Chapter XXII…

Chapter XXII

Some bring a capon, some a rurall cake, Some nuts, some apples; some that thinke they make The better cheeses, bring 'hem; or else send By their ripe daughters, whom they would commend This way to husbands; and whose baskets beare An embleme of themselves, in plum or peare.

Ben Jonson.

So the time walked away, for this family was not now of those "whom time runneth withal,"--to the second summer of Mr. Didenhover's term.

One morning Mrs. Rossitur was seated in the breakfast-room at her usual employment, mending and patching; no sinecure now. Fleda opened the kitchen door and came in folding up a calico apron she had just taken off.

"You are tired, dear," said Mrs. Rossitur sorrowfully;--"you look pale."

"Do I?"--said Fleda, sitting down. "I am a little tired!"

"Why do you do so?"

"O it's nothing" said Fleda cheerfully;--"I haven't hurt myself. I shall be rested again in a few minutes."

"What have you been doing?"

"O I tired myself a little before breakfast in the garden, I suppose. Aunt Lucy, don't you think I had almost a bushel of peas?--and there was a little over a half bushel last time, so I shall call it a bushel. Isn't that fine?"

"You didn't pick them all yourself?"

"Hugh helped me a little while; but he had the horse to get ready, and I was out before him this morning--poor fellow, he was tired from yesterday, I dare say."

Mrs. Rossitur looked at her, a look between remonstrance and reproach, and cast her eyes down without saying a word, swallowing a whole heartful of thoughts and feelings. Fleda stooped forward till her own forehead softly touched Mrs. Rossitur's, as gentle a chiding of despondency as a very sunbeam could have given.

"Now aunt Lucy!--what do you mean? Don't you know it's good for me?--And do you know, Mr. Sweet will give me four shillings a bushel; and aunt Lucy, I sent three dozen heads of lettuce this morning besides. Isn't that doing well? and I sent two dozen day before yesterday. It is time they were gone, for they are running up to seed, this set; I have got another fine set almost ready."

Mrs. Rossitur looked at her again, as if she had been a sort of terrestrial angel.

"And how much will you get for them?"

"I don't know exactly--threepence, or sixpence perhaps,--I guess not so much--they are so easily raised; though I don't believe there are so fine as mine to be seen in this region.--If I only had somebody to water the strawberries!--we should have a great many. Aunt Lucy, I am going to send as many as I can without robbing uncle Rolf--he sha'n't miss them; but the rest of us don't mind eating rather fewer than usual? I shall make a good deal by them. And I think these morning rides do Hugh good; don't you think so?"

"And what have you been busy about ever since breakfast, Fleda?"

"O--two or three things," said Fleda lightly.

"What?"

"I had bread to make--and then I thought while my hands were in I would make a custard for uncle Rolf."

"You needn't have done that, dear! it was not necessary."

"Yes it was, because you know we have only fried pork for dinner to-day, and while we have the milk and eggs it doesn't cost much--the sugar is almost nothing. He will like it better, and so will Hugh. As for you," said Fleda, gently touching her forehead again, "you know it is of no consequence!"

"I wish you would think yourself of some consequence," said Mrs. Rossitur.

"Don't I think myself of consequence!" naid Fleda affectionately. "I don't know how you'd all get on without me. What do you think I have a mind to do now, by way of resting myself?"

"Well?" said Mrs Rossitur, thinking of something else.

"It is the day for making presents to the minister, you know?"

"The minister?"--

"Yes, the new minister--they expect him to-day;--you have heard of it;--the things are all to be carried to his house to-day. I have a great notion to go and see the fun--if I only had anything in the world I could possibly take with me--"

"Aren't you too tired, dear?"

"No--it would rest me--it is early yet--if I only had something to take!--I couldn't go without taking something----"

"A basket of eggs?" said Mrs. Rossitur.

"Can't, aunt Lucy--I can't spare them; so many of the hens are setting now.--A basket of strawberries!--that's the thing! I've got enough picked for that and to-night too. That will do!"

Fleda's preparations were soon made, and with her basket on her arm she was ready to set forth.

"If pride had not been a little put down in me," she said smiling, "I suppose I should rather stay at home than go with such a petty offering. And no doubt every one that sees it or hears of it will lay it to anything but the right reason. So much the world knows about the people it judges!--It is too bad to leave you all alone, aunt Lucy."

Mrs. Rossitur pulled her down for a kiss, a kiss in which how much was said on both sides!--and Fleda set forth, choosing as she very commonly did the old-time way through the kitchen.

"Off again?" said Barby, who was on her knees scrubbing the great flag-stones of the hearth.

"Yes, I am going up to see the donation party."

"Has the minister come?"

"No, but he is coming to-day, I understand."

"He ha'n't preached for 'em yet, has he?"

"Not yet; I suppose he will next Sunday."

"They are in a mighty hurry to give him a donation party!" said Barby. "I'd ha' waited till he was here first. I don't believe they'd be quite so spry with their donations if they had paid the last man up as they ought. I'd rather give a man what belongs to him, and make him presents afterwards."

"Why, so I hope they will, Barby," said Fleda laughing. But Barby said no more.

The parsonage-house was about a quarter of a mile, a little more, from the saw-mill, in a line at right angles with the main road. Fleda took Hugh from his work to see her safe there. The road ran north, keeping near the level of the mid-hill where it branched off a little below the saw-mill; and as the ground continued rising towards the east and was well clothed with woods, the way at this hour was still pleasantly shady. To the left the same slope of ground carried down to the foot of the hill gave them an uninterrupted view over a wide plain or bottom, edged in the distance with a circle of gently swelling hills. Close against the hills, in the far corner of the plain, lay the little village of Queechy Run, hid from sight by a slight intervening rise of ground; not a chimney shewed itself in the whole spread of country. A sunny landscape just now; but rich in picturesque associations of hay-cocks and winnows, spotting it near and far; and close by below them was a field of mowers at work; they could distinctly hear the measured rush of the scythes through the grass, and then the soft clink of the rifles would seem to play some old delicious tune of childish days. Fleda made Hugh stand still to listen. It was a warm day, but "the sweet south that breathes upon a bank of violets," could hardly be more sweet than the air which coming to them over the whole breadth of the valley had been charged by the new-made hay.

"How good it is, Hugh," said Fleda, "that one can get out of doors and forget everything that ever happened or ever will happen within four walls!"

"Do you?" said Hugh, rather soberly.

"Yes I do,--even in my flower-patch, right before the house-door; but here--" said Fleda, turning away and swinging her basket of strawberries as she went, "I have no idea I ever did such a thing as make bread!--and how clothes get mended I do not comprehend in the least!"

"And have you forgotten the peas and the asparagus too?"

"I am afraid you haven't, dear Hugh," said Fleda, linking her arm within his. "Hugh,--I must find some way to make money."

"More money?" said Hugh smiling.

"Yes--this garden business is all very well, but it doesn't come to any very great things after all, if you are aware of it; and, Hugh, I want to get aunt Lucy a new dress. I can't bear to see her in that old merino, and it isn't good for her. Why, Hugh, she couldn't possibly see anybody, if anybody should come to the house."

"Who is there to come?" said Hugh.

"Why nobody; but still, she ought not to be so."

"What more can you do, dear Fleda? You work a great deal too hard already," said Hugh sighing. "You should have seen the way father and mother looked at you last night when you were asleep on the sofa."

Fleda stifled her sigh, and went on.

"I am sure there are things that might be done--things for the booksellers--translating, or copying, or something,--I don't know exactly--I have heard of people's doing such things. I mean to write to uncle Orrin and ask him. I am sure he can manage it for me."

"What were you writing the other night?" said Hugh suddenly.

"When?"

"The other night--when you were writing by the firelight? I saw your pencil scribbling away at a furious rate over the paper, and you kept your hand up carefully between me and your face, but I could see it was something very interesting. Ha?--" said Hugh, laughingly trying to get another view of Fleda's face which was again kept from him. "Send that to uncle Orrin, Fleda;--or shew it to me first and then I will tell you."

Fleda made no answer; and at the parsonage door Hugh left her.

Two or three wagons were standing there, but nobody to be seen. Fleda went up the steps and crossed the broad piazza, brown and unpainted, but picturesque still, and guided by the sound of tongues turned to the right where she found a large low room, the very centre of the stir. But the stir had not by any means reached the height yet. Not more than a dozen people were gathered. Here were aunt Syra and Mrs. Douglass, appointed a committee to receive and dispose the offerings as they were brought in.

"Why there is not much to be seen yet," said Fleda. "I did not know I was so early."

"Time enough," said Mrs. Douglass. "They'll come the thicker when they do come. Good-morning, Dr. Quackenboss!--I hope you're a going to give us something else besides a bow? and I won't take none of your physic, neither."

"I humbly submit," said the doctor graciously, "that nothing ought to be expected of gentlemen that--a--are so unhappy as to be alone; for they really--a--have nothing to give,--but themselves."

There was a shout of merriment.

"And suppos'n that's a gift that nobody wants?" said Mrs, Douglass's sharp eye and voice at once.

"In that case," said the doctor, "I really--Miss Ringgan, may I--a--may I relieve your hand of this fair burden?"

"It is not a very fair burden, sir," said Fleda, laughing and relinquishing her strawberries.

"Ah but, fair, you know, I mean,--we speak--in that sense----Mrs Douglass, here is by far the most elegant offering that your hands will have the honour of receiving this day."

"I hope so," said Mrs. Douglass, "or there won't be much to eat for the minister. Did you never take notice how elegant things somehow made folks grow poor?"

"I guess he'd as leave see something a little substantial," said aunt Syra.

"Well now," said the doctor, "here is Miss Ringgan, who is unquestionably--a--elegant!--and I am sure nobody will say that she--looks poor!"

In one sense, surely not! There could not be two opinions. But with all the fairness of health, and the flush which two or three feelings had brought to her cheeks, there was a look as if the workings of the mind had refined away a little of the strength of the physical frame, and as if growing poor in Mrs. Douglass's sense, that is, thin, might easily be the next step.

"What's your uncle going to give us, Fleda?" said aunt Syra.

But Fleda was saved replying; for Mrs. Douglass, who if she was sharp could be good-natured too, and had watched to see how Fleda took the double fire upon elegance and poverty, could beat no more trial of that sweet gentle face. Without giving her time to answer she carried her off to see the things already stored in the closet, bidding the doctor over her shoulder "be off after his goods, whether he had got 'em or no."

There was certainly a promising beginning made for the future minister's comfort. One shelf was already completely stocked with pies, and another shewed a quantity of cake, and biscuits enough to last a good-sized family for several meals.

"That is always the way," said Mrs. Douglass;--"it's the strangest thing that folks has no sense! Now one-half o' them pies'll be dried up afore they can eat the rest;--'tain't much loss, for Mis' Prin sent 'em down, and if they are worth anything it's the first time anything ever come out of her house that was. Now look at them biscuit!"--

"How many are coming to eat them?" said Fleda.

"How?"

"How large a family has the minister?"

"He ha'n't a bit of a family! He ain't married."

"Not!"

At the grave way in which Mrs. Douglass faced around upon her and answered, and at the idea of a single mouth devoted to all that closetful, Fleda's gravity gave place to most uncontrollable merriment.

"No," said Mrs. Douglass, with a curious twist of her mouth but commanding herself,--"he ain't to be sure--not yet. He ha'n't any family but himself and some sort of a housekeeper, I suppose; they'll divide the house between 'em."

"And the biscuits, I hope," said Fleda. "But what will he do with all the other things, Mrs. Douglass?"

"Sell 'em if he don't want 'em," said Mrs. Douglass quizzically. "Shut up, Fleda, I forget who sent them biscuit--somebody that calculated to make a shew for a little, I reckon.--My sakes! I believe it was Mis' Springer herself!--she didn't hear me though," said Mrs. Douglass peeping out of the half-open door. "It's a good thing the world ain't all alike;--there's Mis' Plumfield--stop now, and I'll tell you all she sent;--that big jar of lard, there's as good as eighteen or twenty pound,--and that basket of eggs, I don't know how many there is,--and that cheese, a real fine one I'll be bound, she wouldn't pick out the worst in her dairy,--and Seth fetched down a hundred weight of corn meal and another of rye flour; now that's what I call doing things something like; if everybody else would keep up their end as well as they keep up their'n the world wouldn't be quite so one-sided as it is. I never see the time yet when I couldn't tell where to find Mis' Plumfield."

"No, nor anybody else," said Fleda looking happy.

"There's Mis' Silbert couldn't find nothing better to send than a kag of soap," Mrs. Douglass went on, seeming very much amused;--"I was beat when I saw that walk in! I should think she'd feel streaked to come here by and by and see it a standing between Mis' Plumfield's lard and Mis' Clavering's pork--that's a handsome kag of pork, ain't it? What's that man done with your strawberries?--I'll put 'em up here afore somebody takes a notion to 'em.--I'll let the minister know who he's got to thank for 'em," said she, winking at Fleda. "Where's Dr. Quackenboss?"

"Coming, ma'am!" sounded from the hall, and forthwith at the open door entered the doctor's head, simultaneously with a large cheese which he was rolling before him, the rest of the doctor's person being thrown into the background in consequence. A curious natural representation of a wheelbarrow, the wheel being the only artificial part.

