when Gregory, at first too stunned and bewildered to
speak, recovered his senses and interrupted with, "Please don't speak
of your heart, Miss Bently. Why mention so small a matter? Go on with
your little transaction by all means. I am a business man myself, and
can readily understand your motives;" and he turned on his heel and
strode from the room, leaving Miss Bently ill at ease.

The young man's first expression of having received, as it were, a
staggering blow, and then his bitter satire, made an impression on her
cotton-and-wool nature, and for a time her proceedings with Mr. Grobb
did not wear the aspect in which they had been presented by her
friends. But her little world so confidently and continually
reiterated the statement that she was making a "splendid match" that
her qualms vanished, and she felt that what all asserted must be true,
and so entered on the gorgeous preparations as if the wedding were all
and the man nothing.

It is the custom to satirize or bitterly denounce such girls, but
perhaps they are rather to be pitied. They are the natural products of
artificial society, wherein wealth, show, and the social eminence
which is based on dress and establishment are held out as the prizes
of a woman's existence. The only wonder is that so much heart and
truth assert themselves among those who all their life have seen
wealth practically worshipped, and worth, ungilded, generally ignored.
From ultra-fashionable circles a girl is often seen developing into
the noblest womanhood; while narrow, mercenary natures are often found
where far better things might have been expected. If such girls as
Miss Bently could only be kept in quiet obscurity, like a bale of
merchandise, till wanted, it would not be so bad; but some of them are
such brilliant belles and incorrigible coquettes that they are like
certain Wall Street speculators who threaten to "break the street" in
making their own fortunes.

Some natures can receive a fair lady's refusal with a good-natured
shrug, as merely the result of a bad venture, and hope for better luck
next time; but to a greater number this is impossible, especially if
they are played with and deceived. Walter Gregory pre-eminently
belonged to the latter class. In early life he had breathed the very
atmosphere of truth, and his tendency to sincerity ever remained the
best element of his character. His was one of those fine-fibred
natures most susceptible to injury. Up to this time his indiscretions
had only been those of foolish, thoughtless youth, while aiming at the
standard of manliness and style in vogue among his city companions.
High-spirited young fellows, not early braced by principle, must pass
through this phase as in babyhood they cut their teeth. If there is
true mettle in them, and they are not perverted by exceptionally bad
influences, they outgrow the idea that to be fast and foolish is to be
men as naturally as they do their roundabouts.

What a man does is often not so important as the state of the heart
that prompts the act. In common parlance, Walter was as good-hearted a
fellow as ever breathed. Indeed, he was really inclined to noble
enthusiasms.

If Miss Bently had been what he imagined her, she might have led him
swiftly and surely into true manhood; but she was only an adept at
pretty seeming with him, and when Mr. Grobb offered her his vast
wealth, with himself as the only incumbrance, she acted promptly and
characteristically.

But perhaps it can be safely said that in no den of iniquity in the
city could Walter Gregory have received such moral injury as poisoned
his very soul when, in Mr. Bently's elegant and respectable parlor,
the "angel" he worshipped "explained how she was situated," and from a
"sense of duty" stated her purpose to yield to the wishes of her
friends. Gregory had often seen Mr. Grobb, but had given him no
thought, supposing him some elderly relative of the family. That this
was the accepted suitor of the girl who had, with tender, meaning
glances, sung for him sentimental ballads, who had sweetly talked to
him of religion and mission work, seemed a monstrous perversion. Call
it unjust, unreasonable, if you will, yet it was the most natural
thing in the world for one possessing his sensitive, intense nature to
pass into harsh, bitter cynicism, and to regard Miss Bently as a
typical girl of the period.

A young man is far on the road to evil when he loses faith in woman.
During the formative period of character she is, of earthly
influences, the most potent in making or marring him. A kind refusal,
where no false encouragement has been given, often does a man good,
and leaves his faith intact; but an experience similar to that of
young Gregory is like putting into a fountain that which may stain and
embitter the waters of the stream in all its length.

At the early age of twenty-two he became what is usually understood by
the phrase "a man of the world." Still his moral nature could not sink
into the depths without many a bitter outcry against its wrongs. It
was with no slight effort that he drowned the memory of his early home
and its good influences. During the first two or three years he
occasionally had periods of passionate remorse, and made spasmodic
efforts toward better things. But they were made in human strength,
and in view of the penalties of evil, rather than because he was
enamored of the right. Some special temptation would soon sweep him
away into the old life, and thus, because of his broken promises and
repeated failures, he at last lost faith in himself also, and lacked
that self-respect without which no man can cope successfully with his
evil nature and an evil world.

Living in a boarding-house, with none of the restraints and purifying
influences of a good home, he formed intimacies with brilliant but
unscrupulous young men. The theatre became his church, and at last the
code of his fast, fashionable set was that which governed his life. He
avoided gross, vulgar dissipation, both because his nature revolted at
it, and also on account of his purpose to permit nothing to interfere
with his prospects of advancement in business. He meant to show Miss
Bently that she had made a bad business speculation after all. Thus
ambition became the controlling element in his character; and he might
have had a worse one. Moreover, in all his moral debasement he never
lost a decided tendency toward truthfulness and honesty. He would have
starved rather than touch anything that did not belong to him, nor
would he allow himself to deceive in matters of business, and it was
upon these points that he specially prided himself.

Gregory's unusual business ability, coupled with his knowledge of
French and German, led to his being sent abroad as agent of his firm.
Five years of life in the materialistic and sceptical atmosphere of
continental cities confirmed the evil tendencies which were only too
well developed before he left his own land. He became what so many
appear to be in our day, a practical materialist and atheist. Present
life and surroundings, present profit and pleasure, were all in all.
He ceased to recognize the existence of a soul within himself having
distinct needs and interests. His thoughts centred wholly in the
comfort and pleasures of the day and in that which would advance his
ambitious schemes. His scepticism was not intellectual and in
reference to the Bible and its teachings, but practical and in
reference to humanity itself. He believed that with few exceptions men
and women lived for their own profit and pleasure, and that religion
and creeds were matters of custom and fashion, or an accident of
birth. Only the reverence in which religion had been held in his early
home kept him from sharing fully in the contempt which the gentlemen
he met abroad seemed to have for it. He could not altogether despise
his mother's faith, but he regarded her as a gentle enthusiast haunted
by sacred traditions. The companionships which he had formed led him
to believe that unless influenced by some interested motive a liberal-
minded man of the world must of necessity outgrow these things. With
the self-deception of his kind, he thought he was broad and liberal in
his views, when in reality he had lost all distinction between truth
and error, and was narrowing his mind down to things only. Jew or
Gentile, Christian or Pagan, it was becoming all one to him. Men
changed their creeds and religions with other fashions, but all looked
after what they believed to be the main chance, and he proposed to do
the same.

As time passed on, however, he began to admit to himself that it was
strange that in making all things bend to his pleasure he did not
secure more. He wearied of certain things. Stronger excitements were
needed to spur his jaded senses. His bets, his stakes at cards grew
heavier, his pleasures more gross, till a delicate organization so
revolted at its wrongs and so chastised him for excess that he was
deterred from self-gratification in that direction.

Some men's bodies are a "means of grace" to them. Coarse dissipation
is a physical impossibility, or swift suicide in a very painful form.
Young Gregory found that only in the excitements of the mind could he
hope to find continued enjoyment. His ambition to accumulate wealth
and become a brilliant business man most accorded with his tastes and
training, and on these objects he gradually concentrated all his
energies, seeking only in club-rooms and places of fashionable resort
recreation from the strain of business.

He recognized that the best way to advance his own interests was to
serve his employers well; and this he did so effectually that at last
he was made a partner in the business, and, with a sense of something
more like pleasure than he had known for a long time, returned to New
York and entered upon his new duties.

As we have said, among those who warmly greeted and congratulated him,
was Mr. Hunting. They gradually came to spend much time together, and
business and money-getting were their favorite themes. Gregory saw
that his friend was as keen on the track of fortune as himself, and
that he had apparently been much more successful. Mr. Hunting
intimated that after one reached the charmed inner circle Wall Street
was a perfect Eldorado, and seemed to take pains to drop occasional
suggestions as to how an investment shrewdly made by one with his
favored point of observation often secured in a day a larger return
than a year of plodding business.

These remarks were not lost on Gregory, and the wish became very
strong that he might share in some of the splendid "hits" by which his
friend was accumulating so rapidly.

Usually Mr. Hunting was very quiet and self-possessed, but one evening
in May he came into Gregory's rooms in a manner indicating not a
little excitement and elation.

"Gregory!" he exclaimed, "I am going to make my fortune."

"Make your fortune! You are as rich as Croesus now."

"The past will be as nothing. I've struck a mine rather than a vein."

"It's a pity some of your friends could not share in your luck."

"Well, a few can. This is so large, and such a good thing, that I have
concluded to let a few intimates go in with me. Only all must keep
very quiet about it;" and he proposed an operation that seemed certain
of success as he explained it.

Gregory concluded to put into it nearly all he had independent of his
investment in the firm, and also obtained permission to interest his
partners, and to procure an interview between them and Mr. Hunting.

The scheme looked so very plausible that they were drawn into it also;
but Mr. Burnett took Gregory aside and said: "After all, we must place
a great deal of confidence in Mr. Hunting's word in this matter. Are
you satisfied that we can safely do so?"

"I would stake my life on his word in this case," said Gregory,
eagerly, "and I pledge all I have put in the firm on his truth."

This was the last flicker of his old enthusiasm and trust in anybody
or anything, including himself. With almost the skill of genius Mr.
Hunting adroitly, within the limits of the law, swindled them all, and
made a vast profit out of their losses. The transaction was not
generally known, but even some of the hardened gamblers of the street
said "it was too bad."

But the bank-officers with whom Burnett & Co. did business knew about
it, and if it had not been for their lenience and aid the firm would
have failed. As it was, it required a struggle of months to regain the
solid ground of safety.

At first the firm was suspicious of Gregory, and disposed to blame him
very much. But when he proved to them that he had lost his private
means by Hunting's treachery, and insisted on making over to them all
his right and title to the property he had invested with them, they
saw that he was no confederate of the swindler, but that he had
suffered more than any of them.

He had, indeed. He had lost his ambition. The large sum of money that
was to be the basis of the immense fortune he had hoped to amass was
gone. He had greatly prided himself on his business ability, but had
signalized his entrance on his new and responsible position by being
overreached and swindled in a transaction that had impoverished
himself and almost ruined his partners. He grew very misanthropic, and
was quite as bitter against himself as against others. In his
estimation people were either cloaking their evil or had not been
tempted, and he felt after Hunting dropped the mask that he would
never trust any one again.

It may be said, all this is very unreasonable. Yes, it is; but then
people will judge the world by their own experience of it, and some
natures are more easily warped by wrong than others. No logic can cope
with feeling and prejudice. Because of his own misguided life and the
wrong he had received from others, Walter Gregory was no more able to
form a correct estimate of society than one color-blind is to judge of
the tints of flowers. And yet he belonged to that class who claim pre-
eminently to know the world. Because he thought he knew it so well he
hated and despised it, and himself as part of it.

The months that followed his great and sudden downfall dragged their
slow length along. He worked early and late, without thought of
sparing himself. If he could only see what the firm had lost through
him made good, he did not care what became of himself. Why should he?
There was little in the present to interest him, and the future
looked, in his depressed, morbid state, as monotonous and barren as
the sands of a desert. Seemingly, he had exhausted life, and it had
lost all zest for him.

But while his power to enjoy had gone, not so his power to suffer. His
conscience was uneasy, and told him in a vague way that something was
wrong. Reason, or, more correctly speaking, instinct, condemned his
life as a wretched blunder. He had lived for his own enjoyment, and
now, when but half through life, what was there for him to enjoy?

