Saint or Sinner

IT worried Hannah Dean not to find her sister at the door when the factory “let out” one pleasant June evening. Hetty and she worked through the day in different rooms, but they always walked home together at night. Hannah was the more troubled because for the past week or two Hetty had acted strangely. At home she followed Hannah from room to room, and would not. be left alone. At the mill, on the contrary, she avoided her sister, and spent all her spare time idling with Frank Cotter, a young fellow who worked in the machine-shop, whom Hannah did not fancy. This evening, when Hetty was missing, Hannah feared that she had gone Somewhere with Frank, and took her homeward path, thinking in a troubled mood of the pretty, wayward girl, and of their father’s death, which had occurred two months before. But Tom Furness joined her, and his cheeriness drove away her care. He persuaded her to go rowing with him on the river, after supper; but the mother, Mrs. Dean, when she heard the plan, objected strenuously, because it was the prayer-meeting night, and Hannah ought to go to church. Hannah’s pleading that she had been to prayer-meetings all her life and had never been in a boat on the river would have availed little had not Tom come to the rescue and persisted in taking her; while the widow, who had not seemed to notice Hetty’s absence, marched sullenly off to church, taking her third child, Patty, an imbecile girl, of whom she was very fond. Tom and Hannah spent a happy hour, rowing through the twilight. He coaxed her to sing, and all the squalid cares of her life seemed to drop away with the deep, sweet shadows that fell over the water.

At last he drew his boat up on the shore, and they silently landed; and, though they knew it not, their enchanted dream of youth and love was over. She never sang again.

They walked together down the riverside till they reached the church. There were lights in the vestry, and the meeting was still in session.

‘‘Let us go in,” said Hannah; and Tom acquiesced.

They separated at the door, and Tom sat down among the men, while she crossed over to the women’s side of the house. She looked around for Hetty without finding her, but soon distinguished her mother at the end of one of the seats. A lamp hung suspended from the ceiling over the old woman’s head, and the yellow, flickering light fell full on her hard old face, so dark and rigid, intense and pinched. Her hands were gloveless, and lay clasped tight upon her knee. Her eyes were closed, and her lips moved in response to the prayer of Deacon Dudley, a white-haired old man who knelt near her. Patty’s pretty, imbecile face was close to her mother’s shoulder.

When the meeting was over Tom met Hannah at the gate. “ Come with me; I’ve something to tell you,” he said.

“What is it?” she asked, in vague alarm.

“ Hetty had trouble with the overseer to-day, and he’s turned her out of the mill. She ’s been slack at her work, and I guess she ’s been away from it more than you knew.”

“ With Frank Cotter? ”

“ I suppose so.”

“ But where is she now? ”

“ At Sue Flint’s.”

Annoyed at hearing this, since Frank Cotter boarded at Mrs. Flint’s, Hannah went straight there with Tom.

She knocked at the kitchen door, and without waiting for a response opened it and walked in with neighborly freedom.

Mrs. Flint, a raw-boned, weary-looking woman, sat on one side of the stove, and her husband, Jabez Flint, sat on the other. His mouth was drawn up and open on one side. His nose seemed to have forgotten which way it had originally meant to go, and at last, in sheer despair, it had given up trying to be a nose and had come to an end. His eyes stared vacantly in opposite directions. His forehead slanted back to the unkempt hair, which straggled forward to meet it in a vain attempt to give some harmony to the face. He smoked a short, black pipe, and he did not move when Tom and Hannah entered. Mrs. Flint, however, rose, greeted them, and pushed forward chairs. Tom sat down, but Hannah only steadied herself by the back of hers, and asked, “ Is Hetty here? ’ ’

“Yes; she and Sue have just gone up-stairs to bed.”

Hannah breathed more freely to learn that Hetty had not gone out with Frank Cotter.

“ I should like to see Hetty,” she said. “I’ve just heard about her trouble.”

“Her trouble, eh! ” exclaimed Mrs. Flint, sharply.

“Oh, didn’t she tell you? Some trouble with the overseer that worried her,” said Hannah, annoyed to find that she had revealed what Hetty had kept secret.

“ Like enough she told Sue,” said Mrs. Flint, “ but I did n’t take no notice when she come in; I was busy ’tendin’ to him,” indicating Jabez with her thumb.

“ Have you been sick to-day? ” asked Tom of the old man.

Mrs. Flint answered for her husband: “A dreadful spell; he ain’t quite come out of it yet. I don’t know, sometimes, what we shall do.”

No more was said for a minute, and then Hannah proposed going up for Hetty, and Mrs. Flint consented. Shortly afterwards the two girls came downstairs together, anti Hannah said quietly, “ I’ve coaxed Hetty to go home with me, and we 'll tell mother in the morning. Hetty’s afraid mother will be vexed, but I guess not.”

This speech was much braver than Hannah felt. Tom stared at Hetty, and was startled to see how white the pretty face was.

They all walked home silently, and Hannah insisted that Tom should leave them at the gate.

“You are not fair, Hannah,” said Tom. “ You are always shutting me out when you are in trouble. Never mind, I ’ll come in some day.” He suddenly stopped, kissed her, and turned away.

“ Hetty,” began Hannah, bending to her sister a face whose blush the darkness hid, “now tell me all about it. Was it about ” —

“No, it was n’t about Frank,” broke in Hetty. " And yet it was too, I suppose. Any way, I was n’t at my work regular, and there was a fuss to-day, and the boss just turned me off.” She stopped, and even the night which concealed Hannah’s blush Could not hide her look of terror. “ Oh, I don’t dare go in! ”

“ Hetty, Hetty, my poor girl, what have you done ? ”

“I have n’t done anything,”

“ Then what are you afraid of ? ”

“ Oh, I'm afraid, I ’m afraid! ” clinging desperately to her sister.

“ Come round the house,” said Hannah, “ and we ’ll go up the back-stairs, and nobody need see us,”

“ She ’ll come up in the night! ” cried Hetty, catching her breath hysterically.

“ Who ’ll come up ? ” asked Hannah, trembling.

“Mother, mother!” whispered Hetty ; “ she ’ll poison me too.”

And then, suddenly, both girls had sunk upon the ground, and were staring at each other with white faces. Neither moved, while Hetty, in low, wild whispers, went on: “The night that father died, I saw her go to the closet and get a bottle out of that little cupboard she always keeps locked, and I saw her pour something into a cup of tea, and I did n’t think anything. Of course, I did n’t. But she came and woke him up. I was just at the door, where I was standing still, so as not to wake him, and she did n’t see me. She gave him the tea, and somehow I felt frightened then. You know how he grew worse that evening, and the doctors did n’t know what was the matter. Oh, and after giving him the tea, she went to the window and opened it. The stars were very bright, and she threw something out, — I did n’t see what. But a week ago I was round there, and I found the bottle, and it had some white powder in it, and it was marked ‘ Arsenic.’ ”

“ You don’t know it was that she threw out.”