"Oh!--that's you, doctor, is it?" said Mrs. Douglass.

"This is me, ma'am," said the doctor, rolling up to the closet door,--"this has the honour to be--a--myself,--bringing my service to the feet of Miss Ringgan."

"'Tain't very elegant," said the sharp lady.

Fleda thought if his service was at her feet, her feet should be somewhere else, and accordingly stepped quietly out of the way and went to one of the windows, from whence she could have a view both of the comers and the come; and by this time thoroughly in the spirit of the thing she used her eyes upon both with great amusement. People were constantly arriving now, in wagons and on foot; and stores of all kinds were most literally pouring in. Bags and even barrels of meal, flour, pork, and potatoes; strings of dried apples, salt, hams and beef; hops, pickles, vinegar, maple sugar and molasses; rolls of fresh butter, cheese, and eggs; cake, bread, and pies, without end. Mr. Penny, the storekeeper, sent a box of tea. Mr. Winegar, the carpenter, a new ox-sled. Earl Douglass brought a handsome axe-helve of his own fashioning; his wife a quantity of rolls of wool. Zan Finn carted a load of wood into the wood-shed, and Squire Thornton another. Home-made candles, custards, preserves, and smoked liver, came in a batch from two or three miles off up on the mountain. Half a dozen chairs from the factory man. Half a dozen brooms from the other store-keeper at the Deepwater settlement. A carpet for the best room from the ladies of the township, who had clubbed forces to furnish it; and a home-made concern it was, from the shears to the loom.

The room was full now, for every one after depositing his gift turned aside to see what others had brought and were bringing; and men and women, the young and old, had their several circles of gossip in various parts of the crowd. Apart from them all Fleda sat in her window, probably voted "elegant" by others than the doctor, for they vouchsafed her no more than a transitory attention and sheered off to find something more congenial. She sat watching the people; smiling very often as some odd figure, or look, or some peculiar turn of expression or tone of voice, caught her ear or her eye.

Both ear and eye were fastened by a young countryman with a particularly fresh face whom she saw approaching the house. He came up on foot, carrying a single fowl slung at his back by a stick thrown across his shoulder, and without stirring hat or stick he came into the room and made his way through the crowd of people, looking to the one hand and the other evidently in a maze of doubt to whom he should deliver himself and his chicken, till brought up by Mrs. Douglass's sharp voice.

"Well, Philetus! what are you looking for?"

"Do, Mis' Douglass!"--it is impossible to express the abortive attempt at a bow which accompanied this salutation,--"I want to know if the minister 'll be in town to-day?"

"What do you want of him?"

"I don't want nothin' of him. I want to know if he'll be in town to-day?"

"Yes--I expect he'll be along directly--why, what then?"

"Cause I've got ten chickens for him here, and mother said they hadn't ought to be kept no longer, and if he wa'n't to hum I were to fetch 'em back, straight."

"Well he'll be here, so let's have 'em," said Mrs. Douglass biting her lips.

"What's become o' t'other one?" said Earl, as the young man's stick was brought round to the table;--"I guess you've lost it, ha'n't you?"

"My gracious!" was all Philetus's powers were equal to. Mrs. Douglass went off into fits which rendered her incapable of speaking and left the unlucky chicken-bearer to tell his story his own way, but all he brought forth was "Du tell!--I am beat!--"

"Where's t'other one?" said Mrs. Douglass between paroxysms.

"Why I ha'n't done nothin' to it," said Philetus dismally,--there was teu on 'em afore I started, and I took and tied 'em together and hitched 'em onto the stick, and that one must ha' loosened itself off some way.--I believe the darned thing did it o' purpose."

"I guess your mother knowed that one wouldn't keep till it got here," said Mrs. Douglass.

The room was now all one shout, in the midst of which poor Philetus took himself off as speedily as possible. Before Fleda had dried her eyes her attention was taken by a lady and gentleman who had just got out of a vehicle of more than the ordinary pretension and were coming up to the door. The gentleman was young, the lady was not, both had a particularly amiable and pleasant appearance; but about the lady there was something that moved Fleda singularly and somehow touched the spring of old memories, which she felt stirring at the sight of her. As they neared the house she lost them--then they entered the room and came through it slowly, looking about them with an air of good-humoured amusement. Fleda's eye was fixed but her mind puzzled itself in vain to recover what in her experience had been connected with that fair and lady-like physiognomy and the bland smile that was overlooked by those acute eyes. The eyes met hers, and then seemed to reflect her doubt, for they remained as fixed as her own while the lady quickening her steps came up to her.

"I am sure," she said, holding out her hand, and with a gentle graciousness that was very agreeable,--"I am sure you are somebody I know. What is your name?"

"Fleda Ringgan."

"I thought so!" said the lady, now shaking her hand warmly and kissing her,--"I knew nobody could have been your mother but Amy Charlton! How like her you look!--Don't you know me? don't you remember Mrs. Evelyn?"

"Mrs. Evelyn!" said Fleda, the whole coming back to her at once.

"You remember me now?--How well I recollect you! and all that old time at Montepoole. Poor little creature that you were! and dear little creature, as I am sure you have been ever since. And how is your dear aunt Lucy?"

Fleda answered that she was well.

"I used to love her very much--that was before I knew you--before she went abroad. We have just got home--this spring; and now we are staying at Montepoole for a few days. I shall come and see her to-morrow--I knew you were somewhere in this region, but I did not know exactly where to find you; that was one reason why I came here to-day--I thought I might hear something of you. And where are your aunt Lucy's children? and how are they?"

"Hugh is at home," said Fleda, "and rather delicate--Charlton is in the army.'

"In the army. In Mexico!"--

"In Mexico he has been"--

"Your poor aunt Lucy!"

--"In Mexico he has been, but he is just coming home now--he has been wounded, and he is coming home to spend a long furlough."

"Coming home. That will make you all very happy. And Hugh is delicate--and how are you, love? you hardly look like a country-girl. Mr. Olmney!--" said Mrs. Evelyn looking round for her companion, who was standing quietly a few steps off surveying the scene,--"Mr. Olmney!--I am going to do you a favour, sir, in introducing you to Miss Ringgan--a very old friend of mine. Mr. Olmney,--these are not exactly the apple-cheeks and robustious demonstrations we are taught to look for in country-land?"

This was said with a kind of sly funny enjoyment which took away everything disagreeable from the appeal; but Fleda conceived a favourable opinion of the person to whom it was made from the fact that he paid her no compliment and made no answer beyond a very pleasant smile.

"What is Mrs. Evelyn's definition of a very old friend?" said he with with another smile, as that lady moved off to take a more particular view of what she had come to see. "To judge by the specimen before me I should consider it very equivocal."

"Perhaps Mrs. Evelyn counts friendships by inheritance," said Fleda. "I think they ought to be counted so."

"'Thine own friend and thy father's friend forsake not'?" said the young man.

Fleda looked up and smiled a pleased answer.

"There is something very lovely in the faithfulness of tried friendship--and very uncommon."

"I know that it is uncommon only by hearsay," said Fleda, "I have so many good friends."

He was silent for an instant, possibly thinking there might be a reason for that unknown only to Fleda herself.

"Perhaps one must be in peculiar circumstances to realize it," he said sighing;--"circumstances that leave one of no importance to any one in the world.--But it is a kind lesson I--one learns to depend more on the one friendship that can never disappoint."

Fleda's eyes again gave an answer of sympathy, for she thought from the shade that had come upon his face that these circumstances had probably been known to himself.

"This is rather an amusing scene," he remarked presently in a low tone.

"Very," said Fleda. "I have never seen such a one before."

"Nor I," said he. "It is a pleasant scene too, it is pleasant to see so many evidences of kindness and good feeling on the part of all these people."

"There is all the more shew of it, I suppose, to-day," said Fleda, "because we have a new minister coming;--they want to make a favourable impression."

"Does the old proverb of the 'new broom' hold good here too?" said he, smiling. "What's the name of your new minister?"

"I am not certain," said Fleda,--"there were two talked of--the last I heard was that it was an old Mr. Carey; but from what I hear this morning I suppose it must be the other--a Mr. Ollum, or some such queer name, I believe."

Fleda thought her hearer looked very much amused, and followed his eye into the room, where Mrs. Evelyn was going about in all quarters looking at everything, and finding occasion to enter into conversation with at least a quarter of the people who were present. Whatever she was saying it seemed at that moment to have something to do with them, for sundry eyes turned in their direction; and presently Dr. Quackenboss came up, with even more than common suavity of manner.

"I trust Miss Ringgan will do me the favour of making me acquainted with--a--with our future pastor!" said the doctor, looking however not at all at Miss Ringgan but straight at the pastor in question. "I have great pleasure in giving you the first welcome, sir,--or, I should say, rather the second; since no doubt Miss Ringgan has been in advance of me. It is not un--a--appropriate, sir, for I may say we--a--divide the town between us. You are, I am sure, a worthy representative of Peter and Paul; and I am--a--a pupil of Esculapus, sir! You are the intellectual physician, and I am the external."

"I hope we shall both prove ourselves good workmen, sir," said the young minister, shaking the doctor's hand heartily.

"This is Dr. Quackenboss, Mr. Olmney," said Fleda, making a tremendous effort. But though she could see corresponding indications about her companion's eyes and mouth, she admired the kindness and self-command with which he listened to the doctor's civilities and answered them; expressing his grateful sense of the favours received not only from him but from others.

"O--a little to begin with," said the doctor, looking round upon the room, which would certainly have furnished that for fifty people;--"I hope we ain't done yet by considerable--But here is Miss Ringgan, Mr.--a--Ummin, that has brought you some of the fruits of her own garden, with her own fair hands--a basket of fine strawberries--which I am sure--a--will make you forget everything else!"

Mr. Olmney had the good-breeding not to look at Fleda, as he answered, "I am sure the spirit of kindness was the same in all, Dr. Quackenboss, and I trust not to forget that readily."

Others now came up; and Mr. Olmney was walked off to be "made acquainted" with all or with all the chief of his parishioners then and there assembled. Fleda watched him going about, shaking hands, talking and smiling, in all directions, with about as much freedom of locomotion as a fly in a spider's web; till at Mrs. Evelyn's approach the others fell off a little, and taking him by the arm she rescued him.

"My dear Mr. Olmney!" she whispered, with an intensely amused face,--"I shall have a vision of you every day for a month to come, sitting down to dinner with a rueful face to a whortleberry pie; for there are so many of them your conscience will not let you have anything else cooked--you cannot manage more than one a day."

"Pies!" said the young gentleman, as Mrs. Evelyn left talking to indulge her feelings in ecstatic quiet laughing,--"I have a horror of pies!"

"Yes, yes," said Mrs. Evelyn nodding her head delightedly as she drew him towards the pantry,--"I know!--Come and see what is in store for you. You are to do penance for a month to come with tin pans of blackberry jam fringed with pie-crust--no, they can't be blackberries, they must be raspberries--the blackberries are not ripe yet. And you may sup upon cake and custards--unless you give the custards for the little pig out there--he will want something."

"A pig!--" said Mr. Olmney in a maze; Mrs. Evelyn again giving out in distress. "A pig?" said Mr. Olmney.

"Yes--a pig--a very little one," said Mrs. Evelyn convulsively. "I am sure he is hungry now!--"

They had reached the pantry, and Mr. Olmney's face was all that was wanting to Mrs. Evelyn's delight. How she smothered it, so that it should go no further than to distress his self-command, is a mystery known only to the initiated. Mrs. Douglass was forthwith called into council.

"Mrs. Douglass," said Mr. Olmney, "I feel very much inclined to play the host, and beg my friends to share with me some of these good things they have been so bountifully providing."

"He would enjoy them much more than he would alone, Mrs. Douglass," said Mrs. Evelyn, who still had hold of Mr. Olmney's arm, looking round to the lady with a most benign face.

"I reckon some of 'em would be past enjoying by the time he got to 'em, wouldn't they?" said the lady. "Well, they'll have to take 'em in their fingers, for our crockery ha'n't come yet--I shall have to jog Mr. Flatt's elbow--but hungry folks ain't curious."

"In their fingers, or any way, provided you have only a knife to cut them with," said Mr. Olmney, while Mrs. Evelyn squeezed his arm in secret mischief;--"and pray if we can muster two knives let us cut one of these cheeses, Mrs. Douglass."

And presently Fleda saw pieces of pie walking about in all directions supported by pieces of cheese. And then Mrs. Evelyn and Mr. Olmney came out from the pantry and came towards her, the latter bringing her with his own hands a portion in a tin pan. The two ladies sat down in the window together to eat and be amused.

"My dear Fleda, I hope you are hungry!" said Mrs. Evelyn, biting her pie Fleda could not help thinking with an air of good-humoured condescension.

"I am, ma'am," she said laughing.

"You look just as you used to do," Mrs. Evelyn went on earnestly.

"Do I?" said Fleda, privately thinking that the lady must have good eyes for features of resemblance.

