A Book o' Nine Tales.

“Agnes,” I remarked, one February evening, when we were on our way home from a concert to which we had boldly gone without even a pretence that it was in the remotest way connected with our literary project, “I fear we are becoming demoralized, and it seems to me the only hope of our ever completing ‘April’s Lady’ is to put everything else aside for the time being and give our minds to it. I can get my work arranged, and you can finish those articles for ‘The Quill’ by the middle of March. Then, we can be quietly married and go to some nice old-fashioned place – say St. Augustine – for a couple of months and get this magnum opus on paper at last.”

“As to being married,” returned she sedately, “have you considered that we could not possibly make a living, since we should inevitably be always writing the same things?”

“Why, that is my chief reason,” I retorted, “for proposing it. Think how awkward it is going to be if either of us marries somebody else, and then we write the same things. It is a good deal better to have our interests in common if our inventive faculty is to be so.”

“There is something in what you say,” Agnes assented; “and it would be especially awkward for you, since the invention is in my head.”

“Then we will consider it all arranged.”

“Oh, no, George; by no means. I couldn’t think of it for a minute!”

Whether she did think of it for a minute is a point which may be left for the settling of those versed in the ways of the feminine mind; certain it is that the programme was carried out – except in one trifling particular. We were quietly married, we did go to St. Augustine, but as for doing anything with the story, that was quite another thing. We did not finish it then, and we have not finished it yet, and I have ceased to have any very firm confidence that we ever shall finish it; although, whenever arises one of those financial crises which are so painfully frequent in the family of a literary man, and we sit down to consider possible resources, one or the other of us is sure sooner or later to observe: —

“And then there is ‘April’s Lady,’ you know.”

Interlude Eighth.
A CUBAN MORNING

[Scene, the shady piazza of the hotel at Marianao, Cuba. Time, nine o’clock on a hot March morning. Miss Peltonville and Arthur Chester tête-à-tête.]

She. Why did you follow us to Cuba?

He. I have already told you that I thought you were in Florida.

She. Yes? And so you came to Marianao, where nobody comes at this time of year, in order that you might be perfectly safe from an encounter, I suppose.

He. Oh, I – that is; precisely.

She. I had a letter from Annie Cleaves yesterday.

He. Had you?

She. Yes; and she said you told her that you were coming to Cuba to find me.

He. Oh, that’s nothing. It isn’t to be supposed I told her the truth.

She. Do you speak the truth so seldom, then? Is there no dependence to be put on what you say?

He. None whatever; otherwise I should be continually hampered by the necessity of conforming my actions to my words. You can see yourself how inconvenient that would be.

She. For one who has had so little practice, very likely; but then you would find it a novel experience, I have no doubt.

He. Ah, you have given me an idea. I’ll try it when all other novelties in life are exhausted.

She. Don’t put it off too long, or from the force of habit you may find it impossible.

He. You underrate my adaptability.

She. Meanwhile I wish to know why you came.

He. Since you are here yourself, you might be supposed to regard the place as sufficiently interesting to attract the traveller.

She. Then you decline to tell me?

He. Oh, no; I came because you amuse me.

She. Thank you for nothing.

He. And consequently I am in love with you, as I did myself the honor to mention before you left New York.

She. Am I to understand that amusement is your idea of love?

He. Love certainly must be something that does not bore one.

She. But it seems a somewhat limited view to take.

He. Oh, it is only one way out of many; I assure you I have quantities of ideas upon the subject, all founded upon experience. I loved Lottie Greenwell because she made a glorious champagne cup. Indeed, for ten days I positively adored her, until one night she put in too much curaçoa, and I realized how uncertain a foundation my passion had. Then there was Elsie Manning. My passion for her was roused entirely by her divine waltzing, but I realized that it isn’t good form for a man to waltz with his wife, and I stood a much better chance if she married some other man. After that came Kate Turner; she writes so fascinating a letter that I lost my heart every time I saw her handwriting on the back of an envelope, although perhaps that feeling you would call only a fancy, since nobody would think of marrying on a virtue that is sure to end with the wedding. A wife never writes to her husband about anything but the servants and the payment of her milliner’s bills; so my flirtation with her wouldn’t really count as a love affair.

She. You excel in nice metaphysical distinctions.

He. Then there was Miss French. I loved her because she snubbed me, – just as I loved Nora Delaney for her riding, and Annie Cleaves for her music.

