The Foe in the Household

CHAPTER XXL

AFTER the funeral of Rosa it was as if but a ripple had been made by the casting of a pebble in the stream of Swatara life. Everybody returned to work as if nothing had happened. Yet Max Boyd shed tears in secret when he had rendered the little service he could render the afflicted family. There were flowers ordered by him from the city with which the coffin was garnished without and within ; he seemed to himself to have come quite near to Mrs. Holcombe in her sorrow, and the thought did him good. He stood in greater need than Christopher of sustained human relations. He liked to think of Mrs. Holcombe as a mother, and the sympathy he gave her was of special service to himself.

Mr. Elsden’s plans and operations could not, of course, be in the least degree disturbed by an event like Rosa’s death. He sat in his office, and made his calculations as though THE CALL could never come to him, and he did not withdraw from John Edgar the encouragement of his expectation. It was impossible that any person or influence bearing in the least degree on the life of John should be regarded with indifference by him, and he was aware, of course, that the event which had happened might in some unforeseen way affect the future of Miss Edna. He was more mindful therefore of John ; his self-confidence was to be sustained, his self-respect increased, his hope encouraged, the evidences of his success multiplied. So it was that the machinist had honor of the superintendent before his fellow-workmen, and was seen by Max Boyd walking arm in arm with Mr. Elsden. Edna’s lover, it was to be observed, was worthy of her, and his worthiness must be attested amply, before his aspiration became publicly known. It would then occasion no surprise.

It was not immediately after the death of Rosa that John felt himself capable of resuming work with the same spirit which had urged him on before. Nevertheless the treatment of Mr. Elsden proved to have been the best, for it was successful. Edgar began to think of himself, habitually, as an inventor and a gentleman. A change for the better was perceived even in his person. He cared for himself more and more, and as intelligently as it was possible for him to care. But though he was constantly in the workshop, his thoughts were always wandering to the bishop’s house, and thence to the house not made with hands which had received the fair child. It was not difficult for him to think of Rosa as living under the conditions of an angel.

Strange though, it may seem, hownever, it now appeared to him that the work he had assigned to himself could more readily be performed than it could have been while Rosa was living. For he had felt, from the moment when his thoughts were directed in the channel through which they now constantly passed, that there was something like hostility in his heart towards the guardians of Edna. Anything like an endeavor on his part to secure her rights to her, if rights she had, must seem to them the work of an enemy.

He determined still to speak to Doctor Detwiler, who, at least, knew about her life with Annie Gell, and with this intention went one day to the doctor’s office at an hour when he would be most likely to find him there.

A conversation with John Edgar was the thing which the doctor greatly desired, for he had perceived indications which troubled him, in the workshop and in the parsonage. He had seen John poring over the books which Edna had lent him, studying Rolfe’s notes by the way. And Edna had told him, when he asked who was going to be her market-man and dispose for her of the stores she had gathered, that John had promised to do it. When he asked, “ Why did you employ him?” she had answered, “ There was nobody else to do it ” ; and on his suggestion that it was strange she should have gone up to the mines in search of an assistant, he had been surprised by the spirit with which she answered that he had proved her friend before now, and that she had no better. These trifles of speech, with the notable fact of the box of materials presented by Mr. Elsden through Edgar, had made him desirous of a quiet talk with the latter, and so he considered it fortunate that he was in his office when John came down.

The doctor shook him by the hand cordially, and said : “ What is the matter with you. my good fellow ? You look as hearty as a bear.”

“I am,” said John, “only there was n’t much doing, so I thought I would loaf.”

“ Good. Sit down. Mr. Elsden gives a first-rate report of you, so I suppose you are on the high road to fortune. Keep straight ahead, then, and don’t slip off into by-ways.”

“That’s the road for me to travel, I know it well enough,” said John, expanding, in the genial atmosphere of the office, in a noticeable manner.

“You feel sure of yourself, then. Keep a sharp lookout, and you ’ll make a good drive, I don’t doubt.”

“ I don’t know about that, sir, but I ’ve got the reins in my own hands, I know.”

“ All the better, then, since you ’re on the up-hill road, and a pretty rough one at that.”

“ But I should hate to think I was n’t ever coming to a smooth road, Doctor.”

“Nonsense,” said Detwiler; “what do you want of smooth roads ? Well and good if you happen to strike one, but you’re not a girl. You have something to do, I take it, besides lookingout for an easy way.”

“ I should hope I would n’t be so beggarly poor as I am just now, much longer,” said John, conscious of uprising antagonism. The doctor, in fact, was treating him as though he were not in Mr. Elsden’s confidence, and had not won the heart of Edna Gell, — two circumstances which made him Detwiler’s equal any day.

The doctor, thinking that it was quite too probable that his suspicions in regard to the way in which matters stood between Edna and John were warrantable, answered with the greatest deliberation, intending that his words should convey the utmost meaning possible. “ Don’t you know, Edgar, that poverty is the very best thing in the world for you ? ”

“ I know it is not,” he answered, curtly.