"Except that you have more colour in your cheeks and more sparkles in your eyes. Dear little creature that you were! I want to make you know my children. Do you remember that Mr. and Mrs. Carleton that took such care of you at Montepoole?"

"Certainly I do!--very well."

"We saw them last winter--we were down at their country-place in---- shire. They have a magnificent place there--everything you can think of to make life pleasant. We spent a week with them. My dear Fleda!--I wish I could shew you that place! you never saw anything like it."

Fleda eat her pie.

"We have nothing like it in this country--of course--cannot have. One of those superb English country-seats is beyond even the imagination of an American."

"Nature has been as kind to us, hasn't she?" said Fleda.

"O yes, but such fortunes you know. Mr. Olmney, what do you think of those overgrown fortunes? I was speaking to Miss Ringgan just now of a gentleman who has forty thousand pounds a year income--sterling, sir;--forty thousand pounds a year sterling. Somebody says, you know, that 'he who has more than enough is a thief of the rights of his brother,'--what do you think?"

But Mr. Olmney's attention was at the moment forcibly called off by the "income" of a parishioner.

"I suppose," said Fleda, "his thievish character must depend entirely on the use he makes of what he has."

"I don't know," said Mrs. Evelyn shaking her head,--"I think the possession of great wealth is very hardening."

"To a fine nature?" said Fleda.

Mrs. Evelyn shook her head again, but did not seem to think it worth while to reply; and Fleda was trying the question in her own mind whether wealth or poverty might be the most hardening in its effects; when Mr. Olmney having succeeded in getting free again came and took his station beside them; and they had a particularly pleasant talk, which Fleda who had seen nobody in a great while enjoyed very much. They had several such talks in the course of the day; for though the distractions caused by Mr. Olmney's other friends were many and engrossing, he generally contrived in time to find his way back to their window. Meanwhile Mrs. Evelyn had a great deal to say to Fleda and to hear from her; and left her at last under an engagement to spend the next day at the Pool.

Upon Mr. Olmney's departure with Mrs. Evelyn the attraction which had held the company together was broken, and they scattered fast. Fleda presently finding herself in the minority was glad to set out with Miss Anastasia Finn and her sister Lucy, who would leave her but very little way from her own door. But she had more company than she bargained for. Dr. Quackenboss was pleased to attach himself to their party, though his own shortest road certainly lay in another direction; and Fleda wondered what he had done with his wagon, which beyond a question must have brought the cheese in the morning. She edged herself out of the conversation as much as possible, and hoped it would prove so agreeable that he would not think of attending her home. In vain. When they made a stand at the cross-roads the doctor stood on her side.

"I hope, now you've made a commencement, you will come to see us again, Fleda," said Miss Lucy.

"What's the use of asking?" said her sister abruptly. "If she has a mind to she will, and if she ha'n't I am sure we don't want her."

They turned off.

"Those are excellent people," said the doctor when they were beyond hearing;--"really respectable!"

"Are they?" said Fleda.

"But your goodness does not look, I am sure, to find--a--Parisian graces in so remote a circle?"

"Certainly not!" said Fleda.

"We have had a genial day!" said the doctor, quitting the Finns.

"I don't know," said Fleda, permitting a little of her inward merriment to work off,--"I think it has been rather too hot."

"Yes," said the doctor, "the sun has been ardent; but I referred rather to the--a--to the warming of affections, and the pleasant exchange of intercourse on all sides which has taken place. How do you like our--a--the stranger?"

"Who, sir?"

"The new-comer,--this young Mr. Ummin?"

Fleda answered, but she hardly knew what, for she was musing whether the doctor would go away or come in. They reached the door, and Fleda invited him, with terrible effort after her voice; the doctor having just blandly offered an opinion upon the decided polish of Mr. Olmney's manners!

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Chapter XXIII

Labour is light, where lore (quoth I) doth pay; (Saith he) light burthens heavy, if far borne.

Drayton.

Fleda pushed open the parlour door and preceded her convoy, in a kind of tip-toe state of spirits. The first thing that met her eyes was her aunt in one of the few handsome silks which were almost her sole relic of past wardrobe prosperity, and with a face uncommonly happy and pretty; and the next instant she saw the explanation of this appearance in her cousin Charlton, a little palish, but looking better than she had ever seen him, and another gentleman of whom her eye took in only the general outlines of fashion and comfortable circumstances; now too strange to it to go unnoted. In Fleda's usual mood her next movement would have been made with a demureness that would have looked like bashfulness. But the amusement and pleasure of the day just passed had for the moment set her spirits free from the burden that generally bound them down; and they were as elastic as her step as she came forward and presented to her aunt "Dr. Quackenboss,--and then turned to shake her cousin's hand."

"Charlton!--Where did you come from? We didn't expect you so soon."

"You are not sorry to see me, I hope?"

"Not at all--very glad;"--and then as her eye glanced towards the other new-comer Charlton presented to her "Mr. Thorn;" and Fleda's fancy made a sudden quick leap on the instant to the old hall at Montepoole and the shot dog. And then Dr. Quackenboss was presented, an introduction which Capt. Rossitur received coldly, and Mr. Thorn with something more than frigidity.

The doctor's elasticity however defied depression, especially in the presence of a silk dress and a military coat. Fleda presently saw that he was agonizing her uncle. Mrs. Rossitur had drawn close to her son. Fleda was left to take care of the other visitor. The young men had both seemed more struck at the vision presented to them than she had been on her part. She thought neither of them was very ready to speak to her.

"I did not know," said Mr. Thorn softly, "what reason I had to thank Rossitur for bringing me home with him to-night--he promised me a supper and a welcome,--but I find he did not tell me the half of my entertainment."

"That was wise in him," said Fleda;--"the half that is not expected is always worth a great deal more than the other."

"In this case, most assuredly," said Thorn bowing, and Fleda was sure not knowing what to make of her.

"Have you been in Mexico too, Mr. Thorn?"

"Not I!--that's an entertainment I beg to decline. I never felt inclined to barter an arm for a shoulder-knot, or to abridge my usual means of locomotion for the privilege of riding on parade--or selling oneself for a name--Peter Schlemil's selling his shadow I can understand; but this is really lessening oneself that one's shadow may grow the larger."

"But you were in the army?" said Fleda.

"Yes--It wasn't my doing. There is a time, you know, when one must please the old folks--I grew old enough and wise enough to cut loose from the army before I had gained or lost much by it."

He did not understand the displeased gravity of Fleda's face, and went on insinuatingly;--

"Unless I have lost what Charlton has gained--something I did not know hung upon the decision--Perhaps you think a man is taller for having iron heels to his boots?"

"I do not measure a man by his inches," said Fleda.

"Then you have no particular predilection for shooting men?"

"I have no predilection for shooting anything, sir."

"Then I am safe!" said he, with an arrogant little air of satisfaction. "I was born under an indolent star, but I confess to you, privately, of the two I would rather gather my harvests with the sickle than the sword. How does your uncle find it?"

"Find what, sir?"

"The worship of Ceres?--I remember he used to be devoted to Apollo and the Muses."

"Are they rival deities?"

"Why--I have been rather of the opinion that they were too many for one house to hold," said Thorn glancing at Mr. Rossitur. "But perhays the Graces manage to reconcile them!"

"Did you ever hear of the Graces getting supper?" said Fleda. "Because Ceres sometimes sets them at that work. Uncle Rolf," she added as she passed him,--"Mr. Thorn is inquiring after Apollo--will you set him right, while I do the same for the tablecloth?"

Her uncle looked from her sparkling eyes to the rather puzzled expression of his guest's face.

"I was only asking your lovely niece," said Mr. Thorn coming down from his stilts,--"how you liked this country life?"

Dr. Quackenboss bowed, probably in approbation of the epithet.

"Well sir--what information did she give you on the subject?"

"Left me in the dark, sir, with a vague hope that you would enlighten me."

"I trust Mr. Rossitur can give a favourable report?" said the doctor benignly.

But Mr. Rossitur's frowning brow looked very little like it.

"What do you say to our country life, sir?"

"It's a confounded life, sir," said Mr. Rossitur, taking a pamphlet from the table to fold and twist as he spoke,--"it is a confounded life; for the head and the hands must either live separate, or the head must do no other work but wait upon the hands. It is an alternative of loss and waste, sir."

"The alternative seems to be of--a--limited application," said the doctor, as Fleda, having found that Hugh and Barby had been beforehand with her, now came back to the company. "I am sure this lady would not give such a testimony."

"About what?" said Fleda, colouring under the fire of so many eyes.

"The blighting influence of Ceres' sceptre," said Mr. Thorn.

"This country life," said her uncle;--"do you like it, Fleda?"

"You know, uncle," said she cheerfully, "I was always of the old Douglasses' mind--I like better to hear the lark sing than the mouse squeak."

"Is that one of Earl Douglass's sayings?" said the doctor.

"Yes sir," said Fleda with quivering lips,--"but not the one you know--an older man."

"Ah!" said the doctor intelligently. "Mr. Rossitur,--speaking of hands,--I have employed the Irish very much of late years--they are as good as one can have, if you do not want a head."

"That is to say,--if you have a head," said Thorn.

"Exactly" said the doctor, all abroad,--"and when there are not too many of them together. I had enough of that, sir, some years ago when a multitude of them were employed on the public works. The Irish were in a state of mutilation, sir, all through the country."

"Ah!" said Thorn,--"had the military been at work upon them?"

"No sir, but I wish they had, I am sure; it would have been for the peace of the town. There were hundreds of them. We were in want of an army."

"Of surgeons,--I should think," said Thorn.

Fleda saw the doctor's dubious air and her uncle's compressed lips; and commanding herself, with even a look of something like displeasure she quitted her seat by Mr. Thorn and called the doctor to the window to look at a cluster of rose acacias just then in their glory. He admired, and she expatiated, till she hoped everybody but herself had forgotten what they had been talking about. But they had no sooner returned to their seats than Thorn began again.

"The Irish in your town are not in the same mutilated state now, I suppose, sir?"

"No sir, no," said the doctor;--"there are much fewer of them to break each other's bones. It was all among themselves, sir."

"The country is full of foreigners," said Mr. Rossitur with praiseworthy gravity.

"Yes sir," said Dr. Quackenboss thoughtfully;--"we shall have none of our ancestors left in a short time, if they go on as they are doing."

Fleda was beaten from the field, and rushing into the breakfast-room astonished Hugh by seizing hold of him and indulging in a most prolonged and unbounded laugh. She did not shew herself again till the company came in to supper; but then she was found as grave as Minerva. She devoted herself particularly to the care and entertainment of Dr. Quackenboss till he took leave; nor could Thorn get another chance to talk to her through all the evening.

When he and Rossitur were at last in their rooms Fleda told her story.

"You don't know how pleasant it was, aunt Lucy--how much I enjoyed it--seeing and talking to somebody again. Mrs. Evelyn was so very kind."

"I am very glad, my darling," said Mrs. Rossitur, stroking away the hair from the forehead that was bent down towards her;--"I am glad you had it to-day and I am glad you will have it again to-morrow."

"You will have it too, aunt Lucy. Mrs. Evelyn will be here in the morning--she said so."

"I shall not see her."

"Why? Now aunt Lucy!--you will."

"I have nothing in the world to see her in--I cannot."

"You have this?"

"For the morning? A rich French silk?--It would be absurd. No, no,--it would be better to wear my old merino than that."

"But you will have to dress in the morning for Mr. Thorn?--he will be here to breakfast."

"I shall not come down to breakfast.--Don't look so, love!--I can't help it."

"Why was that calico got for me and not for you?" said Fleda, bitterly.

"A sixpenny calico," said Mrs. Rossitur smiling,--"it would be hard if you could not have so much as that, love."

"And you will not see Mrs. Evelyn and her daughters at all!--and I was thinking that it would do you so much good!--"

Mrs. Rossitur drew her face a little nearer and kissed it, over and over.

"It will do you good, my darling--that is what I care for much more."

"It will not do me half as much," said Fleda sighing.

Her spirits were in their old place again; no more a tip-toe to-night. The short light of pleasure was overcast. She went to bed feeling very quiet indeed; and received Mrs. Evelyn and excused her aunt the next day, almost wishing the lady had not been as good as her word. But though in the same mood she set off with her to drive to Montepoole, it could not stand the bright influences with which she found herself surrounded. She came home again at night with dancing spirits.

It was some days before Capt. Rossitur began at all to comprehend the change which had come upon his family. One morning Fleda and Hugh having finished their morning's work were in the breakfast-room waiting for the rest of the family, when Charlton made his appearance, with the cloud on his brow which had been lately gathering.

"Where is the paper?" said he. "I haven't seen a paper since I have been here."

"You mustn't expect to find Mexican luxuries in Queechy, Capt. Rossitur," said Fleda pleasantly.--"Look at these roses, and don't ask me for papers!"

He did look a minute at the dish of flowers she was arranging for the breakfast table, and at the rival freshness and sweetness of the face that hung over them.

"You don't mean to say you live without a paper?"

"Well, it's astonishing how many things people can live without," said Fleda rather dreamily, intent upon settling an uneasy rose that would topple over.

"I wish you'd answer me really," said Charlton. "Don't you take a paper here?"