She. And now you love me, I am to understand, as suited to the position of court jester to your Royal Highness.

He. One must have some sort of a reason for being in love.

She. But one needn’t be in love.

He. Oh, yes; life is very dull otherwise; and besides, I have always thought it very stupid to marry without having been in love a dozen times at least. One is apt to lose his head otherwise; and how can he judge of the value of his passion without having had a good deal of experience?

She. So you advertise yourself as a marrying man?

He. Every bachelor is a marrying man. It is only a question of finding a convenient wife.

She. Like a convenient house, I suppose.

He. Exactly.

She. I wonder any woman ever consents to marry a man.

He. They know their own sex too well to be willing to marry a woman.

She. But men are such selfish creatures!

He. You are amazingly pretty when you toss your head that way. It is worth coming from New York to see.

She. It is well you think so; otherwise you might consider your voyage a waste of time.

He. What, with the certainty of your consenting to marry me?

She. I like your assurance! Why should I marry you?

He. I supposed that with your sex the fact of my amazing attachment would be a sufficient reason.

She. Your knowledge of our sex is then remarkably limited. Apparently, whether I happen to love you is of no particular consequence.

He. Oh, love is said to beget love.

She. But you love me, you say, because I amuse you. Now you don’t amuse me in the least, and as I do not know just how to cultivate a passion simply on the rather doubtful ground of your affection, especially with the chance of its being transient, there really seems to be very little chance of reciprocity.

He. Do you know what a tremendously hot day it is?

She. I don’t see the connection, and I am sure I am cool enough.

He. But you make it very hot for me! How picturesque that ragged fellow over there looks, riding on the top of his high saddle.

She. With a string of mules tied to his horse’s tail. I am fond of the mules, their bells are so musical.

He. And their bray.

She. And the muleteers sing such weird songs. I hear them going by about four o’clock in the morning, on their way to the Havana market, and the effect is most fascinating.

He. I should have expected you to be fond of the mules.

She. Why?

He. A fellow feeling is said to have a softening effect, and the mule’s strongest characteristic is —

She. Consistency!

He. And as I was about to remark, we are apt to value others most for the virtues we do not ourselves possess.

She. You are sufficiently rude.

He. There is always danger that honesty will be thought rude.

She. Really, you begin to amuse me. Please go on; I would like to try falling in love on the amusement plan; it must be very droll.

He. Oh, bother the amusement! Like the young ladies in novels, I would be loved for myself alone.

She. I fear that would be more difficult than the other way. What have you ever done to make me admire you?

He. Perhaps nothing. Admiration presupposes the capability of appreciation.

She. Ah! What have you done, then, worthy of admiration?

He. I have managed to find you at Marianao, and bring about a tête-à-tête before I have been here fifteen hours.

She. Wonderful man! And of all that, what comes?

He. That I ask you to marry me. That is certainly something.

She. Yes; it isn’t much, and you have done it before. But as you say, it is certainly something.

He. You are always flattering! Really, one wouldn’t have expected you to be light now, when it is my deepest affections and all that sort of touching thing with which you are trifling.

She. You are a humbug!

He. Of course; so are you; so is everybody. Civilization is merely the apotheosis of humbug.

She. My friend, that trick of striving after epigram is fast making you as bad as a confirmed punster.

He. Still, it is all true. I am a humbug in proposing to you; you, if you reject me —

She. I certainly do, most emphatically and finally!

He. You make me the happiest of men.

She. You make your system of humbug far too complicated for me to follow.

He. Why, this is genuine.

She. Anything genuine from you, I fear, is impossible.

He. Oh, no; I have to be genuine occasionally, for the sake of contrast. The humbug was in asking you to marry me, and I wouldn’t have had you say yes for the world.

She. I never suspected you of insanity, Mr. Chester. Am I to infer that the climate of Cuba, or the wines —

He. Oh, neither, I assure you. Besides, Cuba has no wines, as you ought to know. Now, see; I’ll do you the rare honor of telling you the truth. Of course, you are at liberty to believe it or not, as you please; and very likely you won’t, because it happens to be as true as the Gospel, revised version. Some days since, I asked Annie Cleaves to marry me.

She. What particular thing had she been playing to rouse you to that point of enthusiasm?

He. If my memory serves me, it was the Chopin Nocturne in G minor. She did play extremely well, and as we happened to be in the conservatory afterward, I improved the opportunity to propose.

She. Oh, very naturally!

