Chapter VII…

Chapter VII

Since he doth lack Of going back Little, whose will Doth urge him to run wrong, or to stand still. BEN JONSON.

One of the warm evenings in that summer, when the windows were all open of Winthrop's attic and the candles flared in the soft breeze from the sea, Rufus came in. Winthrop only gave him a look and a smile from his papers as he appeared; and Rufus flung himself, or rather dropped down, upon the empty couch where Winnie used to lie. Perhaps the thought of her came to him, for he looked exceedingly sober; only he had done that ever since he shewed his face at the door. For some minutes he sat in absorbed contemplation of Winthrop, or of somewhat else; he was certainly looking at him. Winthrop looked at nothing but his papers; and the rustling of them was all that was heard, beside the soft rush of the wind.

"Always at work?" said Rufus, in a dismal tone, half desponding and wholly disconsolate.

"Try to be. --"

"Why don't you snuff those candles?" was the next question, given with a good deal more life.

"I didn't know you wanted more light," said Winthrop, stopping to put in order the unruly wicks his brother referred to.

"What are you at there?"

"A long answer in chancery."

"Ryle's?"

"No -- Mr. Eversham's case."

"How does Ryle's business get on?"

"Very satisfactorily. I've got light upon that now."

"What's the last thing done?"

"The last thing I did was to file a replication, bringing the cause to an issue for proofs; and proofs are now taking before an Examiner."

"You have succeeded in every step in that cause?"

"In every step."

"The steps must have been well taken."

Winthrop was silent, going on with his 'answer.'

"How much do you expect you'll get from them?"

"Can't tell yet. I somewhat expect to recover a very large sum."

"Winthrop -- I wish I was a lawyer --" Rufus said presently with a sigh.

"Why?" said his brother calmly.

"I should -- or at least I might -- be doing something."

"Then you think all the work of the world rests upon the shoulders of lawyers? I knew they had a good deal to do, but not so much as that."

"I don't see anything for me to do," Rufus said despondingly.

Rufus got off his couch and began gloomily to walk up and down.

"How easily those who are doing well themselves can bear the ill haps of their friends!" he said.

Winthrop went back to his papers and studied them, with his usual calm face and in silence, for some time. Rufus walked and cogitated for half an hour.

"I ought not to have said that, Winthrop," were his first words. "But now look at me!"

"With pleasure," said Winthrop laying down his 'answer' -- "I have looked at many a worse man."

"Can't you be serious?" said Rufus, a provoked smile forcing itself upon him.

"I thought I was rarely anything else," said Winthrop. "But now I look at you, I don't see anything in the world the matter."

"Yet look at our different positions -- yours and mine."

"I'd as lieve be excused," said Winthrop. "You always made the best show, in any position."

"Other people don't think so," said Rufus, turning with a curious struggle of feeling in his face, and turning to hide it in his walk up and down.

"What ails you, Will? -- I don't know what you mean."

"You deserve it!" said Rufus, swallowing something in his mind apparently, that cost him some trouble.

"I don't know what I deserve," said Winthrop gravely. "I am afraid I have not got it."

"How oddly and rightly we were nicknamed in childhood!" Rufus went on bitterly, half communing with himself. -- "I for fiery impulse, and you for calm rule."

"I don't want to rule," said Winthrop half laughing. "And I assure you I make no effort after it."

"You do it, and always will. You have the love and respect and admiration of everybody that knows you -- in a very high degree; and there is not a soul in the world that cares for me, except yourself."

"I do not think that is true, Will," said Winthrop after a little pause. "But even suppose it were -- those are not the things one lives for."

"What does one live for then!" Rufus said almost fiercely.

"At least they are not what I live for," said Winthrop correcting himself.

"What do you live for?"

His brother hesitated.

"For another sort of approbation -- That I may hear 'Well done,' from the lips of my King, -- by and by."

Rufus bit his lip and for several turns walked the room in silence -- evidently because he could not speak. Perhaps the words, 'Them that honour me, I will honour,' -- might have come to his mind. But when at last he began to talk, it was not upon that theme.

"Governor," -- he said in a quieter tone, -- "I wish you would help me."

"I will -- if I can."

"Tell me what I shall do."

"Tell me your own thoughts first, Will."

"I have hardly any. The world at large seems a wretched and utter blank to me."

"Make your mark on it, then."

"Ah! -- that is what we used to say. -- I don't see how it is to be done."

"It is to be done in many ways, Rufus; in many courses of action; and there is hardly one you can set your hand to, in which it may not be done."

Rufus again struggled with some feeling that was too much for him.

"Your notions have changed a little from the old ones, -- and I have kept mine," he said.

"I spoke of making your mark, -- not of being seen to do it," his brother returned.

Again Rufus was silent.

"Well but the question is not of that now," he said, "but of doing something; -- to escape from the dishonour and the misery of doing nothing."

"Still you have not told me your thoughts, Will. You are not fit for a merchant."

"I'll never enter a counting-house again! -- for anything!" was Rufus's reply.

"If I were in your place, I should take up my old trade of engineering again, just where I left it off."

Rufus walked, and walked.

"But I am fit for better things," -- he said at length.

"Then you are fit for that."

"I suppose that follows," said Rufus with some disdainful expression.

"There is no more respectable profession."

"It gives a man small chance to distinguish himself," said Rufus, -- "and it takes one out of the world."

"Distinction may be attained almost anywhere," said Winthrop.

"'Who sweeps a room as for thy laws, "'Makes that and th' action fine.'"

"I should like to see you do it!" was Rufus's scornful rejoinder.

"What?"

"Sweep rooms by way of distinction."

"I don't know about the distinction," said Winthrop; "but the thing you may see me do any morning, if you come at the right hour."

"Sweep these rooms?"

"With a broomstick."

"Why Winthrop, that's beneath you!"

"I have been thinking so lately," said Winthrop. "It wasn't, in the days when I couldn't afford to pay any one for doing it; and those days reached down to a very late point."

"Afford!" said Rufus, standing still in his walk; -- "Why you have made money enough ever since you began practice, to afford such a thing as that."

"Ay -- if I could have put it all on the floor."

"Where had you to put it?"

"I had Mr. Inchbald to reward for his long trust in me, and Mr. Herder to reimburse for his kindness, -- and some other sources of expenditure to meet."

"Mr. Herder could have been paid out of the costs of this lawsuit."

"No, he couldn't."

"And thereupon, you would recommend the profession of a street-sweeper to me!" said Rufus, beginning his walk with renewed energy.

"On the whole, I think I would not," said Winthrop gravely. "I am of opinion you can do something better."

"I don't like engineering!" said Rufus presently.

"What do you like?"

Rufus stopped and stood looking thoughtfully on the table where Winthrop's papers lay.

"I consider that, to be as honourable, as useful, and I should think quite as pleasant a way of life, as the one I follow."

"Do you? --" said Rufus, looking at the long 'answer in Chancery.'

"I would as lieve go into it to-morrow, and make over my inkstand to you, if I were only fit for that and you for this."

"Would you!" said Rufus, mentally conceding that his brother was 'fit' for anything.

"Just as lieve."

Rufus's brow lightened considerably, and he took up his walk again.

"What would you like better, Will?"

"I don't know --" said Rufus meditatively -- "I believe I'll take your advice. There was an offer made to me a week or two ago -- at least I was spoken to, in reference to a Southern piece of business --"

"Not another agency?"

"No -- no, engineering; -- but I threw it off, not thinking then, or not knowing, that I would have anything more to do with the matter -- I dare say it's not too late yet."

"But Will," said his brother, "whatever choice you make now, it is your last choice."

"How do you know it is my last choice?" said Rufus.

"Because it ought to be."

Rufus took to silence and meditating again.

"Any profession rightly managed, will carry you to the goal of honour; but no two will, ridden alternately."

"It seems so," said Rufus bitterly.

And he walked and meditated, back and forth through the room; while Winthrop lost himself in his 'answer.' The silence lasted this time till Rufus came up to the table and extending his hand bid his brother 'good night.'

"Are you going?" said Winthrop starting up.

"Yes -- going; and going South, and going to be an engineer, and if possible to reach the goal of honour on the back of that calling, by some mysterious road which as yet I see not."

"Stay here to-night, Will."

"No, I can't -- I've got to see somebody."

"All night?"

"Why, no," said Rufus smiling. "I suppose I could come back; more especially as I am going bona fide away. By the way, Winthrop, do you know they say the yellow fever is here?"

"I know they say so."

"What will you do?"

"Nothing."

"I mean, of course, if the report is true."

"So I mean."

"But you will not stay here?"

"I think I will."

"But it would be much better to go out of town."

"If I think so, I'll go."

"I'll make you think so," said Rufus putting on his hat, -- "or else I won't go engineering! I'll be back in an hour."

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Chapter VIII

Yea, men may wonder, while they scan A living, thinking, feeling man, In such a rest his heart to keep; But angels say, -- and through the word I ween their blessed smile is heard, -- "He giveth his beloved sleep!" ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

Notwithstanding however Rufus's assurance, he did go off to his engineering and he did not succeed in changing his brother's mind. Winthrop abode in his place, to meet whatever the summer had in store for him.

It brought the city's old plague, though not with such fearful presence as in years past. Still the name and the dread of it were abroad, and enough of its power to justify them. Many that could, ran away from the city; and business, if it was not absolutely checked, moved sluggishly. There was much less than usual done.

There was little in Winthrop's line, certainly. Yet in the days of vacant courts and laid-by court business, the tenant of Mr. Inchbald's attic went out and came in as often as formerly. What he did with his time was best known to himself.

"I wonder how he does, now, all alone," said Mrs. Nettley to her brother.

"I've a notion he isn't so much of the time alone," said Mr. Inchbald. "He's not at home any more than he used to be, nor so much. I hear him going up or down the stairs -- night and day."

"Surely there are no courts now?" said Mrs. Nettley.

"Never are in August -- and especially not now, of course."

"I'm afraid he's lonesome, poor fellow!"

"Never saw a fellow look less like it," said Mr. Inchbald. "He's a strong man, he is, in his heart and mind. I should expect to see one of the pyramids of Egypt come down as soon as either of 'em. Lonesome? I never saw him look lonesome."

"He has a trick of not shewing what he feels then," said his sister. "I've seen him times when I know he felt lonesome, -- though as you say, I can't say he shewed it. He's a strong build of a man, too, George."

"Like body, like mind," said her brother. "Yes. I like to see a man all of a piece. But his brother has a finer figure."

"Do you think so?" said Mrs. Nettley. "That's for a painter. Now I like Winthrop's the best."

"That's for a woman," said Mr. Inchbald laughing. "You always like what you love."

"Well, what do you suppose he finds to keep him out so much of the time?"

"I don't know," said Mr. Inchbald, -- "and I daren't ask him. I doubt some poor friends of his know."

"Why do you?"

"I can't tell you why; -- something -- the least trifle, once or twice, has given me the idea."

"He's a Christian to look at!" said Mrs. Nettley, busying herself round her stove and speaking in rather an undertone. "He's worse than a sermon to me, many times."

Her brother turned slowly and went out, thereby confessing, his sister thought, that Winthrop had been as bad as a sermon to him.

As he went out he saw a girl just mounting the stairs.

"Is Mr. Landholm in?" she said putting her head over the balusters.

"I don't know, my girl -- I think he may be."

"I'll know before long," she rejoined, taking the stairs at a rate that shewed she meant what she said. Like no client at law that ever sought his lawyer's chambers, on any errand. Before Mr. Inchbald had reached the first landing, she was posted before the desired door, and had tapped there with very alert fingers. Winthrop opened the door.

"Clam!" -- said he. -- "Come in."

"Mr. Winthrop," said Clam, coming in as slowly as she had mounted the stairs fast, and speaking with unusual deliberation, and not in the least out of breath, -- "don't you want to help the distressed?"

"What's the matter, Clam?"

"Why Mr. Haye's took, and Miss 'Lizabeth's all alone with him; and she's a little too good to be let die of fright and worry, if she ain't perfect. Few people are."

"All alone!"

"She's keeping house with him all alone this minute."

"What do you mean by all alone?"

"When there ain't but two people in the house and one o' them's deathly sick."

"Where are the servants? and Mrs. Haye?"

"They was all afraid they'd be took -- she and them both; so they all run -- the first one the best feller. I stayed, 'cause I thought the yaller fever wouldn't do much with one o' my skin; and anyhow it was as good to die in the house as in the street -- I'd rather."

"When did they go?" said Winthrop beginning to put up books and papers.

"Cleared out this mornin' -- as soon as they knowed what was the matter with Mr. Haye."

"His wife too?" said Winthrop.

"Not she! she went off for fear she'd be scared -- years ago."

"Has Miss Haye sent for no friends?"

"She says there ain't none to send to; and I guess there ain't."

"Run home to your mistress, Clam, as fast as you can. -- When was Mr. Haye taken sick?"

"Some time yesterday. Then you're comin', Mr. Winthrop?"

"Yes. Run."

Clam ran home. But quick as her speed had been, when she got the handle of the door in her hand she saw a figure that she knew, coming down the street; and waited for him to come up. Winthrop and she passed into the house together.

The gentleman turned into one of the deserted parlours; and Clam with a quick and soft step ran up stairs and into the sick room. Mr. Haye lay there unconscious. Elizabeth was sitting by the side of the bed, with a face of stern and concentrated anxiety.

"Here's the stuff," said Clam, setting some medicine on the table; -- "and there's a gentleman down stairs that wants to see you, Miss 'Lizabeth -- on business."

"Business!" said Elizabeth, -- "Did you tell him what was in the house?"

"I told him," said Clam, "and he don't care. He wants to see you."

Elizabeth had no words to waste, nor heart to speak them. She got up and went down stairs and in at the open parlour door, like a person who walks in a dream through a dreadful labyrinth of pain, made up of what used to be familiar objects of pleasure. So she went in. But so soon as her eye caught the figure standing before the fireplace, though she did not know what he had come there for, only that he was there, her heart sprang as to a pillar of hope. She stopped short and her two hands were brought together with an indescribable expression, telling of relief.

"Oh Mr. Landholm! what brought you here!"

He came forward to where she stood and took one of her hands; and felt that she was trembling like a shaking leaf.

"How is your father?" was his question.

"I don't know!" said Elizabeth bending down her head while tears began to run fast, -- "I don't know anything about sickness -- I never was with anybody before --"

She had felt one other time the gentle kind hands which, while her own eyes were blinded with tears, led her and placed her on the sofa. Elizabeth took the sofa cushion in both arms and laid her head upon it, turning her face from her companion; and her whole frame was racked and shaken with terrible agitation.

In a few minutes this violent expression of feeling came to an end. She took her arms from the pillow and sat up and spoke again to the friend at her side; who meanwhile had been perfectly quiet, offering neither to check nor to comfort her. Elizabeth went back to a repetition of her last remark, as if for an excuse.

"I never even tried to nurse anybody before -- and the doctor couldn't stay with me this morning --"

"I will do both now," said Winthrop.

"What?" -- said Elizabeth looking at him bewilderedly.

"Stay with you, and take care of Mr. Haye."

"Oh no! you must not!" she said with a sort of eager seriousness; -- "I shouldn't like to have you."

"I have seen something of the disease," he said smiling slightly, "and I am not afraid of it. -- Are you?"

"Oh yes! -- oh yes!!"

How much was confessed in the tone of those words! -- and she hid her face again. But her companion made no remark.

"Is there no friend you would like to have sent for?"

"No," said Elizabeth, -- "not one! not one here -- and not anywhere, that I should care to have with me."

"May I go up and see Mr. Haye now?" he said presently. "Which is the room?"

Elizabeth rose up to shew him.

"No," he said, gently motioning her back, -- "I am going alone. You must stay here."

"But I must go too, Mr. Landholm! --"

"Not if I go," he said.

"But I am his daughter, -- I must."

"I am not his daughter -- so as far as that goes we are even. And by your own confession you know nothing of the matter; and I do. No -- you must not go above this floor."

"Until when, Mr. Landholm?" said Elizabeth looking terrified.

"Until new rules are made," he said quietly. "While you can do nothing in your father's room, both for him and for you it is much better that you should not be there."

"And can't I do anything?" said Elizabeth.

"If I think you are wanted, I will let you know. Meanwhile there is one thing that can be done everywhere."

He spoke, looking at her with a face of steady kind gravity. Elizabeth could not meet it; she trembled with the effort she made to control herself.

"It is the thing of all others that I cannot do, Mr. Landholm."

"Learn it now, then. Which is the room?"

Elizabeth told him, without raising her eyes; and stood motionless on the floor where he left her, without stirring a finger, as long as she could hear the sound of his footsteps. They went first to the front door, and she heard him turn the key; then they went up the stairs.

The locking of that door went to her heart, with a sense of comfort, of dependence, of unbounded trust in the hand, the heart, the head, that had done it. It roused, or the taking off of restraint roused again, all the tumult of passions that had raged after her first coming in. She dropped on her knees by the sofa and wrapping her arms round the cushion as she had done before, she laid her head down on it, and to all feeling laid her heart down too; such bitter and deep and long sobs shook and racked her breast.

She was alive to nothing but feeling and the indulgence of it, and careless how much time the indulgence of it might take. It was passion's time. She was startled when two hands took hold of her and a grave voice said,

"If you do in this way, I shall have two patients instead of one, Miss Elizabeth."

Elizabeth suffered herself to be lifted up and placed on the sofa, and sat down like a child. Even at the instant came a flash of recollection bringing back the time, long past, when Winthrop had lifted her out of the rattlesnake's way. She felt ashamed and rebuked.

"This is not the lesson I set you," he said gently.

Elizabeth's head drooped lower. She felt that he had two patients -- if he had only known it!

"You might set me a great many lessons that I should be slow to learn, Mr. Landholm," she said sadly.

"I hope not," he said in his usual tone. "There is no present occasion for this distress. I cannot see that Mr. Haye' symptoms are particularly unfavourable."

Elizabeth could have answered a great deal to that; but she only said, tearfully,

"How good you are to take care of him!"

"I will be as good as I can," said he smiling a little. "I should like to have you promise to do as much."

"That would be to promise a great deal, Mr. Landholm," said Elizabeth looking up earnestly.

"What then?"

Elizabeth looked down and was silent, but musing much to herself.

"Is it too much of a promise to make?" said he gravely.

"No --" said Elizabeth slowly, -- "but more than I am ready to make."

"Why is that?"

"Because, Mr. Landholm," said she looking up again at him, "I don't believe I should keep it if I made it."