"We would take one thankfully if it would be so good as to come; but seriously, Charlton, we haven't any," she said changing her tone.

"And have you done without one all through the war?"

"No--we used to borrow one from a kind neighbour once in a while, to make sure, as Mr. Thorn says, that you had not bartered an arm for a shoulder-knot."

"You never looked to see whether I was killed in the meanwhile, I suppose?"

"No--never," said Fleda gravely, as she took her place on a low seat in the corner,--"I always knew you were safe before I touched the paper."

"What do you mean?"

"I am not an enemy, Charlton," said Fleda laughing. "I mean that I used to make aunt Miriam look over the accounts before I did."

Charlton walked up and down the room for a little while in sullen silence; and then brought up before Fleda.

"What are you doing?"

Fleda looked up,--a glance that as sweetly and brightly as possible half asked half bade him be silent and ask no questions.

"What are you doing?" he repeated.

"I am putting a patch on my shoe."

His look expressed more indignation than anything else.

"What do you mean?"

"Just what I say," said Fleda, going on with her work.

"What in the name of all the cobblers in the land do you do it for?"

"Because I prefer it to having a hole in my shoe; which would give me the additional trouble of mending my stockings."

Charlton muttered an impatient sentence, of which Fleda only understood that "the devil" was in it, and then desired to know if whole shoes would not answer the purpose as well as either holes or patches?

"Quite--if I had them," said Fleda, giving him another glance which, with all its gravity and sweetness, carried also a little gentle reproach.

"But do you know," said he after standing still a minute looking at her, "that any cobbler in the country would do what you are doing much better for sixpence?"

"I am quite aware of that," said Fleda, stitching away.

"Your hands are not strong enough for that work!"

Fleda again smiled at him, in the very dint of giving a hard push to her needle; a smile that would have witched him into good humour if he had not been determinately in a cloud and proof against everything. It only admonished him that he could not safely remain in the region of sunbeams; and he walked up and down the room furiously again. The sudden ceasing of his footsteps presently made her look up.

"What have you got there?--Oh, Charlton, don't!--please put that down!--I didn't know I had left them there.--They were a little wet and I laid them on the chair to dry."

"What do you call this?" said he, not minding her request.

"They are only my gardening gloves--I thought I had put them away."

"Gloves!" said he, pulling at them disdainfully,--"why here are two--one within the other--what's that for?"

"It's an old-fashioned way of mending matters,--two friends covering each other's deficiencies. The inner pair are too thin alone, and the outer ones have holes that are past cobbling."

"Are we going to have any breakfast to-day?" said he flinging the gloves down. "You are very late!"

"No," said Fleda quietly,--"it is not time for aunt Lucy to be down yet."

"Don't you have breakfast before nine o'clock?"

"Yes--by half-past eight generally."

"Strange way of getting along on a farm!--Well I can't wait--I promised Thorn I would meet him this morning--Barby!--I wish you would bring me my boots!--"

Fleda made two springs,--one to touch Charlton's mouth, the other to close the door of communication with the kitchen.

"Well!--what is the matter?--can't I have them?"

"Yes, yes, but ask me for what you want. You mustn't call upon Barby in that fashion."

"Why not? is she too good to be spoken to? What is she in the kitchen for?"

"She wouldn't be in the kitchen long if we were to speak to her in that way," said Fleda. "I suppose she would as soon put your boots on for you as fetch and carry them. I'll see about it."

"It seems to me Fleda rules the house," remarked Capt. Rossitur when she had left the room.

"Well who should rule it?" said Hugh.

"Not she!"

"I don't think she does," said Hugh; "but if she did, I am sure it could not be in better hands."

"It shouldn't be in her hands at all. But I have noticed since I have been here that she takes the arrangement of almost everything. My mother seems to have nothing to do in her own family."

"I wonder what the family or anybody in it would do without Fleda!" said Hugh, his gentle eyes quite firing with indignation. "You had better know more before you speak, Charlton."

"What is there for me to know?"

"Fleda does everything."

"So I say; and that is what I don't like."

"How little you know what you are talking about!" said Hugh. "I can tell you she is the life of the house, almost literally; we should have had little enough to live upon this summer if it had not been for her."

"What do you mean?"--impatiently enough.

"Fleda--if it had not been for her gardening and management. She has taken care of the garden these two years and sold I can't tell you how much from it. Mr. Sweet, the hotel-man at the Pool, takes all we can give him."

"How much does her 'taking care of the garden' amount to?"

"It amounts to all the planting and nearly all the other work, after the first digging,--by far the greater part of it."

Charlton walked up and down a few turns in most unsatisfied silence.

"How does she get the things to Montepoole?"

"I take them."

"You!--When?"

"I ride with them there before breakfast. Fleda is up very early to gather them."

"You have not been there this morning?"

"Yes."

"With what?"

"Peas and strawberries."

"And Fleda picked them?"

"Yes--with some help from Barby and me."

"That glove of hers was wringing wet."

"Yes, with the pea-vines, and strawberries too; you know they get so loaded with dew. O Fleda gets more than her gloves wet. But she does not mind anything she does for father and mother."

"Humph!--And does she get enough when all is done to pay for the trouble?"

"I don't know," said Hugh rather sadly. "She thinks so. It is no trifle."

"Which?--the pay or the trouble?"

"Both. But I meant the pay. Why she made ten dollars last year from the asparagus beds alone, and I don't know how much more this year."

"Ten dollars!--The devil!"

"Why?"

"Have you come to counting your dollars by the tens?"

"We have counted our sixpences so a good while," said Hugh quietly.

Charlton strode about the room again in much perturbation. Then came in Fleda, looking as bright as if dollars had been counted by the thousand, and bearing his boots.

"What on earth did you do that for?" said he angrily. "I could have gone for them myself."

"No harm done," said Fleda lightly,--"only I have got something else instead of the thanks I expected."

"I can't conceive," said he, sitting down and sulkily drawing on his foot-gear, "why this piece of punctiliousness should have made any more difficulty about bringing me my boots than about blacking them."

A sly glance of intelligence, which Charlton was quick enough to detect, passed between Fleda and Hugh. His eye carried its question from one to the other. Fleda's gravity gave way.

"Don't look at me so, Charlton," said she laughing;--"I can't help it, you are so excessively comical!--I recommend that you go out upon the grass-plat before the door and turn round two or three times."

"Will you have the goodness to explain yourself? Who did black these boots?"

"Never pry into the secrets of families," said Fleda. "Hugh and I have a couple of convenient little fairies in our service that do things unknownst."

"I blacked them, Charlton," said Hugh.

Capt. Rossitur gave his slippers a fling that carried them clean into the corner of the room.

"I will see," he said rising, "whether some other service cannot be had more satisfactory than that of fairies!"

"Now Charlton," said Fleda with a sudden change of manner, coming to him and laying her hand most gently on his arm,--"please don't speak about these things before uncle Rolf or your mother--Please do not!--Charlton!--It would only do a great deal of harm and do no good."

She looked up in his face, but he would not meet her pleading eye, and shook off her hand.

"I don't need to be instructed how to speak to my father and mother; and I am not one of the household that has submitted itself to your direction."

Fleda sat down on her bench and was quiet, but with a lip that trembled a little and eyes that let fall one or two witnesses against him. Charlton did not see them, and he knew better than to meet Hugh's look of reproach. But for all that there was a certain consciousness that hung about the neck of his purpose and kept it down in spite of him; and it was not till breakfast was half over that his ill-humour could make head against this gentle thwarting and cast it off. For so long the meal was excessively dull. Hugh and Fleda had their own thoughts; Charlton was biting his resolution into every slice of bread and butter that occupied him; and Mr. Rossitur's face looked like anything but encouraging an inquiry into his affairs. Since his son's arrival he had been most uncommonly gloomy; and Mrs. Rossitur's face was never in sunshine when his was in shade.

"You'll have a warm day of it at the mill, Hugh," said Fleda, by way of saying something to break the dismal monotony of knives and forks.

"Does that mill make much?" suddenly inquired Charlton.

"It has made a new bridge to the brook, literally," said Fleda gayly; "for it has sawn out the boards; and you know you mustn't speak evil of what carries you over the water."

"Does that mill pay for the working?" said Charlton, turning with the dryest disregard from her interference and addressing himself determinately to his father.

"What do you mean? It does not work gratuitously," answered Mr. Rossitur, with at least equal dryness.

"But, I mean, are the profits of it enough to pay for the loss of Hugh's time?"

"If Hugh judges they are not, he is at liberty to let it alone."

"My time is not lost," said Hugh; "I don't know what I should do with it."

"I don't know what we should do without the mill," said Mrs. Rossitur.

That gave Charlton an unlucky opening.

"Has the prospect of farming disappointed you, father?"

"What is the prospect of your company?" said Mr. Rossitur, swallowing half an egg before he replied.

"A very limited prospect!" said Charlton,--"if you mean the one that went with me. Not a fifth part of them left."

"What have you done with them?"

"Shewed them where the balls were flying, sir, and did my best to shew them the thickest of it."

"Is it necessary to shew it to us too?" said Fleda.

"I believe there are not twenty living that followed me into Mexico," he went on, as if he had not heard her.

"Was all that havoc made in one engagement?" said Mrs. Rossitur, whose cheek had turned pale.

"Yes, mother--in the course of a few minutes."

"I wonder what would pay for that loss!" said Fleda indignantly.

"Why, the point was gained! and it did not signify what the cost was so we did that. My poor boys were a small part of it."

"What point do you mean?"

"I mean the point we had in view, which was taking the place."

"And what was the advantage of gaining the place."

"Pshaw!--The advantage of doing one's duty."

"But what made it duty?" said Hugh.

"Orders."

"I grant you," said Fleda,--"I understand that--but bear with me, Charlton,--what was the advantage to the army or the country?"

"The advantage of great honour if we succeeded, and avoiding the shame of failure."

"Is that all?" said Hugh.

"All!" said Charlton.

"Glory must be a precious thing when other men's lives are so cheap to buy it," said Fleda.

"We did not risk theirs without our own," said Charlton colouring.

"No,--but still theirs were risked for you."

"Not at all;--why this is absurd! you are saying that the whole war was for nothing."

"What better than nothing was the end of it? We paid Mexico for the territory she yielded to us, didn't we, uncle Rolf?"

"Yes."

"How much?"

"Twenty millions, I believe."

"And what do you suppose the war has cost?"

"Hum--I don't know,--a hundred."

"A hundred million! besides--how much besides!--And don't you suppose, uncle Rolf, that for half of that sum Mexico would have sold us peaceably what she did in the end?"

"It is possible--I think it is very likely."

"What was the fruit of the war, Capt. Rossitur?"

"Why, a great deal of honour to the army and the nation at large."

"Honour again! But granting that the army gained it, which they certainly did, for one I do not feel very proud of the nation's share."

"Why they are one" said Charlton impatiently.

"In an unjust war"

"It was not an unjust war!"

"That's what you call a knock-downer," said Fleda laughing. "But I confess myself so simple as to have agreed with Seth Plumfield, when I heard him and Lucas disputing about it last winter, that it was a shame to a great and strong nation like ours to display its might in crushing a weak one."

"But they drew it upon themselves. They began hostilities."

"There is a diversity of opinion about that."

"Not in heads that have two grains of information."

"I beg your pardon. Mrs. Evelyn and Judge Sensible were talking over that very question the other day at Montepoole; and he made it quite clear to my mind that we were the aggressors."

"Judge Sensible is a fool!" said Mr. Rossitur.

"Very well!" said Fleda laughing;--"but as I do not wish to be comprehended in the same class, will you shew me how he was wrong, uncle?"

This drew on a discussion of some length, to which Fleda listened with profound attention, long after her aunt had ceased to listen at all, and Hugh was thoughtful, and Charlton disgusted. At the end of it Mr. Rossitur left the table and the room, and Fleda subsiding turned to her cold coffee-cup.

"I didn't know you ever cared anything about politics before," said Hugh.

"Didn't you?" said Fleda smiling, "You do me injustice."

Their eyes met for a second, with a most appreciating smile on his part; and then he too went off to his work. There was a few minutes' silent pause after that.

"Mother," said Charlton looking up and bursting forth, "what is all this about the mill and the farm?--Is not the farm doing well?"

"I am afraid not very well," said Mrs. Rossitur, gently.

"What is the difficulty?"

"Why, your father has let it to a man by the name of Didenhover, and I am afraid he is not faithful; it does not seem to bring us in what it ought."

"What did he do that for?"

"He was wearied with the annoyances he had to endure before, and thought it would be better and more profitable to have somebody else take the whole charge and management. He did not know Didenhover's character at the time."

"Engaged him without knowing him!"

Fleda was the only third party present, and Charlton unwittingly allowing himself to meet her eye received a look of keen displeasure that he was not prepared for.

"That is not like him," he said in a much moderated tone. "But you must be changed too, mother, or you would not endure such anomalous service in your kitchen."

"There are a great many changes, dear Charlton," said his mother, looking at him with such a face of sorrowful sweetness and patience that his mouth was stopped. Fleda left the room.

"And have you really nothing to depend upon but that child's strawberries and Hugh's wood-saw?" he said in the tone he ought to have used from the beginning.