He. It is a form of words that comes very readily to my lips, as you know. Annie confessed to that very superfluous and old-fashioned sentiment called love, which wasn’t in good form, I’ll admit; but in consideration for the object of her attachment, and the fact that on that particular evening I was in love myself, I managed to overlook it.

She. Very good of you, I’m sure. I hope Annie appreciated your generosity.

He. Very likely she didn’t. Your sex very seldom do appreciate masculine virtues; but Annie has a far more old-fashioned and worse vice than love. Why, the girl, in the midst of these enlightened nineteenth-century days, actually goes to the nonsensical bother of keeping a conscience! It must be more trouble to attend to, Agnes, than her aunt Wheeler’s seven pet poodles and three red-headed parrots.

She. I suppose you are right. You don’t speak from experience, though, do you?

He. Oh, no; I never had a conscience: as a boy, I preferred white mice; now I have my horses, you know.

She. And your innumerable loves.

He. If such trifles are to be taken into account.

She. Go on about Annie.

He. Well, on my confessing how far I had carried my flirtation with you – I can’t, for the life of me, tell how I happened to speak of it; I am usually more discreet.

She. I should hope so.

He. Oh, I am, I assure you; but the loves are so numerous, while I am but one, that they sometimes get the better of my discretion. What is one among so many?

She. Oh, in this case, absolutely nothing.

He. Thank you again.

She. But to continue —

He. Well, to continue, Annie actually seemed to think that you had some sort of claim upon me. Fancy!

She. She needn’t have troubled.

He. Oh, of course not. Why, I have offered myself to dozens of girls, with no more idea of marrying them than I have of becoming a howling dervish; and more than that, I have habitually been accepted. That is one thing about you that attracted me, do you know? There is a beautiful novelty about being rejected.

She. So that is the secret of my amusing you, is it? You ought to have explained this to Annie.

He. Oh, she wouldn’t have understood. Like every other girl, ’twas the personal application that she was touched by. You see she didn’t know the other girls, and she did know you; and she seems to think your no more binding than any other person’s yes. Perhaps she knows that a woman’s negative —

She. Really, Arthur, that’s so hackneyed that if you haven’t the gallantry not to say it you ought to be ashamed to repeat anything so stale.

He. Perhaps you are right; I have known you to be on very rare occasions. However, Annie insisted that I should come, and, as she said, “assure myself of your sentiments and of my own.” Did you ever hear anything more absurd? As if I didn’t know, all the time, that you were dying for me; and as if I – despite my mad and overpowering passion for your lovely self, Miss Peltonville – couldn’t tell as well in New York as in Cuba whether I wanted to marry her or not.

She. If you were no better informed of your own sentiments than of mine, I don’t wonder she doubted your conclusions.

He. Oh, she didn’t in the least.

She. At least, Annie may set her mind quite at rest, so far as I am concerned.

He. Thank you so much. It is such a relief to have things settled.

She. What would you have done if I had accepted you?

He. Oh, I was confident of my ability of putting the question so that you wouldn’t.

She. I have almost a mind to do it, even now.

He. Really?

She. Oh, don’t be alarmed. There is one insuperable obstacle.

He. What is that?

She. Yourself.

He. Then I am quite safe. That is a permanent one.

She. Well, I wish Annie joy of her bargain. She is worthy of a better fate; and since we are talking frankly, I must say that what she can see in you I can’t imagine.

He. These things are so strange; there is no accounting for them. Why, I have been perfectly puzzled – do you know? – ever since I came last night, to tell what I found in you last winter.

She. Since we seem to be striving to outdo each other in abuse, it is quite in keeping for me to add, that I have no occasion to bother my head on such a question, for I never pretended to have found anything in you.

He. But then, as I said, you amused me; and one may sometimes be so far amused that —

She. His amusement may even amount to astonishment, perhaps; and, by the way, that gentleman on the gray horse, just coming between the China laurels with papa, expects to marry me.

He. Fred Armstrong, by all that is unspeakable! Agnes Peltonville, I humble myself in the dust before you; and no humiliation could be greater than going down into Cuban dust. You are an angel; you have removed my last fear.

She. Yes; and how?

He. I was always jealous of Fred Armstrong; he was forever dangling about Annie. Do I understand that you are engaged?

She. Oh, I didn’t say that I expected to marry him; but since Annie confesses such a strong attachment to you —

He. Oh, I didn’t say I was the object of the attachment.