"You expect me to say, in that case you are quite right not to make it. No, -- you are quite wrong."

He waited a little; but said no more, and Elizabeth could not. Then he left the room and she heard him going down stairs! Her first thought was to spring up and go after to help him to whatever he wanted; then she remembered that he and Clam could manage it without her, and that he would certainly choose to have it so. She curled herself up on her sofa and laying her head on the cushion in more quiet wise, she went off into a long fit of musing; for Winthrop's steps, when they came from down stairs went straight up stairs again, without turning into the parlour. She mused, on her duty, her danger, her sorrow and her joy. There was something akin to joy in the enormous comfort, rest, and pleasure she felt in Winthrop's presence. But it was very grave musing after all; for her duty, or the image of it, she shrank from; her danger she shrank from more unequivocally; and joy and sorrow could but hold a mixed and miserable reign. The loss of her father could not be to Elizabeth what the loss of his mother had been to Winthrop. Mr. Haye had never made himself a part of his daughter's daily inner life; to her his death could be only the breaking of the old name and tie and associations, which of late years had become far less dear than they used to be. Yet to Elizabeth, who had nothing else, they were very much; and she looked to the possible loss of them as to a wild and dreary setting adrift upon the sea of life without harbour or shore to make anywhere. And then rose the shadowy image of a fair port and land of safety, which conscience whispered she could gain if she would. But sailing was necessary for that; and chart-studying; and watchful care of the ship, and many an observation taken by heavenly lights; and Elizabeth had not even begun to be a sailor. She turned these things over and over in her mind a hundred times, one after another, like the visions of a dream, while the hours of the day stole away noiselessly.

The afternoon waned; the doctor came. Elizabeth sprang out to meet him, referred him to her coadjutor up stairs, and then waited for his coming down again. But the doctor when he came could tell her nothing; there was no declarative symptom as yet; he knew no more than she did; she must wait. She went back to her sofa and her musing.

The windows were open, but with the sultry breath of August little din of business came into the room; the place was very quiet. The house was empty and still; seldom a footfall could be heard overhead. Clam was busy, up stairs and down, but she went with a light step when she pleased, and she pleased it now. It was a relief to have the change of falling night; and then the breeze from the sea began to come in at the windows and freshen the hot rooms; and twilight deepened. Elizabeth wished for a light then, but for once in her life hesitated about ringing the bell; for she had heard Clam going up and down and feared she might be busied for some one else. And she thought, with a heart full, how dismal this coming on of night would have been, but for the friend up stairs. Elizabeth wished bitterly she could follow his advice.

She sat looking out of the open window into the duskiness, and at the yellow lights of the street lamps which by this time spotted it; thinking so, and feeling very miserable. By and by Clam came in with a candle and began to let down the blinds.

"What are you going to do?" said her mistress. "You needn't pull those down."

"Folks'll see in," said Clam.

"No they won't -- there's no light here."

"There's goin' to be, though," said Clam. "Things is goin' straight in this house, as two folks can make 'em."

"I don't want anything -- you may let the lamps alone, Clam."

"I dursn't," said Clam, going on leisurely to light the two large burners of the mantle lamps, -- "Mr. Winthrop told me to get tea for you and do everything just as it was every night; so I knowed these had to be flarin' up -- You ain't goin' to be allowed to sit in the shades no longer."

"I don't want anything!" said Elizabeth. "Don't bring any tea here."

"Then I'll go up and tell him his orders is contradickied," said Clam.

"Stop!" said her mistress when she had reached the door walking off, -- "don't carry any foolish speech up stairs at such a time as this; -- fetch what you like and do what you like, -- I don't care."

The room was brilliantly lighted now; and Clam set the salver on the table and brought in the tea-urn; and miserable as she felt, Elizabeth half confessed to herself that her coadjutor up stairs was right. Better this pain than the other. If the body was nothing a gainer, the mind perhaps might be, for keeping up the wonted habits and appearances.

"Ask Mr. Landholm to come down, Clam."

"I did ask him," said the handmaiden, "and he don't want nothin' but biscuits, and he's got lots o' them."

"Won't he have a cup of tea?"

"He knows his own mind mostly," said Clam; "and he says he won't."

"What arrangements can you make for his sleeping up there to- night, Clam?"

"Him and me 'll see to it," responded Clam confidently. "I know pretty much what's in the house; and the best of it ain't too good for him."

So Elizabeth drank her cup of tea alone; and sat alone through the long evening and mused. For still it was rather musing than thinking; going over things past and things present; things future she cared not much to meddle with. It was not a good time, she said, for taking up her religious wants and duties; and in part that was true, severely as she felt them; for her mind was in such a slow fever that none of its pulses were healthful. Fear, and foreboding, for her father and for herself, -- hope springing along with the fear; a strong sense that her character was different from what it ought to be, and a strong wish that it were not, -- and a yet mightier leaning in another direction; -- all of these, meeting and modifying each other and struggling together, seemed to run in her veins and to tell in each beat of the tiny timekeeper at her wrist. How could she disentangle one from the other, or give a quiet mind to anything, when she had it not to give?

She was just bitterly asking herself this question, when Winthrop came in at the open parlour door; and the immediate bitter thought which arose next was, did he ever have any but a quiet mind to give to anything? The two bitters were so strong upon her tongue that they kept it still; till he had walked up to the neighbourhood of her sofa.

"How is my father, Mr. Landholm?" she said rising and meeting him.

"As you mean the question I cannot answer it -- There is nothing declarative, Miss Elizabeth. Yes," he said kindly, meeting and answering her face, -- "you must wait yet awhile longer."

Elizabeth sat down again, and looked down.

"Are you troubled with fears for yourself?" he said gently, taking a chair near her.

"No --" Elizabeth said, and said truly. She could have told him, what indeed she could not, that since his coming into the house another feeling had overmastered that fear, and kept it under.

"At least," she added, -- "I suppose I have it, but it doesn't trouble me now."

"I came down on principle," said he, -- "to exchange the office of nurse for that of physician; -- thinking it probably better that you should see me for a few minutes, than see nobody at all."

"I am sure you were right," said Elizabeth. "I felt awhile ago as if my head would go crazy with too many thoughts."

"Must be unruly thoughts," said Winthrop.

"They were," said she looking up.

"Can't you manage unruly thoughts?"

"No! -- never could."

"Do you know what happens in that case? -- They manage you."

"But how can I help it, Mr. Landholm? There they are, and here am I; -- they are strong and I am weak."

"If they are the strongest, they will rule."

Elizabeth sat silent, thinking her counsellor was very unsatisfactory.

"Are you going to sit up all night, Miss Elizabeth?"

"No -- I suppose not --"

"I shall; so you may feel easy about being alone down here. There could be no disturbance, I think, without my knowing it. Let Clam be here to keep you company; and take the best rest you can."

It was impossible for Elizabeth to say a word of thanks, or of his kindness; the words choked her; she was mute.

"Can I do anything, Mr. Landholm?"

"Nothing in the world -- but manage your thoughts," he said smiling.

Elizabeth was almost choked again, with the rising of tears this time.

"But Mr. Landholm -- about that -- what is wrong cannot be necessary; there must be some way of managing them?"

"You know it," he said simply.

But it finished Elizabeth's power of speech. She did not even attempt to look up; she sat pressing her chin with her hand, endeavouring to keep down her heart and to keep steady her quivering lips. Her companion, who in the midst of all her troubles she many times that evening thought was unlike any other person that ever walked, presently went out into the hall and called to Clam over the balusters.

"Is he going to give her directions about taking care of me?" thought Elizabeth in a great maze, as Winthrop came back into the parlour and sat down again. When Clam appeared however he only bade her take a seat; and then bringing forth a bible from his pocket he opened it and read the ninety-first psalm. Hardly till then it dawned upon Elizabeth what he was thinking to do; and then the words that he read went through and through her heart like drawn daggers. One after another, one after another. Little he imagined, who read, what strength her estimate of the reader's character gave them; nor how that same estimate made every word of his prayer tell, and go home to her spirit with the sharpness as well as the gentleness of Ithuriel's spear. When Elizabeth rose from her knees, it was with a bowed head which she could in no wise lift up; and after Winthrop had left the room, Clam stood looking at her mistress and thinking her own thoughts, as long as she pleased unrebuked.

"One feels sort o' good after that, now, don't they?" was her opening remark, when Elizabeth's head was at last raised from her hands. "Do you think the roof of any house would ever fall in over his head? He's better'n a regiment o' soldiers."

"Is everything attended to down stairs, Clam?"

"All's straight where the Governor is," said Clam with a sweeping bend of her head, and going about to set the room in order; -- "there ain't two straws laid the wrong way."

"Where he is!" repeated Elizabeth -- "He isn't in the kitchen, I suppose, Clam."

"Whenever he's in the house, always seems to me he's all over," said Clam. "It's about that. He's a governor, you know. Now Miss 'Lizabeth, how am I goin' to fix you for the night?"

"No way," said Elizabeth. "I shall just sleep here, as I am. Let the lamps burn, and shut down the blinds."

"And then will I go off to the second story and leave you?"

"No, indeed -- Fetch something that you can lay on the floor, and stay here with me."

Which Clam presently did; nothing more than a blanket however; and remarked as she curled herself down with her head upon her arm,

"Ain't he a handsome man, Miss 'Lizabeth?"

"Who? --" ungraciously enough.

"Why, the Governor."

"Yes, for aught I know. Lie still and go to sleep, Clam, if you can; and let me."

Very promptly Clam obeyed this command; but her less happy mistress, as soon as the deep drawn breaths told her she was alone again, sat up on her sofa to get in a change of posture a change from pain.

How alone! -- In the parlour after midnight, with the lamps burning as if the room were gay with company; herself, in her morning dress, on the sofa for a night's rest, and there on her blanket on the carpet, Clam already taking it. How it told the story, of illness and watching and desertion and danger; how it put life and death in near and strong contrast; and the summer wind blew in through the blinds and pushed the blinds themselves gently out into the room, just as Elizabeth had seen and felt in many a bright and happy hour not so long past. The same summer breath, and the summer so different! Elizabeth could hardly bear it. She longed to rush up stairs where there was somebody; but then she must not; and then the remembrance that somebody was there quieted her again. That thought stirred another train, the old contrast between him and herself, the contrast between his condition and hers, now brought more painfully than ever home. "He is ready to meet anything," she thought, -- "nothing can come amiss to him; -- he is as ready for that world as for this -- and more!" --

The impression of the words he had read that evening came back to her afresh, and the recollection of the face with which he had read them, -- calm, happy, and at rest; -- and Elizabeth threw herself off the sofa and kneeled down to lay her head and arms upon it, in mere agony of wish to change something, or rather of the felt want that something should be changed. O that she were at peace like him! O that she had like him a sure home and possession beyond the reach of sickness and death! O that she were that rectified, self-contained, pure, strong spirit, that he was! -- The utmost of passionate wish was in the tears that wept out these yearnings of heart -- petitions they half were, -- for her mind in giving them form, had a half look to the only possible power that could give them fruition. But it was with only the refreshment of tears and exhaustion that she laid herself on her couch and went to sleep.

Clam had carried away her blanket bed and put out the lamps, before Elizabeth awoke the next morning. It was a question whether the room looked drearier by night or by day. She got up and went to the window. Clam had pulled up the blinds. The light of the summer morning was rising again, but it shone only without; all was darkness inside. Except that light- surrounded watcher up stairs. How Elizabeth's heart blessed him.

The next thing was, to get ready to receive his report. That morning's toilet was soon made, and Elizabeth sat waiting. He might come soon, or he might not; for it was early, and he might not know whether she was awake and risen yet. She was unaccustomed, poor child, to a waiting of pain; and her heart felt tired and sore already from the last forty-eight hours of fears and hopes. Fears and hopes were in strong life now, but a life that had become very tender to every touch. Clam was setting the breakfast-table -- Could breakfast be eaten or not? The very cups and saucers made Elizabeth's heart ache. She was glad when Clam had done her work and was gone and she sat waiting alone. But the breaths came painfully now, and her heart was weary with its own aching.

The little knock at the door came at last. Elizabeth ran to open it, and exchanged a silent grasp of the hand with the newsbearer; her eyes looked her question. He came in just as he came last night; calm and grave.

"I can tell you nothing new, Miss Elizabeth," he said. "I cannot see that Mr. Haye is any better -- I do not know that he is any worse."

But Elizabeth was weak to bear longer suspense; she burst into tears and sat down hiding her face. Her companion stood near, but said nothing further.

"May I call Clam?" he asked after a few minutes.

Elizabeth gave eager assent; and the act of last night was repeated, to her unspeakable gratification. She drank in every word, and not only because she drank in the voice with them.

"Breakfast's just ready, Mr. Winthrop," said Clam when she was leaving the room; -- "so you needn't go up stairs."

The breakfast was a very silent one on Elizabeth's part. Winthrop talked on indifferent subjects; but she was too full- hearted and too sick-hearted to answer him with many words. And when the short meal was ended and he was about quitting the parlour she jumped up and followed him a step or two.

"Mr. Winthrop -- won't you say a word of comfort to me before you go? --"

He saw she needed it exceedingly; and came back and sat down on the sofa with her.

"I don't know what to say to you better than this, Miss Elizabeth," he said, turning over again the leaves of his little bible; -- "I came to it in the course of my reading this morning; and it comforted me."

He put the book in her hands, but Elizabeth had to clear her eyes more than once from hot tears, before she could read the words to which he directed her.

"And there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the daytime from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and for a covert from storm and from rain."

Elizabeth looked at it.

"But I don't understand it, Mr. Landholm?" she said, raising her eyes to his face.

He said nothing; he took the book from her and turning a few leaves over, put it again in her hands. Elizabeth read; --

"And a man shall be as an hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place; as the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land."

"Is that plainer?" he asked.

"It means the Saviour?" said Elizabeth.

"Certainly it does! To whom else should we go?"

"But Mr. Landholm," said Elizabeth after a minute's struggle, "why do you shew me this, when you know I can do nothing with it?"

"Will you do nothing?" he said.

The words implied that she could; an implication she would not deny; but her answer was another burst of tears. And with the book in her hand he left her.

The words were well studied that day! by a heart feeling the blast of the tempest and bitterly wanting to hide itself from the wind. But the fact of her want and of a sure remedy, was all she made clear; how to match the one with the other she did not know. The book itself she turned over with the curiosity and the interest of fresh insight into character. It was well worn, and had been carefully handled; it lay open easily anywhere, and in many places various marks of pencilling shewed that not only the eyes but the mind of its owner had been all over it. It was almost an awful book to Elizabeth's handling. It seemed a thing too good to be in her hold. It bore witness to its owner's truth of character, and to her own consequent being far astray; it gave her an opening such as she never had before to look into his mind and life and guess at the secret spring and strength of them. Of many of the marks of his pencil she could make nothing at all; she could not divine why they had been made, nor what could possibly be the notable thing in the passage pointed out; and longing to get at more of his mind than she could in one morning's hurried work, she found another bible in the house and took off a number of his notes, for future and more leisurely study.

It was a happy occupation for her that day. No other could have so softened its exceeding weariness and sadness. The doctor gave her no comfort. He said he could tell nothing yet; and Elizabeth could not fancy that this delay of amendment gave any encouragement to hope for it. She did not see Winthrop at dinner. She spent the most of the day over his bible. Sickness of heart sometimes made her throw it aside, but so surely sickness of heart made her take it up again.

The thought of Winthrop himself getting sick, did once or twice look in through the window of Elizabeth's mind; but her mind could not take it in. She had so much already to bear, that this tremendous possibility she could not bear so much as to look at; she left it a one side; and it can hardly be numbered among her recognized causes of trouble.

The day wore to an end. The evening and the sea-breeze came again. The lamps were lit and the table dressed with the salver and tea-urn. And Elizabeth was thankful the day was over; and waited impatiently for her friend to make his appearance.

She thought he looked thoughtfuller than ever when he came. That might have been fancy.

"I don't know, Miss Elizabeth," he said, taking her hand as he had done in the morning, and answering her face. "We must wait yet. -- How have you borne the day?"

"I have borne it by the help of your book," she said looking down at it and trembling.

"You could have no better help," he said with a little sigh, as he turned away to the table, -- "except that of the Author of it."

The tea was very silent, for even Winthrop did not talk much; and very sad, for Elizabeth could hardly hold her head up.

"Mr. Winthrop," she said when he rose, -- "can you give me a minute or two before you go? -- I want to ask you a question."

"Certainly," -- he said; and waited, both standing, while she opened his bible and found the place he had shewed her in the morning. She shewed it to him now.

"This -- I don't quite understand it. -- I see what is spoken of, and the need of it, -- but -- how can I make it my own?"

She looked up as she put the question, with most earnest eyes, and lips that only extreme determination kept from giving way. He looked at her, and at his book.

"By giving your trust to the Maker of the promise."

"How? --"

"The same unquestioning faith and dependence that you would give to any sure and undoubted refuge of human strength."

Elizabeth looked down and pressed her hands close together upon her breast. She knew so well how to give that! -- so little how to give the other.

"Do you understand what Christ requires of those who would follow him?"

"No," she said looking up again, -- "not clearly -- hardly at all."

"One is -- that you give up everything, even in thought, that is contrary to his authority."

He was still, and so was she, both looking at each other.

"That is what is meant by repentance. The other thing is, -- that you trust yourself for all your wants -- from the forgiveness of sin, to the supply of this moment's need, -- to the strength and love of Jesus Christ; -- and that because he has paid your price and bought you with his own blood."

"You mean," said Elizabeth slowly, "that his life was given in place of mine."

Winthrop was silent. Elizabeth stood apparently considering.

"'Everything that is contrary to his authority'" -- she added after a minute, -- "how can I know exactly all that?"

He still said nothing, but touched with his finger once or twice the book in his hand.

Elizabeth looked, and the tears came to her eyes.

"You know, --" she said, hesitating a little, -- "what physicians say of involuntary muscular resistance, that the physical frame makes sometimes?"

He answered her with an instant's light of intelligence, and then with the darkened look of sorrow. But he took his bible away with him and said no more.

Elizabeth sat down and struggled with herself and with the different passions which had been at work in her mind, till she was wearied out; and then she slept.

She waked up in the middle of the night, to find the lamps burning bright and Clam asleep on the floor by her side; she herself was sitting yet where she had been sitting in the evening, on a low seat with her head on the sofa cushion. She got up and with a sort of new spring of hope and cheer, whence come she knew not, laid herself on the sofa and slept till the morning.

"You'd best be up, Miss 'Lizabeth," were Clam's first words.