As in increasing weakness he dragged himself to the office on a sultry
September day, the thought occurred to him that the end was nearer
than he expected.

"Let it come," he said, bitterly. "Why should I live?"

The thought of his early home recurred to him with increasing
frequency, and he had a growing desire to visit it before his strength
failed utterly. Therefore it was with a certain melancholy pleasure
that he found himself at liberty, through the kindness of his
partners, to make this visit, and at the season, too, when his boyish
memories of the place, like the foliage, would be most varied and
vivid.




CHAPTER II

OPENING A CHESTNUT BURR



If the reader could imagine a man visiting his own grave, he might
obtain some idea of Walter Gregory's feelings as he took the boat
which would land him not far from his early home. And yet, so
different was he from the boy who had left that home fifteen years
before, that it was almost the same as if he were visiting the grave
of a brother who had died in youth.

Though the day was mild, a fresh bracing wind blew from the west.
Shielding himself from this on the after-deck, he half reclined, on
account of his weakness, in a position from which he could see the
shores and passing vessels upon the river. The swift gliding motion,
the beautiful and familiar scenery, the sense of freedom from routine
work, and the crisp, pure air, that seemed like a delicate wine, all
combined to form a mystic lever that began to lift his heart out of
the depths of despondency.

A storm had passed away, leaving not a trace. The October sun shone in
undimmed splendor, and all nature appeared to rejoice in its light.
The waves with their silver crests seemed chasing one another in mad
glee. The sailing vessels, as they tacked to and fro across the river
under the stiff western breeze, made the water foam about their blunt
prows, and the white-winged gulls wheeled in graceful circles
overhead. There was a sense of movement and life that was contagious.
Gregory's dull eyes kindled with something like interest, and then he
thought: "The storm lowered over these sunny shores yesterday. The
gloom of night rested upon these waters but a few hours since. Why is
it that nature can smile and be glad the moment the shadow passes and
I cannot? Is there no sunlight for the soul? I seem as if entering a
cave, that grows colder and darker at every step, and no gleam shines
at the further end, indicating that I may pass through it and out into
the light again."

Thus letting his fancy wander at will, at times half-dreaming and
half-waking, he passed the hours that elapsed before the boat touched
at a point in the Highlands of the Hudson, his destination. Making a
better dinner than he had enjoyed for a long time, and feeling
stronger than for weeks before, he started for the place that now, of
all the world, had for him the greatest attraction.

There was no marked change in the foliage as yet, but only a deepening
of color, like a flush on the cheek of beauty. As he was driving along
the familiar road, farm-house and grove, and even tree, rock, and
thicket, began to greet him as with the faces of old friends. At last
he saw, nestling in a wild, picturesque valley, the quaint outline of
his former home. His heart yearned toward it, and he felt that next to
his mother's face no other object could be so welcome.

"Slower, please," he said to the driver.

Though his eyes were moist, and at times dim with tears, not a feature
in the scene escaped him. When near the gateway he sprung out with a
lightness that he would not have believed possible the day before, and
said, "Come for me at five."

For a little time he stood leaning on the gate. Two children were
playing on the lawn, and it almost seemed to him that the elder, a boy
of about ten years, might be himself, and he a passing stranger, who
had merely stopped to look at the pretty scene.

"Oh that I were a boy like that one there! Oh that I were here again
as of old!" he sighed. "How unchanged it all is, and I so changed! It
seems as if the past were mocking me. That must be I there playing
with my little sister. Mother must be sewing in her cheery south room,
and father surely is taking his after-dinner nap in the library. Can
it be that they are all dead save me? and that this is but a beautiful
mirage?"

He felt that he could not meet any one until he became more composed,
and so passed on up the valley. Before turning away he noticed that a
lady come out at the front door. The children joined her, and they
started for a walk.

Looking wistfully on either side, Gregory soon came to a point where
the orchard extended to the road. A well-remembered fall pippin tree
hung its laden boughs over the fence, and the fruit looked so ripe and
golden in the slanting rays of October sunlight that he determined to
try one of the apples and see if it tasted as of old. As he climbed
upon the wall a loose stone fell clattering down and rolled into the
road. He did not notice this, but an old man dozing in the porch of a
little house opposite did. As Gregory reached up his cane to detach
from its spray a great, yellow-cheeked fellow, his hand was arrested,
and he was almost startled off his perch by such a volley of oaths as
shocked even his hardened ears. Turning gingerly around so as not to
lose his footing, he faced this masked battery that had opened so
unexpectedly upon him, and saw a white-haired old man balancing
himself on one crutch and brandishing the other at him.

"Stop knockin' down that wall and fillin! the road with stuns, you--,"
shouted the venerable man, in tones that indicated anything but the
calmness of age. "Let John Walton's apples alone, you--thief. What do
you mean by robbin' in broad daylight, right under a man's nose?"

Gregory saw that he had a character to deal with, and, to divert his
mind from thoughts that were growing too painful, determined to draw
the old man out; so he said, "Is not taking things so openly a rather
honest way of robbing?"

"Git down, I tell yer," cried the guardian of the orchard.

"Suppose 'tis, it's robbin' arter all. So now move on, and none of yer
cussed impudence."

"But you call them John Walton's apples," said Gregory, eating one
with provoking coolness. "What have you got to do with them? and why
should you care?"

"Now look here, stranger, you're an infernal mean cuss to ask such
questions. Ain't John Walton my neighbor? and a good neighbor, too?
D'ye suppose a well-meanin' man like myself would stand by and see a
neighbor robbed? and of all others, John Walton? Don't you know that
robbin' a good man brings bad luck, you thunderin' fool?"

"But I've always had bad luck, so I needn't stop on that account,"
retorted Gregory, from the fence.

"I believe it, and you allers will," vociferated the old man, "and
I'll tell yer why. I know from the cut of yer jib that yer've allers
been eatin' forbidden fruit. If yer lived now a good square life like
'Squire Walton and me, you'd have no reason to complain of yer luck.
If I could get a clip at yer with this crutch I'd give yer suthin'
else to complain of. If yer had any decency yer wouldn't stand there a
jibin' at a lame old man."

Gregory took off his hat with a polite bow and said: "I beg your
pardon; I was under the impression that you were doing the 'cussing.'
I shall come and see you soon, for somehow it does me good to have you
swear at me. I only wish I had as good a friend in the world as Mr.
Walton has in you." With these words he sprung from the fence on the
orchard side, and made his way to the hill behind the Walton
residence, leaving the old man mumbling and muttering in a very
profane manner.

"Like enough it was somebody visitin' at the Walton's, and I've made
a--fool of myself after all. What's worse, that poor little Miss Eulie
will hear I've been swearin' agin, and there'll be another awful
prayin' time. What a cussed old fool I be, to promise to quit
swearin'! I know I can't. What's the good o' stoppin'? It's inside,
and might as well come out. The Lord knows I don't mean no disrespect
to Him. It's only one of my ways. He knows well enough that I'm a good
neighbor, and what's the harm in a little cussin'?" and so the strange
old man talked on to himself in the intervals between long pulls at
his pipe.

By the time Gregory reached the top of the hill his strength was quite
exhausted, and, panting, he sat down on the sunny side of a thicket of
cedars, for the late afternoon was growing chilly. Beneath him lay the
one oasis in a desert world.

With an indescribable blending of pleasure and pain, he found himself
tracing with his eye every well-remembered path, and marking every
familiar object.

Not a breath of air was stirring, and it would seem that Nature was
seeking to impart to his perturbed spirit, full of the restless
movement of city life and the inevitable disquiet of sin, something of
her own calmness and peace. The only sounds he heard seemed a part of
nature's silence,--the tinkle of cowbells, the slumberous monotone of
water as it fell over the dam, the grating notes of a katydid,
rendered hoarse by recent cool nights, in a shady ravine near by, and
a black cricket chirping at the edge of the rock on which he sat--
these were all. And yet the sounds, though not heard for years, seemed
as familiar as the mother's lullaby that puts a child to sleep, and a
delicious sense of restfulness stole into his heart. The world in
which he had so greatly sinned and suffered might be another planet,
it seemed so far away. Could it be that in a few short hours he had
escaped out of the hurry and grind of New York into this sheltered
nook? Why had he not come before? Here was the remedy for soul and
body, if any existed.

Not a person was visible on the place, and it seemed that it might
thus have been awaiting him in all his absence, and that now he had
only to go and take possession.

"So our home in heaven awaits us, mother used to say," he thought,
"while we are such willing exiles from it. I would give all the world
to believe as she did."

He found that the place so inseparably associated with his mother
brought back her teachings, which he had so often tried to forget.

"I wish I might bury myself here, away from the world," he muttered,
"for it has only cheated and lied to me from first to last. Everything
deceived me, and turned out differently from what I expected. These
loved old scenes are true and unchanged, and smile upon me now as when
I was here a happy boy. Would to heaven I might never leave them
again!"

He was startled out of his revery by the sharp bark of a squirrel that
ran chattering and whisking its tail in great excitement from limb to
limb in a clump of chestnuts near. The crackling of a twig betrayed to
Gregory the cause of its alarm, for through an opening in the thicket
he saw the lady who had started out for a walk with the children while
he was leaning on the front gate.

Shrinking further behind the cedars he proposed to reconnoitre a
little before making himself known. He observed that she was attired
in a dark, close-fitting costume suitable for rambling among the
hills. At first he thought that she was pretty, and then that she was
not. His quick, critical eye detected that her features were not
regular, that her profile was not classic. It was only the rich glow
of exercise and the jaunty gypsy hat that had given the first
impression of something like beauty. In her right hand, which was
ungloved, she daintily held, by its short stem, a chestnut burr which
the squirrel in its alarm had dropped, and now, in its own shrill
vernacular, was scolding about so vociferously. She was glancing
around for some means to break it open, and Gregory had scarcely time
to notice her fine dark eyes, when, as if remembering the rock on
which he had been sitting, she advanced toward him with a step so
quick and elastic that he envied her vigor.

Further concealment was now impossible. Therefore with easy politeness
he stepped forward and said: "Let me open the burr for you, Miss
Walton."

She started violently at the sound of his voice, and for a moment
reminded him of a frightened bird on the eve of flight.

"Pardon me for so alarming you," he hastened to say, "and also pardon
a seeming stranger for addressing you informally. My name may not be
unknown to you, although I am in person. It is Walter Gregory."

She had been so startled that she could not immediately recover
herself, and still stood regarding him doubtfully, although with
manner more assured.

"Come," said he, smiling and advancing toward her with the quiet
assurance of a society man. "Let me open the burr for you, and you
shall take its contents in confirmation of what I say. If I find sound
chestnuts in it, let them be a token that I am not misrepresenting
myself. If my test fails, then you may justly ask for better
credentials."

Half smiling, and quite satisfied from his words and appearance in
advance, she extended the burr toward him. But as she did so it parted
from the stem, and would have fallen to the ground had he not, with
his ungloved hand, caught the prickly thing. His hand was as white and
soft as hers, and the sharp spines stung him sorely, yet he permitted
no sign of pain to appear upon his face.

"Ah!" exclaimed Miss Walton, "I fear it hurt you."

He looked up humorously and said, "An augury is a solemn affair, and
no disrespect must be allowed to nature's oracle, which in this case
is a chestnut burr;" and he speedily opened it.

"There!" he said, triumphantly, "what more could you ask? Here are two
solid, plump chestnuts, with only a false, empty form of shell between
them. And here, like the solid nuts, are two people entitled to each
other's acquaintance, with only the false formality of an
introduction, like the empty shell, keeping them apart. Since no
mutual friend is present to introduce us, has not Nature taken upon
herself the office through this chestnut burr? But perhaps I should
further Nature's efforts by giving you my card."