[They sit confronting each other in silence a moment, until the riders, having dismounted, are seen approaching the piazza. Then Chester leans forward impulsively, and speaks with a new intensity.]

He. Agnes!

She. Arthur!

He. Quick! Before they come! You won’t send me away?

She. But —

He. No, no more nonsense; I am in dead earnest now. You know I couldn’t live without you, or I shouldn’t have followed you to Cuba.

She. And Annie Cleaves?

He. Oh, if you had a letter from her yesterday, you must know she’s engaged to Bob Wainwright. Is it yes?

She. (rising.) It would be a pity that you should have come so far for nothing.

[As he rises also he manages to catch her hand, which he clasps joyously before the pair go forward to meet the new-comers.]

He. I hope you had a pleasant ride, Mr. Peltonville? I like Marianao so well that I have concluded to remain a while.

Tale the Ninth.
DELIA GRIMWET

To an ordinary observer, nothing could be more commonplace than Kempton, a decrepit little apology for a village, lying on the coast of Maine. Properly speaking, however, no sea-port can be utterly commonplace, with its suggestion of the mystery of the sea, the ships, the sailors who have been to far lands, the glimpses of unwritten tragedies on every hand. But among sea-side villages Kempton was surely dull enough, and dry enough, and lifeless enough, – as if the sea-winds had sucked its vitality, leaving it empty and pallid and juiceless, like the cockle-shells which bleached upon its sandy beaches.

Yet Kempton had one peculiarity which marked it as singular among all New England towns. It had a woman to dig its graves.

Its one church stood stark and doleful upon the hill at whose foot lay the rotting wharves; and back from the church stretched the church-yard in which the Kempton dead took their long repose, scarcely more monotonous than their colorless lives. The sexton, digging their last resting-places in the ochery loam, might look far off toward the sea where they had wrested from the grudging waters a scanty subsistence; and the dead wives, if so be that their ears were yet sentient, might lie at night and hear below the beat of the waves which afar had rolled over the unmarked graves of their sailor husbands.

To and fro among the grass-grown mounds the sexton went daily, quite unmindful of being the unique feature of Kempton by belonging to the weaker sex. With masculine stride and coarse hands, her unkempt locks blown by the salt winds, the woman went her way and did her work with a steadfastness and a vigor which might have put to shame many a man idling about the boats under the hill. She was not an old woman, – not even middle-aged, except with the premature age of toil and sorrow; but the weather-beaten face, the stooping shoulders, and the faded hair made her seem old. To look at her, it was difficult to realize what her youth could have been like, or to call up any image of sweet or gracious maidenhood in which she could have shared.

It was a gray November day. The white-caps made doubly black the dark waves of the bay, and the bitter wind blew freshly through the withered grass and stubble, chasing the faded leaves over Kempton Hill until they rushed about the old meeting-house like a flight of terrified witches. A stranger was driving slowly up the road from the next town in an open carriage, and as he came to the top of the hill he drew rein before the church and looked about him.

His gaze was not that of one who beheld the scene for the first time. He gazed down at the irregular houses under the hill, cuddled like frightened and weak-kneed sheep. He looked over the bay to the lighthouse, looming ghastly and white against the dark sea and sky. His glance took in all the details of the picture, cold and joyless, devoid alike of warmth and color. He shivered and sighed, his brows drooping more heavily yet over his dark piercing eyes, and then turned his gaze to objects nearer at hand.

Close by was the stark church, with weather-beaten steeple, wherein half a dozen generations of Kempton women, – the men, for the most part, being at sea, – had worshipped the power of the storm, praying more for the escape from evil of the absent than for good to themselves. Beyond the church appeared the first headstones of the graveyard, the ground sloping away so rapidly that little more than the first row of slate slabs was visible from the street. With another shiver Mr. Farnsworth (for by that name the gentleman played his part upon this world’s stage) got down from his carriage, fastened his horse, and walked toward the stones, whose rudely chiselled cherubs leered at him through their tawny rust of moss with a diabolic and sinister mirthfulness.

As Mr. Farnsworth opened the sagging and unpainted gate of the enclosure, he became aware that the place was not empty. The head and shoulders of a human being were visible half-way down the hill, now and then obscured by the dull-reddish heap of earth thrown up from a partially dug grave.

The visitor made his way down the irregular path, so steep as to be almost like a rude flight of stairs, and as he neared the worker, he suddenly perceived, with something of a shock, that the grave-digger was a woman. She worked as if familiar with her task, a man’s battered hat pushed back from her forehead, over which her faded hair straggled in confusion, and across which certain grimy streaks bore witness that she had not escaped the primal curse, but labored in the sweat of her brow.