"Why?" said Elizabeth springing up.

"It's time," said her handmaiden.

Elizabeth rose from her sofa and put her face and dress in such order as a few minutes could do. She had but come back from doing this, and was standing before the table, when Winthrop came in. It was much earlier than usual. Elizabeth looked, but he did not answer, the wonted question. He led her gently to the window and placed himself opposite to her.

"You must leave here, Miss Elizabeth," he said.

"Must I?" -- said Elizabeth looking up at him and trembling.

"You must --" he answered very gently.

"Why, Mr. Landholm?" Elizabeth dared to say.

"Because there is no longer any reason why you should stay here."

She trembled exceedingly, but though her very lips trembled, she did not cry. He would have placed her on a chair, but she resisted that and stood still.

"Where do you want me to go, Mr. Winthrop?" she said presently, like a child.

"I will take you wherever you say -- to some friend's house?"

She caught at his arm and her breath at once, with a kind of sob; then releasing his arm, she said,

"There isn't anywhere."

"No house in the city?"

She shook her head.

"If you will let me, I will take you to a safe and quiet place; and as soon as possible away from the city."

"When?"

"When from here? -- Now, -- as soon as you can be ready."

Elizabeth's eye wandered vaguely towards the table like a person in a maze.

"Mayn't I go up stairs again?" she said, her eye coming back to his.

"I would rather you did not."

She gave way then and sat down covering her face with her hands. And sobs as violent as her tremblings had been, held her for a little while. The moment she could, she rose up and looked up again, throwing off her tears as it were, though a sob now and then even while she was speaking interrupted her breath.

"But Mr. Winthrop -- the house, --how can I go and leave it with everything in it?"

"I will take care, if you will trust me."

"I will trust you," she said with running tears. "But you? --"

"I will take care of it and you too. -- I will try to."

"That was not what I meant --"

"I am safe," he said.

He gently seated her; and then going off to Clam at the other side of the room he bade her fetch her mistress's bonnet and shawl. He himself put them on, and taking her arm in his, they went forth of the house.

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Chapter IX

The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows flee; Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass Stains the clear radiance of Eternity, Until Death shiver it to atoms. SHELLEY.

The dawn of the summer morning was just flushing up over the city, when Winthrop and his trembling companion came out of the house. The flush came up upon a fair blue sky, into which little curls of smoke were here and there stealing; and a fresh air in the streets as yet held place of the sun's hot breath. One person felt the refreshment of it, as he descended the steps of the house and began a rather swift walk up the Parade. But those were very trembling feet that he had to guide during that early walk; though his charge was perfectly quiet. She did not weep at all; she did not speak, nor question any of his movements. Neither did he speak. He kept a steady and swift course till they reached Mr. Inchbald's house in Little South Street, and then only paused to open the door. He led Elizabeth up-stairs to his own room, and there and not before took her hand from his arm and placed her on a chair. Himself quietly went round the room, opening the windows and altering the disposition of one or two things. Then he came back to her where she sat like a statue, and in kind fashion again took one of her hands.

"I will see that you are waited upon," he said gently; "and I will send Clam to you by and by for your orders. Will you stay here for a little while? -- and then I will take care of you."

How she wished his words meant more than she knew they did. She bowed her head, thinking so.

"Can I give you anything?"

She managed to say a smothered 'no,' and he went; first pulling out of his pocket his little bible which he laid upon the table.

Was that by way of answering his own question? It might be, or he might not have wanted it in his pocket. Whether or no, Elizabeth seized it and drew it towards her, and as if it had contained the secret charm and panacea for all her troubles, she laid her hands and her head upon it, and poured out there her new and her old sorrows; wishing even then that Winthrop could have given her the foundation of strength on which his own strong spirit rested.

After a long while, or what seemed such, she heard the door softly open and some one come in. The slow careful step was none that she knew, and Elizabeth did not look up till it had gone out and the door had closed again. It was Mrs. Nettley, and Mrs. Nettley had softly left on the table a waiter of breakfast. Elizabeth looked at it, and laid her head down again.

The next interruption came an hour later and was a smarter one. Elizabeth had wearied herself with weeping, and lay comparatively quiet on the couch.

"Miss 'Lizabeth," said the new-comer, in more gentle wise than it was her fashion to look or speak, -- "Mr. Winthrop said I was to come and get your orders about what you wanted."

"I can't give orders -- Do what you like," said Elizabeth keeping her face hid.

"If I knowed what 'twas," -- said Clam, sending her eye round the room for information or suggestion. "Mr. Winthrop said I was to come. -- Why you haven't took no breakfast?"

"I didn't want any."

"You can't go out o' town that way," said Clam. "The Governor desired you would take some breakfast, and his orders must be follered. You can't drink cold coffee neither --"

And away went Clam, coffee-pot in hand.

In so short a space of time that it shewed Clam's business faculties, she was back again with the coffee smoking hot. She made a cup carefully and brought it to her mistress.

"You can't do nothin' without it," said Clam. "Mr. Winthrop would say, 'Drink it' if he was here --"

Which Elizabeth knew, and perhaps considered in swallowing the coffee. Before she had done, Clam stood at her couch again with a plate of more substantial supports.

"He would say 'Eat,' if he was here --" she remarked.

"Attend a little to what I have to say," said her mistress.

"While you're eatin'," said Clam. "I wasn't to stop to get breakfast."

A few words of directions were despatched, and Clam was off again; and Elizabeth lay still and looked at the strange room and thought over the strange meaning and significance of her being there. A moment's harbour, with a moment's friend. She was shiveringly alone in the world; she felt very much at a loss what to do, or what would become of her, She felt it, but she could not think about it. Tears came again for a long uninterrupted time.

The day had reached the afternoon, when Clam returned, and coming into Mrs. Nettley's kitchen inquired if her mistress had had any refreshment. Mrs. Nettley declared that she dursn't take it up and that she had waited for Clam. Upon which that damsel set about getting ready a cup of tea, with a sort of impatient promptitude.

"Have you got all through?" Mrs. Nettley asked in the course of this preparation.

"What?" said Clam.

"Your work."

"No," said Clam. "Never expect to. My work don't get done."

"But has Mr. Landholm got through his work, down at the house?"

"Don't know," said Clam. "He don't tell me. But if we was to work on, at the rate we've been a goin' to-day -- we'd do up all Mannahatta in a week or so."

"What's been so much to do? -- the funeral, I know."

"The funeral," said Clam, "and everything else. That was only one thing. There was everything to be locked up, and everything to be put up, and the rest to be packed; and the silver sent off to the Bank; and everybody to be seen to. I did all I could, and Mr. Winthrop he did the rest."

"He'll be worn out!" said Mrs. Nettley.

"No he won't," said Clam. "He ain't one o' them that have to try hard to make things go -- works like oiled 'chinery -- powerful too, I can tell you."

"What's going to be done?" said Mrs. Nettley meditatively.

"Can't say," said Clam. "I wish my wishes was goin' to be done -- but I s'pose they ain't. People's ain't mostly, in this world." She went off with her dish of tea and what not, to her mistress up-stairs. But Elizabeth this time would endure neither her presence nor her proposal. Clam was obliged to go down again leaving her mistress as she had found her. Alone with herself.

Then, when the sun was long past the meridian, Elizabeth heard upon the stair another step, of the only friend, as it seemed to her, that she had. She raised her head and listened to it. The step went past her door, and into the other room, and she sat waiting. "How little he knows," she thought, "how much of a friend he is! how little he guesses it. How far he is from thinking that when he shall have bid me good bye -- somewhere -- he will have taken away all of help and comfort I have. --"

But clear and well defined as this thought was in her mind at the moment, it did not prevent her meeting her benefactor with as much outward calmness as if it had not been there. Yet the quiet meeting of hands had much that was hard to bear. Elizabeth did not dare let her thoughts take hold of it.

"Have you had what you wanted?" he said, in the way in which one asks a question of no moment when important ones are behind.

"I have had all I could have," Elizabeth answered.

There was a pause; and then he asked,

"What are your plans, Miss Elizabeth?"

"I haven't formed any. -- I couldn't not, yet."

"Do you wish to stay in the city, or to go out of it?"

"Oh to go out of it!" said Elizabeth, -- "if I could -- if I knew where."

"Where is your cousin?"

"She was at Vantassel; but she left it for some friend's house in the country, I believe. I don't want to be where she is."

Elizabeth's tears came again.

"It seems very strange --" she said presently, trying to put a stop to them, but her words stopped.

"What?" said Winthrop.

"It seems very strange, -- but I hardly know where to go. I have no friends near -- no near friends, in any sense; there are some, hundreds of miles off, in distance, and further than that in kind regard. I know plenty of people, but I have no friends. -- I would go up to Wut-a-qut-o, if there was anybody there," she added after a minute or two.

"Shahweetah has passed into other hands," said Winthrop.

"I know it," said Elizabeth; -- "it passed into mine."

Winthrop started a little, and then after another moment's pause said quietly,

"Are you serious in wishing to go there now?"

"Very serious!" said Elizabeth, "if I had anybody to take care of me. I couldn't be there with only Clam and Karen."

"You would find things very rough and uncomfortable."

"What do you suppose I care about how rough?" said Elizabeth. "I would rather be there than in any other place I can think of."

"I am afraid you would still be much alone there -- your own household would be all."

"I must be that anywhere," said Elizabeth bitterly. "I wish I could be there."

"Then I will see what I can do," said he rising.

"About what?" said Elizabeth.

"I will tell you if I succeed."

Mr. Landholm walked down stairs into Mrs. Nettley's sanctum, where the good lady was diligently at work in kitchen affairs.

"Mrs. Nettley, will you leave your brother and me to keep things together here, and go into the country with this bereaved friend of mine?"

Mrs. Nettley stood still with her hands in the dough of her bread and looked at the maker of this extraordinary proposition.

"Into the country, Mr. Landholm! -- When?"

"Perhaps this afternoon -- in two or three hours."

"Dear Mr. Landholm! --"

"Dear Mrs. Nettley."

"But it's impossible."

"Is it?"

"Why -- What does she want me for, Mr. Landholm?"

"She is alone, and without friends at hand. She wishes to leave the city and take refuge in her own house in the country, but it is uninhabited except by servants. She does not know of my application to you, which I make believing it to be a case of charity."

Mrs. Nettley began to knead her dough with a haste and vigour which told of other matters on hand.

"Will you go, Mr. Landholm?"

"Certainly -- to see you safe there -- and then I will come back and take care of Mr. Inchbald."

"How far is it, sir?"

"So far as my old home, which Miss Haye has bought."

"What, Wut -- that place of yours?" said Mrs. Nettley.

"Yes," Winthrop said gravely.

"And how long shall I be wanted, Mr. Landholm?"

"I do not know, Mrs. Nettley."

Mrs. Nettley hastily cut her dough into loaves and threw it into the pans.

"You are going, Mrs. Nettley?"

"Why sir -- in two hours, you say?"

"Perhaps in so little as that -- I am going to see."

"But Mr. Landholm," said the good lady, facing round upon him after bestowing her pans in their place, and looking somewhat concerned, -- "Mr. Landholm, do you think she will like me? -- Miss Haye?"

Winthrop smiled a little.

"I think she will be very thankful to you, Mrs. Nettley -- I can answer no further."

"I suppose it's right to risk that," Mrs. Nettley concluded. "I'll do what you say, Mr. Landholm."

Without more words Mr. Landholm went out and left the house.

"Are Miss Haye's things all ready?" asked Mrs. Nettley of Clam, while she nervously untied her apron.

"All's ready that he has to do with," Clam answered a little curtly.

"But has he to do with your mistress's things?"

"He has to do with everything, just now," said Clam. "I wish the now'd last for ever!"

"How can we go to-night? -- the boats and the stages and all don't set off so late."

"Boats don't stop near Wutsey Qutsey," said Clam.

Mrs. Nettley went off to make her own preparations.

When Mr. Landholm came again, after an interval of some length, he came with a carriage.

"Are you ready, Mrs. Nettley?" he said looking into that lady's quarters.

"In a little bit, Mr. Landholm! --"

Whereupon he went up-stairs.

"If you wish to go to Wut-a-qut-o, Miss Elizabeth," he said, "my friend Mrs. Nettley will go with you and stay with you, till you have made other arrangements. I can answer for her kindness of heart, and unobtrusive manners, and good sense. Would you like her for a companion?"

"I would like anybody -- that you can recommend."

"My friend Cowslip's little sloop sets sail for the neighbourhood of Wut-a-qut-o this evening."

"Oh thank you! --Will she take us?"

"If you wish it."

"Oh thank you! --"

"Would you not be better to wait till to-morrow? -- I can make the sloop wait."

"Oh no, let us go," said Elizabeth rising. "But your friend is very good -- your friend who is going with me, I mean."

"Mrs. Nettley. But you need not move yet -- rest while you can."

"Rest!" -- said Elizabeth. And tears said what words did not.

"There is only one rest," said Winthrop gravely; "and it is in Christ's hand. 'Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, AND I WILL GIVE YOU REST.'" --

Elizabeth's sobs were bitter. Her counsellor added no more however; he left the room after a little while, and soon returned to tell her that all was ready. She was ready too by that time.

"But Mr. Winthrop," she said looking at him earnestly, "is everything here so that you can leave it?"

She dared not put the whole of her meaning into words. But Winthrop understood, and answered a quiet "yes;" and Elizabeth lowered her veil and her head together and let him lead her to the carriage.

A few minutes brought them to the pier at the end of which the Julia Ann lay.

"You're sharp upon the time, Mr. Landholm," said her master; -- "we're just goin' to cast off. But we shouldn't have done it, nother, till you come. All right!"

"Is all right in the cabin?" said Winthrop as they came on board.

"Well, it's slicked up all it could be on such short notice," said the skipper. "I guess you wont have to live in it long; the wind's coming up pretty smart ahind us. Haul away there! -- "

It was past six o'clock, and the August sun had much lessened of its heat, when, as once before with Mr. Landholm for a passenger, the Julia Ann stood out into the middle of the river with her head set for the North.

Mrs. Nettley and Clam hid themselves straightway in the precincts of the cabin. Elizabeth stood still where she had first placed herself on the deck, in a cold abstracted sort of carelessness, conscious only that her protector was standing by her side, and that she was not willing to lose sight of him. The vessel, and her crew, and their work before her very eyes, she could hardly be said to see. The sloop got clear of the wharf and edged out into the mid-channel, where she stood bravely along before the fair wind. Slowly the trees and houses along shore were dropped behind, and fresher the wind and fairer the green river-side seemed to become. Elizabeth's senses hardly knew it, or only in a kind of underhand way; not recognized.

"Will you go into the cabin? or will you have a seat here?" she heard Winthrop say.

Mechanically she looked about for one. He brought a chair and placed her in it, and she sat down; choosing rather the open air and free sky than any shut-up place, and his neighbourhood rather than where he was not; but with a dulled and impassive state of feeling that refused to take up anything, past, present or future. It was not rest, it was not relief, though there was a seeming of rest about it. She knew then it would not last. It was only a little lull between storms; the enforced quiet of wearied and worn-out powers. She sat mazily taking in the sunlight, and the view of the sunlighted earth and water, the breath of the sweeping fresh air, the creaking of the sloop's cordage, in the one consciousness that Winthrop kept his place at her side all this time. How she thanked him for that! though she could not ask him to sit down, nor make any sort of a speech about it.

Down went the sun, and the shadows and the sunlight were swept away together; and yet fresher came the sweet wind. It was a sort of consolation to Elizabeth, that her distress gave Winthrop a right and a reason to attend upon her; she had had all along a vague feeling of it, and the feeling was very present now. It was all of comfort she could lay hold of; and she clutched at it with even then a foreboding sense of the desolation there would be when that comfort was gone. She had it now; she had it, and she held it; and she sat there in her chair on the deck in a curious half stupor, half quiet, her mind clinging to that one single point where it could lean.

There came a break-up however. Supper was declared to be ready; and though nobody but Winthrop attended the skipper's table, Elizabeth was obliged to take some refreshments of her own, along with a cup of the sloop's tea, which most certainly she would have taken from no hand but the one that presented it to her. And after it, Elizabeth was so strongly advised to go to the cabin and take some rest, that she could not help going; resting, she had no thought of. Her companions were of easier mind; for they soon addressed themselves to such sleeping conveniencies as the little cabin could boast. Miss Haye watched them begin and end their preparations and bestow themselves in resting positions to sleep; and then drawing a breath of comparative rest herself, she placed herself just within the cabin threshold, on the floor, where she could look out and have a good view of the deck through the partly open door.

It was this night as on the former occasion, a brilliant moonlight; and the vessel had no lamps up to hinder its power. The mast and sails and lines stood out in sharp light and shadow. The man at the helm Elizabeth could not see; the moonlight poured down upon Winthrop, walking slowly back and forth on the deck, his face and figure at every turn given fully and clearly to view. Elizabeth herself was in shadow; he could not look within the cabin door and see her; she could look out and see him right well, and she did. He was pacing slowly up and down, with a thoughtful face, but so calm in its thoughtfulness that it was a grievous contrast to Elizabeth's own troubled and tossed nature. It was all the more fascinating to her gaze; while it was bitter to her admiration. The firm quiet tread, -- the manly grave repose of the face, -- spoke of somewhat in the character and life so unlike what she knew in her own, and so beautiful to her sense of just and right, that she looked in a maze of admiration and self-condemning; rating herself lower and lower and Winthrop higher and higher, at every fair view the moonlight gave, at every turn that brought him near or took him further from her. And tears -- curious tears -- that came from some very deep wells of her nature, blinded her eyes, and rolled hot down her cheeks, and were wiped away that she might look. "What shall I do when he gets tired of that walk and goes somewhere else?" -- she thought; and with the thought, as instantly, Elizabeth gathered herself up from off the floor, wiped her cheeks from the tears, and stepped out into the moonlight. "I can't say anything, but I suppose he will," was her meditation. "Nobody knows when I shall have another chance." --

"They could not make it comfortable for you in there?" said Winthrop coming up to her.

"I don't know -- yes, -- I have not tried."

"Are you very much fatigued?"

"I suppose so. -- I don't feel it."

"Can I do anything for you?"

The real answer nearly burst Elizabeth's bounds of self- control, but nevertheless her words were quietly given.

"Yes, -- if you will only let me stay out here a little while."

He put a chair for her instantly, and himself remained standing near, as he had done before.

"Walk on, if you wish," said Elizabeth. "Don't mind me."

But instead of that he drew up another chair, and sat down.