“No, but I’m pretty sure, and I’m afraid of her.”

“ Show me the bottle.”

Hetty rose slowly, and Hannah followed, staggering after her round the house.

Hetty poked about in the grass, where she had dropped the bottle on the spot in which she had found it. Hannah crouched against the house. Her hand trailed in some high clover growing there, and the dew on it felt like blood.

“ There! ” said Hetty at last, holding up a small phial. Hannah took it, put it in her pocket, and rising led the way into the house,

Mrs. Dean and Patty had gone to bed and left a lamp burning on the kitchen table. Hannah fastened up the doors and windows, and as she did so Mrs. Dean called out from her room, the one under whose window they had just found the bottle, “ This is a pretty time of night to come in! Is Hetty there? ”

Hetty shrank and shivered, but Hannah answered, “ Yes,” took up the lamp, and mounted the stairs, while Hetty followed. When they had reached the room, Hannah closed the door behind them, took out the bottle, and read the fatal label.

Mrs. Dean was at this time about sixty years old. She could neither read nor write. She had been born in one of the worst neighborhoods of the State, — a squalid collection of some half dozen huts in the country, where the men and women herded together like cattle. She had drifted out of these surroundings, and, rather late in life, had married the son of a farmer of much better class. Her husband was a hard-working, inefficient man, and all the worldly prosperity of the family was due to her thrift and her stingy economy. Mr. Dean had possessed a certain feeble-minded sensitiveness of organization. Repelled by his wife’s stern character, unable even to share in the peculiar religious fervor which she always manifested, he had sought refuge in the affection of Hannah and Hetty; Patty always seemed to inspire him with repugnance and awe. There was nothing unpleasant about the girl. She would sit for hours crooning songs in a low, sweet voice, apparently seeing and hearing nothing. But she did see and hear, and would sometimes show that she had been keenly observing everything during the whole time she had been quiet; and it was probably this odd mingling of imbecility and shrewdness which produced in her father a species of nervous terror.

Mrs. Dean, on the contrary, manifested for Patty the only real tenderness she displayed in her family. For her only would she relax the stern economy with which she presided over the household.

Mrs. Dean had fretted much, at first, over the expenses which her husband’s illness involved. His health had been failing a long time, and for two years before his death he had not worked at all. Hannah, lying awake all this dreadful night, with the bottle labeled arsenic hidden away among her clothes, remembered how the fretfulness had subsided as the months rolled on, and how a certain angry but silent acquiescence had marked her mother’s reception of every fresh bill for medicine or medical attendance.

Hannah’s thoughts suddenly reverted, at this moment, to a time when she was a child. An old man and his wife had lived some years in Mrs. Dean’s family, with the understanding that they were to be cared for during life, and at their death Mrs. Dean was to receive the small sum of money they would leave behind.

Hannah remembered that once when the old woman, Betsey Jordan, had shown, with childish glee, some cloth which she had bought for a new cloak, Mrs. Dean had turned away, grumbling, “If you are n’t more saving of your money than that, precious little will them get that feeds you.”

It was just a week after this that, in the early morning, Mr. and Mrs. Jordan were found both dead in their bed. Hannah remembered her father’s bending over the still, old faces, and saying, gently and sadly, —

“ They went together, any way; but it ’s sudden, and makes the home feel lonesome. ’ ’

The look on her mother’s face as he spoke came even now before Hannah’s eyes, and she understood it at last. These people were cousins of Tom Furness’s mother. And Hannah, working slowly through this horrible mesh of circumstance, came to a new point to be considered, a new agony to be borne. Tom Furness! She clutched the bedclothes and set her teeth. Tom Furness! She raised herself and stared at Hetty, whose hysterical sobbings had long since subsided into sleep. For one moment, Hannah felt as if she could kill the girl for putting this fearful thing between Tom and herself. Only for a moment; the next, she felt a horror of herself, which set her thoughts striving to find the path of her duty, — her feelings, rather, for she could not think it all out. Somehow, at last, in all the black maze, it came clear to her that she was her mother’s child, and must not breathe a suspicion against her. Perhaps the suspicion was false, but that possibility only barred her the more from telling it. Tom and she must go apart forever. Patty must never know. Hetty’s life must be freed from this dark shadow; in atonement, perhaps, for her own late anger with her.

For the rest, one duty lay clear before Hannah: “Never to let it happen again.” She said these words over and over, as if they might be a spell against fate. She would watch her mother till she died, so that the horrible impulse of crime, the avarice which prompted the impulse, should never be free to work again. She must ever keep in mind that human life might depend on her silent vigilance, and that the price of her silence might be blood. And would she not also be guilty of that blood? Tom must go. Into that valley of the shadow of death which her life entered she could drag no lover.

It rained Sunday morning. Hannah saw at once that she would not be tempted to indulge in the exquisite misery of meeting Tom once more, and going to the next town with him to church, before she told him that they must separate. The other girls made ready to go to church with their mother. Hetty looked pale and frightened, and avoided Hannah’s eye. She too was meditating a desperate resolve. Hannah sat sullen and still, and made no movement to go with the others. Her mother rebuked her sharply, but she answered that her head ached, and they left her sitting in the kitchen. In a few minutes Tom burst in at the door, shaking the rain off his coat and tossing his wet hat in before him. “ I watched the folks go in to meeting,” he said, “ and saw you were not there. What ’s the matter? Is it Hetty?”

She stood silent, and so obviously agitated that he took both her hands in alarm. “No, no!” she cried, “you must n’t think any harm of Hetty. She ’s a good girl. Indeed she is. Think what you like of me — of — the rest of us.” She trembled, feeling how helpless she was, shut in the house alone with the man she loved. If they were only out, —out somewhere in the pitiless storm, and she could run from him forever, through the rain and wind, and hide herself in the uttermost parts of the earth! But she could not flee. She must stand still and drive him away, — out under the angry sky. “ Oh, Tom, Tom, go! For God’s sake go, and don’t ask me anything! ”

“ Hannah! ”

“ Yes, you are angry. I knew you would be angry, but it is all for your own sake.”

“ Good heavens! What is all for my sake? ”

“ That you must go. Tom, dear Tom, it is forever. You must many some one else. You must never marry me. Oh, don’t kill me by staying here any lon-

“ Tell me,” he cried, as she sank sobbing on the floor before him, “ what do you mean ? Do you want me to leave you, so you may marry another man? ”

“ Me marry another man ! ” She sprang up as she spoke. “ Who dared say I would marry another man? No, it is you who must marry.”