“ I devoutly hope that you will never find out a short cut to wealth,” said Detwiler.

“ Why ? ” The doctor had spoken so kindly that John would have felt ashamed to betray the anger he felt. He had learned that he must control himself if he would be the companion of gentlemen.

“ Because you would get lazy. And there would be plenty of harpies around to suck the blood out of you then. You can guess what would follow. ”

“ You think,” said John, reddening, “ that I ’m never going to conquer that cursed — ”

“ I know that you are going to fight like a hero, and that you will be obliged to tight, probably, as long as you live. Is n’t that occupation enough for a man ? I think you will carry the day, for you are a born fighter.”

“ You have as good as taken my head off,” said John; “only you have n't ! ” he added, with a self-assertion that would have been absurd, had it not been pitiful.

“ I have told you the truth, though,” returned the doctor, drily; then he stopped. John should himself direct the conversation, for it was evident that he had come to talk.

“ Have you seen that little picture of Miss Rosa,” he asked, advancing bravely.

“ Yes, and how good it is ! ” The doctor took a quill from his pen-rack, and dusted his writing-desk therewith.

“ I have been fooling away with my pencil to see if I could do anything like it. I can’t ; yet I taught Miss Edna all she knows about drawing.”

“ You ! ” The exclamation probed John’s vanity, and touched a nerve of pride.

“ She says so,” he answered quickly.

“ O, of course she says so ! But you do not suppose that she sees the facts as we do,—as I do, I mean, for it seems you do not agree with me.”

“ I never thought that I could do much for her, or that I had done much. But she — It makes no difference who taught her, or who didn’t ; if she chooses to feel grateful to me, I am not going to complain, sir.”

“ I don’t like the way you talk, John,” said the doctor ; “ it would be insufferable in any young man. It sounds exactly as if you might be capable of making use of the silly, kind feeling she is perhaps generous enough to express to you.”

“ I don’t think it would be likely, sir, I would be saying anything to you about her that she ’d think insufferable.”

“ No matter what she would think about it. I’m old enough to be father to both of you, and that’s what I think.”

“ It is a great pity that she lost her father so young,” said John, quickly, thankful that the doctor had assisted him by introducing that word.

“ On the contrary,” said Detwiler, " she has suffered no loss. Better guardianship she could not possibly have had than she has found in Bishop Holcombe and his wife.”

“ You think poverty a fine thing, doctor, by the way you talk about fortunes lost.”

The words were spoken with so much significance that, although the doctor abhorred the necessity, he felt himself compelled to ask John what he meant.

“ If a thing is your own you want it, I suppose. If you don’t ask for it, most likely you are ignorant that it belongs to you. Your crust, if it’s yours, is sweeter to you than another man’s loaf, though he says you ’re welcome.”

The doctor reflected, and dared not ask this time to what all this talk might have reference. He determined to ignore for the present the possibility of any hidden meaning in the words.

“ Any one of us,” he said, " would be glad to help a woman, especially, if she was young and pretty ; particularly to a better fortune, if we felt we had the right. But even if we felt that we had it, we might be greatly mistaken. Very few of us really have the right to seek the portion we might choose.”

“ I suppose you are right, sir,” John said, stiffly.

“Yes, for that would imply a divine right, which nothing short of a divine power could confer.”

John was silent.

“ Even she herself could not give it. There are two sides to every such question.”

This subject must not be dropped at its present stage ; the doctor was manifestly bent on pushing it.

“ I don’t understand you, sir.” John looked about uneasily, and wished that Detwiler could know exactly how things stood between himself and Edna ; he felt also that he had lost an opportunity of asking at the right moment, “ Who was Edna’s father? Tell me, if you know.”

“ I understand you, though, I ’m afraid,” the doctor said. “I am afraid that you have the greatest hope in your heart that can enter it. No, I should not say that. There is a greater hope even than that, — one that will make you take hold of life, sir, with nobler determination. I am not blind ; I can see all that you see, and a great deal beyond.”

“ Has she — told you anything ? ”

“No. I wish— I wish she had ! ”

“ Well, if you know all, sir, what do you think of it ? ”

“Badly.”

“You think I am such a poor devil! ” said John, breaking out passionately, after a brief silence. “ You will not see that I — I am not what I was.”

“ I believe you will be an honorable, upright man, sir. But do you know where you are ? You are in Eden, and you must go out.” There was pity, tenderness, authority, in the voice of Detwiler speaking these words. He added in another tone, as if suddenly he was himself rising to a height he had never attained before, “ Poor fellow ! you will have plenty of company outside.”

What was the doctor thinking? what was he about to require ? Edgar waited, alarmed and awed, to know.

“ You have been thinking that you would marry this dear girl, some clay. Speak, ’fore God ! ”

“ Yes, I have.”