There was silence then that might be felt. The moonlight poured down noiselessly on the water, and over the low dusky distant shore; the ripples murmured under the sloop's prow; the wind breathed gently through the sails. Now and then the creak of the rudder sounded, but the very stars were not more calmly peaceful than everything else.

"There is quiet and soothing in the speech of such a scene as this," Winthrop said after a time.

"Quiet!" said Elizabeth. Her voice choked, and it was a little while before she could go on. -- "Nothing is quiet to a mind in utter confusion."

"Is yours so?"

"Yes."

The sobs were at her very lips, but the word got out first.

"It is no wonder," he observed gently.

"Yes it is wonder," said Elizabeth; -- "or at least it is what needn't be. Yours wouldn't be so in any circumstances."

"What makes the confusion?" -- he asked, in a gentle considerate tone that did not press for an answer.

"The want of a single fixed thing that my thoughts can cling to."

He was silent a good while after that.

"There is nothing fixed in this world," he said at length.

"Yes there is," said Elizabeth bitterly. "There are friends -- and there is a self-reliant spirit -- and there is a settled mind."

"Settled -- about what?"

"What it will and what it ought to do."

"Is yours not settled on the latter point?" he asked.

"If it were," said Elizabeth with a little hesitation and struggling, -- "that don't make it settled."

"It shews where the settling point is."

"Which leaves it as far as ever from being settled," said Elizabeth, almost impatiently.

"A self-reliant spirit, if it be not poised on another foundation than its own, hath no fixedness that is worth anything, Miss Elizabeth; -- and friends are not safe things to trust to."

"Some of them are," said Elizabeth.

"No, for they are not sure. There is but one friend that cannot be taken away from us."

"But to know that, and to know everything else about him, does not make him our friend," said Elizabeth in a voice that trembled.

"To agree to everything about him, does."

"To agree? -- How? -- I do agree to it," said Elizabeth.

"Do you? Are you willing to have him for a King to reign over you? -- as well as a Saviour to make you and keep you safe?"

She did not answer.

"You do not know everything about him, neither."

"What don't I know?"

"Almost all. You cannot, till you begin to obey him; for till then he will not shew himself to you. The epitome of all beauty is in those two words -- Jesus Christ."

She made no answer yet, with her head bowed, and striving to check the straining sobs with which her breast was heaving. She had a feeling that he was looking on compassionately; but it was a good while before she could restrain herself into calmness; and during that time he added nothing more. When she could look up, she found he was not looking at her; his eyes were turned upon the river, where the moon made a broad and broadening streak of wavy brightness. But Elizabeth looked at the quiet of his brow, and it smote her; though there was now somewhat of thoughtful care upon the face. The tears that she thought she had driven back, rushed fresh to her eyes again.

"Do you believe what I last said, Miss Elizabeth?" he said turning round to her.

"About the epitome of all beauty?"

"Yes. Do you believe it?"

"You say so -- I don't understand it," she said sadly and somewhat perplexed.

"I told you so," he answered, looking round to the moonlight again.

"But Mr. Landholm," said Elizabeth in evident distress, "won't you tell me something more?"

"I cannot."

"Oh yes you can, -- a great deal more," she said weeping.

"I could," he said gravely, -- "yet I should tell you nothing -- you would not understand me. You must, find it out for yourself."

"How in the world can I?"

"There is a promise, -- 'If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine.'"

"I don't know how to begin, nor anything about it," said Elizabeth, weeping still.

"Begin anywhere."

"How? What do you mean?"

"Open the Bible at the first chapter of Matthew, and read. Ask honestly, of your own conscience and of God, at each step, what obligation upon you grows out of what you are reading. If you follow his leading he will lead you on, -- to himself."

Elizabeth sobbed in silence for some little time; then she said,

"I will do it, Mr. Landholm."

"If you do," said he, "you will find you can do nothing."

"Nothing!" said Elizabeth.

"You will find you are dependent upon the good pleasure of God for power to take the smallest step."

"His good pleasure! -- Suppose it should not be given me."

"There is no 'suppose' about that," Winthrop answered, with a slight smile, which seen as it was through a veil of tears, Elizabeth never forgot, and to which she often looked back in after time; -- "'Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.' But he does not always get a draught at the first asking. The water of life was not bought so cheap as that. However, 'to him that knocketh, it shall be opened.'"

Elizabeth hearkened to him, with a curious mixture of yielding and rebellion at once in her mind. She felt them both there. But the rebellion was against the words; her yielding was for the voice that brought the words to her ear. She paused awhile.

"At that rate, people might be discouraged before they got what they wanted," she observed, when the silence had lasted some little time.

"They might," said Winthrop quietly.

"I should think many might."

"Many have been," he answered.

"What then?" she asked a little abruptly.

"They did not get what they wanted."

Elizabeth started a little, and shivered, and tears began to come again.

"What's to hinder their being discouraged, Mr. Landholm?" she asked in a tone that was a little querulous.

"Believing God's word."

So sweet the words came, her tears ceased at that; the power of the truth sank for a moment with calming effect upon her rebellious feeling; but with this came also as truly the thought, "You have a marvellous beautiful way of saying things quietly!" -- However for the time her objections were silenced; and she sat still, looking out upon the water, and thinking that with the first quiet opportunity she would begin the first chapter of Matthew.

For a little while they both were motionless and silent; and then rising, Winthrop began his walk up and down the deck again. Elizabeth was left to her meditations; which sometimes roved hither and thither, and sometimes concentred themselves upon the beat of his feet, which indeed formed a sort of background of cadence to them all. It was such a soothing reminder of one strong and sure stay that she might for the present lean upon; and the knowledge that she might soon lose it, made the reminder only the more precious. She was weeping most bitter tears during some of that time; but those footsteps behind her were like quiet music through all. She listened to them sometimes, and felt them always, with a secret gratification of knowing they would not quit the deck till she did. Then she had some qualms about his getting tired; and then she said to herself that she could not put a stop to what was so much to her and which she was not to have again. So she sat and listened to them, weary and half bewildered with the changes and pain of the last few days and hours; hardly recognizing the reality of her own situation, or that the sloop, Winthrop's walk behind her, the moonlight, her lonely seat on the deck, and her truly lonely place in the world, were not all parts of a curious phantasm. Or if realizing them, with senses so tried and blunted with recent wear and tear, that they refused to act and left her to realize it quietly and almost it seemed stupidly. She called it so to herself, but she could not help it; and she was in a manner thankful for that. She would wake up again. She would have liked to sit there all night under that moonlight and with the regular fall of Winthrop's step to and fro on the vessel.

"How long can you stand this?" said he, pausing beside her.

"What?" said Elizabeth looking up.

"How long can you do without resting?"

"I am resting. -- I couldn't rest so well anywhere else."

"Couldn't you?"

"No! --" she said earnestly.

He turned away and went on walking. Elizabeth blessed him for it.

The moon shone, and the wind blew, and steadily the vessel sailed on; till higher grounds began to rise on either side of her, and hills stood back of hills, ambitious of each other's standing, and threw their deep shadows all along the margin of the river. As the sloop entered between these narrowing and lifting walls of the river channel, the draught of air became gentler, often hindered by some outstanding high point she had left behind; more slowly she made her way past hill and hill- embayed curves of the river, less stoutly her sails were filled, more gently her prow rippled over the smoother water. Sometimes she passed within the shadow of a lofty hill-side; and then slipped out again into the clear fair sparkling water where the moon shone.

"Are we near there?" said Elizabeth suddenly, turning her head to arrest her walking companion. He came to the back of the chair.

"Near Wut-a-qut-o?"

"Yes."

"No. Nearing it, but not near it yet."

"How soon shall we be?"

"If the wind holds, I should think in two hours."

"Where do we stop?"

"At the sloop's quarters -- the old mill --about two miles down the river from Shahweetah."

"Why wouldn't she carry us straight up to the place?"

"It would be inconvenient landing there, and would very much delay the sloop's getting to her moorings."

"I'll pay for that! --"

"We can get home as well in another way."

"But then we shall have to stay here all night."

"Here, on the sloop, you mean? The night is far gone already."

"Not half!" said Elizabeth. "It's only a little past twelve."

"Aren't you tired?"

"I suppose so, but I don't feel it."

"Don't you want to take some sleep before morning?"

"No, I can't. But you needn't walk there to take care of me, Mr. Winthrop. I shall be quite safe alone."

"No, you will not," he said; and going to some of the sloop's receptacles, he drew out an old sail and laying it on the deck by her side he placed himself upon it, in a half sitting, half reclining posture, which told of some need of rest on his part.

"You are tired," she said earnestly. "Please don't stay here for me!"

"It pleases me to stay," he said lightly. "It is no hardship, under ordinary circumstances, to pass such a night as this out of doors."

"What is it in these circumstances?" said Elizabeth quickly.

"Not a hardship."

"You don't say much more than you are obliged to," thought Elizabeth bitterly. "It is 'not a hardship' to stay there to take care of me; -- and there is not in the world another person left to me who could say even as much." --

"There is a silent peace-speaking in such a scene as this," presently said Winthrop, lying on his sail and looking at the river.

"I dare say there is," Elizabeth answered sadly.

"You cannot feel it, perhaps?"

"Not a particle. I can just see that it might be."

"The Bible makes such constant use of natural imagery, that to one familiar with it, the objects of nature bring back as constantly its teachings -- its warnings -- its consolations."

"What now?" said Elizabeth.

"Many things. Look at those deep and overlapping shadows. 'As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about his people, from henceforth'" --

"Stop, Mr. Winthrop!" Elizabeth exclaimed; -- "Stop! I can't bear it."

"Why?"

"I can't bear it," she repeated, in a passion of tears.

"Why?" said he again in the same tone, when a minute had gone by.

"Those words don't belong to me -- I've nothing to do with them," she said, raising her head and dashing her tears right and left.

But Winthrop made no sort of answer to that, and a dead silence fell between the parties. Again the prow of the sloop was heard rippling against the waves; and slowly she glided past mountain and shadow, and other hills rose and other deep shadows lay before them. Elizabeth, between other thoughts, was tempted to think that her companion was as impassive and cold as the moonlight, and as moveless as the dark mountain lines that stood against the sky. And yet she knew and trusted him better than that. It was but the working of passing impatience and bitter feeling; it was only the chafing of passion against what seemed so self-contained and so calm. And yet that very self-continence and calmness was what passion liked, and what passion involuntarily bent down before.

She had not got over yet the stunned effect of the past days and nights. She sat feeling coldly miserable and forlorn and solitary; conscious that one interest was living at her heart yet, but also conscious that it was to live and die by its own strength as it might; and that in all the world she had nothing else; no, nor never should have anything else. She could not have a father again; and even he had been nothing for the companionship of such a spirit as hers, not what she wanted to make her either good or happy. But little as he had done of late to make her either, the name, and even the nominal guardianship, and what the old childish affection had clung to, were gone -- and never could come back; and Elizabeth wept sometimes with a very bowed head and heart, and sometimes sat stiff and quiet, gazing at the varying mountain outline, and the fathomless shadows that repeated it upon the water.

The night drew on, as the hills closed in more and more upon the narrowing river channel, and the mountain heads lifted themselves more high, and the shadows spread out broader upon the river. Every light along shore had long been out; but now one glimmered down at them faintly from under a high thick wooded bluff, on the east shore; and the Julia Ann as she came up towards it, edged down a little constantly to that side of the river.

"Where are we going?" said Elizabeth presently. "We're getting out of the channel."

But she saw immediately that Winthrop was asleep. It made her feel more utterly alone and forlorn than she had done before. With a sort of additional chill at her heart, she looked round for some one else of whom to ask her question, and saw the skipper just come on deck. Elizabeth got up to speak to him.

"Aren't we getting out of our course?"

"Eg-zackly," said Mr. Hildebrand. "Most out of it. That light's the Mill, marm."

"The Mill! Cowslip's Mill?"

"Well, it's called along o' my father, 'cause he's lived there, I s'pose, -- and made it, -- and owns to it, too, as far as that goes; -- I s'pose it's as good a right to have his name as any one's."

Elizabeth sat down and looked at the light, which now had a particularly cheerless and hopeless look for her. It was the token of somebody's home, shining upon one who had none; it was a signal of the near ending of a guardianship and society which for the moment had taken home's place; a reminder that presently she must be thrown upon her own guidance; left to take care of herself alone in the world, as best she might. The journey, with all its pain, had been a sort of little set- off from the rest of her life, where the contrasts of the past and the future did not meet. They were coming back now. She felt their shadows lying cold upon her. It was one of the times in her life of greatest desolation, the while the sloop was drawing down to her berth under the home light, and making fast in her moorings. The moon was riding high, and dimly shewed Elizabeth the but half-remembered points and outlines; -- and there was a contrast! She did not cry; she looked, with a cold chilled feeling of eye and mind that would have been almost despair, if it had not been for the one friend asleep at her side. And he was nothing to her. Nothing. He was nothing to her. Elizabeth said it to herself; but for all that he was there, and it was a comfort to see him there.

The sails rattled down to the deck; and with wind and headway the sloop gently swung up to her appointed place. Another light came out of the house, in a lantern; and another hand on shore aided the sloop's crew in making her fast.

"How can he sleep through it all!" thought Elizabeth. "I wonder if anything ever could shake him out of his settled composure -- asleep or awake, it's all the same."

"Ain't you goin' ashore?" said the skipper at her side.

"No -- not now."

"They'll slick up a better place for you than we could fix up in this here little hulk. Though she ain't a small sloop neither, by no means."

"What have you got aboard there, Hild'?" called out a voice that came from somewhere in the neighbourhood of the lantern. "Gals?"

"Governor Landholm and some company," said the skipper in a more moderate tone. The other voice took no hint of moderation.

"Governor Landholm? -- is he along? Well -- glad to see him. Run from the yallow fever, eh?"

"Is mother up, father?"

"Up? -- no! -- What on arth!"

"Tell her to get up, and make some beds for folks that couldn't sleep aboard sloop; and have been navigatin' all night."

"Go, and I'll look after the sloop till morning, Captain," said Winthrop sitting up on his sail.

"Won't you come ashore and be comfortable?" said father and son at once.

"I am comfortable."

"But you'll be better off there, Governor."

"Don't think I could, Hild'. I'm bound to stay by the ship."

"Won't you come, Miss?" said the skipper addressing Elizabeth. "You'll be better ashore."

"Oh yes -- come along -- all of you," said the old sloop-master on the land.

"I'm in charge of the passengers, Captain," said Winthrop; "and I don't think it is safe for any of them to go off before morning."

The request was urged to Elizabeth. But Winthrop quietly negatived it every time it was made; and the sloop's masters at last withdrew. Elizabeth had not spoken at all.

"How do you do?" said Winthrop gravely, when the Cowslips, father and son, had turned their backs upon the vessel.

"Thank you --" said Elizabeth, -- and stopped there.

"You are worn out."

"No," -- Elizabeth answered under her breath; and then gathering it, went on, -- "I am afraid you are."

"I am perfectly well," he said. "But you ought to rest."

"I will, -- by and by," said Elizabeth desperately. "I will stay here till the daylight comes. It will not be long, will it?"

He made no answer. The sloop's deck was in parts blockaded with a load of shingles. Winthrop went to these, and taking down bundle after bundle, disposed them so as to make a resting-place of greater capabilities than the armless wooden chair in which Elizabeth had been sitting all night. Over this, seat, back, sides and all, he spread the sail on which he had been lying.

"Is there nothing in the shape of a pillow or cushion that you could get out of the cabin now?" said he.

"But you have given me your sail," said Elizabeth.

"I'm master of the sloop now. Can't you get a pillow?"

Since so much had been done for her, Elizabeth consented to do this for herself. She fetched a pillow from the cabin; and Winthrop himself bestowed it in the proper position; and with a choking feeling of gratitude and pleasure that did not permit her to utter one word, Elizabeth placed herself in the box seat made for her, took off her bonnet and laid her head down. She knew that Winthrop laid her light shawl over her head; but she did not stir. Her thanks reached only her pillow, in the shape of two or three hot tears; then she slept.

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Chapter X

Beneath my palm-trees, by the river side, I sat a weeping; in the whole world wide There was no one to ask me why I wept, -- And so I kept Brimming the water-lily cups with tears Cold as my fears. SHELLEY.

The dawn had fairly broken, but that was all, when Winthrop and old Mr. Cowslip met on the little wharf landing which served instead of courtyard to the house. The hands clasped each other cordially.

"How do you do? Glad to see you in these parts!" was the hearty salutation of the old man to the young.

"Thank you, Mr. Cowslip," said Winthrop, returning the grasp of the hand.

"I don't see but you keep your own," the old man went on, looking at him wistfully. "Why don't you come up our way oftener? It wouldn't hurt you."

"I don't know about that," said Winthrop. "My business lies that way, you know."

"Ah! -- 'tain't as good business as our'n, now," said Mr. Cowslip. "You'd better by half be up there on the old place, with your wife and half a dozen children about you. Ain't married yet, Governor, be you?"

"No sir."

"Goin' to be?"

"I don't know what I am going to be, sir."

"Ah! --" said the old miller with a sly smile. "Is that what you've got here in the sloop with you now? I guessed it, and Hild' said it wa'n't -- not as he knowed on -- but I told him he didn't know everything."

"Hild' is quite right. But there are two ladies here who are going up to Shahweetah. Can you give us a boat, Mr. Cowslip?"

"A boat? -- How many of you?"

"Four -- and baggage. Your boat is large enough -- used to be when I went in her."

"Used to be when I went in her," said the old skipper; "but there it is! She won't hold nobody now."

"What's the matter?"

"She took too many passengers the other day, -- that is, she took one too many. Shipped a cargo of fresh meat, sir, and it wa'n't stowed in right, and the 'Bessie Bell' broke her heart about it. Like to ha' gone to the bottom."

"What do you mean?"

"Why, I was comin' home from Diver's Rock the other day -- just a week ago last Saturday -- I had been round there up the shore after fish; -- you know the rock where the horse mackerel comes? -- me and little Archie; lucky enough we had no more along. By the by, I hope you'll go fishing, Winthrop -- the mackerel's fine this year. How long you're goin' to stay?"

"Only a day or two, sir."

"Ah! -- Well -- we were comin' home with a good mess o' fine fish, and when we were just about in the middle of the river, comin' over, -- the fish had been jumping all along the afternoon, shewing their heads and tails more than common; and I'd been sayin' to Archie it was a sign o' rain -- 'tis, you know, -- and just as we were in the deepest of the river, about half way over, one of 'em came up and put himself aboard of us."