“ Wait till I’ve asked leave to do so,” he said, sullenly. “I might take you at your word.”

She shivered, but answered bravely, “God grant you may. Look! I will swear to you never to marry anybody else in the world, — hut I can’t many you.”

“ What’s your oath worth? You ’re breaking your promise to marry me.”

“ Oh, Tom, Tom,” she moaned, “can’t we part in peace? I have loved you all my life; I cannot quarrel with you, but we must part. Speak kindly to me first. You 'll have plenty to think of and to be glad about after you’ve left me, but I 'll have nothing pleasant to hope for, or to remember, — but just the thought of you. Give me one kind word to live on all my life long. I must live, Tom. I ’ve something to do. Sometime, dear, if you and I live long enough, I Tl tell you all about it. I don’t know when I may be free to speak. I may die first, but if I live, I Tl find you wherever you are and tell you. I hope you 'll marry, Tom. It won’t matter, then, when I tell mv secret. I 'll not come hankering for your love. You need not fear that, when you sit by your wife, in your own house. I ’ll only come to say why I sent you off when we both were young, and you and your wife will be glad and thank me for it.”

He put his arms around her, and said, “ Tell me your secret now.”

She started from him. “ No; if you came to me every day in the year, I’d never tell you. It is n’t my secret.”

“ Well, marry me, and I ’ll never ask you what it is.”

“ Oh, Tom, such a thing could never be between husband and wife. Kiss me once, Tom. God bless you. Go now.”

It was her own hand that opened the door. He staggered out into the rain.

The day passed, as Sundays usually did at Mrs. Dean’s, with dreary formality. In the evening, Hannah went to church with the others. When coming out, she saw Hetty stop and speak with Frank Cotter, but it did not trouble her. It seemed as if nothing would trouble her now.

Monday morning dawned with pitiless brightness. The mill bells rang out through the clear air. Hannah asked Hetty if she should tell their mother of her dismissal from work. The girl answered shortly, “ No, I’m going down to the mill. May be I can get a place.”

They went together to the factory, and separated at the door.

A little before noon Patty came wildly into the room where Hannah worked, and with agitation that almost made her face intelligent told her that Hetty had run away with Frank Cotter that forenoon, and that they were already married.

“ It is just as well,” answered Hannah quietly, turning back to her work.

“Oh,” sobbed Patty, “ mother is taking on dreadful. Do come home.”

Hannah rapidly arranged with the overseer about her work, and left the mill with her sister. On the way Patty told her all she knew about the matter.

Frank and Hetty were now at Mrs. Flint’s. They had come there an hour before, and had sent word to Mrs. Dean that they had been to the next town and had been married about nine o’clock that morning.

The girls found Mrs. Dean seated in the kitchen crying, and as Patty went up to her she sobbed aloud: “ Oh, Patty, I ’ll have to go out scrubbing, in my old age, to get you a morsel to eat, now Hetty has gone. ’’

“ Are you going over to see Hetty? ” Hannah asked.

“ No,” said Mrs. Dean. Hannah went up-stairs, packed up some of Hetty’s things, and brought the bundle down. The old woman took it from her daughter, opened it, and curiously examined its contents. “Where’s her gold beads ? ” demanded the mother.

“ I think likely she wore them,” said Hannah.

Mrs. Dean muttered between her teeth. She turned over the things, picked out some stockings, a new dress, two collars, and some of the better underclothing; then rolling up the poor remains of Hetty’s slender wardrobe, she said, “ You may take them things to her, but she shan’t have these; they cost too much.”

“ Oh, mother,” said Hannah, her heart full of shame and trouble, “ Hetty bought them with money she earned herself. And for her to go as a wife to Frank Cotter without any decent clothes! It would disgrace us all.”

“She’s disgraced us already,” said Mrs. Dean, with a low chuckle. “ Let Frank Cotter dress his own wife, — I can’t afford to. I don’t want to die in the poor-house. It ’s likely she ’ll come to it yet. You may tell her she need n’t look to me to keep her out. Patty shall have the things. ”

Hannah tied up the pitiful bundle left her, took it, and went out into the yard. She felt dizzy, and sat dowm for a few minutes on a stone, just inside the gate. Hearing quick steps, she raised her head, and saw Patty coming with Hetty’s dress and the other clothes. A happy smile lighted the imbecile girl’s face, and she sang softly, as she came along.

“Mother’s queer,” she said, with a low laugh; “Hannah must n’t mind. Patty don’t want the things. Take ’em to Hetty. Poor Hetty! Take ’em to Hetty,” she said again, as Hannah hesitated; “ mother won’t know.” She laughed gleefully. “ Hetty shall have her things. Poor Hannah won’t be sorry any more.”

Poor Hannah indeed! She knew it would not do to take the things. Mrs. Dean would be sure to miss them, and what if she were to be angry with Patty! what if her affection for her imbecile child should lessen! There must be no such risks run. Patty must never offend her mother, must never be allowed to seem a burden to her. Hannah must see to that.

To satisfy Patty, she picked out One or two trifling articles from the bundle, assured her that Hetty would not want the others, thanked her warmly, and went rapidly away to Mrs. Flint’s.

She found Frank and Hetty sitting in solitary and rather uncomfortable state in Mrs. Flint’s parlor. He came to meet her as she entered the room. Hetty hung back shamefaced.

“ Do you think this is a bad business?” asked Frank, with a smile.

“ I hope it is not.”

Hetty ran forward at this, and kissed her sister warmly, murmuring praises of Frank. Hannah gave her the bundle, and told her how Patty sent some of the things, but softened the account of their mother’s part in the transaction. Hetty took it all sweetly, and said she was glad Patty was to have the dress; but she did not speak of her mother, and soon broke away and ran up-stairs with her clothes. Hannah looked at Frank.

“You ’ll be kind to her, and,” with hesitation, “ you’ll go away from New Bridge? ”

“ Yes,” he answered, “ we are going to Orrinsville to-night. I shall look for work there, where I have friends.”

“ That is best.”

“ Oh, yes,” said Frank speaking deliberately; “ I’m sorry for you and Patty, but Hetty can’t stand these things. She asked me to take her away. ’ ’

“ Asked you! ”

“ Oh, she was right enough. I ’d given her reason to think I 'd marry her, and when I’d got her into a scrape about her work I was bound to stand by her. I like her, besides. She’s a good girl, and I could n’t leave her to be scared to death at home.” Frank knew! Hannah’s heart beat heavily as he continued: “I always liked you, Hannah, though you did n’t like me. Hetty thinks you’d better marry soon, and take Patty and come and live near us in Orrinsville.” His tone was truly brotherly. For an instant, a vision of heaven danced before Hannah’s eyes.