"Little else."

Charlton stifled two or three sentences that rose to his lips, and began to walk up and down the room again. His mother sat musing by the tea-board still, softly clinking her spoon against the edge of her tea-cup.

"She has grown up very pretty," he remarked after a pause.

"Pretty!" said Mrs. Rossitur.

"Why?"

"No one that has seen much of Fleda would ever describe her by that name."

Charlton had the candour to think he had seen something of her that morning.

"Poor child!" said Mrs. Rossitur sadly,--"I can't bear to think of her spending her life as she is doing--wearing herself out, I know, sometimes--and buried alive."

"Buried!" said Charlton in his turn.

"Yes--without any of the advantages and opportunities she ought to have. I can't bear to think of it. And yet how should I ever live without her!"--said Mrs. Rossitur, leaning her face upon her hands. "And if she were known she would not be mine long. But it grieves me to have her go without her music that she is so fond of, and the books she wants--she and Hugh have gone from end to end of every volume there is in the house, I believe, in every language, except Greek."

"Well, she looks pretty happy and contented, mother."

"I don't know!" said Mrs. Rossitur shaking her head.

"Isn't she happy?"

"I don't know," said Mrs. Rossitur again;--"she has a spirit that is happy in doing her duty, or anything for those she loves; but I see her sometimes wearing a look that pains me exceedingly. I am afraid the way she lives and the changes in our affairs have worn upon her more than we know of--she feels doubly everything that touches me, or Hugh, or your father. She is a gentle spirit!--"

"She seems to me not to want character," said Charlton.

"Character! I don't know who has so much. She has at least fifty times as much character as I have. And energy. She is admirable at managing people--she knows how to influence them somehow so that everybody does what she wants."

"And who influences her?" said Charlton.

"Who influences her? Everybody that she loves. Who has the most influence over her, do you mean?--I am sure I don't know--Hugh, if anybody,--but she is rather the moving spirit of the household."

Capt. Rossitur resolved that he would be an exception to her rule.

He forgot, however, for some reason or other, to sound his father any more on the subject of mismanagement. His thoughts indeed were more pleasantly taken up.

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Chapter XXIV

My lord Sebastian, The truth you speak doth lack some gentleness And time to speak it in: you rub the sore. When you should bring the plaster.

Tempest.

The Evelyns spent several weeks at the Pool; and both mother and daughters conceiving a great affection for Fleda kept her in their company as much as possible For those weeks Fleda had enough of gayety. She was constantly spending the day with them at the Pool, or going on some party of pleasure, or taking quiet sensible walks and rides with them along or with only one or two more of the most rational and agreeable people that the place could command. And even Mrs. Rossitur was persuaded, more times than one, to put herself in her plainest remaining French silk and entertain the whole party, with the addition of one or two of Charlton's friends, at her Queechy farm-house.

Fleda enjoyed it all with the quick spring of a mind habitually bent to the patient fulfilment of duty and habitually under the pressure of rather sobering thoughts. It was a needed and very useful refreshment. Charlton's being at home gave her the full good of the opportunity more than would else have been possible. He was her constant attendant, driving her to and from the Pool, and finding as much to call him there as she had; for besides the Evelyns his friend Thorn abode there all this time. The only drawback to Fleda's pleasure as she drove off from Queechy would be the leaving Hugh plodding away at his saw-mill. She used to nod and wave to him as they went by, and almost feel that she ought not to go on and enjoy herself while he was tending that wearisome machinery all day long. Still she went on and enjoyed herself; but the mere thought of his patient smile as she passed would have kept her from too much elation of spirits, if there had been any danger. There never was any.

"That's a lovely little cousin of yours," said Thorn one evening, when he and Rossitur, on horseback, were leisurely making their way along the up and down road between Montepoole and Queechy.

"She is not particularly little," said Rossitur with a dryness that somehow lacked any savour of gratification.

"She is of a most fair stature," said Thorn;--"I did not mean anything against that,--but there are characters to which one gives instinctively a softening appellative."

"Are there?" said Charlton.

"Yes. She is a lovely little creature."

"She is not to compare to one of those girls we have left behind us at Montepoole," said Charlton.

"Hum--well perhaps you are right; but which girl do you mean?--for I profess I don't know."

"The second of Mrs. Evelyn's daughters--the auburn-haired one."

"Miss Constance, eh?" said Thorn. "In what isn't the other one to be compared to her?"

"In anything! Nobody would ever think of looking at her in the same room?"

"Why not?" said Thorn coolly.

"I don't know why not," said Charlton, "except that she has not a tithe of her beauty. That's a superb girl!"

For a matter of twenty yards Mr. Thorn went softly humming a tune to himself and leisurely switching the flies off his horse.

"Well,"--said he,--"there's no accounting for tastes--

'I ask no red and white To make up my delight, No odd becoming graces, Black eyes, or little know-not-what in faces.'"

"What do you want then?" said Charlton, half laughing at him, though his friend was perfectly grave.

"A cool eye, and a mind in it."

"A cool eye!" said Rossitur.

"Yes. Those we have left behind us are arrant will-o'the-wisps--dancing fires--no more."

"I can tell you there is fire sometimes in the other eyes," said Charlton.

"Very likely," said his friend composedly,--"I could have guessed as much; but that is a fire you may warm yourself at; no eternal phosphorescence;--it is the leaping up of an internal fire, that only shews itself upon occasion."

"I suppose you know what you are talking about," said Charlton, "but I can't follow you into the region of volcanos. Constance Evelyn has superb eyes. It is uncommon to see a light blue so brilliant."

"I would rather trust a sick head to the handling of the lovely lady than the superb one, at a venture."

"I thought you never had a sick head," said Charlton.

"That is lucky for me, as the hands do not happen to be at my service. But no imagination could put Miss Constance in Desdemona's place, when Othello complained of his headache,--you remember, Charlton,--

''Faith, that's with watching--'twill away again-- Let me but bind this handkerchief about it hard.'"

Thorn gave the intonation truly and admirably.

"Fleda never said anything so soft as that," said Charlton.

"No?"

"No."

"You speak--well, but soft!--do you know what you are talking about there?"

"Not very well," said Charlton. "I only remember there was nothing soft about Othello,--what you quoted of his wife just now seemed to me to smack of that quality."

"I forgive your memory," said Thorn, "or else I certainly would not forgive you. If there is a fair creation in all Shakespeare it is Desdemona, and if there is a pretty combination on earth that nearly matches it, I believe it is that one."

"What one?"

"Your pretty cousin."

Charlton was silent.

"It is generous in me to undertake her defence," Thorn went on, "for she bestows as little of her fair countenance upon me as she can well help. But try as she will, she cannot be so repellant as she is attractive."

Charlton pushed his horse into a brisker pace not favourable to conversation; and they rode forward in silence, till in descending the hill below Deepwater they came within view of Hugh's workplace, the saw mill. Charlton suddenly drew bridle.

"There she is."

"And who is with her?" said Thorn. "As I live!--our friend--what's his name?--who has lost all his ancestors.--And who is the other?"

"My brother," said Charlton.

"I don't mean your brother, Capt. Rossitur," said Thorn throwing himself off his horse.

He joined the party, who were just leaving the mill to go down towards the house. Very much at his leisure Charlton dismounted and came after him.

"I have brought Charlton safe home, Miss Ringgan," said Thorn, who leading his horse had quietly secured a position at her side.

"What's the matter?" said Fleda laughing. "Couldn't he bring himself home?"

"I don't know what's the matter, but he's been uncommonly dumpish--we've been as near as possible to quarrelling for half a dozen miles back."

"We have been--a--more agreeably employed," said Dr. Quackenboss looking round at him with a face that was a concentration of affability.

"I make no doubt of it, sir; I trust we shall bring no unharmonious interruption.--If I may change somebody else's words," he added more low to Fleda,--"disdain itself must convert to courtesy in your presence."

"I am sorry disdain should live to pay me a compliment," said Fleda. "Mr. Thorn, may I introduce to you Mr. Olmney?"

Mr. Thorn honoured the introduction with perfect civility, but then fell back to his former position and slightly lowered tone.

"Are you then a sworn foe to compliments?"

"I was never so fiercely attacked by them as to give me any occasion."

"I should be very sorry to furnish the occasion,--but what's the harm in them, Miss Ringgan?"

"Chiefly a want of agreeableness."

"Of agreeableness!--Pardon me--I hope you will be so good as to give me the rationale of that?"

"I am of Miss Edgeworth's opinion, sir," said Fleda blushing, "that a lady may always judge of the estimation in which she is held by the conversation which is addressed to her."

"And you judge compliments to be a doubtful indication of esteem?"

"I am sure you do not need information on that point, sir."

"As to your opinion, or the matter of fact?" said he somewhat keenly.

"As to the matter of fact," said Fleda, with a glance both simple and acute in its expression.

"I will not venture to say a word," said Thorn smiling. "Protestations would certainly fall flat at the gates where les douces paroles cannot enter. But do you know this is picking a man's pocket of all his silver pennies and obliging him to produce his gold."

"That would be a hard measure upon a good many people," said Fleda laughing. "But they're not driven to that. There's plenty of small change left."

"You certainly do not deal in the coin you condemn," said Thorn bowing. "But you will remember that none call for gold but those who can exchange it, and the number of them is few. In a world where cowrie passes current a man may be excused for not throwing about his guineas."

"I wish you'd throw about a few for our entertainment," said Charlton, who was close behind. "I haven't seen a yellow-boy in a good while."

"A proof that your eyes are not jaundiced," said his friend without turning his head, "whatever may be the case with you otherwise. Is he out of humour with the country life you like so well, Miss Ringgan, or has he left his domestic tastes in Mexico? How do you think he likes Queechy?"

"You might as well ask myself," said Charlton.

"How do you think he likes Queechy, Miss Ringgan?"

"I am afraid something after the fashion of Touchstone," said Fleda laughing;--"he thinks that 'in respect of itself it is a good life; but in respect that it is a shepherd's life it is naught. In respect that it is solitary, he likes it very well; but in respect that it is private, it is a very vile life. Now in respect it is in the fields, it pleaseth him well; but in respect it is not in the court, it is tedious.'"

"There's a guinea for you, Capt. Rossitur," said his friend. "Do you know out of what mint?"

"It doesn't bear the head of Socrates," said Charlton.

"'Hast no philosophy in thee,' Charlton?" said Fleda laughing back at him.

"Has not Queechy--a--the honour of your approbation, Capt. Rossitur?" said the doctor.

"Certainly sir--I have no doubt of its being a very fine country."

"Only he has imbibed some doubts whether happiness be an indigenous crop," said Thorn.

"Undoubtedly," said the doctor blandly,--"to one who has roamed over the plains of Mexico, Queechy must seem rather--a--rather flat place."

"If he could lose sight of the hills," said Thorn.

"Undoubtedly, sir, undoubtedly," said the doctor; "they are a marked feature in the landscape, and do much to relieve--a--the charge of sameness."

"Luckily," said Mr. Olmney smiling, "happiness is not a thing of circumstance; it depends on a man's self."

"I used to think so," said Thorn;--"that is what I have always subscribed to; but I am afraid I could not live in this region and find it so long."

"What an evening!" said Fleda. "Queechy is doing its best to deserve our regards under this light. Mr. Olmney, did you ever notice the beautiful curve of the hills in that hollow where the sun sets?"

"I do notice it now" he said.

"It is exquisite!" said the doctor. "Capt. Rossitur, do you observe, sir?--in that hollow where the sun sets?--"

Capt. Rossitur's eye made a very speedy transition from the hills to Fleda, who had fallen back a little to take Hugh's arm and placing herself between him and Mr. Olmney was giving her attention undividedly to the latter. And to him she talked perseveringly, of the mountains, the country, and the people, till they reached the courtyard gate. Mr. Olmney then passed on. So did the doctor, though invited to tarry, averring that the sun had gone down behind the firmament and he had something to attend to at home.

"You will come in, Thorn," said Charlton.

"Why--I had intended returning,--but the sun has gone down indeed, and as our friend says there is no chance of our seeing him again I may as well go in and take what comfort is to be had in the circumstances. Gentle Euphrosyne, doth it not become the Graces to laugh?"

"They always ask leave, sir," said Fleda hesitating.

"A most Grace-ful answer, though it does not smile upon me," said Thorn.

"I am sorry, sir," said Fleda, smiling now, "that you have so many silver pennies to dispose of we shall never get at the gold."

"I will do my very best," said he.

So he did, and made himself agreeable that evening to every one of the circle; though Fleda's sole reason for liking to see him come in had been that she was glad of everything that served to keep Charlton's attention from home subjects. She saw sometimes the threatening of a cloud that troubled her.

But the Evelyns and Thorn and everybody else whom they knew left the Pool at last, before Charlton, who was sufficiently well again, had near run out his furlough; and then the cloud which had only shewed itself by turns during all those weeks gathered and settled determinately upon his brow.

He had long ago supplied the want of a newspaper. One evening in September the family were sitting in the room where they had had tea, for the benefit of the fire, when Barby pushed open the kitchen door and came in.

"Fleda will you let me have one of the last papers? I've a notion to look at it."