"A sturgeon?"

"Just that, sir; as sound a fellow as ever you saw in your life -- just the length of one of my little oars -- longer than I be -- eight feet wanting one inch, he measured, for the blade of that oar has been broken off a bit -- several inches, -- and what do you think he weighed? -- Two hundred and forty pound."

"So it seems you got him safe to land, where you could weigh him."

"And measure him. I forgot I was talkin' to a lawyer," said the old man laughing. "Yes, I didn't think much how long he was at the time, I guess! He came in as handsome as ever you saw anything done -- just slipped himself over the gunwale so -- and duv under one of the th'arts, and druv his nose through the bottom of the boat."

"Kept it there, I hope?"

"Ha, ha! Not so fast but there came in a'most water enough to float him again by the time we got to land. He was a power of a fellow!"

"And the 'Bessie' don't float?"

"No; she's laid up with three broken ribs."

"No other boat on hand?"

"There's a little punt out there, that Hild' goes a fishin' in -- that'd carry two or three people. But it wouldn't take the hull on ye."

"There's the sloop's boat."

"She leaks," said the miller. "She wants to be laid up as bad as the 'Bessie.'"

"Have you any sort of a team, Mr. Cowslip?"

"Yes! -- there's my little wagon -- it'll hold two. But you ain't wanting it yet, be you?"

"As soon as it can go -- if it can go. Is there a horse to the wagon?"

"Sartain! But won't you stop and take a bit?"

"No sir. If you will let some of the boys take up the punt with her load, I'll drive the wagon myself, and as soon as you can let me have it."

"Jock! -- tackle up the wagon! --that 'ere little red one in the barn," shouted the miller. "Hild' 'll see to the boat-load -- or I will, -- and send it right along. I'm sorry you won't stop."

Winthrop turned back to the sloop. Elizabeth met him there with the question, "if she might not go now?"

"As soon as you please. I am going to drive you up to Shahweetah. The boat will carry the rest, but it is too small to take all of us."

"I'm very glad!" -- Elizabeth could not help saying.

She granted half a word of explanation to Mrs. Nettley, her bonnet was hastily thrown on, and she stood with Winthrop on the wharf before the little wagon was fairly ready. But Jock was not tardy neither; and a very few minutes saw them seated and the horse's head turned from the Mill.

The dawn was fresh and fair yet, hardly yielding to day. In utter silence they drove swiftly along the road, through the woods and out upon the crest of tableland overlooking the bay; just above the shore where the huckleberry party had coasted along, that afternoon years before. By the time they got there, the day had begun to assert itself. Little clouds over Wut-a-qut-o's head were flushing into loveliness, and casting down rosy tints on the water; the mountain slopes were growing bright, and a soft warm colouring flung through all the air from the coming rays of the coming sun. The cat-birds were wide awake and very busy; the song sparrows full of gladness; and now and then, further off, a wood-thrush, less worldly than the one and less unchastened than the other, told of hidden and higher sweets, in tones further removed from Earth than his companions knew. The wild, pure, ethereal notes thrilled like a voice from some clear region where earthly defilement had been overcome, and earthly sorrows had lost their power. Between whiles, the little song sparrows strained their throats with rejoicing; but that was the joy of hilarious nature that sorrows and defilement had never touched. The cat-birds spoke of business, and sung over it, ambitious and self-gratulatory, and proud. And then by turns came the strange thrush's note, saying, as if they knew it and had proved it,

"WHEN HE GIVETH QUIETNESS, THEN WHO CAN MAKE TROUBLE?"

The travellers had ridden so far without speaking a word. If Elizabeth was sometimes weeping, she kept herself very quiet, and perfectly still. The sights and sounds that were abroad entered her mind by a side door, if they entered at all. Winthrop might have taken the benefit of them; but up to the bend of the bay he had driven fast and attentively. Here he suffered the horse to slacken his pace and come even to a walk, while his eye took note of the flushing morning, and perhaps the song of the birds reached his ear. It was not of them he spoke.

"Do you mean to begin upon the first chapter of Matthew?" he said, when the horse had walked the length of some two or three minutes.

"Yes! -- I do" -- said Elizabeth, turning her face towards him.

"According to the rules?"

The answer was spoken more hesitatingly, but again it was 'yes.'

"I am glad of that," he said.

"Mr. Winthrop," said Elizabeth presently, speaking it seemed with some effort, -- "if I get into any difficulty -- if I cannot understand, -- I mean, if I am in any real trouble, -- may I write to you to ask about it?"

"With great pleasure. I mean, it would give me great pleasure to have you do so."

"I should be very much obliged to you," she said humbly.

She did not see, for she did not look to see, a tiny show of a smile which spread itself over her companion's face. They drove on fast, till the bottom of the bay was left and they descended from the tableland, by Sam Doolittle's, to the road which skirted the south side of Shahweetah. Winthrop looked keenly as he passed at the old fields and hillsides. They were uncultivated now; fallow lands and unmown grass pastures held the place of the waving harvests of grain and new-reaped stubblefields that used to be there in the old time. The pastures grew rank, for there were even no cattle to feed them; and the fallows were grown with thistles and weeds. But over what might have been desolate lay the soft warmth of the summer morning; and rank pasture and uncared fallow ground took varied rich and bright hues under the early sun's rays. Those rays had now waked the hilltops and sky and river, and were just tipping the woods and slopes of the lower ground. By the bend meadow Winthrop drew in his horse again and looked fixedly.

"Does it seem pleasant to you?" he asked.

"How should it, Mr. Winthrop?" Elizabeth said coldly.

"Do you change your mind about wishing to be here?"

"No, not at all. I might as well be here as anywhere. I would rather -- I have nowhere else to go."

He made no comment, but drove on fast again, till he drew up once more at the old back door of the old house. It seemed a part of the solitude, for nothing was stirring. Elizabeth sat and watched Winthrop tie the horse; then he came and helped her out of the wagon.

"Lean on me," said he. "You are trembling all over."

He put her arm within his, and led her up to the door and knocked.

"Karen is up -- unless she has forgotten her old ways," said Winthrop. He knocked again.

A minute after, the door slowly opened its upper half, and Karen's wrinkled face and white cap and red shortgown were before them. Winthrop did not speak. Karen looked in bewilderment; then her bewilderment changed into joy.

"Mr. Winthrop! -- Governor!" --

And her hand was stretched out, and clasped his in a long mute stringent clasp, which her eyes at least said was all she could do.

"How do you do, Karen?"

"I'm well -- the Lord has kept me. But you --"

"I am well," said Winthrop. "Will you let us come in, Karen? -- This lady has been up all night, and wants rest and refreshment."

Karen looked suspiciously at 'this lady,' as she unbolted the lower half of the door and let them in; and again when Winthrop carefully placed her in a chair and then went off into the inner room for one which he knew was more easy, and made her change the first for it.

"And what have ye come up for now, governor?" she said, when she had watched them both, with an unsatisfied look upon her face and a tone of deep satisfaction coming out in her words.

"Breakfast, Karen. What's to be had?"

"Breakfast? La!" -- said the old woman, -- "if you had told me you's coming -- What do you expect I'll have in the house for my breakfast, Governor?"

"Something --," said Winthrop, taking the tongs and settling the sticks of wood in the chimney to burn better. Karen stood and looked at him.

"What have you got, Karen?" said Winthrop, setting up the tongs.

"I ha'n't got nothing for company," said Karen, grinning.

"That'll do very well," said Winthrop. "Give me the coffee and I'll make it; and you see to the bread, Karen. You have milk and cream, haven't you?"

"Yes, Governor."

"And eggs?"

"La! yes."

"Where are they?"

"Mr. Landholm, don't trouble yourself, pray!" said Elizabeth. "I am in no hurry for anything. Pray don't!"

"I don't intend it," said he. "Don't trouble your self. Would you rather go into another room?"

Elizabeth would not; and therefore and thereafter kept herself quiet, watching the motions of Karen and her temporary master. Karen seemed in a maze; but a few practical advices from Winthrop at last brought her back to the usual possession of her senses and faculties.

"Who is she?" Elizabeth heard her whisper as she began to bustle about. And Winthrop's answer, not whispered,

"How long ago do you suppose this coffee was parched?"

"No longer ago than yesterday. La sakes! Governor, -- I'll do some fresh for you if you want it."

"No time for that, Karen. You get on with those cakes."

Elizabeth watched Winthrop with odd admiration and curiosity, mixed for the moment with not a little of gratified feeling; but the sense of desolation sitting back of all. He seemed to have come out in a new character, or rather to have taken up an old one; for no one could suppose it worn for the first time. Karen had been set to making cakes with all speed. Winthrop seemed to have taken the rest of the breakfast upon himself. He had found the whereabout of the eggs, and ground some coffee, and made it and set it to boil in Karen's tin coffeepot.

"What are you after now, Mr. Winthrop?" said Karen, looking round from her pan and moulding board. "These'll be in the spider before your coffee's boiled."

"They'll have to be quick, then," said Winthrop, going on with his rummaging.

"What are you after, Governor? -- there's nothin' there but the pots and kittles."

One of which, however, Winthrop brought out as if it was the thing wanted, and put upon the fire with water in it. Going back to the receptacle of 'pots and kittles,' he next came forth with the article Karen had designated as the 'spider,' and set that in order due upon its appropriate bed of coals.

"La sakes! Governor!" said Karen, in a sort of fond admiration, -- "ha'n't you forgot nothin'?"

"Now Karen," said Winthrop, when she had covered the bottom of the hot iron with her thin cakes, -- "you set the table and I'll take care of 'em."

"There's the knife, then," said Karen. "Will ye know when to turn them? There ain't fire enough to bake 'em by the blaze."

"I've not forgotten so much," said Winthrop. "Let's have a cup and saucer and plate, Karen."

"Ye sha'n't have one," said Karen, casting another inquisitive and doubtful glance towards the silent, pale, fixed figure sitting in the middle of her kitchen. He did have one, however, before she had got the two ready; despatched Karen from the table for sugar and cream; and then poured out himself a cup of his own preparation, and set it on Karen's half-spread table, and came to Elizabeth. He did not ask her if she would have it, nor say anything in fact; but gently raising her with one hand, he brought forward her chair with the other, and placed both where he wanted them to be, in the close neighbourhood of the steaming coffee. Once before, Elizabeth had known him take the same sort of superintending care of her, when she was in no condition to take care of herself. It was inexpressibly soothing; and yet she felt as if she could have knelt down on the floor, and given forth her very life in tears. She looked at the coffee with a motionless face, till his hand held it out to her. Not to drink it was impossible, though she was scarcely conscious of swallowing anything but tears. When she took the cup from her lips, she found an egg, hot out of the water, on her plate, which was already supplied also with butter. Her provider was just adding one of the cakes he had been baking.

"I can't eat!" said Elizabeth, looking up.

"You must, --" Winthrop answered.

In the same tone in which he had been acting. Elizabeth obeyed it as involuntarily.

"Who is the lady, Governor?" Karen ventured, when she had possessed herself of the cake-knife, and had got Winthrop fairly seated at his breakfast.

"This lady is the mistress of the place, Karen."

"The mistress! Ain't you the master?" -- Karen inquired instantly.

"No. I have no right here any longer, Karen."

"I heered it was selled, but I didn't rightly believe it," the old woman said sadly. "And the mistress 'll be turning me away now?"

"Tell her no," whispered Elizabeth.

"I believe not, Karen, unless you wish it."

"What should I wish it for? I've been here ever since I come with Mis' Landholm, when she come first, and she left me here; and I want to stay here, in her old place, till I'm called to be with her again. D'ye think it'll be long, Governor?"

"Are you in haste, Karen?"

"I don't want fur to stay" said the old woman. "She's gone, and I can't take care o' you no longer, nor no one. I'd like to be gone, too -- yes, I would."

"You have work to do yet, Karen. You may take as good care as you can of this lady."

Again Karen looked curiously and suspiciously at her, for a minute in silence.

"Is she one of the Lord's people?" she asked suddenly.

Elizabeth looked up on the instant, in utter astonishment at the question; first at Karen and then at Winthrop. The next thing was a back-sweeping tide of feeling, which made her drop her bread and her cup from her hands, and hide her face in them with a bitter burst of tears. Winthrop looked concerned, and Karen confounded. But she presently repeated her question in a half whisper at Winthrop.

"Is she? --"

"There is more company coming, Karen, for you to take care of," he said quietly. "I hope you have cakes enough. Miss Haye -- I see the boat-load has arrived -- will you go into the other room?"

She rose, and not seeing where she went, let him lead her. The front part of the house was unfurnished; but to the little square passage-way where the open door let in the breeze from the river, Winthrop brought a chair, and there she sat down. He left her there and went back to see to the other members of the party, and as she guessed to keep them from intruding upon her. She was long alone.

The fresh sweet air blew in upon her hot face and hands, reminding her what sort of a world it came from; and after the first few violent bursts of pain, Elizabeth presently raised her head to look out and see, in a sort of dogged willingness to take the contrast which she knew was there. The soft fair hilly outlines she remembered, in the same August light; -- the bright bend of the river -- a sloop sail or two pushing lazily up; -- the same blue of a summer morning overhead; -- the little green lawn immediately at her feet, and the everlasting cedars, with their pointed tops and their hues of patient sobriety -- all stood nearly as she had left them, how many years before. And herself -- Elizabeth felt as if she could have laid herself down on the doorstep and died, for mere heart-heaviness. In this bright sunny world, what had she to do? The sun had gone out of her heart. What was to become of her? What miserable part should she play, all alone by herself? She despised herself for having eaten breakfast that morning. What business had she to eat, or to have any appetite to eat, when she felt so? But Winthrop had made her do it. What for? Why should he? It was mere aggravation, to take care of her for a day, and then throw her off for ever to take care of herself. How soon would he do that? --

She was musing, her eyes on the ground; and had quite forgotten the sunny landscape before her with all its gentle suggestions; when Winthrop's voice sounded pleasantly in her ear, asking if she felt better. Elizabeth looked up.

"I was thinking," she said, "that if there were nothing better to be had in another world, I could almost find it in my heart to wish I had never been born into this!"

She expected that he would make some answer to her, but he did not. He was quite silent; and Elizabeth presently began to question with herself whether she had said something dreadful. She was busily taking up her own words, since he had not saved her the trouble. She found herself growing very much ashamed of them.

"I suppose that was a foolish speech," she said, after a few moments of perfect silence, -- "a speech of impatience."

But Winthrop neither endorsed nor denied her opinion; he said nothing about it; and Elizabeth was exceedingly mortified.

"If you wanted to rebuke me," she thought, "you could not have done it better. I suppose there is no rebuke so sharp as that one is obliged to administer to oneself. And your cool keeping silence is about as effectual a way of telling me that you have no interest in my concerns as even you could have devised."

Elizabeth's eyes must have swallowed the landscape whole, for they certainly took in no distinct part of it.

"How are you going to make yourself comfortable here?" said Winthrop presently; -- "these rooms are unfurnished."

She might have said that she did not expect to be comfortable anywhere; but she swallowed that too.

"I will go and see what I can do in the way of getting some furniture together," he went on. "I hope you will be able to find some way of taking rest in the mean time -- though I confess I do not see how."

"Pray do not!" said Elizabeth starting up, and her whole manner and expression changing. "I am sure you are tired to death now."

"Not at all. I slept last night."

"How much? Pray do not go looking after anything! You will trouble me very much."

"I should be sorry to do that."

"I can get all the rest I want."

"Where?"

"On the rocks -- on the grass."

"Might do for a little while," said Winthrop; -- "I hope it will; but I must try for something better."

"Where can you find anything -- in this region?"

"I don't know," said he; "but it must be found. If not in this region, in some other."

"To-morrow, Mr. Landholm."

"To-morrow -- has its own work," said he; and went.

"Will he go to-morrow?" thought Elizabeth, with a pang at her heart. "Oh, I wish -- no, I dare not wish -- that I had never been born! What am I to do with myself?"

Conscience suggested very quietly that something might be done; but Elizabeth bade conscience wait for another time, though granting all it advanced. She put that by, as she did Mrs. Nettley and Clam who both presently came where Winthrop had been standing, to make advances of a different nature.

"What'll I do, Miss 'Lizabeth?" said the latter, in a tone that argued a somewhat dismal view of affairs.

"Anything you can find to do."

"Can't find nothin, --" said Clam, "'cept Karen. One corner of the house is filled enough with her; and the rest ha'n't got nothin' in it."

"Let Karen alone, and take care of your own business, Clam."

"If I knowed what 'twas," said the persevering damsel. "I can't make the beds, for there ain't none; nor set the furnitur to rights, for the rooms is 'stressed empty."

"You can let me alone, at all events. The rooms will have something in them before long. You know what to do as well as any one; -- if you don't, ask Mr. Landholm."

"Guess I will!" said Clam; "when I want to feel foolisher than I do. Did the furnitur come by the sloop?"

"No. Mr. Landholm will send some. I don't care anything about it."

"Ha! then if he's goin' to send it," said Clam turning away, "the place 'll have to be ready for it, I s'pose."

Mrs. Nettley appeared in Clam's place. Elizabeth was still sitting on the door-step, and though she knew by a side view that one had given place to the other, she did not seem to know it and sat looking straight before her at the sunny landscape.

"It's a beautiful place," said Mrs. Nettley after a little pause of doubt.

"Very beautiful," said Elizabeth coldly.

"I did not know it was so beautiful. And a healthy place, I should suppose."

Elizabeth left the supposition unquestioned.

"You are sadly fatigued, Miss Haye," said Mrs. Nettley after a longer pause than before.

"I suppose I am," said Elizabeth rising, for patience had drawn her last breath; -- "I am going down by the water to rest. Don't let any one follow me or call me -- I want nothing -- only to rest by myself."

And drawing her scarf round her, she strode through the rank grass to the foot of the lawn, and then between scattered rocks and sweetbriars and wild rose-bushes, to the fringe of cedar trees which there clothed the rocks down to the water. Between and beneath them, just where she came out upon the river, an outlooking mass of granite spread itself smooth and wide enough to seat two or three people. The sun's rays could not reach there, except through thick cedar boughs. Cedar trees and the fall of ground hid it from the house; and in front a clear opening gave her a view of the river and opposite shore, and of a cedar-covered point of her own land, outjutting a little distance further on. Solitude, silence, and beauty invited her gently; and Elizabeth threw herself down on the grey lichen-grown stone; but rest was not there.