As Miss Walton regained composure, she soon proved to Gregory that she
was not merely a shy country girl. At the close of his rather long and
fanciful speech she said, genially, extending her hand: "My love for
Nature is unbounded, Mr. Gregory, and the introduction you have so
happily obtained from her weighs more with me than any other that you
could have had. Let me welcome you to your own home, as it were. But
see, your hand is bleeding, where the burr pricked you. Is this an
omen, also? If our first meeting brings bloody wounds, I fear you will
shun further acquaintance."

There was a spice of bitterness in Gregory's laugh, as he said:
"People don't often die of such wounds. But it is a little odd that in
taking your hand I should stain it with my blood. I am inclined to
drop the burr after all, and base all my claims on my practical
visiting card. You may come to look upon the burr as a warning, rather
than an introduction, and order me off the premises."

"It was an omen of your choice," replied Miss Walton, laughing. "You
have more to fear from it than I. If you will venture to stay you
shall be most welcome. Indeed, it almost seems that you have a better
right here than we, and your name has been so often heard that you are
no stranger. I know father will be very glad to see you, for he often
speaks of you, and wonders if you are like his old friend, the dearest
one, I think, he ever had. How long have you been here?"

"Well, I have been wandering about the place much of the afternoon."

"I need not ask you why you did not come in at once," she said,
gently. "Seeing your old home after so long an absence is like meeting
some dear friend. One naturally wishes to be alone for a time. But now
I hope you will go home with me."

He was surprised at her delicate appreciation of his feelings, and
gave her a quick pleased look, saying: "Nature has taught you to be a
good interpreter, Miss Walton. You are right. The memories of the old
place were a little too much for me at first, and I did not know that
those whom I met would appreciate my feelings so delicately."

The two children now appeared, running around the brow of the hill,
the boy calling in great excitement: "Aunt Annie, oh! Aunt Annie,
we've found a squirrel-hole. We chased him into it. Can't Susie sit by
the hole and keep him in, while I go for a spade to dig him out?"

Then they saw the unlooked-for stranger, who at once rivalled the
squirrel-hole in interest, and with slower steps, and curious glances,
they approached.

"These are my sister's children," said Miss Walton, simply.

Gregory kindly took the boy by the hand, and kissed the little girl,
who looked half-frightened and half-pleased, as a very little maiden
should, while she rubbed the cheek that his mustache had tickled.

"Do you think we can get the squirrel, Aunt Annie?" again asked the
boy.

"Do you think it would be right, Johnny, if you could?" she asked.
"Suppose you were the squirrel in the hole, and one big monster, like
Susie here, should sit by the door, and you heard another big monster
say, 'Wait till I get something to tear open his house with.' How
would you feel?"

"I won't keep the poor little squirrel in his hole," said sympathetic
Susie.

But the boy's brow contracted, and he said, sternly: "Squirrels are
nothing but robbers, and their holes are robbers' dens. They take half
our nuts every year."

Miss Walton looked significantly at Gregory, and laughed, saying,
"There it is, you see, man and woman."

A momentary shadow crossed his face, and he said, abruptly, "I hope
Susie will be as kindly in coming years."

Miss Walton looked at him curiously as they began to descend the hill
to the house. She evidently did not understand his remark, coupled
with his manner.

As they approached the barn there was great excitement among the
poultry. Passing round its angle, Walter saw coming toward them a
quaint-looking old woman, in what appeared to be a white scalloped
nightcap. She had a pan of corn in her hand, and was attended by a
retinue that would have rejoiced an epicure's heart. Chickens, ducks,
geese, turkeys, and Guinea fowls thronged around and after her with an
intentness on the grain and a disregard of one another's rights and
feelings that reminded one unpleasantly of political aspirants just
after a Presidential election. Johnny made a dive for an old gobbler,
and the great red-wattled bird dropped his wings and seemed inclined
to show fight, but a reluctant armistice was brought about between
them by the old woman screaming: "Maister Johnny, an' ye let not the
fowls alone ye'll ha' na apples roast the night."

Susie clung timidly to her aunty's side as they passed through these
clamorous candidates for holiday honors, and the young lady said,
kindly, "You have a large family to look after, Zibbie, but I'm afraid
we'll lessen it every day now."

"Indeed, an' ye will, and it goes agin the grain to wring the necks of
them that I've nursed from the shell," said the old woman, rather
sharply.

"It must be a great trial to your feelings," said Miss Walton,
laughing; "but what would you have us do with them, Zibbie? You don't
need them all for pets."

Before Zibbie could answer, an old gentleman in a low buggy drove into
the large door-yard, and the children bounded toward him, screaming,
"Grandpa."

A colored man took the horse, and Mr. Walton, with a briskness that
one would not expect at his advanced age, came toward them.

He was a noble-looking old man, with hair and beard as white as snow,
and with the stately manners of the old school. When he learned who
Gregory was he greeted him with a cordiality that was so genuine as to
compel the cynical man of the world to feel its truth.

Mr. Walton's eyes were turned so often and wistfully on his face that
Gregory was embarrassed.

"I was looking for my friend," said the old gentleman, in a husky
voice, turning hastily away to hide his feeling. "You strongly remind
me of him; and yet--" But he never finished the sentence.

Gregory well understood the "and yet," and in bitterness of soul
remembered that his father had been a good man, but that the impress
of goodness could not rest on his face.

He had now grown very weary, and gave evidence of it.

"Mr. Gregory, you look ill," said Miss Walton, hastily.

"I am not well," he said, "and have not been for a long time. Perhaps
I am going beyond my strength to-day."

In a moment they were all solicitude. The driver, who then appeared
according to his instructions, was posted back to the hotel for Mr.
Gregory's luggage, Mr. Walton saying, with hearty emphasis that
removed every scruple, "This must be your home, sir, as long as you
can remain with us, as truly as ever it was."

A little later he found himself in the "spare room," on whose state he
had rarely intruded when a boy. Jeff, the colored man, had kindled a
cheery wood fire on the ample hearth, and, too exhausted even to
think, Gregory sank back in a great easy-chair with the blessed sense
of the storm-tossed on reaching a quiet haven.




CHAPTER III

MORBID BROODING



To the millions who are suffering in mind or body there certainly come
in this world moments of repose, when pain ceases; and the respite
seems so delicious in contrast that it may well suggest the "rest that
remaineth." Thinking of neither the past nor the future, Gregory for a
little time gave himself up to the sense of present and luxurious
comfort. With closed eyes and mind almost as quiet as his motionless
body, he let the moments pass, feeling dimly that he would ask no
better heaven than the eternal continuance of this painless, half-
dreaming lethargy.

He was soon aroused, however, by a knocking at the door, and a middle-
aged servant placed before him a tempting plate of Albert biscuit and
a glass of home-made currant wine of indefinite age. The quaint and
dainty little lunch caught his appetite as exactly as if manna had
fallen adapted to his need; but it soon stimulated him out of his
condition of partial non-existence. With returning consciousness of
the necessity of living and acting came the strong desire to spend as
much of his vacation as possible in his old home, and he determined to
avail himself of Mr. Walton's invitation to the utmost limit that
etiquette would permit.

His awakened mind gave but little thought to his entertainers, and he
did not anticipate much pleasure from their society. He was satisfied
that they were refined, cultivated people, with whom he could be as
much at ease as would be possible in any companionship, but he hoped
and proposed to spend the most of his time alone in wandering amid old
scenes and brooding over the past. The morbid mind is ever full of
unnatural contradictions, and he found a melancholy pleasure in
shutting his eyes to the future and recalling the time when he had
been happy and hopeful. In his egotism he found more that interested
him in his past and vanished self than in the surrounding world. Evil
and ill-health had so enfeebled his body, narrowed his mind, and
blurred the future, that his best solace seemed a vain and sentimental
recalling of the crude yet comparatively happy period of childhood.

This is sorry progress. A man must indeed have lived radically wrong
when he looks backward for the best of his life. Gray-haired Mr.
Walton was looking forward. Gregory's habit of self-pleasing--of
acting according to his mood--was too deeply seated to permit even the
thought of returning the hospitality he hoped to enjoy by a cordial
effort on his part to prove himself an agreeable guest. Polite he ever
would be, for he had the instincts and training of a gentleman, in
society's interpretation of the word, but he had lost the power to
feel a generous solicitude for the feelings and happiness of others.
Indeed, he rather took a cynical pleasure in discovering defects in
the character of those around him, and in learning that their seeming
enjoyment of life was but hollow and partial. Conscious of being evil
himself, he liked to think others were not much better, or would not
be if tempted. Therefore, with a gloomy scepticism, he questioned all
the seeming happiness and goodness he saw. "It is either unreal or
untried," he was wont to say bitterly.

About seven o'clock, Hannah, the waitress, again appeared, saying:
"Supper is ready, but the ladies beg you will not come down unless you
feel able. I can bring up your tea if you wish."

Thinking first and only of self, he at once decided not to go down. He
felt sufficiently rested and revived, but was in no mood for
commonplace talk to comparative strangers. His cosey chair, glowing
fire, and listless ease were much better than noisy children,
inquisitive ladies, and the unconscious reproach of Mr. Walton's face,
as he would look in vain for the lineaments of his lost friend.
Therefore he said, suavely: "Please say to the ladies that I am so
wearied that I should make but a dull companion, and so for their
sakes, as well as my own, had better not leave my room this evening."

It is the perfection of art in selfishness to make it appear as if you
were thinking only of others. This was the design of Walter's polite
message. Soon a bit of tender steak, a roast potato, tea, and toast
were smoking appetizingly beside him, and he congratulated himself
that he had escaped the bore of company for one evening.

Notwithstanding his misanthropy and cherished desolation the supper
was so inviting that he was tempted to partake of it heartily. Then
incasing himself in his ample dressing-gown he placed his slippered
feet on the fender before a cheery fire, lighted a choice Havana, and
proceeded to be miserable after the fashion that indulged misery often
affects.

Hannah quietly removed the tea-tray, and Mr. Walton came up and
courteously inquired if there was anything that would add to his
guest's comfort.

"After a few hours of rest and quiet I hope I shall be able to make a
better return for your hospitality," Gregory rejoined, with equal
politeness.

"Oh, do not feel under any obligation to exert yourself," said kind
Mr. Walton. "In order to derive full benefit from your vacation, you
must simply rest and follow your moods."

This view of the case suited Gregory exactly, and the prospect of a
visit at his old home grew still more inviting. When he was left
alone, he gave himself up wholly to the memories of the past.

At first it was with a pleasurable pain that he recalled his former
life. With an imagination naturally strong he lived it all over again,
from the date of his first recollections. In the curling flames and
glowing coals on the hearth a panorama passed before him. He saw a
joyous child, a light-hearted boy, and a sanguine youth, with the
shifting and familiar scenery of well-remembered experience. Time
softened the pictures, and the harsh, rough outlines which exist in
every truthful portraiture of life were lost in the haze of distance.
The gentle but steady light of mother love, and through her a pale,
half-recognized reflection of the love of God, illumined all those
years; and his father's strong, quiet affection made a background
anything but dark. He had been naturally what is termed a very good
boy, full of generous impulses. There had been no lack of ordinary
waywardness or of the faults of youth, but they showed a tendency to
yield readily to the correcting influence of love. Good impulses,
however, are not principles, and may give way to stronger impulses of
evil. If the influences of his early home had alone followed him, he
would not now be moodily recalling the past as the exiled convict
might watch the shores of his native land recede.

And then, as in his prolonged revery the fire burned low, and the
ruddy coals turned to ashes, the past faded into distance, and his
present life, dull and leaden, rose before him, and from regretful
memories that were not wholly painful he passed to that bitterness of
feeling which ever comes when hope is giving place to despair.