The doctor turned his eyes away from the young face before him. Not often had his strong heart been so troubled ; rarely had his face expressed so much as was now visible upon it.

“ I dare say that, for anything like the future before you which you could clearly see, you would be willing to work,” he said. “ And I know you would n’t count dear any labor or pain. I know to what a noble pitch such a prospect would keep you tuned. You had a right to aim high, John ; no right to aim low. But what would be right for you to do if your interest were the only thing to be considered, don’t you see it would be damnably wrong when somebody else was to be thought of? ”

John looked at the doctor without speaking. He felt as if the life were being crushed out of him. Springing to his feet he walked across the office with rapid strides. He gasped for breath.

Detwiler went on, as if heartlessly regardless of all he saw.

“ You thought that you were getting saved yourself,” said he, his face paling with emotion and his voice betraying it; “ but dare you look forward and face what may arise in another generation, and call you cursed ? What have you felt since you were able to understand your feelings but this, that there was a chained devil in you which you must watch, hour by hour, never knowing the moment when he might spring upon you? And there’s a young girl, — a child I have always considered her till now,— she sees what your trouble is, and because it is in her to help every weak, suffering thing she sees, she is ready, before she could possibly have what she for her part might need, to give herself to you. And you — you are willing to accept such a gift ! Look here ! Are you willing that twenty years from now a son of hers should go through what you’ve gone through, and must go through, for you have n’t finished your fight yet, and you know it! Are you such a dastard that you are willing ? I tell you plainly, Edgar, you have no more right to marry any girl, I don't care who she is, or how low down you go to find her, than if you had leprosy. A man’s fitness for a relation so sacred is n’t determined entirely by his desires.”

“ Go on, sir,” cried John, white with rage.

“ I intend to do so. You have no more right than — I have. I told you you would have company outside of Eden. I went out years ago. If I had dared (listen to me ! no man but yourself has ever heard this of me), — if I had dared, there was a lady whom I would have asked to marry me. I do not know what she would have answered ; but I should at least have had the satisfaction of letting her know that she was all woman could be to man. That is as much as any girl can be to you ; yes, and a thousand times more, for you have many chances and ambitions where I had n’t one. I came and buried myself in these hills, as you might say, to save my life. In more ways than one I’ve saved it. No woman whom I love, I said, shall suffer as my mother suffered, killed outright by anxiety, I tell you, as surely as Jesus conquered his temptations, you may conquer this.”

It was evident that the doctor’s words, so rapidly spoken in that low voice of his, which was so powerful in carrying conviction, had produced an effect. But what effect ? Edgar did not reply, and he went on.

“ Have I given the death-blow to your hopes, poor fellow ? See, then, how unworthy you would have been in this respect to unite her fortune with yours. Be all that you would have been for Edna’s sake, and much more for her sake. Show your love for her by forbearing to curse her children’s children.”

“ I am not going to make a fool of myself,” Edgar began.

“ You shall not tell me to-day what you will do. I am not prepared to think you are ready to take all that the Almighty has prepared for those who defy him.”

“ I don’t see that it’s a question between the Almighty and me,” replied Edgar, sullenly, preparing to leave the office, for the doctor had risen with the evident intention of going about his business.

“ You must settle it with Him thenHe has made his laws ; break them if you think you 'll gain anything by it. But I 'll answer that you find it a losing business in the end. Good by, then. If I have said the cruellest things you ever heard, I am still your best friend, Edgar. I 'm no harder on you than I have been on myself. Let’s do the best we can with what we have, and thank God if he has taught us anything that will make us better doctors of other poor mortals.”

If John Edgar could go away and forget the voice that spoke those words, and the steady gaze of the doctor’s eyes, he was a poorer mortal even than he deemed himself.

CHAPTER XXII.

JOHN had gone but two thirds of his way home when he heard himself called ; it was a well-known and a well-liked voice that startled him with, “ Hallo, there ! ”

It was Max Boyd who called. When he saw Edgar hurrying along with that dark look on his face, he thought it a sufficient reason for arresting him. There was an imperious spirit in Max which needed no more than to see a person bent on a mode of action to make him insist on being told the why.

“ What is your hurry ? How are things working, Edgar ? ” he asked.

“ O, fine ! Is that you, Mr. Boyd ? ” and then John walked on all the faster that he had been hindered.

“ But wait a moment, will you ? I have something you would like to see. You were telling me about that picture. See ! I have one — two.”

He took the drawings from his wallet, as he spoke : one was of Rosa Holcombe, the other of himself.

Edgar’s eyes had an ugly, amazed glare. He took the drawings, and his first impulse was to tear them into fragments; but be gave them back, after a moment, unharmed, A glance had sufficed him.

“ How much did you pay for them ? ” he asked.