"Rest!" -- she said to herself in great bitterness; -- "rest! How can I rest? -- or where can there be rest for me? --"

And then passionate nature took its will, and poured out to itself and drank all the deep draughts of pain that passion alone can fill and refill for its own food. Elizabeth's proud head bowed there, to the very rock she sat on. Yet the proud heart would not lay itself down as well; that stood up to breast pain and wrestle with it, and take the full fierce power of the blast that came. Till nature was tired out, -- till the frame subsided from convulsions that racked it, into weary repose, -- so long the struggle lasted; and then the struggle was not ended, but only the forces on either side had lost the power of carrying it on. And then she sat, leaning against a cedar trunk that gave her its welcome support, which every member and muscle craved; not relieved, but with that curious respite from pain which the dulled senses take when they have borne suffering as long and as sharply as they can.

It was hot in the sun; but only a warm breath of summer air played about Elizabeth where she sat. The little waves of the river glittered and shone and rolled lazily down upon the channel, or curled up in rippling eddies towards the shore. The sunlight was growing ardent upon the hills and the river; but over Elizabeth's head the shade was still unbroken. A soft aromatic smell came from the cedars, now and then broken in upon by a faint puff of fresher air from the surface of the water. Hardly any sound, but the murmur of the ripple at the water's edge and the cheruping of busy grasshoppers upon the lawn. Now and then a locust did sing out; he only said it was August and that the sun was shining hot and sleepily everywhere but under the cedar trees. His song was irresistible. Elizabeth closed her eyes and listened to it, in a queer kind of luxurious rest-taking which was had because mind and body would have it. Pain was put away, in a sort; for the senses of pain were blurred. The aromatic smell of the evergreens was wafted about her; and then came a touch, a most gentle touch, of the south river-breeze upon her face; and then the long dreamy cry of the locust; and the soft plashing sound of the water at her feet. All Elizabeth's faculties were crying for sleep; and sleep came, handed in by the locust and the summer air, and laid its kind touch of forgetfulness upon mind and body. At first she lost herself leaning against the cedar tree, waking up by turns to place herself better; and at last yielding to the overpowering influences without and within, she curled her head down upon a thick bed of moss at her side and gave herself up to such rest as she might.

What sort of rest? Only the rest of the body, which had made a truce with the mind for the purpose. A quiet which knew that storms were not over, but which would be quiet nevertheless. Elizabeth felt that, in her intervals of half-consciousness. But all the closer she clung to her pillow of dry moss. She had a dispensation from sorrow there. When her head left it, it would be to ache again. It should not ache now. Sweet moss! -- sweet summer air! -- sweet sound of plashing water! -- sweet dreamy lullaby of the locust! -- Oh if they could put her to sleep for ever! -- sing pain out and joy in! --

A vague, half-realized notion of the fight that must be gone through before rest 'for ever' could in any wise be hoped for -- of the things that must be gained and the things that must be lost before that 'for ever' rest could in any sort be looked forward to, -- and dismissing the thought, Elizabeth blessed her fragrant moss pillow of Lethe and went to sleep again.

How she dreaded getting rested; how she longed for that overpowering fatigue and exhaustion of mind and body to prolong itself! And as the hours went on, she knew that she was getting rested, and that she would have to wake up to everything again by and by. It should not be at anybody's bidding.

"Miss 'Lizabeth! --" sounded Clam's voice in the midst of her slumbers.

"Go away, Clam!" said the sleeper, without opening her eyes.

"Miss 'Lizabeth, ain't ye goin' to eat nothin'?"

"No -- Go away."

"Miss 'Lizabeth! -- dinner's ready."

"Well! --"

"You're a goin' to kill yourself."

"Don't you kill me!" said Elizabeth impatiently. "Go off."

"To be sure," said Clam as she turned away, -- "there ain't much company."

It was very vexing to be disturbed. But just as she was getting quiet again, came the tread of Mrs. Nettley's foot behind her, and Elizabeth knew another colloquy was at hand.

"Are you asleep, Miss Haye?" said the good lady a little timidly.

"No," said Elizabeth lifting her head wearily, -- "I wish I were."

"There's dinner got ready for you in the house."

"Let anybody eat it that can. -- I can't."

"Wouldn't you be better for taking a little something? I'm afraid you'll give way if you do not."

"I don't care," said Elizabeth. "Let me give way -- only let me alone!"

She curled her head down determinately again.

"I am afraid, Miss Haye, you will be ill," said poor Mrs. Nettley.

"I am willing," -- said Elizabeth. "I don't care about anything, but to be quiet! --"

Mrs. Nettley went off in despair; and Elizabeth in despair also, found that vexation had effectually driven away sleep. In vain the locust sang and the moss smelled sweet; the tide of feeling had made head again, and back came a rush of disagreeable things, worse after worse; till Elizabeth's brow quitted the moss pillow to be buried in her hands, and her half-quieted spirit shook anew with the fresh-raised tempest. Exhaustion came back again; and thankfully she once more laid herself down to sleep and forgetfulness.

Her sleep was sound this time. The body asserted its rights; and long, long she lay still upon her moss pillow, while the regular deep-drawn breath came and went, fetching slow supplies of strength and refreshment. The sun quitted its overhead position and dipped towards Wut-a-qut-o, behind the high brow of which, in summer-time, it used to hide itself. A slant ray found an opening in the thick tree-tops, and shone full upon Elizabeth's face; but it failed to rouse her; and it soon went up higher and touched a little song sparrow that was twittering in a cedar tree close by. Then the shadows of the trees fell long over the grass towards the rocks on the east.

Elizabeth was awakened at last by a familiar adjuration.

"Miss 'Lizabeth! -- you'll catch a Typhus, or an agur, or somethin' dreadful, down there! Don't ye want to live no more in the world?"

Elizabeth sat up, and rested her face on her knees, feeling giddy and sick.

"Don't ye feel bad?"

"Hush, Clam! --"

"I'm sent after ye," said Clam, -- "I dursn't hush. Folks thinks it is time you was back in the house."

"Hush! -- I don't care what folks think."

"Not what nobody thinks?" said Clam.

"What do you mean!" said Elizabeth flashing round upon her. "Go back into the house. -- I will come when I am ready."

"You're ready now," said Clam. "Miss 'Lizabeth, ye ain't fit for anything, for want of eatin'. Come! -- they want ye."

"Not much," -- thought Elizabeth bitterly, -- "if they left it to her to bring me in."

"Are you sick, Miss 'Lizabeth?"

"No."

"He's come home," Clam went on; -- "and you never saw the things he has brought! Him and me's been puttin' 'em up and down. Lots o' things. Ain't he a man!"

"'Up and down!'" repeated Elizabeth.

"Egg-zackly," -- said Clam; -- "Floor-spreads -- what-d'ye- call'ems? -- and bedsteads -- and chairs. He said if he'd know'd the house was all stripped, he'd never have fetched you up here."

"Yes he would," said Elizabeth. "What do I care for a stripped house!" -- "with a stripped heart," her thought finished it.

"Well don't you care for supper neither? -- for that old thing is a fixin' it," said Clam.

"You must not call her names to me."

"Ain't she old?" said Clam.

"She is a very good old woman, I believe."

"Ain't you comin' Miss 'Lizabeth? They won't sit down without you."

"Who sent you out here?"

"Karen axed where you was; and Mrs. Nettley said she dursn't go look for you; and Mr. Landholm said I was to come and bring you in."

"He didn't, Clam! --"

"As likely as your head's been in the moss there, he did, Miss 'Lizabeth."

"Go yourself back into the house. I'll come when I am ready, and I am not ready yet."

"He ha'n't had nothin' to eat to-day, I don't believe," said Clam, by way of a parting argument. But Elizabeth let her go without seeming to hear her.

She sat with her hands clasped round her knees, looking down upon the water; her eyes slowly filling with proud and bitter tears. Yet she saw and felt how coolly the lowering sunbeams were touching the river now; that evening's sweet breath was beginning to freshen up among the hills; that the daintiest, lightest, cheeriest gilding was upon every mountain top, and wavelet, and pebble, and stem of a tree. "Peace be to thee, fair nature, and thy scenes!" -- and peace from them seems to come too. But oh how to have it! Elizabeth clasped her hands tight together and then wrung them mutely. "O mountains -- O river -- O birds!" -- she thought, -- "If I could but be as senseless as you -- or as good for something!"

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Chapter XI

When cockleshells turn silver bells, When wine dreips red frae ilka tree, When frost and snaw will warm us a', Then I'll come doun an' dine wi' thee. JEANNIE DOUGLASS.

The sun was low, near Wut-a-qut-o's brow, when at last slowly and lingeringly, and with feet that, as it were, spurned each step they made, Elizabeth took her way to the house. But no sooner did her feet touch the doorstep than her listless and sullen mood gave place to a fit of lively curiosity -- to see what Winthrop had done. She turned to the left into the old keeping-room.

It had been very bare in the morning. Now, it was stocked with neat cane-bottomed chairs, of bird's-eye maple. In the middle of the floor rested an ambitious little mahogany table with claw feet. A stack of green window-blinds stood against the pier between the windows, and at the bottom on the floor lay a paper of screws and hinges. The floor was still bare, to be sure, and so was the room, but yet it looked hopeful compared with the morning's condition. Elizabeth stood opening her eyes in a sort of mazed bewilderment; then hearing a little noise of hammering in the other part of the house, she turned and crossed over to the east room -- her sleeping-room of old and now. She went within the door and stood fast.

Her feet were upon a green carpet which covered the room. Round about were more of the maple chairs, looking quite handsome on their green footing. There was a decent dressing- table and chest of drawers of the same wood, in their places; and a round mahogany stand which seemed to be meant for no particular place but to do duty anywhere. And in the corner of the room was Winthrop, with Mrs. Nettley and Clam for assistants, busy putting up a bedstead. He looked up slightly from his work when Elizabeth shewed herself, but gave her no further attention. Clam grinned. Mrs. Nettley was far too intent upon holding her leg of the bedstead true and steady, to notice or know anything else whatever.

Elizabeth looked for a moment, without being able to utter a word; and then turned about and went and stood at the open door, her breast heaving thick and her eyes too full to see a thing before her. Then she heard Winthrop pass behind her and go into the other room. Elizabeth followed quickly. He had stooped to the paper of screws, but stood up when she came in, to speak to her.

"I am ashamed of myself for having so carelessly brought you to a dismantled house. I had entirely forgotten that it was so, in this degree, -- though I suppose I must at some time have heard it."

"It would have made no difference, --" said Elizabeth, and said no more.

"I will return to the city to-morrow, and send you up immediately whatever you will give order for. It can be here in a very few days."

Elizabeth looked at the maple chairs and the mahogany table, and she could not speak, for her words choked her. Winthrop stooped again to his paper of screws and hinges and began turning them over.

"What are you going to do?" said Elizabeth, coming a step nearer.

"I am going to see if I can put up these blinds?"

"Blinds!" said Elizabeth.

"Yes. -- I was fortunate enough to find some that were not very far from the breadth of the windows. They were too long; and I made the man shorten them. I think they will do."

"What did you take all that trouble for?"

"It was no trouble."

"Where did all these things come from?"

"From Starlings -- I hadn't to go any further than that for them."

"How far is it?"

"Twelve miles."

"Twelve miles there and back!"

"Makes twenty-four."

"In this hot day! -- I am very sorry, Mr. Landholm!"

"For what?" said he, shouldering one of the green blinds.

"You are not going to put those on yourself?"

"I am going to try -- as I said."

"You have done enough day's work," said Elizabeth. "Pray don't, at least to-night. It's quite late. Please don't! --"

"If I don't to-night, I can't to-morrow," said Winthrop, marching out. "I must go home to-morrow."

Home! It shook Elizabeth's heart to hear him speak the old word. But she only caught her breath a little, and then spoke, following him out to the front of the house.

"I would rather they were not put up, Mr. Landholm. I can get somebody to do it."

"Not unless I fail."

"It troubles me very much that you should have such a day."

"I have had just such a day -- as I wanted," said Winthrop, measuring with his eye and rule the blind and the window-frame respectively.

"Miss 'Lizabeth, Karen's got the tea all ready, she says," Clam announced from the door; "and she hopes everybody's tired of waitin'."

"You've not had tea! --" exclaimed Elizabeth. "Come then, Mr. Winthrop."

"Not now," said he, driving in his gimlet, -- "I must finish this first. 'The night cometh wherein no man can work.'"

Elizabeth shrank inwardly, and struggled with herself.

"But the morning comes also," she said.

Winthrop's eye went up to the top hinge of the blind, and down to the lower one, and up to the top again; busy and cool, it seemed to consider nothing but the hinges. Elizabeth struggled with herself again. She was mortified. But she could not let go the matter.

"Pray leave those things!" she said in another minute. "Come in, and take what is more necessary."

"When my work is done," said he. "Go in, Miss Elizabeth. Karen will give me something by and by."

Elizabeth turned; she could do nothing more in the way of persuasion. As she set her foot heavily on the door-step, she saw Clam standing in the little passage, her lips slightly parted in a satisfied bit of a smile. Elizabeth was vexed, proud, and vexed again, in as many successive quarter seconds. Her foot was heavy no longer.

"Have you nothing to do, Clam?"

"Lots," said the damsel.

"Why aren't you about it, then?"

"I was waitin' till you was about your'n, Miss 'Lizabeth. I like folks to be out o' my way."

"Do you! Take care and keep out of mine," said her mistress. "What are you going to do now?"

"Settle your bed, Miss 'Lizabeth. It's good we've got linen enough, anyhow."

"Linen, --" said Elizabeth, -- "and a bedstead, -- have you got a bed to put on it?"

"There's been care took for that," said Clam, with the same satisfied expression and a little turn of her head.

Half angry and half sick, Elizabeth left her, and went in through her new-furnished keeping-room, to Karen's apartment where the table was bountifully spread and Mrs. Nettley and Karen awaited her coming. Elizabeth silently sat down.

"Ain't he comin'?" said Karen.

"No -- I am very sorry -- Mr. Landholm thinks he must finish what he is about first."

"He has lots o' thoughts," said Karen discontentedly, -- "he'd think just as well after eatin'. -- Well, Miss -- Karen's done her best -- There's been worse chickens than those be -- Mis' Landholm used to cook 'em that way, and she didn't cook 'em no better. I s'pose he'll eat some by'm by -- when he's done thinkin'."

She went off, and Elizabeth was punctually and silently taken care of by Mrs. Nettley. The meal over, she did not go back to her own premises; but took a stand in the open kitchen door, for a variety of reasons, and stood there, looking alternately out and in. The sun had set, the darkness was slowly gathering; soft purple clouds floated up from the west, over Wut-a-qut-o's head, which however the nearer heads of pines and cedars prevented her seeing. A delicate fringe of evergreen foliage edged upon the clear white sky. The fresher evening air breathed through the pine and cedar branches, hardly stirred their stiff leaves, but brought from them tokens of rare sweetness; brought them to Elizabeth's sorrowful face, and passed on. Elizabeth turned her face from the wind and looked into the house. Karen had made her appearance again, and was diligently taking away broken meats and soiled dishes and refreshing the look of the table; setting some things to warm and some things to cool; giving the spare plate and knife and fork the advantage of the best place at table; brushing away crumbs, and smoothing down the salt-cellar. "You are over particular!" thought Elizabeth; -- "it would do him no harm to come after me in handling the salt-spoon! -- that even that trace of me should be removed." She looked out again.

Her friend the locust now and then was reminding her of the long hot day they had passed through together; and the intervals between were filled up by a chorus of grasshoppers and crickets and katydids. Soft and sweet blew the west wind again; that spoke not of the bygone day, with its burden and heat; but of rest, and repose, and the change that cometh even to sorrowful things. The day was passed and gone. "But if one day is passed, another is coming," -- thought Elizabeth; and tears, hot and bitter tears, sprang to her eyes. How could those clouds float so softly! -- how could the light and shadow rest so lovely on them! -- how could the blue ether look so still and clear! "Can one be like that?" -- thought Elizabeth. "Can I? -- with this boiling depth of passion and will in my nature? -- One can --" and she again turned her eyes within. But nothing was there, save the table, the supper, and Karen. The question arose, what she herself was standing there for? but passion and will said they did not care! she would stand there; and she did. It was pleasant to stand there; for passion and will, though they had their way, seemed to her feeling to be quieted down under nature's influences. Perhaps the most prominent thought now was of a great discord between nature and her, between her and right, -- which was to be made up. But still, while her face was towards the western sky and soft wind, and her mind thought this, her ear listened for a step on the kitchen floor. The colours of the western sky had grown graver and cooler before it came.

It came, and there was the scrape of a chair on the wooden floor. He had sat down, and Karen had got up; but Elizabeth would not look in.

"Are ye hungry enough now, Governor?"

"I hope so, Karen, -- for your sake."

"Ye don't care much for your own," said Karen discontentedly.

Perhaps Winthrop -- perhaps Elizabeth, thought that she made up his lack of it. Elizabeth watched, stealthily, to see how the old woman waited upon him -- hovered about him -- supplied his wants, actual and possible, and stood looking at him when she could do nothing else. She could not understand the low word or two with which Winthrop now and then rewarded her. Bitter feeling overcame her at last; she turned away, too much out of tune with nature to notice any more, unless by way of contrast, what nature had spread about her and over her. She went round the house again to the front and sat down in the doorway. The stars were out, the moonlight lay soft on the water, the dews fell heavily.

"Miss Lizzie! -- you'll catch seven deaths out there! -- the day's bad enough, but the night's five times worse," -- Clam exclaimed.

"I shan't catch but one," Elizabeth said gloomily.

"Your muslin's all wet, drinchin'!"

"It will dry."

"I can hang it up, I s'pose; but what'll I do with you if you get sick?"

"Nothing whatever! Let me alone, Clam."

"Mis' Nettles! --" said Clam going in towards the kitchen, -- "Mis' Nettles! -- where's Mr. Landholm? -- Governor Winthrop -- here's Miss 'Lizabeth unhookin' all them blinds you've been a hookin' up."

"What do you mean, Clam?"

"I don't mean no harm," said Clam lowering her tone, -- "but Miss 'Lizabeth does. I wish you would go and see what she is doing, Mr. Winthrop; she's makin' work for somebody; and if it ain't nobody else, it's the doctor."

Winthrop however sat still, and Clam departed in ignorance how he had received her information. Presently however his supper was finished, and he sauntered round to the front of the house. He paused before the doorway where its mistress sat.

"It is too damp for you there."

"I don't feel it."

"I do."

"I am not afraid of it."

"If the fact were according to your fears, that would be a sufficient answer."