“ No,” she said in a moment, “ I must stay. I must see to it all, — watch things, you know. I’ve broken with Tom. He does n’t know. He never shall know. I don’t believe it ever happened, but any way I must see that it never happens again. I don’t believe it.”

“Hannah, you’re the right sort of woman,” cried Frank; but he felt sure that Hannah did believe it.

Mrs. Flint and Sue and Hetty all came in just then, and Mrs. Flint proposed that she and Hannah shoidd go and bring Patty there, and should, if possible, persuade Mrs. Dean to come. Neither Hetty nor Frank felt any desire to have Mrs. Dean’s blessing rest upon their marriage day, and Hannah would gladly have kept these last few moments free from the shadow of her mother’s presence; but they all felt it would be unwise to oppose her coming.

Mrs. Dean was easily induced to let Patty go, and the girl darted gleefully off after her bonnet. When she was gone, Mrs. Dean asked, with an apparent effort to be unconcerned and neighborly, “ How is Mr. Flint? ”

“ Dretful poorly,” answered the unfortunate wife, and, eager to propitiate the widow, she spoke with less reserve than usual of her husband’s illness, and told how he had had two “ spells ” the last two days, and how he had fallen, in one of them, against the table which was set for dinner, and upset it, breaking the crockery and spilling soup all over her new rag carpet.

“ I wouldn’t have a man round doinf like that,” said Mrs. Dean, with a scowl.

“ Why, what would you do? ”

“ Oh, there ’s ways. I ’d still him down, somehow.”

Hannah grew pale in her corner, and Mrs. Flint opened her eyes’ in wonder. Just then Patty came in, flushed and eager, and Mrs. Flint was recalled to her mission, and began to urge Mrs. Dean to go with them.

“ No, I won’t,” said she, shutting her thin lips tight. There was an ominous gleam in her eyes, and Patty cried out, “ Come away! mother won’t care, when we come back.”

II.

Tom waylaid Hannah twice on her way home from the mill, but she repulsed him. Sometimes, afterward, she caught glimpses of him about the village. Always she wished he would come and speak to her. Always she shivered with fear lest he should come. After a few days, however, he left the village. His mother said he had gone to work in some town in Connecticut, where a good place was offered him, and, as she said it, she glanced reproachfully at Hannah. The blood settled heavily around the girl’s heart, but she made no sign and spoke no word. The dread she had felt, while her lover remained in the village, lest he should sometimes persuade her to yield to his entreaty grew into a remembered bliss when the days and months trailed by, and she sickened at heart to know that he would try no more to persuade her. He did not come back to New Bridge, and after a not very long period Hannah heard that he was married. She was left to count the interminable days like sands upon the seashore. The years passed, till the memory of her love ceased to torture her, but she grew very still at heart, and felt as if she must walk softly evermore, because she trod upon a grave.

Patty was her chief comfort. She grew very fond of her after Hetty went away. She often thought with horror that it might be that she had all this while wronged her mother with her suspicion. Then she would try to draw nearer to the widow’s close-locked heart, and to atone, by some dumb service, for the fearful thing she had thought. A revulsion of feeling was sure to follow, and she grew more convinced, year by year, that her mother was guilty. Still, nothing occurred to waken her dread that, in some new access of temptation, Mrs. Dean might repeat the crime, and a wearing monotony of pain, anxiety, and fear that was not quite terror dominated over Hannah’s life. She feared most for Patty, but was comforted by seeing that the mother’s affection for the unfortunate continued firm.

After a while a great revival swept through the village and roused Hannah’s dormant spirit. She frequented prayermeetings, and would fain have joined in the ecstasy of the converted. One evening, a wave of passionate emotion rushed over her soul and stirred it with feelings she had never known before.

Her submission to fate, though uncomplaining, had hitherto been dogged. Now, for an instant, she felt in accord even with the Power that had crushed her life, and given to her, an innocent woman, the burden of guilt to bear. Christ, too, had lived and died for sinners. It was permitted unto her to enter into that great sacrifice, to partake of that immeasurable and holy suffering. Hannah’s heart was moved by the eternal truth underlying the dogmas of theology, — that, for some mysterious reason, the innocent must suffer with the guilty, — and she thrilled with consciousness of intimate union with Him whose death on Calvary has been a type of that mightier vicarious atonement in which the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children, even to the third and fourth generation, and the whole round world groans in the travail of Justice.

“ It’s like Christ,” she said to herself, ” somehow, it’s like Christ to suffer because some one else has done wrong.”

And Hannah might have fallen on her knees and burst out into the wild, incoherent prayer in which her comrades indulged at these meetings, but that just then she turned her head and saw her mother on her knees in the vestry aisle. The old woman’s eyes were closed, her bonnet fallen back. Her hands were clasped, her lips moved, and her body swayed slightly to and fro.

“ She’s a Christian,” thought Hannah, and settled back in her seat.

All the next day, as Hannah walked back and forth between her looms, the machinery grumbled a steady undertone to her thoughts. This daughter, who believed her mother a murderess, had yet never attempted to decide whether the strange perversity and distortion of that mother’s nature did or did not admit a genuine element of sincere, religious feeling. But if it did, what was religion, and of what good was it ?

Hannah remembered her father, who had “ died in his sins,” as Mrs. Dean had been known pleasantly to describe her husband’s condition of soul at the time of his death. Mr. Dean had never been converted, A death-bed conversion might have saved his soul. His wife’s deed had prevented that possibility. What remained to him? Was it his fault that time had not been granted him?

Mrs. Dean might live to feel a genuine penitence. Indeed, it was not clear to Hannah’s mind, clouded as it was by a crude theology, that her mother would not bo saved under any circumstances, since she called on Christ’s great name. Nor did this daughter wish to imagine an eternal retribution awaiting even her guilty mother.

When Hannah went home that night, she found Deacon Dudley sitting by the kitchen fire. He smiled at her in a sickly way. Her mother set her thin old mouth firmly for a moment, and then said, “ Hannah, I ’m married to Mr. Dudley.”

The girl stood still and stared.