Fleda rose and went to rummaging in the cupboards.

"You can have it again in a little while," said Barby considerately.

The paper was found and Miss Elster went out with it.

"What an unendurable piece of ill-manners that woman is!" said Charlton.

"She has no idea of being ill-mannered, I assure you," said Fleda.

His voice was like a brewing storm--hers was so clear and soft that it made a lull in spite of him. But he began again.

"There is no necessity for submitting to impertinence. I never would do it."

"I have no doubt you never will," said his father. "Unless you can't help yourself."

"Is there any good reason, sir, why you should not have proper servants in the house?"

"A very good reason," said Mr. Rossitur. "Fleda would be in despair."

"Is there none beside that?" said Charlton dryly.

"None--except a trifling one," Mr. Rossitur answered in the same tone.

"We cannot afford it, dear Charlton," said his mother softly.

There was a silence, during which Fleda moralized on the ways people take to make themselves uncomfortable.

"Does that man--to whom you let the farm--does he do his duty?"

"I am not the keeper of his conscience."

"I am afraid it would be a small charge to any one," said Fleda.

"But are you the keeper of the gains you ought to have from him? does he deal fairly by you?"

"May I ask first what interest it is of yours?"

"It is my interest, sir, because I come home and find the family living upon the exertions of Hugh and Fleda and find them growing thin and pale under it."

"You, at least, are free from all pains of the kind, Capt. Rossitur."

"Don't listen to him, uncle Rolf!" said Fleda going round to her uncle, and making as she passed a most warning impression upon Charlton's arm,--"don't mind what he says--that young gentleman has been among the Mexican ladies till he has lost an eye for a really proper complexion. Look at me!--do I look pale and thin?--I was paid a most brilliant compliment the other day upon my roses--Uncle, don't listen to him!--he hasn't been in a decent humour since the Evelyns went away."

She knelt down before him and laid her hands upon his and looked up in his face to bring all her plea; the plea of most winning sweetness of entreaty in features yet flushed and trembling. His own did not unbend as he gazed at her, but he gave her a silent answer in a pressure of the hands that went straight from his heart to hers. Fleda's eye turned to Charlton appealingly.

"Is it necessary," he repeated, "that that child and this boy should spend their days in labour to keep the family alive?"

"If it were," replied Mr. Rossitur, "I am very willing that their exertions should cease. For my own part I would quite as lief be out of the world as in it."

"Charlton!--how can you!--" said Fleda, half beside herself,--you should know of what you speak or be silent!--Uncle, don't mind him! he is talking wildly--my work does me good."

"You do not understand yourself," said Charlton obstinately;--"it is more than you ought to do, and I know my mother thinks so too."

"Well!" said Mr. Rossitur,--"it seems there is an agreement in my own family to bring me to the bar--get up, Fleda,--let us hear all the charges to be brought against me, at once, and then pass sentence. What have your mother and you agreed upon, Charlton?--go on!"

Mrs. Rossitur, now beyond speech, left the room, weeping even aloud. Hugh followed her. Fleda wrestled with her agitation for a minute or two, and then got up and put both arms round her uncle's neck.

"Don't talk so, dear uncle Rolf!--you make us very unhappy--aunt Lucy did not mean any such thing--it is only Charlton's nonsense. Do go and tell her you don't think so,--you have broken her heart by what you said;--do go, uncle Rolf!--do go and make her happy again! Forget it all!--Charlton did not know what he was saying--won't you go, dear uncle Rolf?--"

The words were spoken between bursts of tears that utterly overcame her, though they did not hinder the utmost caressingness of manner. It seemed at first spent upon a rock. Mr. Rossitur stood like a man that did not care what happened or what became of him; dumb and unrelenting; suffering her sweet words and imploring tears, with no attempt to answer the one or stay the other. But he could not hold out against her beseeching. He was no match for it. He returned at last heartily the pressure of her arms, and unable to give her any other answer kissed her two or three times, such kisses as are charged with the heart's whole message; and disengaging himself left the room.

For a minute after he was gone Fleda cried excessively; and Charlton, now alone with her, felt as if he had not a particle of self-respect left to stand upon. One such agony would do her more harm than whole weeks of labour and weariness. He was too vexed and ashamed of himself to be able to utter a word, but when she recovered a little and was leaving the room he stood still by the door in an attitude that seemed to ask her to speak a word to him.

"I am sure, Charlton," she said gently, "you will be sorry to-morrow for what you have done."

"I am sorry now," he said. But she passed out without saying anything more.

Capt. Rossitur passed the night in unmitigated vexation with himself. But his repentance could not have been very genuine, since his most painful thought was, what Fleda must think of him.

He was somewhat reassured at breakfast to find no traces of the evening's storm; indeed the moral atmosphere seemed rather clearer and purer than common. His own face was the only one which had an unusual shade upon it. There was no difference in anybody's manner towards himself; and there was even a particularly gentle and kind pleasantness about Fleda, intended, he knew, to soothe and put to rest any movings of self-reproach he might feel. It somehow missed of its aim and made him feel worse; and after on his part a very silent meal he quitted the house and took himself and his discontent to the woods.

Whatever effect they had upon him, it was the middle of the morning before he came back again. He found Fleda alone in the breakfast-room, sewing; and for the first time noticed the look his mother had spoken of; a look not of sadness, but rather of settled patient gravity; the more painful to see because it could only have been wrought by long-acting causes, and might be as slow to do away as it must have been to bring. Charlton's displeasure with the existing state of things had revived as his remorse died away, and that quiet face did not have a quieting effect upon him.

"What on earth is going on!" he began rather abruptly as soon as he entered the room. "What horrible cookery is on foot?"

"I venture to recommend that you do not inquire," said Fleda. "It was set on foot in the kitchen and it has walked in here. If you open the window it will walk out."

"But you will be cold?"

"Never mind--in that case I will walk out too, into the kitchen."

"Into the thick of it!--No--I will try some other way of relief. This is unendurable!"

Fleda looked, but made no other remonstrance, and not heeding the look Mr. Charlton walked out into the kitchen, shutting the door behind him.

"Barby," said he, "you have got something cooking here that is very disagreeable in the other room."

"Is it?" said Barby. "I reckoned it would all fly up chimney I guess the draught ain't so strong as I thought it was."

"But I tell you it fills the house!"

"Well, it'll have to a spell yet," said Barby, "'cause if it didn't, you see, Capt. Rossitur, there'd be nothing to fill Fleda's chickens with."

"Chickens!--where's all the corn in the land?"

"It's some place besides in our barn," said Barby. "All last year's is out, and Mr. Didenhover ha'n't fetched any of this year's home; so I made a bargain with 'em they shouldn't starve as long as they'd eat boiled pursley."

"What do you give them?"

"'Most everything--they ain't particler now-a days--chunks o' cabbage, and scarcity, and pun'kin and that--all the sass that ain't wanted."

"And do they eat that?"

"Eat it!" said Barby. "They don't know how to thank me for't!"

"But it ought to be done out of doors," said Charlton, coming back from a kind of maze in which he had been listening to her. "It is unendurable!"

"Then I guess you'll have to go some place where you won't know it," said Barby;--"that's the most likely plan I can hit upon; for it'll have to stay on till it's ready."

Charlton went back into the other room really down-hearted, and stood watching the play of Fleda's fingers.

"Is it come to this!" he said at length. "Is it possible that you are obliged to go without such a trifle as the miserable supply of food your fowls want!"

"That's a small matter!" said Fleda, speaking lightly though she smothered a sigh. "We have been obliged to do without more than that."

"What is the reason?"

"Why this man Didenhover is a rogue I suspect, and he manages to spirit away all the profits that should come to uncle Rolf's hands--I don't know how. We have lived almost entirely upon the mill for some time."

"And has my father been doing nothing all this while?"

"Nothing on the farm."

"And what of anything else?"

"I don't know," said Fleda, speaking with evident unwillingness. "But surely, Charlton, he knows his own business best. It is not our affair."

"He is mad!" said Charlton, violently striding up and down the floor.

"No," said Fleda with equal gentleness and sadness--"he is only unhappy;--I understand it all--he has had no spirit to take hold of anything ever since we came here."

"Spirit!" said Charlton;--"he ought to have worked off his fingers to their joints before he let you do as you have been doing!"

"Don't say so!" said Fleda, looking even pale in her eagerness--"don't think so, Charlton! it isn't right. We cannot tell what he may have had to trouble him--I know he has suffered and does suffer a great deal.--Do not speak again about anything as you did last night!--Oh," said Fleda, now shedding bitter tears,--"this is the worst of growing poor! the difficulty of keeping up the old kindness and sympathy and care for each other!--"

"I am sure it does not work so upon you," said Charlton in an altered voice.

"Promise me, dear Charlton," said Fleda looking up after a moment and drying her eyes again, "promise me you will not say any more about these things! I am sure it pains uncle Rolf more than you think. Say you will not,--for your mother's sake!"

"I will not, Fleda--for your sake. I would not give you any more trouble to bear. Promise me; that you will be more careful of yourself in future."

"O there is no danger about me," said Fleda with a faint smile and taking up her work again.

"Who are you making shirts for?" said Charlton after a pause.

"Hugh."

"You do everything for Hugh, don't you?"

"Little enough. Not half so much as he does for me."

"Is he up at the mill to-day?"

"He is always there," said Fleda sighing.

There was another silence.

"Charlton," said Fleda looking up with a face of the loveliest insinuation.--"isn't there something you might do to help us a little?"

"I will help you garden, Fleda, with pleasure."

"I would rather you should help somebody else," said she, still looking at him.

"What, Hugh?--You would have me go and work at the mill for him, I suppose!"

"Don't be angry with me, Charlton, for suggesting it," said Fleda looking down again.

"Angry!"--said he. "But is that what you would have me do?"

"Not unless you like,--I didn't know but you might take his place once in a while for a little, to give him a rest,--"

"And suppose some of the people from Montepoole that know me should come by? What are you thinking of?" said he in a tone that certainly justified Fleda's deprecation.

"Well!"--said Fleda in a kind of choked voice,--"there is a strange rule of honour in vogue in the world!"

"Why should I help Hugh rather than anybody else?"

"He is killing himself!--" said Fleda, letting her work fall and hardly speaking the words through thick tears. Her head was down and they came fast. Charlton stood abashed for a minute.

"You sha'n't do so, Fleda," said he gently, endeavouring to raise her,--"you have tired yourself with this miserable work!--Come to the window--you have got low-spirited, but I am sure without reason about Hugh,--but you shall set me about what you will--You are right, I dare say, and I am wrong; but don't make me think myself a brute, and I will do anything you please."

He had raised her up and made her lean upon him. Fleda wiped her eyes and tried to smile.

"I will do anything that will please you, Fleda."

"It is not to please me,--" she answered meekly.

"I would not have spoken a word last night if I had known it would have grieved you so."

"I am sorry you should have none but so poor a reason for doing right," said Fleda gently.

"Upon my word, I think you are about as good reason as anybody need have," said Charlton.

She put her hand upon his arm and looked up,--such a look of pure rebuke as carried to his mind the full force of the words she did not speak,--'Who art thou that carest for a worm which shall die, and forgettest the Lord thy Maker!'--Charlton's eyes fell. Fleda turned gently away and began to mend the fire. He stood watching her for a little.

"What do you think of me, Fleda?" he said at length.

"A little wrong-headed," answered Fleda, giving him a glance and a smile. "I don't think you are very bad."

"If you will go with me, Fleda, you shall make what you please of me!"

He spoke half in jest, half in earnest, and did not himself know at the moment which way he wished Fleda to take it. But she had no notion of any depth in his words.

"A hopeless task!" she answered lightly, shaking her head, as she got down on her knees to blow the fire;--"I am afraid it is too much for me. I have been trying to mend you ever since you came, and I cannot see the slightest change for the better!"

"Where is the bellows?" said Charlton in another tone.

"It has expired--its last breath," said Fleda. "In other words, it has lost its nose."

"Well, look here," said he laughing and pulling her away,--"you will stand a fair chance of losing your face if you put it in the fire. You sha'n't do it. Come and shew me where to find the scattered parts of that old wind instrument and I will see if it cannot be persuaded to play again."

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Chapter XXV

I dinna ken what I should want If I could get but a man.

Scotch Ballad.

Capt. Rossitur did no work at the saw-mill. But Fleda's words had not fallen to the ground. He began to shew care for his fellow-creatures in getting the bellows mended; his next step was to look to his gun; and from that time so long as he staid the table was plentifully supplied with all kinds of game the season and the country could furnish. Wild ducks and partridges banished pork and bacon even from memory; and Fleda joyfully declared she would not see another omelette again till she was in distress.

While Charlton was still at home came a very urgent invitation from Mrs. Evelyn that Fleda should pay them a long visit in New York, bidding her care for no want of preparation but come and make it there. Fleda demurred, however, on that very score. But before her answer was written, another missive came from Dr. Gregory, not asking so much as demanding her presence, and enclosing a fifty-dollar bill, for which he said he would hold her responsible till she had paid him with,--not her own hands,--but her own lips. There was no withstanding the manner of this entreaty. Fleda packed up some of Mrs. Rossitur's laid-by silks, to be refreshed with an air of fashion, and set off with Charlton at the end of his furlough.