"It will do me no harm."

"It must not; and that it may not, you must go in," he said gravely.

"But you are out in it," said Elizabeth, who was possessed with an uncompromising spirit just then.

"I am out in it. Well?"

"Only -- that I may venture --" she did not like to finish her sentence.

"What right have you to venture anything?"

"The same right that other people have."

"I risk nothing," said he gravely.

"I haven't much to risk."

"You may risk your life."

"My life!" said Elizabeth. "What does it signify! --" But she jumped up and ran into the house.

The next morning there was an early breakfast, for which Elizabeth was ready. Then Winthrop took her directions for things to be forwarded from Mannahatta. Then there was a quiet leave-taking; on his part kind and cool, on hers too full of impassioned feeling to be guarded or constrained. But there was reason and excuse enough for that, as she knew, or guard and restraint would both have been there. When she quitted his hand, it was to hide herself in her room and have one struggle with the feeling of desolation. It was a long one.

Elizabeth came out at last, book in hand.

"Dear Miss Haye!" Mrs. Nettley exclaimed -- "you're dreadful worn with this hot weather and being out of doors all day yesterday!"

"I am going out again," said Elizabeth. "Clam will know where to find me."

"If you had wings, I'd know where to find you," said Clam; "but on your feet 'taint so certain."

"You needn't try, unless it is necessary," said Elizabeth dryly.

"But dear Miss Haye!" pleaded Mrs. Nettley, -- "you're not surely going out to try the sun again to-day?"

Elizabeth's lip quivered.

"It's the pleasantest place, Mrs. Nettley -- I am quite in the shade -- I can't be better than I am there, thank you."

"Don't she look dreadful!" said the good lady, as Elizabeth went from the house. "Oh, I never have seen anybody so changed!"

"She's pulled down a bit since she come," said Karen, who gave Elizabeth but a moderate share of her good will at any time. "She's got her mind up high enough, anyway, for all she's gone through."

"Who hain't?" said Clam. "Hain't the Governor his mind up high enough? And you can't pull him down, but you can her."

"His don't never need," said Karen.

"Well -- I don' know, --" said Clam, picking up several things about the floor -- "but them high minds is a trial."

"Hain't you got one yourself, girl?" said old Karen.

"Hope so, ma'am. I take after my admirers. That's all the way I live, -- keeping my head up -- always did."

Karen deigned no reply, but went off.

"Mis' Nettles," said Clam, "do you think Miss Haye 'll ever stand it up here all alone in this here place?"

"Why not?" said Mrs. Nettley innocently.

"I guess your head ain't high enough up for to see her'n," said Clam, in scornful impatience. And she too quitted the conversation in disgust.

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Chapter XII

'Resolve,' the haughty moralist would say, 'The single act is all that we demand.' Alas! such wisdom bids a creature fly Whose very sorrow is, that time hath shorn His natural wings. WORDSWORTH.

The book in Elizabeth's hand was her bible. It was the next thing, and the only thing to be done after Winthrop's going away, that she could think of, to begin upon the first chapter of Matthew. It was action, and she craved action. It was an undertaking; for her mind remembered and laid hold of Winthrop's words -- "Ask honestly, of your own conscience and of God, at each step, what obligation upon you grows out of what you read." And it was an undertaking that Winthrop had set her upon. So she sought out her yesterday's couch of moss with its cedar canopy, and sat down in very different mood from yesterday's mood, and put her bible on her lap. It was a feeling of dull passive pain now; a mood that did not want to sleep.

The day itself was very like yesterday. Elizabeth listened a minute to the sparrow and the locust and the summer wind, but presently she felt that they were overcoming her; and she opened her book to the first chapter of Matthew. She was very curious to find her first obligation. Not that she was unconscious of many resting upon her already; but those were vague, old, dimly recognized obligations; she meant to take them up now definitely, in the order in which they might come.

She half paused at the name in the first verse, -- was there not a shadow of obligation hanging around that? But if there were, she would find it more clearly set forth and in detail as she went on. She passed it for the present.

From that she went on smoothly as far as the twenty-first verse. That stopped her.

"And she shall bring forth a son; and thou shalt call his name Jesus; for he shall save his people from their sins."

"'His people,' --" thought Elizabeth. "I am not one of his people. Ought I not to be?"

The words of the passage did not say; but an imperative whisper at her heart said "Ay!"

"His people! -- but how can I be one of his people?" she thought again. And impatience bade her turn over the leaf, and find something more or something else; but conscience said, "Stop -- and deal with this obligation first."

"What obligation? -- 'He shall save his people from their sins.' Then certainly I ought to let him save me from mine -- that is the least I can do. But what is the first thing -- the first step to be taken? I wish Mr. Landholm was here to tell me. --"

She allowed herself to read on to the end of the page, but that gave her not much additional light. She would not turn over the leaf; she had no business with the second obligation till the first was mastered; she sat looking at the words in a sort of impatient puzzle; and not permitting herself to look forward, she turned back a leaf. That gave her but the titlepage of the New Testament. She turned back another, to the last chapter of the Old. Its opening words caught her eye.

"For behold, the day cometh that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble; and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of Hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch."

"The proud, and they that do wickedly -- that is my character and name truly," thought Elizabeth. "I am of them. -- And it is from this, and this fate, that 'his people' shall be delivered. But how shall I get to be of them?" Her eye glanced restlessly up to the next words above --

"Then shall ye return and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not."

"'Then,' -- in that day," -- thought Elizabeth, "I can discern between them now, without waiting for that. -- Winthrop Landholm is one that serveth God -- I am one that serve him not. There is difference enough, I can see now -- but this speaks of the difference at that day; another sort of difference. -- Then I ought to be a servant of God --"

The obligation was pretty plain.

"Well, I will, when I find out how," -- she began. But conscience checked her.

"This is not the first chapter of Matthew," she said then. "I will go back to that."

Her eye fell lower, to the words,

"But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in his wings."

The tears started to Elizabeth's eyes. "This is that same who will save his people from their sins, -- is it? -- and that is his healing? Oh, I want it! -- There is too much difference between me and them. He shall save his people from their sins, -- I have plenty, -- plenty. But how? -- and what shall I do? It don't tell me here."

It did not; yet Elizabeth could not pass on. She was honest; she felt an obligation, arising from these words, which yet she did not at once recognize. It stayed her. She must do something -- what could she do? It was a most unwelcome answer that at last slid itself into her mind. Ask to be made one of 'his people' -- or to be taught how to become one? Her very soul started. Ask? -- but now the obligation stood full and strong before her, and she could cease to see it no more. Ask? -- why she never did such a thing in her whole life as ask God to do anything for her. Not of her own mind, at her own choice, and in simplicity; her thoughts and feelings had perhaps at some time joined in prayers made by another, and in church, and in solemn time. But here? with the blue sky over her, in broad day, and in open air? It did not seem like praying time. Elizabeth shut her book. Her heart beat. Duty and she were at a struggle now; she knew which must give way, but she was not ready yet. It never entered her head to question the power or the will to which she must apply herself, no more than if she had been a child. Herself she doubted; she doubted not him. Elizabeth knew very little of his works or word, beyond a vague general outline, got from sermons; but she knew one servant of God. That servant glorified him; and in the light which she saw and loved, Elizabeth could do no other but, in her measure, to glorify him too. She did not doubt, but she hesitated, and trembled. The song of the birds and the flow of the water mocked her hesitancy and difficulty. But Elizabeth was honest; and though she trembled she would not and could not disobey the voice of conscience which set before her one clear, plain duty. She was in great doubt whether to stand or to kneel; she was afraid of being seen if she knelt; she would not be so irreverent as to pray sitting; she rose to her feet, and clasping a cedar tree with her arms, she leaned her head beside the trunk, and whispered her prayer, to him who saves his people from their sins, that he would make her one of them, she did not know how, she confessed; she prayed that he would teach her.

She kept her position and did not move her bended head, till the tears which had gathered were fallen or dried; then she sat down and took up her book again and looked down into the water. What had she done? Entered a pledge, she felt, to be what she had prayed to be; else her prayer would be but a mockery, and Elizabeth was in earnest. "What a full-grown fair specimen he is of his class," she thought, her mind recurring again to her adviser and exemplar; "and I -- a poor ignorant thing in the dark, groping for a bit of light to begin!" -- The tears gathered again; she opened the second chapter of Matthew.

She looked off again to feel glad. Was a pledge entered only on her side? -- was there not an assurance given somewhere, by lips that cannot lie, that prayer earnestly offered should not be in vain? She could not recall the words, but she was sure of the thing; and there was more than one throb of pleasure, and a tiny shoot of grateful feeling in her heart, before Elizabeth went back to her book. What was the next 'obligation'? She was all ready for it.

Nothing stopped her much in the second chapter. The 'next obligation' did not start up till the words of John the Baptist in the beginning of the third --

"Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."

"What is repentance? -- and what is the kingdom of heaven?" pondered Elizabeth. "I wish somebody was here to tell me. Repent? -- I know what it is to repent -- it is to change one's mind about something, and to will just against what one willed before. -- And what ought I to repent about? -- Everything wrong! Everything wrong! -- That is, to turn about and set my face just the other way from what it has been all my life! -- I might as good take hold of this moving earth with my two fingers and give it a twist to go westwards. --"

Elizabeth shut up her book, and laid it on the moss beside her.

"Repent? -- yes, it's an obligation. Oh what shall I do with it! --"

She would have liked to do with it as she did with her head -- lay it down.

"These wrong things are iron-strong in me -- how can I unscrew them from their fastenings, and change all the out-goings and in-comings of my mind? -- when the very hands that must do the work have a bent the wrong way. How can I? -- I am strong for evil -- I am weak as a child for good."

"I will try!" she said the next instant, lifting her head up -- "I will try to do what I can. -- But that is not changing my whole inner way of feeling -- that is not repenting. Perhaps it will come. Or is this determination of mine to try, the beginning of it? I do not know that it is -- I cannot be sure that it is. No -- one might wish to be a good lawyer, without at all being willing to go through all the labour and pains for it which Winthrop Landholm has taken. -- No, this is not, or it may not be, repentance -- I cannot be sure that it is anything. But will it not come? or how can I get it? How alone I am from all counsel and help! -- Still it must be my duty to try -- to try to do particular things right, as they come up, even though I cannot feel right all at once. And if I try, won't the help come, and the knowledge? -- What a confusion it is! In the midst of it all it is my duty to repent, and I haven't the least idea how to set about it, and I can't do it! O I wish Winthrop Landholm was here! --"

Elizabeth pondered the matter a good deal; and the more she thought about it, the worse the confusion grew. The duty seemed more imminent, the difficulty more obstinate. She was driven at last, unwillingly again, to her former ressource -- what she could not give herself, to ask to have given her. She did it, with tears again, that were wrung from breaking pride and weary wishing. More quietly then she resolved to lay off perplexing care, and to strive to meet the moment's duty, as it arose. And by this time with a very humbled and quieted brow, she went on with her chapter. The words of the next verse caught her eye and her mind at once.

"For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight."

"Is not this it?" cried Elizabeth. "If I do my part -- all I can -- is not that preparing the way for him to do what I cannot do?"

She thought so, at any rate, and it comforted her.

"Miss 'Lizabeth," said Clam, just behind her, "Karen wants to know what time you'll have dinner?"

"I don't care."

"That's 'zackly Karen's time o' day," said Clam discontentedly.

"I don't care at all, Clam."

"And she says, what 'll you have?"

"Nothing -- or anything. Don't talk to me about it."

"Ain't much good in choosing," said Clam, "when there ain't three things to choose from. How long can you live on pork, Miss 'Lizabeth?"

Elizabeth looked up impatiently.

"Longer than you can. Clam! --"

"Ma'am?"

"Let me alone. I don't care about anything."

Clam went off; but ten minutes had not gone when she was back again.

"Miss Lizzie, -- Anderese wants to know if he'll go on cuttin' wood just as he's a mind to?"

"Anderese? -- who's he?"

"Karen and him used to be brother and sister when they was little."

"What does he want?"

"Wants to know if he shall go on cuttin' wood just as ever."

"Cutting wood! -- what wood?"

"I s'pect it's your trees."

"Mine! What trees?"

"Why the trees in the woods, Miss Lizzie. As long as they was nobody's, Anderese used to cut 'em for the fire; now they're yourn, he wants to know what he shall do with 'em."

"Let 'em alone, certainly! Don't let him cut any more."

"Then the next question is, where'll he go for something to make a fire?"

"To make a fire!"

"Yes, Miss Lizzie -- unless no time 'll do for dinner as well as any time. Can't cook pork without a fire. And then you'd want the kettle boiled for tea, I reckon."

"Can't he get wood anywhere, Clam? without cutting down trees."

"There ain't none to sell anywheres -- he says."

"What trees has he been cutting?" said Elizabeth, rousing herself in despair.

"Any that come handy, I s'pose, Miss Lizzie -- they'll all burn, once get 'em in the chimney."

"He mustn't do that. Tell him -- but you can't tell him-- and I can't. --"

She hesitated, between the intense desire to bid him cut whatever he had a mind, and the notion of attending to all her duties, which was strong upon her.

"Tell him to cut anything he pleases, for to-day -- I'll see about it myself the next time."

Two minutes' peace; and then Clam was at her back again.

"Miss Lizzie, he don't know nothin' and he wants to know a heap. Do you want him to cut down a cedar, he says, or an oak, or somethin' else. There's the most cedars, he says; but Karen says they snap all to pieces."

Elizabeth rose to her feet.

"I suppose I can find a tree in a minute that he can cut without doing any harm. -- Bring me a parasol, Clam, -- and come along with me."

Clam and the parasol came out at one door, and Anderese and his axe at another, as Elizabeth slowly paced towards the house. The three joined company. Anderese was an old grey- haired negro, many years younger however than his sister. Elizabeth asked him, "Which way?"

"Which way the young lady pleases."

"I don't please about it," said Elizabeth, -- "I don't know anything about it -- lead to the nearest place -- where a tree can be soonest found."

The old man shouldered his axe and went before, presently entering a little wood path; of which many struck off into the leafy wilderness which bordered the house. Leaves overhead, rock and moss under foot; a winding, jagged, up and down, stony, and soft green way, sometimes the one, sometimes the other. Elizabeth's bible was still in her hand, her finger still kept it open at the second chapter of Matthew; she went musingly along over grey lichens and sunny green beds of moss, thinking of many things. How she was wandering in Winthrop's old haunts, where the trees had once upon a time been cut by him, she now to order the cutting of the fellow trees. Strange it was! How she was desolate and alone, nobody but herself there to do it; her father gone; and she without another protector or friend to care for the trees or her either. There were times when the weight of pain, like the pressure of the atmosphere, seemed so equally distributed that it was distinctly felt nowhere, -- or else so mighty that the nerves of feeling were benumbed. Elizabeth wandered along in a kind of maze, half wondering half indignant at herself that she could walk and think at all. She did not execute much thinking, to do her justice; she passed through the sweet broken sunlight and still shadows, among the rough trunks of the cedars, as if it had been the scenery of dreamland. On every hand were up-shooting young pines, struggling oaks that were caught in thickets of cedar, and ashes and elms that were humbly asking leave to spread and see the light and reach their heads up to freedom and free air. They asked in vain. Elizabeth was only conscious of the struggling hopes and wishes that seemed crushed for ever, her own.

"She don't see nothin'," whispered Clam to Anderese, whom she had joined in front. "She's lookin' into vacancy. If you don't stop, our axe and parasol 'll walk all round the place, and one 'll do as much work as the other. I can't put up my awning till you cut down something to let the sun in."

The old man glanced back over his shoulder at his young lady.

"What be I goin' to do?" he whispered, with a sidelong glance at Clam.

"Fling your axe into something," said Clam. "That'll bring her up."

The old man presently stepped aside to a young sapling oak, which having outgrown its strength bent its slim altitude in a beautiful parabolic curve athwart the sturdy stems of cedars and yellow pines which lined the path. Anderese stopped there and looked at Elizabeth. She had stopped too, without noticing him, and stood sending an intent, fixed, far-going look into the pretty wilderness of rock and wood on the other side of the way. All three stood silently.

"Will this do to come down, young lady?" inquired Anderese, with his axe on his shoulder. Elizabeth faced about.

"'Twon't grow up to make a good tree -- it's slantin' off so among the others." He brought his axe down.

"That?" said Elizabeth, -- "that reaching-over one? O no! you mustn't touch that. What is it?"

"It's an oak, miss; it's good wood."

"It's a better tree. No indeed -- leave that. Never cut such trees. Won't some of those old things do?"

"Them? -- them are cedars, young lady."

"Well, won't they do?"

"They'd fly all over and burn the house up," said Clam.

"What do you want?"

"Some o' the best there is, I guess," said Clam.

"Hard wood is the best, young lady."

"What's that?"

"Oak -- maple -- hickory -- and there's ash, and birch -- 'tain't very good."

Elizabeth sighed, and led the way on again, while the old negro shouldered his axe and followed with Clam; probably sighing on his own part, if habitual gentleness of spirit did not prevent. Nobody ever knew Clam do such a thing.

"Look at her!" muttered the damsel; -- "going with her head down, -- when'll she see a tree? Ain't we on a march! Miss 'Lizabeth! -- the tree won't walk home after it's cut."

"What?" said her mistress.

"How'll it get there?"

"What?"

"The tree, Miss Lizzie -- when Anderese has cut it."

"Can't he carry some home?"

"He'll be a good while about it -- if he takes one stick at a time -- and we ain't nigh home, neither."

Elizabeth came to a stand, and finally turned in another direction, homewards. But she broke from the path then, and took up the quest in earnest, leading her panting followers over rocks and moss-beds and fallen cedars and tangled vines and undergrowth, which in many places hindered their way. She found trees enough at last, and near enough home; but both she and her companions had had tree-hunting to their satisfaction. Elizabeth commissioned Anderese to find fuel in another way; and herself in some disgust at her new charge, returned to her rock and her bible. She tried to go through with the third chapter of Matthew; and her eye did go over it, though often swimming in tears. But that was the end of her studies at that time. Sorrow claimed the rest of the day for its own, and held the whole ground. Her household and its perplexities -- her bible and its teachings -- her ignorance and her necessities, -- faded away from view; and instead thereof rose up the lost father, the lost home, and the lost friend yet dearer than all.

"What's become of Miss Haye?" whispered Mrs. Nettley late in the evening.

"Don' know," answered Clam. "Melted away -- all that can melt, and shaken down -- all that can shake, of her. That ain't all, so I s'pose there's somethin' left."