“ May be,” broke in the old man, “ you don’t fancy the idea of a stepfather, but I guess we ’ll get on fust-rate. The old woman and me got married today. It don’t take much fuss to get anybody married in this State, and we did n’t want no fuss. I ’ve been mighty lonesome since my fust wife died, an’ Mary, she’s got her husband an’ children to look arter, though I don’t mean to say nothin’ against Mary. She’s a good woman, but I’ve always thought a sight of your ma. I do think, Hannah, she is the smartest woman in New Bridge; an’ such a nice place as she’s got, an’ a smart girl like you in the mill, an’ Patty ” — But here some wiser instinct dawned upon him; he forbore to state how much of a disadvantage he considered Patty in this matrimonial arrangement, and he continued, with a smile meant to express sentiment, “ An’ so you see, though Mary Pierce is a nice, good woman, an’ plenty willing to have her old father stay with her, my feelings seemed to draw me here.”

“You’d better shut up now, about your feelings,” remarked his bride, amiably, “an’ draw a pail of water for your tea.”

The old man got up hurriedly, and taking the empty pail tottered out of the kitchen.

“ I thought,” said the mother, “that it would be handy to have a man about the house. I guess he ’ll rather more than earn his board.”

Hannah did not answer, but took off her bonnet and shawl, and sat down by the table.

In a moment Mr. Dudley was heard crying for help, and Hannah went hastily out to the well, where she found the old man struggling in vain with the bucket. It was evident that he was too feeble to draw the water. Hannah took his place and performed the task, while he stood by simpering out apologies.

At supper, Mr. Dudley pushed his plate over to his wife, and asked her to cut up the meat. Hannah glanced up at him, and saw that his hands were trembling violently. She looked over at her mother, and perceived a heavy frown on the old woman’s brow as she complied with her husband’s request.

Hannah hurried off to the mill the next morning. She carried her dinner, and did not return till night. She looked haggard enough as she came into the kitchen, where Deacon Dudley sat smoking a pipe.

Her mind had been busy all day with harassing thoughts. She had remembered that Mr. Dudley was reputed to own three or four hundred dollars. She could not doubt her mother’s motive in marrying him. She had noticed the evening before that he was far more feeble than her mother could have supposed. He would, very likely, soon become a burden to his new wife. What would happen then, and what could she, Hannah, do? She was away from home eleven hours a day; what things might happen in eleven hours? The mill wheels ground out this question in her ears. The looms and all the flying machinery had screeched it at her, as they kept up their diabolic dance before her eyes. Ought she to expose her mother? Was there really anything to expose?

She looked so sallow as she came into the kitchen that Mr. Dudley, lifting his head and removing his pipe, said. “ Hannah, why don’t you take some of them little white powders, them arsenic powders, the other gals take to clear their skins out? You ’re mighty dark complected.”

Hannah grew ghastly white, and went through the room and up-stairs without speaking.

At supper, Mr. Dudley shoved his plate over to Hannah, and asked her to cut up his meat. Mrs. Dudley contracted her brows, and after a little while remarked to her spouse that his appetite seemed good. He smiled as he answered that he generally relished his food.

Two weeks passed, and one day Mrs. Dudley announced her intention of visiting relatives in Troy, a town some twenty miles distant. Mr. Dudley and Patty were to go with her. Hannah, she said, might, while they were gone, take her meals at Mrs. Flint’s. Hannah was amazed and troubled by this arrangement. Her mother had never made a visit before since she could remember.

“ I think I ’ll go, too,” said Hannah.

“ No, you won’t,” replied Mrs. Dudley, shortly. " I can’t have you foolin’ away all your time. Me an’ the old man’ll go, and Patty,because her board to home would cost suthin; but you can stay an’ ’arn your own livin’.”

Hannah, nevertheless, resolved to go, and made her preparations accordingly. When the morning of the intended departure came, Mrs. Dudley discovered her daughter’s plans, and seemed so angry that a great terror fell upon the unhappy girl, and she dared not go, lest she should only precipitate some dreaded catastrophe. Perhaps she feared that she should draw down doom on her own head. At any rate, her courage failed, and she watched the others depart to take the cars, making no further attempt to accompany them. Mr. Dudley turned after he had entered the road, and looking back to Hannah, who stood leaning on the gate, smiled and called out pleasantly that he wished she were going with them.

Hannah went back into the house and put on her shawl. She had come to a stern determination as those three figures had vanished from her sight. She would go instantly to Mrs. Pierce, Mr. Dudley’s married daughter, confide to her the whole horrible story, and put the matter in her hands. She could go after her father, if she wished, and bring him home, and henceforth take care of him herself. Perhaps she could reason away Hannah’s fears. Perhaps she would tell her that it was all a delusion. Of course, it must be delusion. What proof was it that Mr. Dean had died of poison that his daughters had found a bottle of arsenic under his chamber window ? Bottles were common, and arsenic was used to kill rats,— and was n’t it used also for the complexion? Didn’t Mr. Dudley say so? Hannah knew one or two persons who took it in small doses, as a stimulant. Mr. Dudley had a strangely white complexion. Hannah wondered if he used it. If he died, and people thought it was poison that killed him, of course it was because he took those powders. Hannah was sure he did. Oh, it had all been a delusion, a hideous dream, and she had dreamed it all her life. No, once she had not dreamed any such thing: that was when she rowed on the river with Tom Furness, and sang to him. She had not seen Tom for seven years. He was married. He had forgotten her. And but for this foolish, wicked dream of horror she might have been his wife all this time. Her mother would not do such a thing. Her mother was a good woman. Her mother belonged to the church. It was she, Hannah’s self, who was very bad indeed to have thought of such a thing. She would go and tell Mrs. Pierce, and Mrs. Pierce would tell her that it could not be true. She was so bad, she must be a lost soul. She was sure she would go to hell when she died. She doubted whether hell would be any worse than this. She was n’t certain but she was in hell even now. She would go to Mrs. Pierce, and find out where she was. But perhaps Mrs. Pierce would believe it all. Perhaps her mother would be arrested and hanged, and she would have done it. She would be the murderess then. No, she would not go to Mrs. Pierce at all; she would go to the river, where she had been with Tom, and drown herself before any more misery came to her. But would that save Mr. Dudley ? Save him — save him from what? She didbn’t know. Where was Mr. Dudley? Who was he? Why did it torture her so to think of Mr. Dudley? Oh, she remembered now. He was her mother’s husband, and had gone away with her mother; and she must find Mrs. Pierce and tell her something. She had forgotten what she was to tell her, but she should recollect when she saw her, and it would save something. Where was Mrs. Pierce ?

All the while, Hannah went rushing round the nearly empty village streets, with her brain on fire. She could not find Mrs. Pierce’s house. Everything looked strange to her. On she wandered, through the long forenoon. The faces of the few people She met grew distorted in her vision as she looked at them, and changed into horrible human caricatures. At last, a little before noon, guided by some blind instinct, she staggered into Mrs. Flint’s yard and dropped by the door-step.