Kempton’s peculiarity in the matter of its sexton had not come to the knowledge of the stranger before, although he once had known the village life somewhat intimately. He regarded the woman with a double curiosity, – to see what she was like and to discover whether perchance he had ever known her. He paused as he neared her, resting one nicely gloved hand upon a tilted stone which perpetuated the memory and recorded the virtues of a captain who reposed in some chill cave under the Northern seas. Some slight sound caught the ear of the sexton, who until then had not perceived his approach; she looked up at him stolidly, and as stolidly looked down again, continuing her work without interruption. If there remained any consciousness of the strangeness of her occupation, or if there stirred any womanly shame to be so observed, they were betrayed by no outward sign. She threw up the dull-yellow earth at the feet of the new-comer as unmoved as if she had still only the dwellers in the graves as companions of her labor.

“Don’t you find this rather hard work, my good woman?” the gentleman inquired at length, more by way of breaking the silence than from any especial interest.

“Yes,” the sexton returned impassively, “it’s hard enough.”

“It is rather unusual work for a woman, too,” he said.

To this very obvious remark she returned no answer, a stone to which she had come in her digging seeming to absorb all her attention. She unearthed the obstacle with some difficulty, seized it with her rough hands, and threw it up at the feet of the stranger, who watched her with that idle interest which labor begets in the unconcerned observer.

“Do you always do this work?” Farnsworth asked at length.

“Yes,” was the laconic return.

“But the old sexton, – Joe Grimwet, – is he gone?”

The woman looked up with some interest at this indication that the other had some previous acquaintance with Kempton and its people. She did not, however, stop her labor, as a man would probably have stopped.

“Yes,” she said. “He’s buried over yonder, – there beyond the burdocks.”

The gentleman changed his position uneasily. Some subtile disquietude had arisen to disturb his serenity. The wind rustled mournfully among the dry leaves, the pebbles rattled against the spade of the grave-digger, increasing the sombreness of a scene which might easily affect one at all susceptible to outward influences. In such an atmosphere a sensitive nature not unfrequently experiences a certain feeling of unreality, as if dealing with scenes and creatures of the imagination rather than with actualities; and Farnsworth, whatever the delicacy of his mental fibre, was conscious of such a sense at this moment. He hastened to speak again, as if the sound of his own voice were needed to assure him of the genuineness of the place and scene.

“But how long has he been dead?” he asked. “And his daughter; what became of her?”

The grave-digger straightened herself to her full height; brushing back her wind-blown hair with one grimy hand, she raised her face so that her deep-set eyes were fixed upon the questioner’s face.

“So you knew Delia Grimwet?” she said. “When was you here before? It’d go hard for you to make her out now, if it’s long since.”

“Is she here still?” Farnsworth persisted, ignoring her question.

“Yes,” the sexton replied, suddenly sinking back into the unfinished grave as a frightened animal might retreat into its den. “Yes; she lives in the old place.”

“Alone?”

“Her and the boy.”

He recoiled a step, as if the mention of a child startled or repelled him. Yet to a close observer it might have seemed as if he were making an effort to press her with further questions. If so his courage did not prove sufficient, and he watched in silence while the woman before him went steadily on with her arduous work. Presently, however, he advanced again toward the edge of the pit, which was rapidly approaching completion under her familiar labor.

“Should I find her at home at this time?” he inquired. “Or would she be out at work?”

The woman started and crouched, much as if she had received or expected a blow.

“She’s out, most likely,” she replied in a muffled voice. “She’ll be home along about sundown.”

Farnsworth lingered irresolutely a moment or two, as if there were many things concerning which he could wish to ask; but, as the woman gave him no encouragement, he turned at last and climbed the slippery, ragged path up to the church, untethered his horse, and drove slowly down the hill to the village.

Cap’n Nat Hersey was just coming out of the village store, and to him Farnsworth addressed an inquiry where he might find shelter for himself and horse.

“Well,” the cap’n responded, with the deliberation of a man who has very little to say and his whole life to say it in, “well I dunno but ye might get a chance with Widder Bemis, an’ I dunno as ye could; but there ain’t no harm trying, as I knows of.”