The poor girl had turned in this direction, had she, seeking to make money which should diminish her debt ? He would soon put an end to all this. But though he accounted for the work instantly in this manner, he was surprised when Maxwell answered : “ Dirt cheap, I think. Ten dollars apiece.”

“ Twenty dollars ! ” said Edgar.

“ She ’s a deuced proud little girl, though, John.”

“ Working for your money is a proof of it,” he answered, bitterly.

“ Good as any. If she had n’t been so proud she would have insisted on making me a present of the pictures. I knew it when she sat working that way.”

“ She is n’t rich,” said Edgar ; “but I would n’t have expected her to sell Rosa’s picture.”

“ I would pay. Else they would have thought that I expected to be remembered because I happened to be mixed up in that dreadful accident. You can’t tell what folks will think. I consider such a picture as that cheap at any price.”

“ Ah ! I am going home this way, sir.” said John ; “ it’s a short cut, and I feel too tired for anything. Good night.”

“ That’s an unsociable trick,” Max called after him ; but John, without waiting for an answer, had already plunged among the elder-bushes, and was out of sight.

And now concerning these pictures.

Maxwell Boyd had preserved some of the flowers which had lain on Rosa’s coffin; he had arranged them in a wreath, and placed them under glass, and had brought them thus preserved to Mrs. Holcombe. In other ways he had shown his sympathy, so that he was gratefully remembered in the bishop’s house.

Not many days after the funeral, he was walking in the neighborhood, when he met Edna. She carried a basket and a spade, and had evidently been planting some prized shrub or vine beside Rosa’s grave.

Max asked if he might carry the spade, and then, as he walked along with her, he talked about Rosa. One of the hands, he said, had told him about the excellent likeness she had made of her sister. She was then a real artist, for none but a true artist could have done so much without instruction. He would like very much to see the portrait if Miss Edna would be so kind as to show it to him.

There were two points presented in these words which made an impression on Edna : first, the manner in which young Mr. Boyd spoke of John Edgar, — “one of the hands ” ; second, that in speaking of herself he had called her an artist.

Of course John was one of the hands. And certainly, if any one had a right to speak of him so, it was one of the gentlemen in whose service he was employed. She had heard him spoken of also as an artisan. Mr. Boyd called her an artist; and she felt the difference implied in these words.

“Who was it told you?” she asked, although she knew so well who must have told him.

“ Edgar,” he said. “ He ought to be considered a very good judge ; don’t you think so ? He draws well himself.”

“ Yes.”

“ Things a good deal more complicated than faces though,” he said. “ He brought me a very elaborate drawing one day, and I was completely taken in by it He knows a great deal. It was an engine, and, I supposed, as complete as anything could be ; but he told me it would n’t go, and could n’t be made to go, any more than a wooden horse if it was built. Then he added a line and a curve or too, and said that, made up on that pattern, there was n’t anything running that could equal it for power.”

Edna’s eyes shone with pleasure to hear this praise. “ I can believe it,” she said.

“ I wish I could see that drawing of yours,” said he.

“ I have one here which I made this afternoon,” said Edna. She stopped to take the paper from her pocket. They were standing under the shadow of a great pine-tree. It seemed to Max the perfect hour of a perfect day. He stood there to examine the picture, then he sat down on the mossy bed which covered the old tree’s roots. Edna had drawn Rosa as they had so often seen her, running like a fawn across the bridge. The figure was full of life and motion ; the breeze was in her hair.

“ O, this is perfect! ” exclaimed Max ; “ but how could you bear to draw her — there ? ”

“ It is just as I see her all the time,” said Edna. “ I thought maybe if I put it on paper I — The other one, the one he told you about, was finished from something begun in sport before we — lost her.”

Then — it seemed at first as if to divert her thoughts — Max asked her if she had tested her skill in trying to produce other faces, and ended by saying that he would give a great deal to know what she could do with his. When she seemed surprised at his words, he explained that he had promised to send his classmates photographs of himself, but the negative from which copies were to have been made for them had been destroyed by fire. There had been no artist at Emerald all summer ; if she should succeed, he could send the drawing to town, and copies could be made from it.

Edna reflected, and presently said, “ I will try it.” She had thought, “ He will pay well; the practice will do me good. I shall have all the more to give to Mr. Holcombe when I go away.”

“ To-day ? ” he asked, delighted at his success in obtaining her consent.

“ I don't believe my hand is steady enough to-day,” she said. “ I have been digging with the spade, and the ground was stony. I will try to-morrow, if you like. You might come to Mrs. Holcombe’s.”

But Max thought it unlikely they would want the work going on at the house at this time, and suggested the church. No, Edna said, it could not be there ; Mrs. Holcombe would not be as well pleased. But she was thinking less of Delia than of John Edgar when she said this.

“ Very well, at the house then, if Mrs. Holcombe is willing. I will pay you ten dollars for the picture. Shall I pay now ? ”

He was very ready indeed, but Edna said not till the work was finished, and thought it was a very high price to pay for a small piece of work like that.