They found her there, and took her in. She moaned and muttered day after day, but they who heard her could distinguish nothing she said.

They wrote to Mrs. Dudley, and she came home with her husband and Patty. The old man was not well, and Hannah could not be moved; so Mrs. Dudley’s time was divided between the two houses; which were a quarter of a mile apart. She grumbled a good deal at this, but matters grew no better, since the second night after their return Mr. Dudley became very ill. His wife then ceased her complaints. She seemed very devoted to him. She paid Mrs. Flint to take the whole care of Hannah, that she might give all her time and strength to her husband. He did not improve, however, and when, two days later, Hannah became conscious, Sue Flint told her that her step-father was dead. To Sue’s astonishment, Hannah gave a shriek and went off again into delirium.

Mr. Dudley had Iain in his grave perhaps two weeks, when strange rumors began to circulate through the village. Mrs. Pierce had somehow had suspicions of foul play awakened in her mind.

One day she called at Mrs. Flint’s. Hannah had crawled down into the kitchen that morning, and sat there, silent and wretched. Mrs. Pierce, as she came in, eyed the girl sharply, and Hannah, heart-sick and feeling sorely stricken before Deacon Dudley’s daughter, dropped her eyes to the floor, and, after a moment’s pause, rose, and walking slowly left the room. Mrs. Flint and Mrs. Pierce both felt her departure a relief, and their talk soon turned on the recent death.

“ Will the old woman have his money? ” asked the hostess.

“ Not if I can help it,” answered Mrs. Pierce, with a darkening brow; “ I don’t feel very well satisfied about my father.”

“ Was n’t she kind to him? ”

Mrs. Pierce was silent. Mrs. Flint continued, “She’s a close-fisted woman. I presume she reckoned on his money when she married him.”

“ Yes, and when he died,” said Mrs. Pierce, with startling emphasis. " I he awake nights and think how he died.”

“ Why, but he was an old man; it’s the course of natur’ for the old to die.”

“ Some things are in the course of nature, and some are not,” returned the visitor. “ He was always worse after he 'd taken medicine. She did n't want me there, I could see. But I saw enough to know that. There was sediment in his medicine. I saw it once ” — Here she checked herself. “I never felt my father a burden. He ’d better have stayed with me.”

“ Perhaps,” suggested Mrs. Flint, in vague horror, of what she knew not, “the doctor didn’t understand the case.”

“ I don’t think he did,” answered Mrs. Pierce.

“She isn’t over-patient,” went on Mrs. Flint, who shrank from perceiving any hidden meaning in her visitor’s remarks, " with people who can’t work their way. She ’s always hinting about my husband’s being such a trial to me; and so he is, but I suppose the Lord sent him, and I must make the best of him.”

Whereat, by careful manipulation, Mrs. Pierce drew out from Mrs. Flint the story of that strange remark of the widow Dean’s about “stilling him down.”

“ I’ve often wondered what she meant. I suppose she thought opium or laudanum might be good for him,” added the much-tried wife.

Mr. Dudley’s daughter felt a cold chill run through her bones. Had her poor old father been “stilled down,” — her helpless old father?

Meanwhile, that other daughter, the suspected widow’s child, in the room above, was wearily packing her few things to go back to that home of horror and of sin. She felt by instinct that Mi-s. Pierce’s suspicion was aroused, and that the secret sin would surely be ferreted out. She was conscious of a dreary willingness that it should be so. She left the Flints that day, not weeping when she went, but with a tearless misery in her eyes which they half understood, and which held Sue Flint firmly to her defense in the days that followed.

The village was soon alive with rumor. Hannah heard it at last, with set, dogged face. She too came under the ban. The mill girls fell back when she entered the factory door, and waited below, while she climbed the winding stairs alone in the morning; and they crowded together in the entries at night, and left her to go down the dizzy flights, accompanied only by her own whirling fancies.

Whether Mrs. Dudley was herself aware of all that was being said, no mortal ever knew. She kept within doors, and went her accustomed rounds, only avoiding Hannah a little. Sue Flint, though friendly to Hannah, shared the universal suspicion of the widow, and now told that on the night, many years before, when Hetty had taken refuge at their house, after being turned out of the mill, the girl had sobbed out in her distress that she was afraid to go home, lest her mother should poison her.

Mr. Dudley’s body was taken from the grave and examined. Arsenic was found in the stomach. The afternoon that this discovery was announced, two police officers came from the neighboring town and arrested the widow.

The tidings of this event were borne to Hannah in the mill. She drew her shawl over her head and hurried home, where she found a crowd of men, women, and children standing in the yard and in the road outside.

“ Here comes Hannah! ” cried a small boy, who was instantly silenced by some one.

“ Are they going to take Hannah too?” another boy asked, as that unhappy creature reached the gate.

“ Do you know,” said some one else, “ that to-morrow they mean to take up old Mr. Dean’s body, and see what he died of?”

Hannah turned and faced the crowd. None who stood there ever forgot the dingy, labor - marked figure,, the white, set face gleaming out from the folds of the dark shawl still flecked with cotton from the mill, or the cold, hard voice which spoke.

“I think,” she said, “you’d better dig up all the graves in New Bridge, and see what your fathers died of.”

It was a luckless speech, and it turned away from Hannah what little sympathy had already existed for her in the village. After that, people wondered whether she were not an accomplice in her mother’s crime. Poor Hannah had, in her half-distracted brain, often wondered the same thing.

After speaking to the crowd, Hannah walked quickly into the house and found her mother perfectly composed, but lowering and dark of aspect. She was gathering together a few things to take with her. Patty lay sobbing on the floor. A constable stood at each door. Hannah assisted her mother, and when all was ready offered to go with her. Mrs. Dudley refused to allow her.

When the widow appeared in the yard, a neighbor, Deacon Burrill, stepped forward and spoke to her. “ I ’m very sorry,” he said, “ but I guess it ’ll all come out right, and we’ll be glad to see you back again.”

“ For forty years,” answered the widow, “I’ve been a member of the church here, and I’m as innocent as a babe unborn.”

One half-grown girl gave a hysterical sob; otherwise, all was entirely quiet as Mrs. Dudley walked through the crowded yard. Patty had stayed in the house. Hannah followed her mother’s tottering steps to the covered carriage, which waited in the road. Deacon Burrill helped the widow to enter. The constables got in after her.

The carriage drove away, and the deacon walked with Hannah back to the kitchen door. She would not let him enter with her, and when she had gone in herself he heard her lock the door behind her.

The men and women looked angrily at him as he turned back among them, and some of the boys hissed. That night a mob of lads hung Deacon Burrill in effigy before his own gate.