"Poor thing! -- no wonder she takes it hard," said the good lady.

"No," said Clam, -- she never did take nothin' easy."

"Has she been crying all the afternoon?"

"Don' know," said Clam; "the eye of curiosity ain't invited; but she don't take that easy neither, when she's about it. I've seen her cry -- once; she'd do a year o' your crying in half an hour."

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Chapter XIII

O Land of Quiet! to thy shore the surf Of the perturbed Present rolls and sleeps; Our storms breathe soft as June upon thy turf, And lure out blossoms. LOWELL.

They were days of violent grief which for a little while followed each other. Elizabeth spent them out of doors; in the woods, on the rocks, by the water's edge. She would take her bible out with her, and sometimes try to read a little; but a very few words would generally touch some spring which set her off upon a torrent of sorrow. Pleasant things past or out of her reach, the present time a blank, the future worse than a blank, -- she knew nothing else. She did often in her distress repeat the prayer she had made over the first chapter of Matthew; but that was rather the fruit of past thought; she did not think in those days; she gave up to feeling; and the hours were a change from bitter and violent sorrow to dull and listless quiet. Conscience sometimes spoke of duties resolved upon; impatient pain always answered that their time was not now.

The first thing that roused her was a little letter from Winthrop, which came with the pieces of furniture and stores he sent up to her order. It was but a word, -- or two words; one of business, to say what he had done for her; and one of kindness, to say what he hoped she was doing for herself. Both words were brief, and cool; but with them, with the very handwriting of them, came a waft of that atmosphere of influence -- that silent breath of truth which every character breathes -- which in this instance was sweetened with airs from heaven. The image of the writer rose before her brightly, in its truth and uprightness and high and fixed principle; and though Elizabeth wept bitter tears at the miserable contrast of her own, they were more healing tears than she had shed all those days. When she dried them, it was with a new mind, to live no more hours like those she had been living. Something less distantly unlike him she could be, and would be. She rose and went into the house, while her eyes were yet red, and gave her patient and unwearied attention, for hours, to details of household arrangements that needed it. Her wits were not wandering, nor her eyes; nor did they suffer others to wander. Then, when it was all done, she took her bonnet and went back to her old wood-place and her bible, with an humbler and quieter spirit than she had ever brought to it before. It was the fifth chapter of Matthew now.

The first beatitude puzzled her. She did not know what was meant by 'poor in spirit,' and she could not satisfy herself. She passed it as something to be made out by and by, and went on to the others. There were obligations enough.

"'Meek?'" said Elizabeth, -- "I suppose if there is anything in the world I am not, it is meek. I am the very, very opposite. What can I do with this? It is like a fire in my veins. Can I cool it? And if I could control the outward seeming of it, that would not be the change of the thing itself. Besides, I couldn't, I must be meek, if I am ever to seem so."

She went on sorrowfully to the next.

"'Hunger and thirst after righteousness' -- I do desire it -- I do not 'hunger and thirst.' I don't think I do -- and it is those and those only to whom the promise is given. I am so miserable that I cannot even wish enough for what I need most. O God, help me to know what I am seeking, and to seek it more earnestly! --"

"'Merciful?'" she went on with tears in her eyes -- "I think I am merciful. -- I haven't been tried, but I am pretty sure I am merciful. But there it is -- one must have all the marks, I suppose, to be a Christian. Some people may be merciful by nature -- I suppose I am. --"

"Blessed are the pure in heart."

She stopped there, and even shut up her book, in utter sorrow and shame, that if 'pure in heart' meant pure to the All- seeing eye, hers was so very, very far from it. There was not a little scrap of her heart fit for looking into. And what could she do with it? The words of Job recurred to her, -- "Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one."

Elizabeth was growing 'poor in spirit' before she knew what the words meant. She went on carefully, sorrowfully, earnestly -- till she came to the twenty-fourth verse of the sixth chapter. It startled her.

"No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Mammon."

"That is to say then," said Elizabeth, "that I must devote myself entirely to God -- or not at all. All my life and possessions and aims. It means all that! --"

And for 'all that' she felt she was not ready. One corner for self-will and doing her own pleasure she wanted somewhere; and wanted so obstinately, that she felt, as it were, a mountain of strong unwillingness rise up between God's requirements and her; an iron lock upon the door of her heart, the key of which she could not turn, shutting and barring it fast against his entrance and rule. And she sat down before the strong mountain and the locked door, as before something which must, and could not, give way; with a desperate feeling that it must -- with another desperate feeling that it would not.

Now was Elizabeth very uncomfortable, and she hated discomfort. She would have given a great deal to make herself right; if a movement of her hand could have changed her and cleared away the hindrance, it would have been made on the instant; her judgment and her wish were clear; but her will was not. Unconditional submission she thought she was ready for; unconditional obedience was a stumbling-block before which she stopped short. She knew there would come up occasions when her own will would take its way -- she could not promise for it that it would not; and she was afraid to give up her freedom utterly and engage to serve God in everything. An enormous engagement, she felt! How was she to meet with ten thousand the enemy that came against her with twenty thousand? -- Ay, how? But if he were not met -- if she were to be the servant of sin for ever -- all was lost then! And she was not going to be lost; therefore she was going to be the unconditional servant of God. When? --

The tears came, but they did not flow; they could not, for the fever of doubt and questioning. She dashed them away as impertinent asides. What were they to the matter in hand. Elizabeth was in distress. But at the same time it was distress that she was resolved to get out of. She did not know just what to do; but neither would she go into the house till something was done.

"If Mr. Landholm were here! --"

"What could he do?" answered conscience; "there is the question before you, for you to deal with. You must deal with it. It's a plain question."

"I cannot" -- and "Who will undertake for me?" -- were Elizabeth's answering cry.

Her heart involuntarily turned to the great helper, but what could or would he do for her? -- it was his will she was thwarting. Nevertheless, "to whom should she go?" -- the shaken needle of her mind's compass turned more and more steadily to its great centre. There was light in no other quarter but on that 'wicket-gate' towards which Bunyan's Pilgrim first long ago set off to run. With some such sorrowful blind looking, she opened to her chapter of Matthew again, and carelessly and sadly turned over a leaf or two; till she saw a word which though printed in the ordinary type of the rest, stood out to her eyes like the lettering on a signboard. "ASK." --

"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you."

The tears came then with a gush.

"Ask what? -- it doesn't say, --but it must be whatever my difficulty needs -- there is no restriction. 'Knock'! -- I will -- till it is opened to me -- as it will be! --"

The difficulty was not gone -- the mountain had not suddenly sunk to a level; but she had got a clue to get over the one, and daylight had broken through the other. Elizabeth felt not changed at all; no better, and no tenderer; but she laid hold of those words as one who has but uncertain footing puts his arms round a strong tree, -- she clung as one clings there; and clasped them with assurance of life. Ask? -- did she not ask, with tears that streamed now; she knocked, clasping that stronghold with more glad and sure clasp; she knew then that everything would be 'made plain' in the rough places of her heart.

She did not sit still long then for meditation or to rest; her mood was action. She took her bible from the moss, and with a strong beating sense both of the hopeful and of the forlorn in her condition, she walked slowly through the grass to the steps of her house door. As she mounted them a new thought suddenly struck her, and instead of turning to the right she turned to the left.

"Mrs. Nettley," said Elizabeth as she entered the sitting- room, "isn't it very inconvenient for you to be staying here with me?"

Good Mrs. Nettley was sitting quietly at her work, and looked up at this quite startled.

"Isn't it inconvenient for you?" Elizabeth repeated.

"Miss Haye! -- it isn't inconvenient; -- I am very glad to do it -- if I can be of any service --"

"It is very kind of you, and very pleasant to me; but aren't you wanted at home?"

"I don't think I am wanted, Miss Haye, -- at least I am sure my brother is very glad to have me do anything for Mr. Landholm, or for you, I am sure; -- if I can."

Elizabeth's eye flashed; but then in an instant she called herself a fool, and in the same breath wondered why it should be, that Winthrop's benevolence must put him in the way of giving her so much pain.

"Who fills your place at home, while you are taking care of me here, Mrs. Nettley?"

"I don't suppose any of 'em can just do that," said the good lady with a little bit of a laugh at the idea.

"Well, is there any one to take care of your house and your brother?"

"Mr. Landholm -- he said he'd see to it."

"Mr. Landholm! --"

"He promised he'd take care of George and the house as well. -- I dare say they don't manage much amiss."

"But who takes care of Mr. Landholm?"

"Nobody does, if he don't himself," said Mrs. Nettley with a shake of her head. "He don't give that pleasure to any other living person."

"Not when you are at home?"

"It makes no difference, Miss Haye," said Mrs. Nettley going on with her sewing. "He never will. He never did."

"But surely he boards somewhere, don't he? He don't live entirely by himself in that room?"

"That's what he always used," said Mrs. Nettley; "he does take his dinners somewhere now, I believe. But nothing else. He makes his own tea and breakfast, -- that is! -- for he don't drink anything. If it was any one else, one would be apt to say one would grow unsociable, living in such a way; but it don't make any change in him, no more than in the sun, what sort of a place he lives in."

Elizabeth stood for a minute very still; and then said gently,

"Mrs. Nettley, I mustn't let you stay here with me."

"Why not, Miss Haye? -- I am sure they don't want me. I can just as well stay as not. I am very glad to stay."

"You are wanted more there than here. I must learn to get along alone. -- It don't matter how soon I begin."

"Dear Miss Haye, not yet. Never mind now -- we'll talk about it by and by," said Mrs. Nettley hurriedly and somewhat anxiously. She was a little afraid of Elizabeth.

"How could you get home from this place?"

"O by and by -- there'll be ways -- when the time comes."

"The time must come, Mrs. Nettley. You are very good -- I'm very much obliged to you for coming and staying with me, -- but in conscience I cannot let you stay any longer. It don't make any difference, a little sooner or later."

"Later is better, Miss Elizabeth."

"No -- I shall feel more comfortable to think you are at home, than to think I am keeping you here. I would rather you should make your arrangements and choose what day you will go; and I will find some way for you to go."

"I am very sorry, Miss Elizabeth," said Mrs. Nettley most unaffectedly. "I am sure Mr. Landholm would a great deal rather I should stay."

It was the last word Elizabeth could stand. Her lip trembled, as she crossed the passage to her own room and bolted the door; and then she threw herself on her knees by the bedside and hid the quivering face in her hands.

Why should it, that kind care of his, pierce her like thorns and arrows? why give her that when he could give her no more? "But it will all be over," she thought to herself, -- "this struggle like all other struggles will come to an end; meanwhile I have it to bear and my work to do. Perhaps I shall get over this feeling in time -- time wears out so much. -- But I should despise myself if I did. No, when I have taken up a liking on so good and solid grounds, I hope I am of good enough stuff to keep it to the end of my days."

Then came over her the feeling of forlornness, of loneliness, well and thoroughly realized; with the single gleam of better things that sprung from the promise her heart had embraced that day. True and strong it was, and her soul clung to it. But yet its real brightness, to her apprehension, shone upon a "land that is very far off;" and left all the way thereunto with but a twilight earnest of good things to come; and Elizabeth did not like looking forward; she wanted some sweetness in hand. Yet she clung to that, her one stand-by. She had a vague notion that its gleam might lead to more brightness even this side of heaven; that there might be a sort of comfort growing out of doing one's duty, and the favour of him whose service duty is. Winthrop Landholm was always bright, -- and what else had he to make him so? She would try what virtue there might be in it; she would essay those paths of wisdom which are said to be 'pleasantness;' but again came the longing for help; she felt that she knew so little. Again the word 'ask' -- came back to her; and at last, half comforted, wholly wearied, she rose from her long meditation by the bed-side and went towards the window.

There was such a sparkling beauty on everything outside, under the clear evening sun, that its brilliancy half rebuked her. The very shadows seemed bright, so bright were the lines of light between them, where the tall pointed cedars were casting their mantle on the grass. Elizabeth stood by the open window, wondering. She looked back to the time when she had been there before, when she was as bright, though not as pure, as all things else; and now -- father and friend were away from her, and she was alone. Yet still the sun shone -- might it not again some time for her? Poor child, as she stood there the tears dropped fast, at that meeting of hope and sorrow; hope as intangible as the light, sorrow a thicker mantle than that of the cedar trees. And now the sunlight seemed to say 'Ask' -- and the green glittering earth responded -- "and ye shall receive." Elizabeth looked; -- she heard them say it constantly. She did not question the one word or the other. It seemed very sweet to her, the thought of doing her duty; and yet, -- the tears which had stayed, ran fast again when she thought of Mrs. Nettley's going away and how utterly alone she should be.

She had sat down and was resting her arm on the window-sill; and Miss Haye's face was in a state of humbled and saddened gravity which no one ever saw it in before these days. As she sat there, Karen's voice reached her from the back of the house somewhere; and it suddenly occurred to Elizabeth that it might be as well for her to acquaint herself somewhat better with one of her few remaining inmates, since their number was to be so lessened. She dried her eyes, and went out with quick step through the kitchen till she neared the door of the little back porch where Karen was at work. There she paused.

The old woman was singing one of her Methodist songs, in a voice that had once very likely been sweet and strong. It was trembling and cracked now. Yet none of the fire and spirit of old was wanting; as was shewn, not indeed by the power of the notes, but by the loving flow or cadence the singer gave them. Elizabeth lingered just within the door to listen. The melody was as wild and sweet as suited the words. The first of the song she had lost; it went on --

"Till Jesus shall come, "Protect and defend me until I'm called home; "Though worms my poor body may claim as their prey, "'Twill outshine, when rising, the sun at noon-day.

"The sun shall be darkened, the moon turned to blood, "The mountains all melt at the presence of God; "Red lightnings may flash, and loud thunders may roar, "All this cannot daunt me on Canaan's blest shore.

"A glimpse of bright glory surprises my soul, "I sink in sweet visions to view the bright goal; "My soul, while I'm singing, is leaping to go, "This moment for heaven I'd leave all below.

"Farewell, my dear brethren -- my Lord bids me come; "Farewell, my dear sisters --I'm now going home; "Bright angels are whispering so sweet in my ear, -- "Away to my Saviour my spirit they'll bear.

"I am going -- I'm going -- but what do I see! --"

She was interrupted.

"Do you mean all that, Karen?" said Elizabeth, stepping without the door.

Karen stopped her song and looked round.

"Do you mean all that you are singing, Karen?"

"What I'm singing? --"

"Yes. I've been listening to you. -- Do you feel and mean all those words of your hymn?"

"I don't say no words I don't mean," said Karen, going on with her work; -- "anyhow, I don't mean to."

"But those words you have been singing -- do you mean that you feel them all?"

Karen stood up and faced her as she answered,

"Yes!"

"Do you mean that you would rather die than live?"

"If 'twas the Lord's will, I would," said Karen, without moving her face.

"Why?"

Karen looked at her still, but her face unbent in a little bit of a smile.

"You ain't one of the Lord's people, be you, young lady?"

"I don't know --" said Elizabeth, blushing and hesitating, -- "I mean to be."

"Do you mean to be one of 'em?" said Karen.

"I wish to be -- yes, I mean to be, -- if I can."

The old woman dried her hand which had been busy in water, and coming up took one of Elizabeth's, -- looked at its delicate tints in her own wrinkled and black fingers, and then lifting a moistened eye to Elizabeth's face, she answered expressively,

"Then you'll know."

"But I want to know something about it now," said the young lady as Karen went back to her work. "Tell me. How can you wish to 'leave all for heaven,' as you were singing a moment ago?"

"I'd ha' done that plenty o' years ago," said Karen. "I'd got enough of this world by that time."

"Is that the reason?"

"What reason?" said Karen.

"Is that the reason you would like to go to heaven?"

"It's the reason why I'm willing to leave the earth," said Karen. "It hain't nothin' to do with heaven."

"Anybody might be willing to go to heaven at that rate," said Elizabeth.

"That ain't all, young lady," said Karen, working away while she spoke. "I'm not only willin' to go -- I'm willin' to be there when I get there -- and I'm ready too, thank the Lord!"

"How can one be 'ready' for it, Karen? -- It seems such a change."

"It'll be a good change," said Karen. "Mis' Landholm thinks it is."

Elizabeth stood silent, the tears swelling; she got little light from Karen.

"You wa'n't one of the Lord's people when you come? -- be you? --" said Karen suddenly, looking round at her.

"I hardly know whether I am one now, Karen, -- but I mean to try."

"Tryin' ain't no use," said Karen. "If you want to be one of the Lord's people, you've only to knock, and it shall be opened to you."

"Did you never know that fail?"

"I never tried it but once -- it didn't fail me then," said the old woman. "The Lord keeps his promises. -- I tried it a good while -- it don't do to stop knockin'."

"But I must -- one must try to do something -- I must try to do my duty," said Elizabeth.

"Surely!" said Karen, facing round upon her again, "but you can't help that. Do you s'pose you can love Jesus Christ, and not love to please him? 'Tain't in natur' -- you can't help it."

"But suppose I don't love him, Karen?" said Elizabeth, her voice choking as she said it. "I don't know him yet -- I don't know him enough to love him."

There was a little pause; and then without looking at her, Karen said in her trembling voice, a little more trembling than it was,

"I don't know, Miss 'Lizabeth -- 'To them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name!' -- I heard a man preach that once."

The tears rushed in full measure to Elizabeth's eyes. She stood, not heeding Karen nor anything else, and the thick veil of tears hiding everything from her sight. It was a moment of strong joy; for she knew she believed in him! She was, or she would be, one of 'his people.' Her strong pillar of assurance she clasped again, and leaned her heart upon, with unspeakable rest.

She stood, till the water had cleared itself from her eyes; and then she was turning into the house, but turned back again, and went close up to the old black woman.

"Thank you, Karen," said she. "You have given me comfort."

"You hain't got it all," said Karen without looking at her.

"What do you mean?"

"Did you ever read a book called the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' young lady?"

"No."

"I ain't much like the people there," said Karen, "but they was always glad to hear of one more that was going to be a pilgrim; and clapped their hands, they did."

"Did you ever read it, Karen?"

"I hearn Mis' Landholm read it -- and the Governor."

Elizabeth turned away, and she had not half crossed the kitchen when she heard Karen strike up, in a sweet refrain,

"I'll march to Canaan's land, "I'll land on Canaan's shore," --

Then something stopped the song, and Elizabeth came back to her room. She sat down by the window. The light was changed. There seemed a strange clear brightness on all things without that they had not a little while ago, and that they never had before. And her bread was sweet to her that night.

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