Further inquiry regarding the whereabouts of the domicile of the Widow Bemis led to an offer on the part of Cap’n Hersey to act as pilot to that haven. He declined, however, to take a seat in the buggy. The Cap’n had his own opinion of land-vehicles. A man might with perfect assurance trust himself in a boat; but, for his own part, the cap’n had no faith in those dangerous structures which roam about with nothing better than dry land under them. He walked along by the side of the carriage, conversing affably with the stranger under his convoy.

“Isn’t it a queer notion to have a woman for a sexton?” Farnsworth asked, as they wended along.

“Well, yes,” the captain returned reflectively. “Yes, it is sort of curious. Folks mostly speaks of it that comes here. It is curious, if ye look at it that way. But it all come about as natural as a barnacle on a keel. Old Sexton Grimwet kept getting considerable feeble, and Dele she took to helping him with his work. She was sort of cut off from folks, as ye may say, owing to having a baby and no father to show for it, and she naturally took to heaving anchor alone, or leastways along with the old man. And when the old man was took down with a languishment, she turned to and did all his work for him, – having gradually worked into it, as you may say.”

The cap’n paused to recover from his astonishment at having been betrayed into so long a speech; but, as the stranger had the air of expecting him to continue, he presently went on again:

“There was them that wanted her turned out when old Grimwet died. Some said a woman of that character hadn’t ought to have no connection with the church, even to digging its graves. But Parson Eaton he was good for ’em – I’ve always noticed that when these pious men gets their regular mad up they most generally have things their own way; and he preached ’em a sermon about the Samaritan woman, and Mary Magdalene, and a lot more of them disreputable Scripture women-folks, and, though he never mentioned Dele by name, they all knew what he was driving at, and they wilted. ’Twas a pitiful sight to see the girl a-digging her own father’s grave up there. Me and Tom Tobey and Zenas Faston took hold and finished it for her.”

They moved on in silence a moment or two. Farnsworth’s gaze was fixed upon the darkening bay, and no longer interrogated his companion; but the latter soon again took up his narrative: —

“’Twas well the parson stood up for Dele, too; women-folks is so cussed hard on each other. They wouldn’t ha’ let the girl live, I believe. I always were of the notion there warn’t no harm in Dele. Some – city chap got the better of her. She never was over-smart, but she was awful pretty; and I never believed there was any harm in her. At any rate, she digs a grave as well as a man, and I guess them that’s in ’em don’t lay awake none thinking who tucked ’em in.”

The house of the Widow Bemis was by this time reached, and that estimable lady, who in the summer furnished accommodations to a boarder whenever that rare blessing was to be secured in Kempton, readily undertook the charge of Mr. Farnsworth and his horse for the night. The latter was given into the care of her daughter, for the frequent absences of the men had accustomed the damsels of Kempton to those labors which in inland villages are more frequently left to their brothers; and Farnsworth strolled off toward the wharves, leaving the widow Bemis and Cap’n Hersey in an agony of curiosity in regard to himself and his errand.

Whatever may have been Farnsworth’s feelings at the discovery that the daughter of the dead sexton and the woman of whom he had asked tidings of her were identical, – and they must have been both deep and strong – he had given no outward sign. But now the settling of his brows, and the disquiet apparent in his eyes betrayed his inward conflict. He strolled out upon one of the rotting wharves about which the tide lapped in mournful iteration, folded his arms upon a breast-high post, and stood gazing seaward.

The retrospect which occupied his mind was scarcely more cheerful than the gray scene which spread before his eyes. How awful are the corpses of dead sins which memory casts up, as the sea its victims! The betrayal of a woman is a ghastly thing when one looks back upon it stripped of the garlands and enchantments of passion and temptation; and to Farnsworth, with the image fresh in his rememberance of that faded, earth-stained woman digging a grave upon the bleak hillside, the fault of his youth seemed an incredible dream which only stubborn and stinging memory converted into a possibility. A retrospect is apt to be essentially a plea for self against conscience; but in his gloomy revery Farnsworth found scant excuse for the wreck he had made of the life of Delia Grimwet. He had gone away, married, and lived honored and prosperous. He would have forgotten, had not some nobility of his nature prevented. With the stubbornness of his race, he had fought long and determinedly against his conscience, but he had been forced to yield at last. The death of his wife, to whom he had been tenderly attached, had at once left him free to make such reparation as might still be possible, and had softened him as only sharp sorrow can. He had come to Kempton with the determination of finding Delia, and of doing whatever could be done, at whatever cost to himself.