To her simple spirit of enjoyment the weeks ran fast; and all manner of novelties and kindnesses helped them on. It was a time of cloudless pleasure. But those she had left thought it long. She wrote them how delightfully she kept house for the old doctor, whose wife had long been dead, and how joyously she and the Evelyns made time fly. And every pleasure she felt awoke almost as strong a throb in the hearts at home. But they missed her, as Barby said, "dreadfully;" and she was most dearly welcomed when she came back. It was just before New Year.

For half an hour there was most gladsome use of eyes and tongues. Fleda had a great deal to tell them.

"How well--how well you are looking, dear Fleda!" said her aunt for the third or fourth time.

"That's more than lean say for you and Hugh, aunt Lucy. What have you been doing to yourself?"

"Nothing new," they said, as her eye went from one to the other.

"I guess you have wanted me!" said Fleda, shaking her head as she kissed them both again.

"I guess we have," said Hugh, "but don't fancy we have grown thin upon the want."

"But where's uncle Rolf? you didn't tell me."

"He is gone to look after those lands in Michigan."

"In Michigan!--When did he go?"

"Very soon after you."

"And you didn't let me know!--O why didn't you? How lonely you must have been."

"Let you know indeed!" said Mrs. Rossitur, wrapping her in her arms again;--"Hugh and I counted every week that you staid with more and pleasure each one."

"I understand!" said Fleda laughing under her aunt's kisses. "Well I am glad I am at home again to take care of you. I see you can't get along without me!"

"People have been very kind, Fleda," said Hugh.

"Have they?"

"Yes--thinking we were desolate I suppose. There has been no end to aunt Miriam's goodness and pleasantness."

"O aunt Miriam, always!" said Fleda. "And Seth."

"Catherine Douglass has been up twice to ask if her mother could do anything for us; and Mrs. Douglass sent us once a rabbit and once a quantity of wild pigeons that Earl had shot. Mother and I lived upon pigeons for I don't know how long. Barby wouldn't eat 'em--she said she liked pork better; but I believe she did it on purpose."

"Like enough," said Fleda, smiling, from her aunt's arms where she still lay.

"And Seth has sent you plenty of your favourite hickory nuts, very fine ones; and I gathered butternuts enough for you near home."

"Everything is for me," said Fleda. "Well, the first thing I do shall be to make some butternut candy for you. You won't despise that, Mr. Hugh?"--

Hugh smiled at her, and went on.

"And your friend Mr. Olmney has sent us a corn-basket full of the superbest apples you ever saw. He has one tree of the finest in Queechy, he says."

"My friend!" said Fleda, colouring a little.

"Well I don't know whose he is if he isn't yours," said Hugh. "And even the Finns sent us some fish that their brother had caught, because, they said, they had more than they wanted. And Dr. Quackenboss sent us a goose and a turkey. We didn't like to keep them, but we were afraid if we sent them back it would not be understood."

"Send them back!" said Fleda. "That would never do! All Queechy would have rung with it."

"Well, we didn't," said Hugh. "But so we sent one of them to Barby's old mother for Christmas."

"Poor Dr. Quackenboss!" said Fleda. "That man has as near as possible killed me two or three times. As for the others, they are certainly the oddest of all the finny tribes. I must go out and see Barby for a minute."

It was a good many minutes, however, before she could get free to do any such thing.

"You ha'n't lost no flesh," said Barby shaking hands with her anew. "What did they think of Queechy keep, down in York?"

"I don't know--I didn't ask them," said Fleda. "How goes the world with you, Barby?"

"I'm mighty glad you are come home, Fleda," said Barby lowering her voice.

"Why?" said Fleda in a like tone.

"I guess I ain't all that's glad of it," Miss Elster went on, with a glance of her bright eye.

"I guess not," said Fleda reddening a little;--"but what is the matter?"

"There's two of our friends ha'n't made us but one visit a piece since--oh, ever since some time in October!"

"Well never mind the people," said Fleda. "Tell me what you were going to say."

"And Mr. Olmney," said Barby not minding her, "he's took and sent us a great basket chock full of apples. Now wa'n't that smart of him, when he knowed there wa'n't no one here that cared about 'em?"

"They are a particularly fine kind," said Fleda.

"Did you hear about the goose and turkey?"

"Yes," said Fleda laughing.

"The doctor thinks he has done the thing just about right this time, I s'pect. He had ought to take out a patent right for his invention. He'd feel spry if he knowed who eat one on 'em."

"Never mind the doctor, Barby. Was this what you wanted to see me for?"

"No," said Barby changing her tone. "I'd give something it was. I've been all but at my wit's end; for you know Mis' Rossitur ain't no hand about anything--I couldn't say a word to her--and ever since he went away we have been just winding ourselves up. I thought I should clear out, when Mis' Rossitur said maybe you wa'n't a coming till next week."

"But what is it Barby? what is wrong?"

"There ha'n't been anything right, to my notions, for a long spell," said Barby, wringing out her dishcloth hard and flinging it down to give herself uninterruptedly to talk;--"but now you see, Didenhover nor none of the men never comes near the house to do a chore; and there ain't wood to last three days; and Hugh ain't fit to cut it if it was piled up in the yard; and there ain't the first stick of it out of the woods yet."

Fleda sat down and looked very thoughtfully into the fire.

"He had ought to ha' seen to it afore he went away, but he ha'n't done it, and there it is."

"Why who takes care of the cows?" said Fleda.

"O never mind the cows," said Barby;--"they ain't suffering; I wish we was as well off as they be;--but I guess when he went away he made a hole in our pockets for to mend his'n. I don't say he hadn't ought to ha' done it, but we've been pretty short ever sen, Fleda--we're in the last bushel of flour, and there ain't but a handful of corn meal, and mighty little sugar, white or brown.--I did say something to Mis' Rossitur, but all the good it did was to spile her appetite, I s'pose; and if there's grain in the floor there ain't nobody to carry it to mill,--nor to thresh it,--nor a team to draw it, fur's I know."

"Hugh cannot cut wood!" said Fleda;--"nor drive to mill either, in this weather."

"I could go to mill," said Barby, "now you're to hum, but that's only the beginning; and it's no use to try to do everything--flesh and blood must stop somewhere.--"

"No indeed!" said Fleda. "We must have somebody immediately."

"That's what I had fixed upon," said Barby. "If you could get hold o' some young feller that wa'n't sot up with an idee that he was a grown man and too big to be told, I'd just clap to and fix that little room up stairs for him and give him his victuals here, and we'd have some good of him; instead o' having him streakin' off just at the minute when he'd ought to be along."

"Who is there we could get, Barby?"

"I don't know," said Barby; "but they say there is never a nick that there ain't a jog some place; so I guess it can be made out. I asked Mis' Plumfield, but she didn't know anybody that was out of work; nor Seth Plumfield. I'll tell you who does,--that is, if there is anybody,--Mis' Douglass. She keeps hold of one end of 'most everybody's affairs, I tell her. Anyhow she's a good hand to go to."

"I'll go there at once," said Fleda. "Do you know anything about making maple sugar, Barby?"

"That's the very thing!" exclaimed Barby ecstatically. "There's lots o' sugar maples on the farm and it's murder to let them go to loss; and they ha'n't done us a speck o' good ever since I come here. And in your grandfather's time they used to make barrels and barrels. You and me and Hugh, and somebody else we'll have, we could clap to and make as much sugar and molasses in a week as would last us till spring come round again. There's no sense into it! All we'd want would be to borrow a team some place. I had all that in my head long ago. If we could see the last of that man Didenhover oncet, I'd take hold of the plough myself and see if I couldn't make a living out of it! I don't believe the world would go now, Fleda, if it wa'n't for women. I never see three men yet that didn't try me more than they were worth."

"Patience, Barby!" said Fleda smiling. "Let us take things quietly."

"Well I declare I'm beat, to see how you take 'em," said Barby, looking at her lovingly.

"Don't you know why, Barby?"

"I s'pose I do," said Barby her face softening still more,--"or I can guess."

"Because I know that all these troublesome things will be managed in the best way and by my best friend, and I know that he will let none of them hurt me. I am sure of it--isn't that enough to keep me quiet?"

Fleda's eyes were filling and Barby looked away from them.

"Well it beats me," she said taking up her dishcloth again, "why you should have anything to trouble you. I can understand wicked folks being plagued, but I can't see the sense of the good ones."

"Troubles are to make good people better, Barby."

"Well," said Barby with a very odd mixture of real feeling and seeming want of it,--"it's a wonder I never got religion, for I will say that all the decent people I ever see were of that kind!--Mis' Rossitur ain't though, is she?"

"No," said Fleda, a pang crossing her at the thought that all her aunt's loveliness must tell directly and heavily in this case to lighten religion's testimony. It was that thought and no other which saddened her brow as she went back into the other room.

"Troubles already!" said Mrs. Rossitur. "You will be sorry you have come back to them, dear."

"No indeed!" said Fleda brightly; "I am very glad I have come home. We will try and manage the troubles, aunt Lucy."

There was no doing anything that day, but the very next afternoon Fleda and Hugh walked down through the snow to Mrs. Douglass's. It was a long walk and a cold one and the snow was heavy; but the pleasure of being together made up for it all. It was a bright walk, too, in spite of everything.

In a most thrifty-looking well-painted farm-house lived Mrs. Douglass.

"Why 'tain't you, is it?" she said when she opened the door,--"Catharine said it was, and I said I guessed it wa'n't, for I reckoned you had made up your mind not to come and see me at all.--How do you do?"

The last sentence in the tone of hearty and earnest hospitality. Fleda made her excuses.

"Ay, ay,--I can understand all that just as well as if you said it. I know how much it means too. Take off your hat."

Fleda said she could not stay, and explained her business.

"So you ha'n't come to see me after all. Well now take off your hat, 'cause I won't have anything to say to you till you do. I'll give you supper right away."

"But I have left my aunt alone, Mrs. Douglass;--and the afternoons are so short now it would be dark before we could get home."

"Serve her right for not coming along! and you sha'n't walk home in the dark, for Earl will harness the team and carry you home like a streak--the horses have nothing to do--Come, you sha'n't go."

And as Mrs. Douglass laid violent hands on her bonnet Fleda thought best to submit. She was presently rewarded with the promise of the very person she wanted--a boy, or young man, then in Earl Douglass's employ; but his wife said "she guessed he'd give him up to her;" and what his wife said, Fleda knew, Earl Douglass was in the habit of making good.

"There ain't enough to do to keep him busy," said Mrs. Douglass. "I told Earl he made me more work than he saved; but he's hung on till now."

"What sort of a boy is he, Mrs. Douglass?"

"He ain't a steel trap. I tell you beforehand," said the lady, with one of her sharp intelligent glances,--"he don't know which way to go till you shew him; but he's a clever enough kind of a chap--he don't mean no harm. I guess he'll do for what you want."

"Is he to be trusted?"

"Trust him with anything but a knife and fork," said she, with another look and shake of the head. "He has no idea but what everything on the supper-table is meant to be eaten straight off. I would keep two such men as my husband as soon as I would Philetus."

"Philetus!" said Fleda,--"the person that brought the chicken and thought he had brought two?"

"You've hit it," said Mrs. Douglass. "Now you know him. How do you like our new minister?"

"We are all very much pleased with him."

"He's very good-looking, don't you think so?"

"A very pleasant face."

"I ha'n't seen him much yet except in church; but those that know say he is very agreeable in the house."

"Truly, I dare say," answered Fleda, for Mrs. Douglass's face looked for her testimony.

"But I think he looks as if he was beating his brains out there among his books--I tell him he is getting the blues, living in that big house by himself."

"Do you manage to do all your work without help, Mrs. Douglass?" said Fleda, knowing that the question was "in order" and that the affirmative answer was not counted a thing to be ashamed of.

"Well I guess I'll know good reason," said Mrs. Douglass complacently, "before I'll have any help to spoil my work. Come along, and I'll let you see whether I want one."

Fleda went, very willingly, to be shewn all Mrs. Douglass's household arrangements and clever contrivances, of her own or her husband's devising, for lessening or facilitating labour. The lady was proud, and had some reason to be, of the very superb order and neatness of each part and detail. No corner or closet that might not be laid open fearlessly to a visitor's inspection. Miss Catharine was then directed to open her piano and amuse Fleda with it while her mother performed her promise of getting an early supper; a command grateful to one or two of the party, for Catharine had been carrying on all this while a most stately tête-à-tête with Hugh which neither had any wish to prolong. So Fleda filled up the time good-naturedly with thrumming over the two or three bits of her childish music that she could recall, till Mr. Douglass came in and they were summoned to sit down to supper; which Mrs. Douglass introduced by telling her guests "they must take what they could get, for she had made fresh bread and cake and pies for them two or three times, and she wa'n't a going to do it again."