But Max said he had n’t specified the size. Then he added that she might finish it in three lines if she could. “ Only be true,” he said. “ I wish I owned this lovely little picture,” he added, studying it line by line.

“If you would like you may have it,” Edna said, with hesitation, thinking again of John.

“ Thank you ; at the same price ? ”

“ That is dear Rosa’s face. But I do not think they would want to see her so. I would be glad to give it to anybody who ever saw and loved her. I think it must do anyone good to have it ; as I am sure it did everybody good just to look at her.”

“ I must pay for it though,” Max said, as he laid the leaf in his wallet. “ And I will come to-morrow afternoon, if that is convenient to you.”

“Yes.” Inaudibly Edna continued, “ And so I shall be paid like one of the hands.”

Perhaps something like this thought was passing through Maxwell’s mind, for he said, awkwardly enough : “ Perhaps you don’t like to think of my giving you money for the work. I have some grand books which I would like to share with you, if you would accept them.”

It seemed as if Edna had a little surprise to master before she could answer. “ No. no,” she said, “ money will be better than anything, just now, for me. I am much obliged to you for wanting a picture, though it will be a poor one.” As she spoke she seemed to resolutely put down the confusion she felt, and to ignore it as she looked at Max with a critic’s eyes.

“ I dare say it will be a poor one for the reason that it will be a good likeness,” he said.

“ I think I may do pretty well, because it is so necessary I should feel sure of my ground,” said she.

“ And you do feel sure of it ? ”

“ I could draw your face, without a sitting.”

“ But you will let me come ? ”

“You had better come,” said she, picking up her basket and spade, and looking homeward.

“You have capital practice,” said he, rising and taking the spade from her hand and swinging it over his shoulder. “There’s Edgar himself, — you might draw him a dozen times and get a different likeness each time. He is more like a chameleon than any living animal I have seen. I know him pretty well, but I suppose if I should say what I thought of him, the men who have known him all his life would laugh in my face.”

“ Don’t they understand him ? ”

“ No.”

“ Could n't they be made to ? ”

“Honestly, I should hope not. There are too many things left at loose ends in him. When they’re all caught up and secured, he will do to talk about, if that ever happens.”

A crimson glow overspread the face of Edna Cell.

“ He makes fun for you,” she said.

“ He does, indeed. But he will come out right one day.”

“ I must leave you,” said Edna.

They had approached the bridge when she thus dismissed him. He gave her back the spade. “ To-morrow, then ? ”

She hesitated a moment, thought of the patron he was like to prove, and said : “ Yes, to-morrow.”

But going homewards alone she thought: “ Poor John ! he has nobody to stand by him but me. Well then, he has me.”

When Maxwell sat down in Mrs. Holcombe’s best room on his return from the bank the next afternoon, he had that lady for company, and a very serious artist to perform the stipulated work. If he had engaged Edna’s services simply for his own entertainment, because he was curious to learn the extent of her skill and had little to amuse him in those rather dull days, Edna had undertaken the work with the intention to do her best and take the wages stipulated. And if there was any embarrassment to be felt in the progress of the work, she was not the one to feel it. It might have been a block of wood, or any other inanimate object, that she was portraying. Surprised at this, he presently fell into a deeply reflective mood, which made her say, “ Talk to —mother.”

Thereupon he did so. He had picked up several odd names in the neighborhood recently, and of these he began to speak, one after another. They were like so many signs in a book, he said, which he did not understand. Delia, who did understand them, explained, and so an hour and a half passed on, and the work was done. Edna had succeeded in making a spirited sketch, and was satisfied that Mr. Boyd should take it with him when he rose to go.

“You have paid ten times what it is worth,” said Mrs. Holcombe, when he presented Edna with the stipulated price.

“ A small sum to pay for so good a picture, and a small sum to pay for the privilege of the hour I have spent here.”

As Max said this, he felt a sudden moisture in his eyes. He had no sweet home memories ; his childhood had been bleak, dark, and cold, his remembrance of his mother was full of pain. The kind words, the kind voice, the noble presence of the bishop’s wife, the thought of that moment when it had fallen to his lot to make known to her the death of her child, drew him irresistibly towards her. He went away thinking more seriously than he had thought before of the good service it was within his power to render this household, of the means of education he might put within Edna’s reach, of the adornments he would like to bring into the little house so fragrant with mignonette, of the pictures he would fain hang upon the walls.

As he walked homeward, he remembered John Edgar; and, as he told him later, when John was returning from the doctor’s office, wanted to show him at once the likeness of himself which Edna had drawn. It would give John a pleasure to see such good work ; and he was curious to know the expression that satisfaction would find, He did not show his purchase to Christopher on his return ; — Christopher would not care for such a trifle. If it had been his own work, however, he would have been quite sure that his brother would not have considered it a trifle. Maxwell was in fact quite certain, and well might be, that he sufficed for the heart, as business did for the brain, of Christopher.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE path which John Edgar took, when he left Max on his way home from Emerald, led him half a mile out of his way, but it brought him near to Mr. Holcombe’s.