The fire flickered out and died, his head drooped lower and lower,
while the brooding frown upon his brow darkened almost into a scowl.
Outwardly he made a sad picture for a young man in the prime of life,
but to Him who looks at the attitude of the soul, what but unutterable
love kept him from appearing absolutely revolting?

Suddenly, like light breaking into a vault a few notes of prelude were
struck upon the piano in the parlor below, and a sweet voice, softened
by distance sung:

     "Rock of ages, cleft for me,
      let me hide myself in thee,"

How often he had heard the familiar words and music in that same home!
They seemed to crown and complete all the memories of the place, but
they reminded him more clearly than ever before that its most
inseparable associations were holy, hopeful, and suggestive of a faith
that he seemed to have lost as utterly as if it had been a gem dropped
into the ocean.

He had lived in foreign lands far from his birthplace, but the purpose
to return ever dwelt pleasurably in his mind. But how could he cross
the gulf that yawned between him and the faith of his childhood? Was
there really anything beyond that gulf save what the credulous
imagination had created? Instinctively he felt that there was, for he
was honest enough with himself to remember that his scepticism was the
result of an evil life and the influence of an unbelieving world,
rather than the outcome of patient investigation. The wish was father
to the thought.

Yet sweet, unfaltering, and clear as the voice of faith ever should
be, the hymn went forward in the room below, his memory supplying the
well-known words that were lost from remoteness:--

     "When mine eyelids close in death,
      When I soar to worlds unknown."

"Oh, when!" he exclaimed, bitterly. "What shall be my experience then?
If I continue to fail in health as I have of late I shall know
cursedly soon. That must be Miss Walton singing. Though she does not
realize it, to me this is almost as cruel mockery as if an angel sang
at the gates of hell."

The music ceased, and the monotone of one reading followed.

"Family prayers as of old," he muttered. "How everything conspires to-
day to bring my home-life back again! and yet there is a fatal lack of
something that is harder to endure than the absence of my own kindred
and vanished youth. I doubt whether I can stay here long after all.
Will not the mocking fable of Tantalus be repeated constantly, as I
see others drinking daily at a fountain which though apparently so
near is ever beyond my reach?"

Shivering with the chill of the night and the deeper chill at heart,
he retired to troubled sleep.




CHAPTER IV

HOW MISS WALTON MANAGED PEOPLE



Rest, and the sunny light and bracing air of the following morning,
banished much of Gregory's moodiness, and he descended the stairs
proposing to dismiss painful thoughts and get what comfort and
semblance of enjoyment he could out of the passing hours. Mr. Walton
met him cordially--indeed with almost fatherly solicitude--and led him
at once to the dining-room, where an inviting breakfast awaited them.
Miss Walton also was genial, and introduced Miss Eulalia Morton, a
maiden sister of her mother. Miss Eulie, as she was familiarly called,
was a pale, delicate little lady, with a face sweetened rather than
hardened and imbittered by time. If, as some believe, the flesh and
the spirit, the soul and the body, are ever at variance, she gave the
impression at first glance that the body was getting the worst of the
conflict. But in truth the faintest thoughts of strife seemed to have
no association with her whatever. She appeared so light and aerial
that one could imagine her flying over the rough places of life, and
vanishing when any one opposed her.

Miss Walton reversed all this, for she was decidedly substantial. She
was of only medium height, but a fine figure made her appear taller
than she was. She immediately gave the impression of power and reserve
force. You felt this in her quick, elastic step, saw it in her decided
though not abrupt movements, and heard it in her tone. Even the
nonchalant Mr. Gregory could not ignore her in his customary polite
manner, though quiet refinement and peculiar unobtrusiveness seemed
her characteristics. She won attention, not because she sought it, nor
on the ground of eccentricities, but because of her intense vitality.
From her dark eyes a close observer might catch glimpses of a quick,
active mind, an eager spirit, and--well, perhaps a passionate temper.
Though chastened and subdued, she ever gave the impression of power to
those who came to know her well. In certain ways, as they interpreted
her, people acknowledged this force of character. Some spoke of her as
very lively, others as exceedingly energetic and willing to enter on
any good work. Some thought her ambitious, else why was she so
prominent in church matters, and so ready to visit the sick and poor?
They could explain this in but one way. And some looked knowingly at
each other and said: "I wonder if she is always as smiling and sweet
as when in society;" and then followed shaking of heads which
intimated, "Look out for sudden gusts."

Again, as in simple morning wrapper she turned to greet Gregory, she
gave him the impression of something like beauty. But his taste,
rendered critical by much observation both at home and abroad, at once
told him that he was mistaken.

"The expression is well enough," he thought, "but she has not a single
perfect feature--not one that an artist would copy, except perhaps the
eyes, and even they are not soft and Madonna-like."

He had a sybarite's eye for beauty, and an intense admiration for it.
At the same time he was too intellectual to be satisfied with the mere
sensuous type. And yet, when he decided that a woman was not pretty,
she ceased to interest him. His exacting taste required no small
degree of outward perfection crowned by ready wit and society polish.
With those so endowed he had frequently amused himself in New York and
Paris by a passing flirtation since the politic Miss Bently had made
him a sceptic in regard to women. All his intercourse with society had
confirmed his cynicism. The most beautiful and brilliant in the
drawing-rooms were seldom the best. He flattered them to their faces
and sneered at them in his heart. Therefore his attentions were merely
of a nature to excite their vanity, stimulated by much incense from
other sources. He saw this plainly manifested trait, which he
contributed to develop, and despised it. He also saw that many were as
eager for a good match as ever the adored Miss Bently had been, and
that, while they liked his compliments, they cared not for him. Why
should they? Insincere and selfish himself, why should he expect to
awaken better feelings on the part of those who were anything but
unsophisticated, and from knowledge of the world could gauge him at
his true worth? Not even a sentimental girl would show her heart to
such a man. And yet with the blind egotism of selfishness he smiled
grimly at their apparent heartlessness and said, "Such is woman."

At the same time it must in justice be said that he despised men in
general quite as sincerely. "Human nature is wretched stuff," had come
to be the first article in his creed.

In regard to Miss Walton he concluded: "She is a goodish girl, more of
a lady than the average, pious and orthodox, an excellent housekeeper,
and a great comfort to her father, no doubt. She is safe from her very
plainness, though confident, of course, that she could resist
temptation and be a saint under all circumstances;" and he dismissed
her from his mind with a sort of inward groan and protest against the
necessity of making himself agreeable to her during his visit.

He did not think it worth while to disguise his face as he made these
brief critical observations, and quick-witted Annie gathered something
of the drift of his thoughts, as she stole a few glances at him from
behind the coffee-urn. It piqued her pride a little, and she was
disappointed in him, for she had hoped for a pleasant addition to
their society for a time. But she was so supremely indifferent to him,
and had so much to fill her thoughts and days, that his slight promise
to prove an agreeable visitor caused but momentary annoyance. Yet the
glimmer of a smile flitted across her face as she thought: "He may
find himself slightly mistaken in me, after all. His face seems to
say, 'No doubt she is a good young woman, and well enough for this
slow country place, but she has no beauty, no style.' I think I can
manage to disturb the even current of his vanity, if his visit is long
enough, and he shall learn at least that I shall not gape admiringly
at his artificial metropolitan airs."

Her manner toward Gregory remained full of kindness and grace, but she
made no effort to secure his attention and engage him in conversation,
as he had feared she would do. She acted as if she were accustomed to
see such persons as himself at her father's breakfast-table every
morning; and, though habitually wrapped up in his own personality, he
soon became dimly conscious that her course toward him was not what he
had expected.

Miss Eulie was all solicitude in view of his character of invalid; and
the children looked at him with curious eyes and growing
disapprobation. There was nothing in him to secure their instinctive
friendship, and he made no effort to win their sympathies.

The morning meal began with a reverent looking to heaven for God's
blessing on the gifts which were acknowledged as coming from Him; and
even Gregory was compelled to admit that the brief rite did not appear
like a careless signing of the cross, or a shrivelled form from which
spirit and meaning had departed, but a sincere expression of loving
trust and gratitude.

During the greater part of the meal, Mr. Walton dwelt on the
circumstances that had led to his friendship with Gregory's father,
but at last the conversation flagged a little, since the young man
made so slight effort to maintain it.

Suddenly Mr. Walton turned to his daughter and said, "By the way,
Annie, you have not told me where you found Mr. Gregory, for my
impression is that you brought him down from the hills."

"I was about to say that I found him in a chestnut burr," replied
Annie, with a twinkle in her eye. "At least I found a stranger by the
cedar thicket, and he proved from a chestnut burr who he was, and his
right to acquaintance, with a better logic than I supposed him capable
of."

"Indeed?" asked Gregory, quickly, feeling the prick of her last words;
"on what grounds were you led to estimate my logic so slightingly?"

"On merely general grounds; but you see I am open to all evidence in
your favor. City life no doubt has great advantages, but it also has
greater drawbacks."

"What are they?"

"I cannot think of them all now. Suffice it to say that if you had
always lived in the city you could not have interpreted a chestnut
burr so gracefully. Many there seem to forget Nature's lore."

"But may they not learn other things more valuable?"

Miss Walton shook her head, and said, with a laugh: "An ignorant
exhorter once stated to his little schoolhouse audience that Paul was
brought up at the foot of the hill Gamaliel. I almost wish he were
right, for I should have had more confidence in the teachings of the
hill than in those of the narrow-minded Jewish Rabbi."

"And yet you regard Paul as the very chief of the apostles."

"He became such after he was taught of Him who teaches through the
hills and nature generally."

"My daughter is an enthusiast for nature," remarked Mr. Walton.

"If the people are the same as when I was here a boy, the hills have
not taught the majority very much," said Gregory, with a French shrug.

"Many of them have a better wisdom than you think," answered Annie,
quietly.

"In what does it consist?"

"Well, for one thing they know how to enjoy life and add to the
enjoyment of others."

Gregory looked at her keenly for a moment, but saw nothing to lead him
to think that she was speaking on other than general principles; but
he said, a little moodily, as they rose from the table, "That
certainly is a better wisdom than is usually attained in either city
or country."

"It is not our custom to make company of our friends," said Mr.
Walton, cordially. "We hope you will feel completely at home, and come
and go as you like, and do just what you find agreeable. We dine at
two, and have an early supper on account of the children. There are
one or two fair saddle horses on the place, but if you do not feel
strong enough to ride, Annie can drive you out, and I assure you she
is at home in the management of a horse."

"Yes, indeed," echoed the little boy. "Aunt Annie can manage anything
or anybody."

"That is a remarkable power," said Gregory, with an amused look and a
side glance at the young girl. "How does she do it?"

"Oh, I don't know," replied the boy; "she makes them love her, and
then they want to do as she says."

A momentary wrathful gleam shot from Annie's eyes at her indiscreet
little champion, but with heightened color she joined in the laugh
that followed.

Gregory had the ill grace to say with a sort of mocking gallantry, as
he bowed himself out, "It must be delightful to be managed on such
terms."




CHAPTER V

WAS IT AN ACCIDENT?



Putting on a light overcoat, for the morning air was sharp and
bracing, Gregory soon found himself in the old square garden. Though
its glory was decidedly on the wane, it was as yet unnipped by the
frost It had a neatness and an order of its own that were quite unlike
those where nature is in entire subordination to art. Indeed it looked
very much as he remembered it in the past, and he welcomed its
unchanged aspect. He strolled to many other remembered boyish haunts,
and it seemed that the very lichens and mosses grew in the same places
as of old, and that nature had stood still and awaited his return.