The next day Mr. Dean’s body was disinterred, and it was currently reported that the stomach was found perfectly preserved and loaded with arsenic. It was horrible to Hannah to know that curious hands had torn open that grave and rifled it of its hideous secret. She went at night to the grave-vard, and groveled for hours over the mound, which had been hastily piled again, and smoothed with her bare hands the carelessly heaped earth.

People next suggested that it would be well to examine the graves of the aged Jordans, whose deaths had seemed so strange, years before, but it was never done. The public mind was sated with horror.

The trial came at last. Hannah and Patty sat, through it all, by their mother’s side. Hetty did not come into the court room. Hannah firmly forbade her. and she was only too willing to escape the public ignominy to be seen there.

“ Keep your wife away,” said Hannah to Frank Cotter. “ Keep away yourself. You can do no good there. People would only stare at Hetty, because she lias been talked about in it, you know, that she was afraid of her mother when she married you. And when she read in the paper that mother was arrested, she cried aloud, 1 They’ve found her out at last! ’ and fainted. That’s told all over New Bridge. Is it true? ”

” Yes,” he said.

“ She ’d better have kept her thoughts and her faintings to herself,” answered Hannah, shortly; then, softening a little, she added, “ She was never good at keeping secrets, and this, to be sure, has been a thing to burn its way out of a closer mouth than hers. And may be it would have been better ” — A shadow came over her face, already dark with care. She paused, and said no more.

The trial dragged its slow length out for three days, and was finished. The jury retired. Outcast and abhorred sat the prisoner and her children before the bar. This was the end of Hannah’s long endeavor to prevent a repetition of her mother’s crime,—to sit through a slow half-hour, waiting for the verdict. She had kept the secret, and blood had been the penalty of her silence. Was she not also guilty of that blood ? Should she not arise, confess her sin before men, and go with her mother to meet a common doom? She thought of Tom. He would hear the story. He would understand now, and be glad sheh had sent him away.

The jury came back and rendered their verdict, “ Guilty. ” Capital punishment had been abolished in the State, and Mrs. Dudley was sentenced to imprisonment for life.

The evidence had been only circumstantial, but very strong against the widow. It went to prove that she had poisoned her victim rather slowly, by putting arsenic in the food and medicine she gave him during his illness. The attempt failed on the part of the defense to prove that Mr. Dudley killed himself by an accidental overdose of arsenic, which it was asserted he took habitually as a stimulant. The habit was not even conclusively shown to have existed. Hannah and Patty had both been put on the stand as witnesses, but, fortunately for them, neither had seen or known positively anything about the matter.

Hannah returned to her work in the mill. Patty did much of the housework, and what was beyond her limited powers Hannah performed at night, after her toil in the factory was over. Visitors had always been rare at this house. Now, no neighbor ever called. Sue Flint was still friendly when she happened to meet Hannah, but she never came to see the sisters. Hannah left off going to church, and this fact was unfavorably commented on, and strengthened the half - suspicion entertained against her. Patty ceased her crooning about the house, and when her work was done would sit motionless upon the door-sill through the long summer days. She always brightened when Hannah came home, but it was with only a faint illumination of her darkened spirit.

Every month the two sisters went to the state-prison and saw their mother. They carried her food in such quantities that, in all the years that she remained there, she was very little dependent on the prison fare. The warden allowed the old woman some privileges on account of her age. She was never obliged to wear the prison dress, and her daughters always clothed her. They even did her washing, and kept her supplied with white, freshly “ done up ” caps. At the intercession of some persons of influence, whom Hannah interested in the case, Mrs. Dudley was permitted to have a rocking - chair in her cell. The girls wanted to take her a feather-bed, but this was considered too great a luxury, and they were not allowed to do so. She never worked with the rest of the female prisoners, but was given yarn to knit, in her own cell, into stockings for the other convicts. One of her jailers said she showed her passion for acquisition by stealing and secreting in her bed great bunches of this yarn. She always maintained that she was innocent, and stoutly insisted that Mr. Dudley took the arsenic himself. Sometimes, even now, Hannah half believed it. The warden once said, however, that, in talking about it, Mrs. Dudley showed a knowledge of poisons and their peculiar properties and action certainly astonishing in such an ignorant person, were she supposed innocent of unholy dabbling in such mysteries.

The church at New Bridge dropped Mrs. Dudley’s name from the roll of its membership. The charge of her soul’s salvation thenceforth devolved on the state-prison chaplain and chance visitors or preachers at the jail. But Hannah never delegated to any other individual the care of her mother’s person. The mother always received her daughters, when they visited her, with a certain dry dignity, such as she seemed to consider befitting her injured innocence. She might be in a prison cell, but she never forgot that she was a persecuted martyr, and, in a squalid sort of fashion, she was a stately one.

One evening, in the September after Mrs. Dudley’s trial, Patty left the house after supper, for a stroll across the meadows and down to the river, one of whose many curves brought it back of their house. Hannah sat quite idle, in the fast-falling twilight. The kitchen door stood open before her. The long, faint light streamed in and fell about her. She wore her dark factory gown. Her hair, generally twisted tight from her face, was this night pushed loosely back. Her hands lay clasped in her lap. Not beautiful she looked, yet surely not unlovely, for the stern mouth was softened, and the hard eyes were almost dreamy.

Suddenly she became aware that the room was darkened, and, looking up, she saw that a man stood in the doorway and shut out the light.

A moment she stared bewildered, and then she saw that he held in his arms a little child. A moment more, and she knew that Tom Furness stood before her. She did not move, only sat and gazed.

The man’s lips trembled, and some strange emotion flickered over his face as he saw this silent woman who sat in his Hannah’s place. Then he slowly walked across the room, and laid the sleeping child in her lap. She looked at it, and she looked at him wildly, and then she gathered it close to her heart.

Tom leaned over her and put his hand on her shoulder, and felt her tremble under his touch.

“Hannah,” he said at length, “I have guessed it all now, and know why you sent me away; but you should have told me, and I would have stood by you. I was mad and proud, and in my madness and pride I married — a woman who drank herself to death. My boy is a sickly little fellow, and I ’ve brought him in my arms all the way, to ask you to take him and take care of him.”

A sound of sobbing filled the dreary old kitchen. All the sorrow and remorse and doubt and fear of seven years was told; but after the storm came quiet and the promise of peaceful days.

New Bridge gossip busied itself greatly over the marriage of Tom Furness to Hannah Dean. People wondered that he dared marry into a family which had proved so fatal to husbands, and most of all they pitied the sickly child, delivered up to the tender mercies of the daughters of a mother who was supposed to have poisoned at least four persons from motives of economy! Their apprehensions were quieted in time, when they saw how well the boy was cared for, and how fond he seemed of Hannah. Of course, some fragments of the true story were also bruited about, and helped to restore a kindly feeling towards Hannah among her neighbors.