There was an evening meeting in the meeting-house, and he thought that he might possibly meet Edna on the road. He hardly knew why he wanted to see her just then. He was thoroughly angry with the doctor, and with Boyd, — and perhaps with Edna also. But for one thing, he would ask her about these drawings she had sold Max. Though he knew she was working for money, it displeased him that she should have been willing to take Maxwell’s portrait She had sat and studied him sufficiently to make his picture lifelike. T hat was in fact the chief cause of his displeasure. If he should meet her, because of this displeasure he would find it more easy to ask her about that mystery of her parentage, and to place her under a great debt of discovery to him.

As he walked along thinking of Edna she suddenly stood in the path before him. She had come from the meetinghouse before the service was over, — it was so warm there, and her head ached, she said. But the truth was she had become uneasy in thinking about John ; he might need her, and she had come out on purpose to seek for him. Her sense of the fact that he did need her, that since she had given herself to him things were going well with him, whereas before that they had for the most part gone wrong (he was constantly telling her so, and the evidence of her own eyes corroborated his words), had made her life seem more important, had given it a new significance ; and when she saw that he was not in the congregation she was troubled, and so finally walked out to learn where he was, and almost at once came upon him.

It warmed her heart to see him, for she thought he could not have come in that direction at that hour unless it was to find her. By the dim light she eagerly scanned his face, and saw that, though it looked disturbed, his eyes were not drunken. And so she was doubly glad.

“Are you going to the meeting? ” she asked him.

“ No,” he said, “ I am going to walk with you, if you will let me.”

“ Not down here, then ; I don't like to walk by the creek. It makes me sick even to hear the sound of the water.”

“ Then we will go up the road, Will you take my arm ? it is rough walking. Are you tired ? ”

“ I could walk all night.” So she took took his hand, and they walked along together.

“ You must tell me one thing, Edna,” said John, after they had gone a' short distance, for he had a great deal to say, and no time to lose ; “what have you been drawing Maxwell Boyd for ? ”

“ O, have you seen if ? I was going to tell you. For pay, of course ; just as you work for him. You are one of the hands ; well, so am I.”

“ It is n’t. the same thing at all,” said he, “and I wish you had not done it. I wish he had his ten dollars back. You can't ask him for the picture, I suppose, but you can return his money.”

“ Why do you wish me to do it, John ? ”

“ Because, I think it is the right thing to do. If you are in need of the money, why should you not ask me for it? I have more than I shall use. And besides, if you do not wish to ask me, though all I have is yours, dear Edna, it would be better for you to ask for your own.”

“Ask for my own, John ! what do you mean ? ”

“I am going to tell you. But it is not an easy thing to say. Come in here ; this is the mouth of Pit Hole ; we can sit here and rest, and I will tell you all about it.”

But at the entrance of the old mine Edna hesitated. What was He going to tell her ? Something that she did not know about herself?

“Will you come in ?” he said. “I made a seat in here, and was going to tell you if you found yourself tired away from home, up here, you could step in and rest.”

That acknowledgment of his thoughtfulness of her led Edna in.

“ What is it you are going to tell me ?” she asked, sitting down beside him. “ Is it about myself ?”

“ Partly. But first I will tell you of a piece of good fortune I have had myself,” said Edgar, finding it difficult to advance on the other line of speech. “ I have a prospect of being taken into partnership in business by a gentleman. It depends on myself altogether, — on what I am able to do ; so you see I shall be very hard at work now all the time. I can’t tell you more about it just now, but I shall be able to pay every debt which you feel has been contracted for you by the kindness of other people.”

“ O John, how good you are ! ”

“ But you know it is all I am living for, Edna, to serve you, ’ he said, recollecting the doctor’s words, which had implied that it was Edna’s pity for him which had made her willing to live for him.

A few weeks before Edna would have answered, “ And you are all I have to live for ” ; but since Rosa’s death it had been revealed to her that there was a great deal in Mr. Holcombe’s house for which she could and must live.

“ If it had been me instead of Rosa, though, John, you would have borne it, and done just as well,” said she. “ And after a while, when all these good things came to pass which you expect, you would have found somebody else, just as dear and a great deal better than I.”

“ Do you really believe that ? Don’t you know better ? Don’t you know that you are my angel ? that 1 'm not the same man that I was before — before you promised ? Edna, you must stand by me, and I will stand by you. You know what I am ; you knew what I was that morning.”

“John, John, do not talk so. I always see you when I look forward. There is nobody else in the world for me but you.”

“ Do you love me, Edna ? ”

“ Yes, John, I do love you.”