And yet every familiar object chided him for being so changed, and he
began to find more of pain than pleasure as this contrast between what
he had been and what he might have been was constantly forced upon
him.

"Oh that I had never left this place!" he exclaimed, bitterly: "It
would have been better to stay here and drudge as a day laborer. What
has that career out in the world to which I looked forward so ardently
amounted to? The present is disappointment and self-disgust, the
future an indefinite region of fears and forebodings, and even the
happy past is becoming a bitter mockery by reminding me of what can
never be again."

Wearied and despondent, he moodily returned to the house and threw
himself on a lounge in the parlor. A smouldering wood fire upon the
hearth softened the air to summer temperature. The heat was grateful
to his chilled, bloodless body, and gave him a luxurious sense of
physical comfort, and he muttered: "I had about resolved to leave this
place with its memories that are growing into torment, but I suppose
it would be the same anywhere else. I am too weak and ill to face new
scenes and discomfort. A little animal enjoyment and bodily respite
from pain seem about all that is left to me of existence, and I think
I can find these here better than elsewhere. If I am expected,
however, to fall under the management of the daughter of the house on
the terms blurted out by that fidgety nephew of hers, I will fly for
my life. A plague on him! His restlessness makes me nervous! If I
could endure a child at all, the blue-eyed little girl would make a
pretty toy."

Sounds from the sitting-room behind the parlor now caught his
attention, and listening he soon became aware that Miss Walton was
teaching the children. "She has just the voice for a 'schoolmarm,'" he
thought--"quick, clear-cut, and decided."

If he had not given way to unreasonable prejudice he might also have
noted that there was nothing harsh or querulous in it.

"With her management and love of nature, she doubtless thinks herself
the personification of goodness. I suppose I shall be well lectured
before I get away. I had a foretaste of it this morning. 'Drawbacks of
city life,' forsooth! She no doubt regards me as a result of these
disadvantages. But if she should come to deem it her mission to
convert or reform me, then will be lost my small remnant of peace and
comfort."

But weakness and weariness soon inclined him to sleep. Miss Walton's
voice sounded far away. Then it passed into his dream as that of Miss
Bently chiding him affectedly for his wayward tendencies; again it was
explaining that conscientious young lady's "sense of duty" in view of
Mr. Grobb's offer, and even in his sleep his face darkened with pain
and wrath.

Just then, school hours being over, Miss Walton came into the parlor.
For a moment, as she stood by the fire, she did not notice its
unconscious occupant. Then, seeing him, she was about to leave the
room noiselessly, when the expression of his face arrested her steps.

If Annie Walton's eyes suggested the probability of "sudden gusts,"
they also at times announced a warm, kind heart, for as she looked at
him now her face instantly softened to pity.

"Good he is not," she thought, "but he evidently suffers in his evil.
Something is blighting his life, and what can blight a life save evil?
Perhaps I had better change my proposed crusade against his vanity and
cynicism to a kind, sisterly effort toward making him a better and
therefore a happier man. It will soon come out in conversation that I
have long been the same as engaged to another, and this will relieve
me of absurd suspicions of designs upon him. If I could win a friendly
confidence on his part, I'm sure I could tell him some wholesome
truths, for even an enemy could scarcely look on that face without
relenting."

There was nothing slow or cumbrous about Annie. These thoughts had
flashed through her mind during the brief moment in which her eyes
softened from surprise into sympathy as they caught the expression of
Gregory's face. Then, fearing to disturb him, with silent tread she
passed out to her wonted morning duties.

How seemingly accidental was that visit to the parlor! Its motive
indefinite and forgotten. Apparently it was but a trivial episode of
an uneventful day, involving no greater catastrophe than the momentary
rousing of a sleeper who would doze again. But what day can we with
certainty call uneventful? and what episode trivial? Those half-
aimless, purposeless steps of Annie Walton into the quiet parlor might
lead to results that would radically change the endless future of
several lives.

In her womanly, pitying nature, had not God sent His angel? If a
viewless "ministering spirit," as the sinful man's appointed guardian,
was present, as many believe is the case with every one, how truly he
must have welcomed this unselfish human companionship in his loving
labor to save life; for only they who rescue from sin truly save life.

And yet the sleeper, even in his dreams, was evidently at war with
himself, the world, and God. He was an example of the truth that good
comes from without and not from within us. It is heaven stooping to
men; heaven's messengers sent to us; truth quickened in our minds by
heavenly influence, even as sunlight and rain awaken into beautiful
life the seeds hidden in the soil; and, above all, impulses direct
from God, that steal into our hearts as the south wind penetrates ice-
bound gardens in spring.

But, alas! multitudes like Walter Gregory blind their eyes and steel
their hearts against such influences. God and those allied to Him
longed to bring the healing of faith and love to his wounded spirit.
He scowled back his answer, and, as he then felt, would shrink with
morbid sensitiveness and dislike from the kindest and most delicate
presentation of the transforming truth. But the divine love is ever
seeking to win our attention by messengers innumerable; now by the
appalling storm, again by a summer sunset; now by an awful providence,
again by a great joy; at times by stern prophets and teachers, but
more often by the gentle human agencies of which Annie was the type,
as with pitying face she bent over the worn and jaded man of the world
and hoped and prayed that she might be able to act the part of a true
sister toward him. Thorny and guarded was every avenue to his heart;
and yet her feminine tact, combined with the softening and purifying
influence of his old home, might gain her words acceptance, where the
wisest and most eloquent would plead in vain.

After dinner he again hastened forth for a walk, his purpose being to
avoid company, for he was so moody and morbid, so weak, nervous, and
irritable, that the thought of meeting and decorously conversing with
those whose lives and character were a continual reproach to him was
intolerable. Then he had the impression that the "keen-eyed, plain-
featured Miss Walton," as he characterized her in his mind, would
surely commence discoursing on moral and religious subjects if he gave
her a chance; and he feared that if she did, he would say or do
something very rude, and confirm the bad impression that he was sure
of having already made. If he could have strolled into his club, and
among groups engaged with cards, papers, and city gossip, he would
have felt quite at home. Ties formed at such a place are not very
strong as a usual thing, and the manner of the world can isolate the
members and their real life completely, even when the rooms are
thronged. As Gregory grew worn and thin and his pallor increased, as
he smoked and brooded more and more apart, his companions would shrug
their shoulders significantly and whisper, "It looks as if Gregory
would go under soon. Something's the matter with him."

At first good-natured men would say, "Come, Gregory, take a hand with
us," but when he complied it was with such a listless manner that they
were sorry they had asked him. At last, beyond mere passing
courtesies, they had come to leave him very much alone; and in his
unnatural and perverted state this was just what he most desired. His
whole being had become a diseased, sensitive nerve, shrinking most
from any effort toward his improvement, even as a finger pointed at a
festering wound causes anticipatory agonies.

At the club he would be let alone, but these good people would "take
an interest in him," and might even "talk religion," and probe with
questions and surmises. If they did, he knew, from what he had already
seen of them, that they would try to do it delicately and kindly, but
he felt that the most considerate efforts would be like the surgical
instruments of the dark ages. He needed good, decisive, heroic
treatment. But who would have the courage and skill to give it? Who
cared enough for him to take the trouble?

Not merely had Annie Walton looked with eyes of human pity upon his
sin-marred visage that morning. The Divine personality, enthroned in
the depths of her soul and permeating her life, looked commiseratingly
forth also. Could demons glare from human eyes and God not smile from
them?

As Annie thought much of him after her stolen glance in the morning,
she longed to do that which he dreaded she would try to do--attempt
his reformation. Not that she cared for him personally, or that she
had grown sentimentally interested in his Byronic style of
wretchedness. So far from it, her happy and healthful nature was
repelled by his diseased and morbid one. She found him what girls call
a "disagreeable man." But she yearned toward a sinning, suffering
soul, found in any guise. It was not in her woman's heart to pass by
on the other side.




CHAPTER VI

UNEXPECTED CHESTNUT BURRS



Gregory's afternoon walk was not very prolonged, for a shivering sense
of discomfort soon drove him back to the house. Although the morning
had been cool, the sun had shone bright and warm, but now the fore-
shadowing of a storm was evident. A haze had spread over the sky,
increasing in leaden hue toward the west. The chilly wind moaned
fitfully through the trees, and the landscape darkened like a face
shadowed by coming trouble.

Walter dreaded a storm, fearing it would shut him up with the family
without escape; but at last the sun so enshrouded itself in gloom that
he was compelled to return. He went to his room, for a book, hoping
that when they saw him engaged they would leave him more to himself.
But to his agreeable surprise he found a cheerful fire blazing on the
hearth, and an ample supply of wood in a box near. The easy-chair was
wheeled forward, and a plate of grapes and the latest magazine were
placed invitingly on the table. Even his cynicism was not proof
against this, delicate thoughtfulness, and he exclaimed, "Ah, this is
better than I expected, and a hundred-fold better than I deserve. I
make but poor return for their kindness. This cosey room seems to say,
'We won't force ourselves on you. You can be alone as much as you
like,' for I suppose they must have noticed my disinclination for
society. But they are wise after all, for I am cursed poor company for
myself and worse than none at all for others."

Eating from time to time a purple grape, he so lost himself in the
fresh thoughts of the magazine that the tea-bell rang ere he was
aware.

"In the name of decency I must try to make myself agreeable for a
little while this evening," he muttered, as he descended to the
cheerful supper-room.

To their solicitude for his health and their regret that the
approaching storm had driven him so early to the house, he replied, "I
found in my room a better substitute for the sunlight I had lost;
though as a votary of nature, Miss Walton, I suppose you will regard
this assertion as rank heresy."

"Not at all, for your firelight is the result of sunlight." answered
Annie, smiling.

"How is that?"

"It required many summers to ripen the wood that blazed on your
hearth. Indeed, good dry wood is but concentrated sunshine put by for
cold, gloomy days and chilly nights."

"That is an odd fancy. I wish there were other ways of storing up
sunshine for future use."

"There are," said Miss Walton, cheerfully; and she looked up as if she
would like to say more, but he instantly changed the subject in his
instinctive wish to avoid the faintest approach to moralizing. Still,
conversation continued brisk till Mr. Walton asked suddenly, "By the
way, Mr. Gregory, have you ever met Mr. Hunting of Wall Street?"

There was no immediate answer, and they all looked inquiringly at him.
To their surprise his face was darkened by the heaviest frown. After a
moment he said, with peculiar emphasis, "Yes; I know him well."

A chill seemed to fall on them after that; and he, glancing up, saw
that Annie looked flushed and indignant, Miss Eulie pained, and Mr.
Walton very grave. Even the little boy shot vindictive glances at him.
He at once surmised that Hunting was related to the family, and was
oppressed with the thought that he was fast losing the welcome given
him on his father's account. But in a few moments Annie rallied and
made unwonted efforts to banish the general embarrassment, and with
partial success, for Gregory had tact and good conversational powers
if he chose to exert them. When, soon after, they adjourned to the
parlor, outward serenity reigned.

On either side of the ample hearth, on which blazed a hickory fire, a
table was drawn up. An easy-chair stood invitingly by each, with a
little carpet bench on which to rest the feet.

"Take one of these," said Mr. Walton, cordially, "and join me with a
cigar. The ladies of my household are indulgent to my small vices."

"And I will send for your magazine," said Annie, "and then you can
read and chat according to your mood. You gee that we do not intend to
make a stranger of you."

"For which I am very glad. You treat me far better than I deserve."

Instead of some deprecatory remark, Annie gave him a quick, half-
comical look which he did not fully understand.

"There is more in her than I at first imagined," he thought.