She left the mill and entered upon a quiet household life. She missed, at first, the ceaseless whir of the machinery. It was so still at home, she said, she could not think; but she soon came to feel this stillness, broken only by Patty’s croon, which sounded again, and by the sweet laugh of Tom’s child, to be a blessed thing.

Tom and his wife were naturally very ordinary people, and had they married in their first youth would undoubtedly have settled into a most humdrum life. But they had both lived through sad and dark experiences, which made every commonplace incident and detail of their married days an inexpressible relief and pleasure, and thus they had come to know the deeper meaning of trifles.

He never shirked his part in her sad ministry to her mother, but she would never let him go with her and Patty to the prison. They continued their visits there, but they always went alone. Neither Tom nor Tom’s boy would Hannah permit to be seen with them on these occasions, when all who saw them would remember their disgrace.

Winter and summer wore away, and still Mrs. Dudley sat in her white-walled cell, the eternal knitting in her hand, the small, bright eyes ever fixed upon the door; ten years were told, and never a confession of guilt was drawn from her.

There was one lady who visited the prison who took a great interest in Mrs. Dudley, and believed her to be innocent; and feeling, also, that a prison cell was a dreary abode for a woman nearly eighty years old, she made many efforts, and at last obtained a pardon for her. Those persons who had testified against Mrs. Dudley at the trial at first opposed her return to New Bridge. They said they feared her revenge, and all the old suspicion that had been lulled so long woke again, and people looked coldly as ever on Tom Furness and his wife. It was a bitter time for those two. They sent Robert away on a visit, that he, at least, might be shielded from all this evil speaking.

“ Oh, Tom,” cried Hannah once, “ I ought never to have married you, to bring this on you. ”

He smiled sadly, yet tenderly. “ It is hard, Hannah, but we 'll weather it, and if they get the old woman pardoned we ’ll take her and go West, where nobody will ever know. It’s clear in my mind that it will do no harm for her, old as she is, to come out of jail. And we 'll never think of the past. We ’ll think instead that her mind has been sick all her life, and that ’s how she came to be as she is. Indeed, I don’t think she was born with a well soul.”

So Mrs. Dudley, in her trembling old age, came back to the home she had polluted, and which grew sad again when she entered it. Patty shrank a little from this dark, helpless old woman. She had entirely forgotten that her mother had ever been there before, having now for several years had no ideas connected with her except the prison associations, and she was bewildered to see her in the house. Robert stayed all this while at Frank and Hetty Cotter’s, busy and happy among their numerous brood.

“If mother does not live very long,” said Hannah, “ Robert shall never come home while she is here. He shall never see her.”

It seemed at first as if the old woman would die very soon, but under the thoughtful care they gave her she rallied a little, and was sometimes seen at the front windows, looking out at the street, or on the other side of the house, staring over the wide, lovely meadows that stretched down to the peaceful water. Did she know that the passers-by still shuddered when they saw her dark old face through the window-pane? Did she care for the familiar fields and the changing yet unchanged sky circling above them ?

She had been at home a fortnight, when a longing woke within her to go again to the village church where she had once been a constant attendant. She was shocked because Tom and Hannah did not go to church, and querulously reproved them.

“We will go with you,” answered Hannah, with a patient smile.

“If you went, to church regular,” said Mrs. Dudley, “may be the Lord would give you freedom from the bondage of sin, like as he’s given it to me.”

As she spoke, Tom remembered the superstitious belief of some religious fanatics, that they were so intimately associated by grace with God’s grace that they could do no wrong, and he wondered whether Mrs. Dudley were not under the influence of this idea. Perhaps she had believed that whatever annoyed her annoyed God also, and it was lawful for her to put it away. Was this the explanation of her constant assertion of innocence?

Tom was too proud just then to borrow a horse and carriage of any of the neighbors, to carry to church the feeble old convict. So when Sunday came, he took a small wagon, which he had obtained somewhere, set an arm-chair in it, and placed therein the old woman. Hannah and Patty walked along the sidewalk; Tom went between the shafts and drew the wagon himself.

Through the Sunday quiet of the village street they passed, under the arching elms and the straight, fair maples, and they paused at length before the old white church. Silently Tom lifted Mrs. Dudley out, and Hannah supported her up the steps. Their faces were set and pale, but hers was flushed, and it trembled a little with the helpless quiver of old age. They led her in to the seat to which she had formerly been accustomed, and they sat down by her.

She stared about her a moment, then fixed her eyes on the minister, and the old peculiar Sunday look which Hannah had known from childhood stole over her face.

She rigidly maintained this appearance of devotion to the end of the service. God only knows what were the thoughts of any one of that strange family group. He knows also whether the sort of pious feeling which Mrs. Dudley manifested from her earliest to her latest s was purely assumed, or whether it arose from some real germ of good in her ill-born and sin-distorted soul.

Through the long morning service, with the sweet sounds of nature stealing in through the open windows, Mrs. Dudley kept her place. She sat among her life-long neighbors, and they gazed on her fearfully. The mark of Cain was on her brow, but her children faithfully surrounded her, and it may be God had not quite forsaken her.

The next day one of the church members met Tom Furness, and told him, with a not unnatural disgust, that great dissatisfaction was felt at Mrs. Dudley’s appearance in the house of God. It disturbed the congregation, and it must not happen again.

A savage light gleamed for an instant in Tom’s eyes, then he spoke quietly: “Very well, I don’t think much of your religion, but I thought the particular boast of your church was that it preached a gospel fit for sinners and powerful to save them.”

So the quaint procession never reappeared in the streets of New Bridge, and the sinner came no more to the house of penitence and prayer.

A little longer Mrs. Dudley lingered on the threshold of the grave. A few more sunny days and long, still evenings remained for her; for Hannah and her husband yet a little more patience and silent pain, and then the end came.

No confession passed Mrs. Dudley’s lips. She sank into a sort of stupor, and died quietly at last. They were all there: Frank and Hetty Cotter, Tom, Hannah, and Patty. When the wretched life was fairly gone, Tom drew a long, free breath, and lifted his head like a man who throws down a great burden. Each person save Hannah, whose head was bowed in her hands, turned and looked strangely at the others. Death had set the living free, and a great wonder, a great sorrow, and a great exultation were all written for a moment in those blanched faces. No one spoke till Tom crossed over and laid his hand on Hannah’s shoulder. “Dear,” said he, “it is over now. We will send for Robert, and take Patty, and move somewhere, far from here.”

S.A. L. E. M.