“Will—you kiss me Edna, as a sign that you do love me, and that nothing shall come between us ? ”

She bent down and kissed his hard hand.

“ Nothing shall come between us,” she said. She was so quiet, so composed, that he in turn became so. “ You were going to tell me something about myself, John,” she said. “ What is it ? what have I to ask for that is mine ? ”

“ You have your father to ask for, Edna, and the property which belongs to you.”

“ I do not understand you, John. Whom shall I ask ? Do you know ? Shall I ask you ? ”

“ I only know that you would be likely to get what you asked for. Mrs. Holcombe, I should think, would be the one to ask. She would be likely to know more about it than anybody. Annie was her friend, — was n’t she ? ”

“ Yes, her friend. But, John, if there was anything belonging to me, they would have told me. They would have told me long ago.”

“ Perhaps not. If they would, why did n’t they, or why don’t they ? ”

“ Do you think they would keep back anything from me that was mine ? ” exclaimed Edna, after a short pause, in which her surprise had been growing into amazement. “ Annie would have known, they would all have known, if there was anything. Do you expect me to believe that they have all cheated me and wronged me ? I do not, I cannot.”

“ I don’t know what to think about it, that is the honest fact ; ask Mrs. Holcombe, and then perhaps you will know more than I do; but, if you fail, I shall feel bound to go on with the investigation, as the guardian of your rights.”

“ Go on where ? what with ? Tell me all, tell me everything, dear John. You can’t think how you have surprised me.”

“ I ’ll tell you that your father was a gentleman,” said he.

“ Do you suppose I did not know that?”

Nothing could have pleased John as did these words. How near the girl who was convinced that her father was a gentleman had allowed him to come to her !

“ If you were my wife I should have everything made clear,” said he. “ I would ask questions of persons I thought most likely would be able to answer them. But you sec, my darling, I can’t go very far now even for you ; people might think I was doing it for myself. But I know better. I know that if you had your rights, everything would be changed between us. Money changes everything.”

“ Not hearts.”

“ They say, hearts most.”

“ I don’t believe it. But if you think there is a danger of that John, I shall never ask any questions. I don’t want my heart to be changed about you. I know that nothing but you yourself could ever change it. And if I ask any question, it will be for you. I ought to go home. They will wonder where I am.”

“ But, Edna, before you go, promise me that you will ask.”

“ About my father ? ”

“ Yes.”

“ Of Mrs. Holcombe ? ”

“ Yes.”

“ But I could not ask for rights which I know nothing about.”

“ Well, ask that question and see what comes of it.”

Edna reflected. At last she said, leading the way out of the mine : “John, if I do, it will be the hardest thing I ever did, and for your sake. I never could ask her to tell me what she has not thought best to tell me for my own sake. I think you could not ask me to do anything I ought not to do. If you should be mistaken, and I should let her think that I suspected she had kept back what she ought to have told me, it would be a great affliction to me. But I am going to trust you, dear.”

Those last words John did not like to hear; they implied that the trust was an effort on Edna’s part.

“ My girl, you may,” he said ; and as they came out under the starlight he kissed her, not modestly on the hand, but bravely on the cheek, and so saw himself justified, and the day’s humiliations atoned for.

All night Edna was thinking: “ He could not have been so much in earnest about it if he had not known enough to make him sure. And he would not have urged me to ask, if he had not seen it was the best thing to do. I will do it for his sake.”

And the next morning, while Delia was packing dried fruit in a jar and Edna was arranging the dishes on the kitchen shelves, she asked about her parents, and said that she would like to visit the place where she was born, that she might see the people who remembered her father and mother. Did Mrs. Holcombe ever see them ? And did she remember them well ? And did she, Edna, favor either of them?

Yes, — her father, Delia told her. Edna had always felt, she said, that she was more like her father than her mother; and Delia told her she was right, that she did much more resemble him. And he was a gentleman ? O, yes.

As Delia answered these questions, she thought, “ The child perhaps already knows all that I could tell her! ”

“He must have been a poor man, though,” said Edna. “ But then,” she added, repenting that she had given her doubteven this much expression, — “but then he was a gentleman, and I always believed he was. O, I forgot ” ; and she walked hastily out of the room, as if she had left some work which must be at once attended to.

When she came back again, she made no further allusion to this subject ; other thoughts had occupied her since she went. The doctor, on the lookout for her, had seen her as he drove past on the opposite bank of the stream, and had called to her, “Get your bonnet and come with me a mile or two,” and she had gladly accepted his invitation. After what she had said to Mrs. Holcombe, the one desirable thing seemed to be to get away out of sight, the further the better. If there was nothing to tell, she had wronged her best friends by consenting to adopt the suspicions of others; if there was anything to tell, she did not want to know that the telling cost Mrs. Holcombe anything.