Seated with the magazine, Gregory found himself in the enjoyment of
every element of comfort. That he might be under no constraint to
talk, Annie commenced speaking to her father and Miss Eulie of some
neighborhood affairs, of which he knew nothing. The children and a
large greyhound were dividing the rug between them. The former were
chatting in low tones and roasting the first chestnuts of the season
on a broad shovel that was placed on the glowing coals. The dog was
sleepily watching them lest in their quick movements his tail should
come to grief.

Gregory had something of an artist's eye, and he could not help
glancing up from his reading occasionally, and thinking what a pretty
picture the roomy parlor made.

"Annie," said Mr. Walton, after a little while, "I can't get through
this article with my old eyes. Won't you finish it for me? Shall we
disturb you, Mr. Gregory?"

"Not at all."

Gregory soon forgot to read himself in listening to her. Not that he
heard the subject-matter with any interest, but her sweet, natural
tones and simplicity arrested and retained his attention. Even the
statistics and the prose of political economy seemed to fall from her
lips in musical cadence, and yet there was no apparent effort and not
a thought of effect. Walter mused as he listened.

"I should like to hear some quiet, genial book read in that style,
though it is evident that Miss Walton is no tragedy queen."

Having finished the reading, Annie started briskly up and said, "Come,
little people, your chestnuts are roasted and eaten. It's bedtime. The
turkeys and squirrels will be at the nut-trees long before you to-
morrow unless you scamper off at once."

"O, Aunt Annie," chimed their voices, "you must sing us the chestnut
song first; you promised to."

"With your permission, Mr. Gregory, I suppose I must make my promise
good," said Annie.

"I join the children in asking for the song," he replied, glad to get
them out of the way on such easy conditions, though he expected a
nursery ditty or a juvenile hymn from some Sabbath-school collection,
wherein healthy, growing boys are made to sing, "I want to be an
angel." "Moreover," he added, "I have read that one must always keep
one's word to a child."

"Which is a very important truth: do you not think so?"

"Since you are using the word 'truth' so prominently, Miss Walton, I
must say that I have not thought much about it. But I certainly would
have you keep your word on this occasion."

"Aunt Annie always keeps her word," said Johnny, rather bluntly. By
some childish instinct he divined that Gregory did not appreciate Aunt
Annie sufficiently, and this added to his prejudice.

"You have a stout little champion there," Gregory remarked.

"I cannot complain of his zeal," she answered significantly, at the
same time giving the boy a caress. "Mr. Gregory, this is a rude
country ballad, and we are going to sing it in our accustomed way,
even though it shock your city ears. Johnny and Susie, you can join in
the chorus;" and she sang the following simple October glee:

    Katydid, your throat is sore,
    You can chirp this fall no more;
    Robin red-breast, summer's past,
    Did you think 'twould always last?
    Fly away to sunny climes,
    Lands of oranges and limes;
    With the squirrels we shall stay
    And put our store of nuts away.
O the spiny chestnut burrs! O the prickly chestnut burrs!
    Harsh without, but lined with down,
    And full of chestnuts, plump and brown.

    Sorry are we for the flowers;
    We shall miss our summer bowers;
    Still we welcome frosty Jack,
    Stealing now from Greenland back.
    And the burrs will welcome him;
    When he knocks, they'll let him in.
    They don't know what Jack's about;
    Soon he'll turn the chestnuts out.
O the spiny, etc.-

    Turkey gobbler, with your train,
    You shall scratch the leaves in vain;
    Squirrel, with your whisking tail,
    Your sharp eyes shall not avail;
    In the crisp and early dawn,
    Scampering across the lawn.
    We will beat you to the trees,
    Come you then whene'er you please.
O the spiny, etc.--

Gregory's expression as she played a simple prelude was one of
endurance, but when she began to sing the changes of his face were
rapid. First he turned toward her with a look of interest, then of
surprise. Miss Eulie could not help watching him, for, though she was
well on in life, just such a character had never risen above her
horizon. Too gentle to censure, she felt that she had much cause for
regret.

At first she was pleased to see that he found the ditty far more to
his taste than he had expected. But the rapid alternation from pleased
surprise and enjoyment to something like a scowl of despair and almost
hate she could not understand. Following his eyes she saw them resting
on the boy, who was now eagerly joining in the chorus of the last
verse. She was not sufficiently skilled to know that to Gregory's
diseased moral nature things most simple and wholesome in themselves
were most repugnant. She could not understand that the tripping little
song, with its wild-wood life and movement--that the boy singing with
the delight of a pure, fresh heart--told him, beyond the power of
labored language, how hackneyed and blase he had become, how far and
hopelessly he had drifted from the same true childhood.

And Miss Walton, turning suddenly toward him, saw the same dark
expression, full of suffering and impotent revolt at his destiny, as
he regarded it, and she too was puzzled.

"You do not like our foolish little song," she said.

"I envy that boy, Miss Walton," was his reply.

Then she began to understand him, and said, gently, "You have no
occasion to."

"I wish you, or any one, could find the logic to prove that."

"The proof is not in logic but in nature, that is ever young. They who
draw their life from nature do not fall into the only age we need
dread."

"Do you not expect to grow old?"

She shook her head half humorously and said, "But these children will
before I get them to bed."

He ostensibly resumed his magazine, but did not turn any leaves.

His first mental query was, "Have I rightly gauged Miss Walton? I half
believe she understands me better than I do her. I estimated her as a
goodish, fairly educated country girl, of the church-going sort, one
that would be dreadfully shocked at finding me out, and deem it at
once her mission to pluck me as a brand from the burning. I know all
about the goodness of such girls. They are ignorant of the world; they
have never been tempted, and they have a brood of little feminine
weaknesses that of course are not paraded in public.

"And no doubt all this is true of Miss Walton, and yet, for some
reason, she interests me a little this evening. She is refined, but
nowhere in the world will you meet drearier monotony and barrenness
than among refined people. Having no real originality, their little
oddities are polished away. In Miss Walton I'm beginning to catch
glimpses of vistas unexplored, though perhaps I am a fool for thinking
so.

"What a peculiar voice she has! She would make a poor figure, no doubt,
in an opera; and yet she might render a simple aria very well. But for
songs of nature and ballads I have never heard so sympathetic a voice.
It suggests a power of making music a sweet home language instead of a
difficult, high art, attainable by few. Really Miss Walton is worth
investigation, for no one with such a voice can be utterly
commonplace. Strange as it is, I cannot ignore her. Though she makes
no effort to attract my attention, I am ever conscious of her
presence."




CHAPTER VII

A CONSPIRACY



When Miss Walton returned to the parlor her father said, "Annie, I am
going to trespass on your patience again."

She answered with a little piquant gesture, and was soon reading in
natural, easy tones, without much stumbling, what must have been Greek
to her.

Gregory watched her with increasing interest, and another question
than the one of finance involved in the article was rising in his
mind.

"Is this real? Is this seeming goodness a fact?" It was the very
essence of his perverted nature to doubt it. Now that his eyes were
opened, and he closely observed Miss Walton, he saw that his
prejudices against her were groundless. Although not a stylish, pretty
woman, she was evidently far removed from the goodish, commonplace
character that he could regard as part of the furniture of the house,
useful in its place, but of no more interest than a needful piece of
cabinet work. Nor did she assert herself as do those aggressive,
lecturing females who deem it their mission to set everybody right
within their sphere.

And yet she did assert herself; but he was compelled to admit that it
was like the summer breeze or the perfume of a rose. He had resolved
that very day to avoid and ignore her as far as possible, and yet,
before the first evening in her presence was half over, he had left a
magazine story unfinished; he was watching her, thinking and surmising
about her, and listening, as she read, to what he did not care a straw
about. Although she had not made the slightest effort, some influence
from her had stolen upon him like a cool breeze on a sultry day, and
wooed him as gently as the perfume of a flower that is sweet to all.
He said to himself, "She is not pretty," and yet found pleasure in
watching her red lips drop figures and financial terms as musically as
a little rill murmurs over a mossy rock.

From behind his magazine he studied the group at the opposite table,
but it was with the pain which a despairing swimmer, swept seaward by
a resistless current, might feel in seeing the safe and happy on the
shore.

Gray Mr. Walton leaned back in his chair, the embodiment of peace and
placid content.

The subject to which he was listening and kindred topics had so far
receded that his interest was that of a calm, philosophic observer,
and Gregory thought, with a glimmer of a smile, "He is not dabbling in
stocks or he could not maintain that quiet mien."

His habits of thought as a business man merely made it a pleasure to
keep up with the times. In fact he was in that serene border-land
between the two worlds where the questions of earth are growing vague
and distant and those of the "better country" more real and
engrossing, for Gregory observed, later in the evening, that he took
the family Bible with more zest than he had bestowed on the motive
power of the world. It was evident where his most valued treasures
were stored. With a bitter sigh, Gregory thought, "I would take his
gray hairs if I could have his peace and faith."

Miss Eulie, to whom he gave a passing glance, seemed even less earthly
in her nature. Indeed, it appeared as if she had never more than half
belonged to the material creation. Slight, ethereal, with untroubled
blue eyes, and little puff curls too light to show their change to
gray, she struck Gregory unpleasantly, as if she were a connecting
link between gross humanity and spiritual existence, and his eyes
reverted to Miss Walton, and dwelt with increasing interest on her.
There at least were youth, health, and something else--what was it in
the girl that had so strongly and suddenly gained his attention? At
any rate there was nothing about her uncanny and spirit-like.

He did not understand her. Was it possible that a young girl, not much
beyond twenty, was happy in the care of orphan children, in the quiet
humdrum duties of housekeeping, and in reading stupid articles through
the long, quiet evenings, with few excitements beyond church-going,
rural tea-drinkings, and country walks and rides? With a grim smile he
thought how soon the belles he had admired would expire under such a
regimen. Could this be good acting because a guest was present? If so
it was perfect, for it seemed, her daily life.

"I will watch her," he thought. "I will solve this little feminine
enigma. It will divert my mind, and I've nothing else to do."

"My daughter spoils me, you see, Mr. Gregory," said Mr. Walton,
starting up as Annie finished a theory that would make every one rich
by the printing-press process,

"Don't plume yourself, papa," replied Annie, archly; "I shall make you
do something for me to pay for all this."

With a humorous look he replied, "No matter, I have the best of the
bargain, for I should have to do the 'something' anyway. But what do
you think of this theory, sir?" And he explained, not knowing that
Walter had been listening.

The gentlemen were soon deep in the mysteries of currency and finance,
topics on which both could talk well. Annie listened with polite
attention for a short time--indeed Gregory was exerting himself more
for her sake than for Mr. Walton's--and she was satisfied from her
father's face that his guest was interesting him; but as the subject
was mainly unintelligible to her she soon turned with real zest to
Miss Eulie's fancy-work, and there was an earnest whispered discussion
in regard to the right number of stitches. Walter noted this and
sneeringly thought, with a masculine phase of justice often seen,
"That's like a woman. She drops one of the deepest and most important
subjects of the day" (and he might have added, "As explained by me")--
"and gives her whole soul to a bit of thread lace;" and he soon let
Mr. Walton have the discussion all his own way.

In furtherance of his purpose to draw Annie out he said, rather
banteringly, "Miss Walton, I am astonished that so good a man as your
father should have as an ardent friend the profane and disreputable
character that I found living in the cottage opposite on the day of my
arrival."

"Profane, I admit he is," she replied, "but not disreputable. Indeed,
as the world goes, I think old Daddy Tuggar, as he is called in this
vicinity, is a good man."

"O, Annie!" said Miss Eulie. "How can you think so? You have broader
charity than I. He is breaking his poor wife's heart."

"Indeed?" said Annie, dryly; "I was not aware of it."

"I too am astonished," said Walter, in mock solemnity. "How is it that
a refined and orthodox young lady, a pillar of the church, too, I
gather, can regard with other than unmixed disapprobation a man who
breaks the third commandment and all the rules of Lindley Murray at
every breath?"

"I imagine the latter offence is the more heinous sin in your eyes,
Mr. Gregory," she said, scanning his face with a quick look.

"Oh, you become aggressive. I was under the impression that I was
making the attack and that you were on the defensive. But I can
readily explain the opinion which you, perhaps not unjustly, impute to
me. You and I judge this venerable sinner from different standpoints."

"You explain your judgment, but do not justify it," replied Annie,
quietly.

"Annie, I don't see on what grounds you call Daddy Tuggar a good man,"
said Miss Eulie, emphatically.

"Please understand me, aunty," said Annie, earnestly. "I did not say
he was a Christian man, but merely a good man as the world goes; and I
know I shall shock you when I say that I have more faith in him than
in his praying and Scripture-quoting wife. There, I knew I should,"
she added, as she saw Miss Eulie's look of pained surprise.

Mr. Walton was listening with an amused smile. He evidently understood
his quaint old friend and shared Annie's opinion of him.

Gregory was growing decidedly interested, and said, "Really, Miss
Walton, I must side with your aunt in this matter. I shall overwhelm
you with an awful word. I think you are latitudinarian in your
tendencies."

"Which Daddy Tuggar would call a new-fangled way of swearing at me,"
retorted Annie, with her frank laugh that was so genuinely mirthful
that even Aunt Eulie joined in it.

"I half think," continued Annie, "that the churchmen in the ages of
controversy did a good deal of worse swearing than our old neighbor is
guilty of when they hurled at each other with such bitter zest the
epithets Antinomian, Socinian, Pelagian, Calvinistic, etc."

"Those terms have an awful sound. They smite my ear with all the power
that vagueness imparts, and surely must have caused stout hearts to
tremble in their day," he remarked.

"We are no longer on the ground of currency and finance," said Annie,
archly, "and I shall leave you to imagine that I know all about the
ideas represented by the polysyllabic terms of churchmen's warfare."

He looked at her a moment in comic dismay. Really this country girl
was growing too much for him in his game of banter.

"Miss Walton, I shall not dispute or question your knowledge of the
Socin--cin--(you know the rest) heresy--"

"Alas!" put in Annie, quietly, "I do know all about the 'sin heresy.'
I can say that honestly."

"I am somewhat inclined to doubt that," he said, quickly; then added,
in sudden and mock severity, "Miss Walton, if I were a judge upon the
bench I should charge that you were evading the question and befogging
the case. The point at issue is, How can you regard Daddy Tuggar as a
good man? As evidence against him I can affirm that I do not remember
to have had such a good square cursing in my life, and I have received
several."

This last expression caused Miss Eulie to open her eyes at him.

"Not for your sake, sir," said Annie, with a keen yet humorous glance
at him, "who as judge on the bench have in your pocket a written
verdict, I fear, but for Aunt Eulie's I will give the reasons for my
estimate. I regard her in the light of an honest jury. In the first
place the term you used, 'square,' applies to him. I do not think he
could be tempted to do a dishonest thing; and that, as the world goes,
is certainly a good point."

"And as the church goes, too," he added, cynically.

"He is a good neighbor, and considerate of the rights of others. He
can feel, and is not afraid to show a sincere indignation when seeing
a wrong done to another."

"I can vouch for that. I shall steal no more of your apples, Mr.
Walton."

"There is not a particle of hypocrisy about him. I wish I could think
the same of his wife. For some reason she always gives me the
impression of insincerity. If I were as good as you are, aunty,
perhaps I should not be so suspicious. One thing more, and my eulogy
of Daddy--the only one he will ever receive, I fear--is over. He is
capable of sincere friendship, and that is more than you can say of a
great many."

"It is indeed," said Gregory, with bitter emphasis. "I should be
willing to take my chances with Daddy Tuggar in this or any other
world."

"You had better not," she answered, now thoroughly in earnest.

"Why so?"

"I should think memories of this place would make my meaning clear,"
she replied, gently.

Gregory's face darkened, and he admitted to himself that most
unexpectedly she had sent an arrow home, and yet he could take no
exception.

His indifference toward her had vanished now. So far from regarding
her as a dull, good, country girl with a narrow horizon of little
feminine and commonplace interests, he began to doubt whether he
should be able to cope with her in the tilt of thought. He saw that
she was quick, original, and did her own thinking, that in repartee
she hit back unexpectedly, in flashes, as the lightning strikes from
the clouds. He could not keep pace with her quick intuition.

Moreover, in her delicate reference to his parents' faith she had
suggested an argument for Christianity that he had never been able to
answer. For a little time she had caused him to forget his wretched
self, but her last remark had thrown him back on his old doubts,
fears, and memories. As we have said, his cynical, despondent
expression returned, and he silently lowered at the fire.

Annie had too much tact to add a word. "He must be hurt--well probed
indeed--before he can be well," she thought.

Country bedtime had now come, and Mr. Walton said, "Mr. Gregory, I
trust you will not find our custom of family prayers distasteful."

"The absence of such a custom would seem strange to me in this place,"
he replied, but he did not say whether it would be agreeable or
distasteful.

Annie went to the piano as if it were a habit, and after a moment
chose the tender hymn--

    "Come, ye disconsolate."

At first, in his morbid sensitiveness, he was inclined to resent this
selection as aimed at him, but soon he was under the spell of the
music and the sentiment, which he thought had never before been so
exquisitely blended.

Miss Walton was not very finished or artistic in anything. She would
not be regarded as a scholar, even among the girls of her own age and
station, and her knowledge of classical music was limited. But she was
gifted in a peculiar degree with tact, a quick perception, and the
power of interpreting the language of nature and of the heart. She
read and estimated character rapidly. Almost intuitively she saw
people's needs and weaknesses, but so far was she from making them the
ground of satire and contempt that they awakened her pity and desire
to help. In other words, she was one of those Christians who in some
degree catch the very essence of Christ's character, who lived and
died to save. She did not think of condemning the guilty and
disconsolate man that brooded at her fireside, but she did long to
help him.

"I may never be able to say such words to him directly," she thought,
"but I can sing them, and if he leaves our home to-morrow he shall
hear the truth once more."

And she did sing with tenderness and feeling. In rendering something
that required simplicity, nature, and pathos, no prima donna could
surpass her, for while her voice was not powerful, and had no unusual
compass, it was as sweet as that of a thrush in May.

Only deaf ears and a stony heart could have remained insensible, and
Gregory was touched. A reviving breath from Paradise seemed to blow
upon him and gently urge, "Arise, struggle, make one more effort, and
you may yet cross the burning sands of the desert. It is not a mirage
that is mocking you now."

As the last words trembled from the singer's lips he shaded his eyes
with the hand on which his head was leaning, but Miss Eulie saw a tear
fall with momentary glitter, and she exulted over it as his good angel
might have done.

If penitent tears could be crystallized they would be the only gems of
earth that angels would covet, and perhaps God's co-workers here will
find those that they caused to flow on earth, set as gems in their
"crown of glory that fadeth not away."

Mr. Walton, in reverential tones, read the fifty-third chapter of
Isaiah, which, with greater beauty and tenderness, carried forward the
thought of the hymn; and then he knelt and offered a prayer that was
so simple and child-like, so free from form and cant, and so direct
from the heart, that Gregory was deeply moved. The associations of his
early home were now most vividly revealed and crowned by the sacred
hour of family worship, the memory of which, like a reproachful face,
had followed him in all his evil life.

When he arose from his knees he again shaded his face with his hand to
hide his wet eyes and twitching muscles. After a few moments he bade
the family an abrupt goodnight, and retired to his room.

At first they merely exchanged significant glances. Then Miss Eulie
told of the tear as if it were a bit of dust from a mine that might
enrich them all. For a while Annie sat thoughtfully gazing into the
fire, but at last she said, "It must be plain to us that Mr. Gregory
has wandered further from his old home in spirit than he has in body;
but it seems equally evident that he is not happy and content. He
seems suffering and out of health in soul and body. Perhaps God has
sent him to us and to his childhood's home for healing. Let us,
therefore, be very careful, very tender and considerate. He is
naturally proud and sensitive, and is morbidly so now."

"I think he is near the Kingdom," said Miss Eulie, with a little sigh
of satisfaction.

"Perhaps all are nearer than we think," said Annie, in a musing tone.
"God is not far from any one of us. But it is the curse of sin to
blind. He has, no doubt, been long in reaching his present unhappy
condition, and he may be long in escaping from it."

"Well, the Lord reigns," said Mr. Walton, sententiously, as if that
settled the question.

"Dear old father!" said Annie, smiling fondly at him, "that's your
favorite saying. You have a comfortable habit of putting all
perplexing questions into the Lord's hand and borrowing no further
trouble. Perhaps that is the wisest way after all, only one is a long
time learning it."

"I've been a long time learning it, my child," said her father. "Let
us agree to carry his case often to the throne of mercy, and in His
good time and way our prayers will be answered."

Thus in quaint old scriptural style they conspired for the life of
their unconscious guest. This was in truth a "holy alliance." How many
dark conspiracies there have been, resulting in blood, wrong, and
outrage, that some unworthy brow might wear for a little time a petty,
perishing crown of earth! Oh, that there were more conspiracies like
that in Mr. Walton's parlor for the purpose of rendering the unworthy
fit to wear the crown immortal!




CHAPTER VIII

WITCHCRAFT



Miss Eulie was doomed to disappointment, for Gregory came down late to
breakfast the following morning with not a trace of his softened
feelings. Indeed, because of pride, or for some reason, he chose to
seem the very reverse of all she had hoped. The winter of his unbelief
could not pass away so easily.

Even in January there are days of sudden relenting, when the frost's
icy grasp upon nature seems to relax. Days that rightfully belong to
spring drop down upon us with birds that have come before their time.
But such days may end in a northeast snowstorm and the birds perish.

The simile appeared true of Gregory. As far as he took part in the
table-talk he was a cold, finished man of the world, and the gloom of
the early morning rested on his face. But Annie noticed that he made
an indifferent breakfast and did not appear well.

After he had retired to his room to write some letters, as he said,
she remarked to her father when alone with him:

"I suppose you remember Mr. Gregory's manner when you spoke of Mr.
Hunting. They evidently are acquainted and not on good terms. What
could have occurred between them?"

"Some quarrel resulting from business, perhaps," said Mr. Walton,
musingly.

"I believe Charles has been trying to restrain Mr. Gregory in some of
his fast ways," Annie continued, emphatically, "and they have had hot
words. Men have so little discretion in their zeal."

"Business men are not apt to interfere with each other's foibles
unless they threaten their pockets," her father replied. "It is more
probable that Gregory has borrowed money of Hunting, and been
compelled to pay it against his will; and yet I have no right to
surmise anything of the kind."

"But Mr. Hunting is not a mere business man, father. He is bent on
doing good wherever he can find opportunity. I incline to my solution.
But it is clear that we must be silent in regard to him while Mr.
Gregory is with us, for I never saw such bitter enmity expressed in
any face. It is well that Charles is to be absent for some time, and
that we have no prospect of a visit from him while our guest is here.
Oh, dear! I wish Charles could come and make us a visit instead of
this moody, wayward stranger."

"I can echo that wish heartily, Annie, for in the son I find little of
my old friend, his father. But remember what you said last night. It
may be that he was sent to us in order that we should help him become
what his father was."

"I will do my best; but I do not look forward to his society with much
pleasure. Still, if there should be any such result as we hope for, I
should feel repaid a thousand-fold."

Gregory finished his letters and then paced restlessly up and down his
room.