The doctor was in his usual cheery mood ; it was exaltation of desire and purpose to ride by his side in the early morning along the mountain road. They had not gone far when he began to talk about her speculations, — wanted to know how they prospered, and she told him about the drawings. She told him, chiefly because she was a little disturbed by what John had said last night about taking money of Mr. Boyd, and she wished to know how the doctor would look at the transaction. He seemed greatly pleased, and said he should ask Boyd to let him look at the drawing, and was interested to know what she had made out of his handsome face. Then he told her that he had great expectations in regard to Faulkner and the sale of her little farm ; he thought the last time he saw him Faulkner seemed inclined to close at seven hundred. That was the highest he would go. “ Suppose we just drive round that way and see if he has gone to sleep over it,” said the doctor.

“ Do ! ” exclaimed Edna ; and all the rest of the way she was from time to time thinking what she would do supposing Faulkner should pay her seven hundred dollars for her land. But she had other thoughts too, that occupied her during that drive.

They visited Faulkner, and he haggled with the doctor for an hour, but finally came to terms; for the day had arrived when he must go to work on those fields of Edna’s if he intended them to give him a crop the next year. The doctor urged him up to six hundred and ninety-five, and there he stopped, and could be urged no further.

“Take it,” said Edna to the doctor; and so the bargain was sealed, and Faulkner promised to come down for the papers which the doctor, Annie Gell’s executor, would have ready for him next day ; he would bring the payment with him in full, he said, or else Boyd’s bank would cash his note.

Going home the doctor asked her what she would do with so much money, and she answered, so promptly as to prove to him that the point had been for some time settled in her own mind, “ Give it to Mrs. Holcombe.”

“Well, we must see about that. I am your guardian, you know,” he said.

“ But you know,” she answered, “ I owe them everything.”

“ Yes, I know that. Well, we ’ll see about it,” he said again.

Edna did not tell him that it seemed to her a small thing to give all she had into Mrs. Holcombe’s hands, since she had, urged by a suspicion, asked her those questions in the morning.

“There ’s one thing I wanted to ask you,” he said ; “ do you see much of John Edgar nowadays ? ”

“ I saw him last evening.”

Edna was glad that the doctor had asked the question, and, if he went a great deal further than this, she resolved she would answer him. She would feel easier if he knew all that had passed between John and herself.

“ Is he doing well ? I hear he is, — better at least than he was.”

“ O, yes,” said Edna ; “ he is doing very well.”

“ I know he says so ; but we cannot always take a person’s testimony in such a matter. He has had such a poor record so far, that really it would be almost a miracle if he reformed entirely. I don't know that it is possible for him to reform. Such a fever in the blood as he has is likely to break out at any time.”

“ But good nursing and care keeps down a fever, and breaks it up, I have heard you say. It is better than medicine and all the doctors.”

“ That is true,” said the doctor, gravely, “ but I don’t know what kind of nursing he would be likely to get.”

“ He might have a friend who could serve him.”

“No, Edna, it is not likely; he will gang his ain gait, now straight, and now crooked, and all the watching of the best nurse that ever was would n’t hinder that fever from getting the upper hand of him now and then.”

It seemed along time that the doctor drove along in silence ; at last he said, “Edna, look in my face.”

His eyes filled with tears as she did so. “ Tell me all about it, darling,” said he. But she was silent.

“Well, I cannot pry into your secrets, but he has told me that he means to marry you. I can’t believe it, though. I don’t see how it could happen. I don’t intend to believe it, for he was never very careful about what he said since I knew him. If it is really true, you will tell me when you want me to know ; meantime, I shall dismiss a thing so incredible from my mind.”

“Why is it so incredible?” asked Edna.

“ Why ? Because you are Edna.”

“But is there any other reason?” She was thinking that, if there was any secret to be told which she had a right to know, the doctor might be able to divulge it.

“ There are more reasons than I can give just now. But you shall know them yet.”The doctor gave Lightfoot a cut, and then occupied himself in restraining her. “ You must have felt very lonely, and longed for a friend,” said he. “But, my child, the thing I do not understand is how you should ever have allowed him to see that he had any right whatever to speak to you as — as a lover, if he has.”

“ Can I help it if you do not understand it?” said Edna. “It is not a mystery to me. If he seems worthless to you, he does not seem more so than I have appeared to myself.”

“But your worthlessness is becoming less and less apparent to you, and will do so. You are a child ; you have been in a dream. Think of Mrs. Holcombe the wife of old Lawson ! what kind of marriage do you suppose that would be ? Well this one would be about equal to that, according to my way of looking at things. Six months ago John would have told you I was his best friend. I know I am his friend. I know I am yours. I shall keep your secret. But there is one thing you must promise, Edna; you will invite me to your wedding. You will hide nothing from me. Everything shall be aboveboard.”

He repeated that question, and came back to it when he saw that she had not answered it, until she had given him her promise. “Now I can rest,” he thought. “ Edna will not deceive me.”