"That this country girl should have so moved me!" he muttered. "What
does it mean? What is there about her that takes hold of my attention
and awakens my interest? I wish to go downstairs now, and talk to her,
and have her read to me, and am provoked with myself that I do.
Yesterday at this time I wished to avoid her.

"Why should I wish to avoid her? If she amuses me, diverts my mind,
beguiles my pain, or more dreary apathy, why not let her exert her
power to the utmost and make herself useful? Yes, but she will try to
do more than amuse. Well, suppose she does; one can coolly foil such
efforts. Not so sure of that. If I were dealing with a man I could,
but one must be worse than a clod to hear her sing and not feel. I
suppose I made a weak fool of myself before them all last night, and
they thought I was on the eve of conversion. I half wish I were, or on
the eve of anything else. Any change from my present state would seem
a relief. But a man cannot go into these things like an impulsive
girl, even if he believes in them, which is more than I do. I seem to
have fallen into a state of moral and physical imbecility, in which I
can only doubt, suffer, and chafe.

"I won't avoid her. I will study and analyze her character. I doubt
whether she is as good, fresh, and original as she seems. Such girls
exist only in moral stories, and I've met but few even there. I will
solve her mystery. Probably it is not a very deep one, and after a day
or two she will become an old story and life resume its normal
monotony;" and he at once descended the stairs to carry out his
purpose.

The children were just coming from the sitting-room where they had
their school, exclaiming, "Oh, aunty, what shall we do this awful
rainy day?"

"Wait till I have given some directions to Zibbie, and I will read you
a fairy story, and then you can go up into the garret until dinner-
time."

"May I listen to the fairy story also?" asked Walter.

Miss Walton looked up with a smile and said, "You must be half-
desperate from your imprisonment to accept of such solace. But if you
can wait till I have kept my word to the children I will read
something more to your taste."

"I think I should like to hear how a fairy story sounds once again
after all these years."

"As Shakespeare may sound to us some time in the future," she replied,
smiling.

"I can't believe we shall ever outgrow Shakespeare," he said.

"I can believe it, but cannot understand how it is possible. As yet I
am only growing up to Shakespeare."

"You seem very ready to believe what you cannot understand."

"And that is woman's way, I suppose you would like to add," she
answered, smiling over her shoulder, as she turned to the kitchen
department. "You men have a general faith that there will be dinner at
two o'clock, though you understand very little how it comes to pass,
and if you are disappointed the best of your sex have not fortitude
enough to wait patiently, so I must delay no longer to propitiate the
kitchen divinity."

"There!" he said, "I have but crossed her steps in the hall, and she
has stirred me and set my nerves tingling like an October breeze. She
is a witch."

After a few minutes Miss Walton entered. Each of the children called
for a story, and both clamored for their favorites.

"Johnny," said Miss Walton, "it is manly to yield to the least and
weakest, especially if she be a little woman."

The boy thought a moment, and then with an amusing assumption of
dignity said, "You may read Susie's story first, aunty."

"Susie, promise Johnny that his story shall be read first next time;"
which Susie promptly did with a touch of the womanly grace which
accompanies favors bestowed after the feminine will has triumphed.

"Now, little miniature man and woman, listen!" and their round eyes
were ready for the world of wonders.

And this child of nature was at the same time showing Gregory a world
as new and strange--a world that he had caught glimpses of when a boy,
but since had lost hopelessly. She carried the children away into
fairy-land. She suggested to him a life in which simplicity, truth,
and genuine goodness might bring peace and hope to the heart.

"Well, what do you think of the fairy story?" she asked after she had
finished and the children had drawn sighs of intense relief at the
happy denouement, in which the ugly ogre was slain and the prince and
princess were married:

"I did not hear it," he said.

"That's complimentary. But you appeared listening very closely."

"You have heard of people reading a different meaning between the
lines, and I suppose one can listen to a different meaning."

"And what could you find between the lines of this fairy tale?" she
asked with interest.

"It would be difficult for me to explain--something too vague and
indefinite for words, I fear. But if you will read me something else I
will listen to the text itself."

"Come, children, scamper off to the garret," said Annie, "and remember
you are nearer heaven up there, and so must be very kind and gentle to
each other."

"You will fill those youngsters' heads with beautiful superstitions."

"Superstition and faith are not so very far apart, though so unlike."

"Yes, it is hard to tell where one leaves off and the other begins."

"Is it?"

"Isn't it?"

"I don't like to contradict you, sir."

"You have contradicted me, and I suppose it is manly to yield to a
lady.'"

"Not in matters of principle and honest conviction."

"Alas! if one has not very much of either!"

"It is a very great misfortune, and, I suppose I ought to add, fault."

"I have no doubt it is a misfortune, Miss Walton, but you are not
reading."

"Well, make your choice."

"I leave it entirely to you."

"You don't look very well to-day. I will select something light and
cheerful from Dickens."

"Excuse me, please. I am in no mood for his deliberate purpose to make
one laugh."

"Then here is Irving. His style flows like a meadowbrook."

"No, he is too sentimental."

"Walter Scott, then, will form a happy medium."

"No, he wearies one with explanations and history."

"Some of Tennyson's dainty idylls will suit your fastidious taste."

"I couldn't abide his affected, stilted language to-day."

"Shakespeare, then; you regard him as perfect."

"No, he makes me think, and I do not wish to."

"Well, here are newspapers, the latest magazine, and some new novels."

"Modern rubbish--a mushroom growth. They will soon kindle kitchen
fires instead of thought."

"Then I must make an expedition to the library. What shall I bring?
There is Mosheim's 'Ecclesiastical Ancient History'; that has a solid,
venerable sound. Or, if you prefer poetry, I will get Gray's 'Elegy.'
That cannot be a literary mushroom, for he was twenty years writing
it. But perhaps it is Tupper you would like. That would suit your mood
exactly, Tupper's 'Proverbial Philosophy.'"

"You are growing satirical, Miss Walton. Why don't you assert plainly
that I am as full of whims as a--"

"Woman, would you like to say?"

"Present company excepted. The fact is, I am two-thirds ill to-day,
and the most faultless style and theme in our language would weary me.
I am possessed by the evil spirits of ennui, unrest, and disgust at
myself and all the world, present company always excepted. Do you know
of any spell that can exorcise these demons?"

"Yes, a very simple one. Will you put yourself absolutely in my power
and obey?"

"I am your slave."

Miss Walton left the room and soon returned with a large afghan. "You
must take a horizontal position in order that my spell may work."

"Pshaw! you are prescribing an ordinary nap."

"I am glad to say the best things in this world are ordinary. But
permit me to suggest that in view of your pledged word you have
nothing to do in this matter but to obey."

"Very well;" and he threw himself on the sofa.

"The day is chilly, sir, and I must throw this afghan over you;" and
she did so with a little touch of delicacy which is so grateful when
one is indisposed.

Her manner both soothed and pleased him.

He was more lonely than he realized, for it had been years since he
had experienced woman's gentle care and ministry; and Annie Walton had
a power possessed by few to put jangling nerves at rest. Suddenly he
said, "I wish I had a sister like you."

"My creed, you know," she replied, "makes all mankind kindred."

"Nonsense!" said Gregory, irritably; "deliver me from your church
sisters."

"Take care!" she answered, with a warning nod, "I'm a church sister;
so don't drive me away, for I am going to sing you to sleep."

"I'm half inclined to join your church that I may call you sister."

"You would be disciplined and excommunicated within a month. But hush;
you must not talk."

"How would you treat me after I had been anathematized?"

"If you were as ill as you are to-day I would make you sleep. Hush;
not another word. I am going to sing."

A luxurious sense of comfort stole over him, and he composed himself
to listen and criticise, little imagining, though, that he would fall
asleep. He saw through the window a lowering sky with leaden clouds
driven wildly across it. The wind moaned and soughed around the angles
of the house, and the rain beat against the glass. All without seemed
emblematic of himself. But now he had a brief but blessed sense of
shelter from both the storm and himself. The fire blazed cheerily on
the hearth. The afghan seemed to envelop him like a genial atmosphere.
Had Miss Walton bewitched it by her touch? And now she has found
something to suit her, or rather him, and is singing.

"What an unusual voice she has!" he thought "Truly the spirit of
David's harp, that could banish the demon from Saul, dwells in it. I
wonder if she is as good and real as she seems, or whether, under the
stress of temptation or the poison of flattery, she would not show
herself a true daughter of Eve? I must find out, for it is about the
only remaining question that interests me. If she is like the rest of
us--if she is a female Hunting--then good-by to all hope. I shall not
live to find anybody or anything to trust. If she is what she seems,
it's barely possible that she might help me out of this horrible
'slough of despond,' if she would take the trouble. I wish that she
were my sister, or that my sister had lived and had been just like
her."




CHAPTER IX

MISS WALTON RECOMMENDS A HOBBY



To Gregory's surprise he waked and then admitted to himself that,
contrary to his expectation and purpose, he had been asleep. His last
remembered consciousness was that of sweet, low music; and how long
ago was that? He looked at his watch; it was nearly two, and he must
have slept several hours. He glanced around and saw that he was alone,
but the fire still blazed on the hearth, and the afghan infolded him
with its genial warmth as before, and it seemed that although by
himself he was still cared for.

"She is a witch," he muttered. "Her spells are no jokes. But I will
investigate her case like an old-time Salem inquisitor. With more than
Yankee curiosity, which was at the bottom of their superstitious
questionings, I will pry into her power. But she will find that she
has a wary sceptic to convince. I have seen too many saints and
sinners to be again deceived by fair seeming."

A broad ray of sunlight shot across the room. "By my soul! it's
clearing off. Is this her work also? Has she swept away the clouds
with her broomstick? And there goes the dinner-bell, too;" and he went
to his room two steps at a time, as he had done when a boy.

Annie coming out of the sitting-room at that moment, smiled and said:
"He must be better."

At the table she asked, "How do you find yourself now?"

"Much given to appetite." Then, turning to Mr. Walton, he said,
abruptly, "Do you believe in witchcraft?"

"Well, no, sir," said Mr. Walton, a little taken aback.

"I do!" continued he, emphatically.

"When and where have you had experience of the black art?"

"This morning, and in your house, sir."

"You seem none the worse for it," said his host, smiling.

"Indeed, I have not felt so well in months. Your larder will suffer if
I am practiced upon any more."

"Well, of all modern and prosaic results of witchery this exceeds,"
said Annie, laughing, "since only a good appetite comes of it."

"It yet remains to be seen whether this is the only result," replied
Gregory. "What possessed the old Puritans to persecute the Salem
witches is a mystery to me, if their experience was anything like
mine."

"You must remember that the question of what was agreeable or
otherwise scarcely entered into a Puritan's motives."

"I am not so sure of that," he answered, quickly. "It has ever seemed
to me that the good people of other days went into persecution with a
zeal that abstract right can hardly account for. People will have
their excitements, and a good rousing persecution used to stir things
like the burning of Chicago or a Presidential election in our day."

"Granting," said Annie, "the bigotry and cruelty of the persecutor--
and these must be mainly charged to the age--still you must admit that
among them were earnest men who did from good motives what appears
very wrong to us. What seemed to them evil and destructive principles
were embodied in men and women, and they meant to destroy the evil
through the suffering and death of these poor creatures."

"And then consider the simplicity and ease of the persecutor's
method," continued Gregory, mockingly. "A man's head has become full
of supposed doctrinal errors. To refute and banish these would require
much study and argument on the part of the opponent. It was so much
easier to take an obstinate heretic's head off than to argue with him!
I think it was the simplicity of the persecutor's method that kept it
in favor so long."

"But it never convinced any one," said Annie, "and the man killed
merely goes into another world of the same opinion still."

"And there probably learns, poor fellow, that both were wrong, and
that he had