Her table was abundantly spread however, and with most exquisite neatness, and everything was of excellent quality, saving only certain matters which call for a free hand in the use of material. Fleda thought the pumpkin pies must have been made from that vaunted stock which is said to want no eggs nor sugar, and the cakes she told Mrs. Rossitur afterwards would have been good if half the flour had been left out and the other ingredients doubled. The deficiency in one kind however was made up by superabundance in another; the table was stocked with such wealth of crockery that one could not imagine any poverty in what was to go upon it. Fleda hardly knew how to marshal the confusion of plates which grouped themselves around her cup and saucer, and none of them might be dispensed with. There was one set of little glass dishes for one kind of sweetmeat, another set of ditto for another kind; an army of tiny plates to receive and shield the tablecloth from the dislodged cups of tea, saucers being the conventional drinking vessels; and there were the standard bread and butter plates, which besides their proper charge of bread and butter and beef and cheese, were expected, Fleda knew, to receive a portion of every kind of cake that might happen to be on the table. It was a very different thing however from Miss Anastasia's tea-table or that of Miss Flora Quackenboss. Fleda enjoyed the whole time without difficulty.

Mr. Douglass readily agreed to the transfer of Philetus's services.

"He's a good boy!" said Earl,--"he's a good boy; he's as good a kind of a boy as you need to have. He wants tellin'; most boys want tellin'; but he'll do when he is told, and he means to do right."

"How long do you expect your uncle will be gone?" said Mrs. Douglass.

"I do not know," said Fleda.

"Have you heard from him since he left?"

"Not since I came home," said Fleda. "Mr. Douglass, what is the first thing to be done about the maple trees in the sugar season?"

"Why, you calculate to try makin' sugar in the spring?"

"Perhaps--at any rate I should like to know about it."

"Well I should think you would," said Earl, "and it's easy done--there ain't nothin' easier, when you know the right way to set to work about it; and there's a fine lot of sugar trees on the old farm--I recollect of them sugar trees as long ago as when I was a boy--I've helped to work them afore now, but there's a good many years since--has made me a leetle older--but the first thing you want is a man and a team, to go about and empty the buckets--the buckets must be emptied every day, and then carry it down to the house."

"Yes, I know," said Fleda, "but what is the first thing to be done to the trees?"

"Why la! 'tain't much to do to the trees--all you've got to do is to take an axe and chip a bit out and stick a chip a leetle way into the cut for to dreen the sap, and set a trough under, and then go on to the next one, and so on;--you may make one or two cuts in the south side of the tree, and one or two cuts in the north side, if the tree's big enough, and if it ain't, only make one or two cuts in the south side of the tree; and for the sap to run good it had ought to be that kind o' weather when it freezes in the day and thaws by night;--I would say!--when it friz in the night and thaws in the day; the sap runs more bountifully in that kind o' weather."

It needed little from Fleda to keep Mr. Douglass at the maple trees till supper was ended; and then as it was already sundown he went to harness the sleigh.

It was a comfortable one, and the horses if not very handsome nor bright-curried were well fed and had good heart to their work. A two mile drive was before them, and with no troublesome tongues or eyes to claim her attention Fleda enjoyed it fully. In the soft clear winter twilight when heaven and earth mingle so gently, and the stars look forth brighter and cheerfuller than ever at another time, they slid along over the fine roads, too swiftly, towards home; and Fleda's thoughts as easily and swiftly slipped away from Mr. Douglass and maple sugar and Philetus and an unfilled wood-yard and an empty flour-barrel, and revelled in the pure ether. A dark rising ground covered with wood sometimes rose between her and the western horizon; and then a long stretch of snow, only less pure, would leave free view of its unearthly white light, dimmed by no exhalation, a gentle, mute, but not the less eloquent, witness to Earth of what Heaven must be.

But the sleigh stopped at the gate, and Fleda's musings came home.

"Good night!" said Earl, in reply to their thanks and adieus;--"'tain't anything to thank a body for--let me know when you're a goin' into the sugar making and I'll come and help you."

"How sweet a pleasant message may make an unmusical tongue," said Fleda, as she and Hugh made their way up to the house.

"We had a stupid enough afternoon," said Hugh.

"But the ride home was worth it all!"

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Chapter XXVI

'Tis merry, 'tis merry, in good green wood, So blithe Lady Alice is singing; On the beech's pride, and the oak's brown side, Lord Richard's axe is ringing.

Lady of the Lake.

Philetus came, and was inducted into office and the little room immediately; and Fleda felt herself eased of a burden. Barby reported him stout and willing, and he proved it by what seemed a perverted inclination for bearing the most enormous logs of wood he could find into the kitchen.

"He will hurt himself!" said Fleda.

"I'll protect him!--against anything but buckwheat batter," said Barby with a grave shake of her head. "Lazy folks takes the most pains, I tell him. But it would be good to have some more ground, Fleda, for Philetus says he don't care for no dinner when he has griddles to breakfast, and there ain't anything much cheaper than that."

"Aunt Lucy, have you any change in the house?" said Fleda that same day.

"There isn't but three and sixpence," said Mrs. Rossitur with a pained conscious look. "What is wanting, dear?"

"Only candles--Barby has suddenly found we are out, and she won't have any more made before to-morrow. Never mind!"

"There is only that," repeated Mrs. Rossitur. "Hugh has a little money due to him from last summer, but he hasn't been able to get it yet. You may take that, dear."

"No," said Fleda,--"we mustn't. We might want it more."

"We can sit in the dark for once," said Hugh, "and try to make an uncommon display of what Dr. Quackenboss calls 'sociality.'"

"No," said Fleda, who had stood busily thinking,--"I am going to send Philetus down to the post-office for the paper, and when it comes I am not to be balked of reading it--I've made up my mind! We'll go right off into the woods and get some pine knots, Hugh--come! They make a lovely light. You get us a couple of baskets and the hatchet--I wish we had two--and I'll be ready in no time. That'll do!"

It is to be noticed that Charlton had provided against any future deficiency of news in his family. Fleda skipped away and in five minutes returned arrayed for the expedition, in her usual out-of-door working trim, namely,--an old dark merino cloak, almost black, the effect of which was continued by the edge of an old dark mousseline below, and rendered decidedly striking by the contrast of a large whitish yarn shawl worn over it; the whole crowned with a little close-fitting hood made of some old silver-grey silk, shaped tight to the head, without any bow or furbelow to break the outline. But such a face within side of it! She came almost dancing into the room.

"This is Miss Ringgan!--as she appeared when she was going to see the pine trees. Hugh, don't you wish you had a picture of me?"

"I have got a tolerable picture of you, somewhere," said Hugh.

"This is somebody very different from the Miss Ringgan that went to see Mrs. Evelyn, I can tell you," Fleda went on gayly.

"Do you know, aunt Lucy, I have made up my mind that my visit to New York was a dream, and the dream is nicely folded away with my silk dresses. Now I must go tell that precious Philetus about the post-office--I am so comforted, aunt Lucy, whenever I see that fellow staggering into the house under a great log of wood! I have not heard anything in a long time so pleasant as the ringing strokes of his axe in the yard. Isn't life made up of little things!"

"Why don't you put a better pair of shoes on?"

"Can't afford it, Mrs. Rossitur! You are extravagant!"

"Go and put on my India-rubbers."

"No ma'am!--the rocks would cut them to pieces. I have brought my mind down to--my shoes."

"It isn't safe, Fleda; you might see somebody."

"Well ma'am!--But I tell you I am not going to see anybody but the chick-a-dees and the snow-birds, and there is great simplicity of manners prevailing among them."

The shoes were changed, and Hugh and Fleda set forth, lingering awhile however to give a new edge to their hatchet, Fleda turning the grindstone. They mounted then the apple-orchard hill and went a little distance along the edge of the table-land before striking off into the woods. They had stood still a minute to look over the little white valley to the snow-dressed woodland beyond.

"This is better than New York, Hugh," said Fleda.

"I am very glad to hear you say that," said another voice. Fleda turned and started a little to see Mr. Olmney at her side, and congratulated herself instantly on her shoes.

"Mrs. Rossitur told me where you had gone and gave me permission to follow you, but I hardly hoped to overtake you so soon."

"We stopped to sharpen our tools," said Fleda. "We are out on a foraging expedition."

"Will you let me help you?"

"Certainly!--if you understand the business. Do you know a pine knot when you see it?"

He laughed and shook his head, but avowed a wish to learn.

"Well, it would be a charity to teach you anything wholesome," said Fleda, "for I heard one of Mr. Olmney's friends lately saying that he looked like a person who was in danger of committing suicide."

"Suicide!--One of my friends!"--he exclaimed in the utmost astonishment.

"Yes," said Fleda laughing;--"and there is nothing like the open air for clearing away vapours."

"You cannot have known that by experience," said he looking at her.

Fleda shook her head and advising him to take nothing for granted, set off into the woods.

They were in a beautiful state. A light snow but an inch or two deep had fallen the night before; the air had been perfectly still during the day; and though the sun was out, bright and mild, it had done little but glitter on the earth's white capping. The light dry flakes of snow had not stirred from their first resting-place. The long branches of the large pines were just tipped with snow at the ends; on the smaller evergreens every leaf and tuft had its separate crest. Stones and rocks were smoothly rounded over, little shrubs and sprays that lay along the ground were all doubled in white; and the hemlock branches, bending with their feathery burthen, stooped to the foreheads of the party and gave them the freshest of salutations as they brushed by. The whole wood-scene was particularly fair and graceful. A light veil of purity, no more, thrown over the wilderness of stones and stumps and bare ground,--like the blessing of charity, covering all roughnesses and unsightlinesses--like the innocent unsullied nature that places its light shield between the eye and whatever is unequal, unkindly, and unlovely in the world.

"What do you think of this for a misanthropical man, Mr. Olmney? there's a better tonic to be found in the woods than in any remedies of man's devising."

"Better than books?" said he.

"Certainly!--No comparison."

"I have to learn that yet."

"So I suppose," said Fleda. "The very danger to be apprehended, as I hear, sir, is from your running a tilt into some of those thick folios of yours, head foremost.--There's no pitch there, Hugh--you may leave it alone. We must go on--there are more yellow pines higher up."

"But who could give such a strange character of me to you?" said Mr. Olmney.

"I am sure your wisdom would not advise me to tell you that, sir. You will find nothing there, Mr. Olmney."

They went gayly on, careering about in all directions and bearing down upon every promising stump or dead pine tree they saw in the distance. Hugh and Mr. Olmney took turns in the labour of hewing out the fat pine knots and splitting down the old stumps to get at the pitchy heart of the wood; and the baskets began to grow heavy. The whole party were in excellent spirits, and as happy as the birds that filled the woods and whose cheery "chick-a-dee-dee-dee," was heard whenever they paused to rest and let the hatchet be still.

"How one sees everything in the colour of one's own spectacles," said Fleda.

"May I ask what colour yours are to-day?" said Mr. Olmney.

"Rose, I think," said Hugh.

"No," said Fleda, "they are better than that--they are no worse colour than the snow's own--they shew me everything just as it is. It could not be lovelier."

"Then we may conclude, may we not," said Mr. Olmney, "that you are not sorry to find yourself in Queechy again?"

"I am not sorry to find myself in the woods again. That is not pitch, Mr. Olmney."

"It has the same colour,--and weight."

"No, it is only wet--see this and smell of it--do you see the difference? Isn't it pleasant?"

"Everything is pleasant to-day," said he smiling.

"I shall report you a cure. Come, I want to go a little higher and shew you a view. Leave that, Hugh, we have got enough--"

But Hugh chose to finish an obstinate stump, and his companions went on without him. It was not very far up the mountain and they came to a fine look-out point; the same where Fleda and Mr. Carleton had paused long before on their quest after nuts. The wide spread of country was a white waste now; the delicate beauties of the snow were lost in the far view; and the distant Catskill shewed wintrily against the fair blue sky. The air was gentle enough to invite them to stand still, after the exercise they had taken, and as they both looked in silence Mr. Olmney observed that his companion's face settled into a gravity rather at variance with the expression it had worn.

"I should hardly think," said he softly, "that you were looking through white spectacles, if you had not told us so."

"O--a shade may come over what one is looking at you know," said Fleda. But seeing that he still watched her inquiringly she added,

"I do not think a very wide landscape is ever gay in its effect upon the mind--do you?"

"Perhaps--I do not know," said he, his eyes turning to it again as if to try what the effect was.

"My thoughts had gone back," said Fleda, "to a time a good while ago, when I was a child and stood here in summer weather--and I was thinking that the change in the landscape is something like that which years make in the mind."

"But you have not, for a long time at least, known any very acute sorrow?"

"No--" said Fleda, "but that is not necessary. There is a gentle kind of discipline which does its work I think more surely."

"Thank God for gentle discipline!" said Mr. Olmney; "if you do not know what those griefs are that break down mind and body together."

"I am not unthankful, I hope, for anything," said Fleda gently; "but I have been apt to think that after a crushing sorrow the mind may rise up again, but that a long-continued though much lesser pressure in time breaks the spring."

He looked at her again with a mixture of incredulous and tender interest, but her face did not belie her words, strange as they sounded from so young and in general so bright-seeming a creature.

"'There shall no evil happen to the just,'" he said presently and with great sympathy.

Fleda flashed a look of gratitude at him--it was no more, for she felt her eyes watering and turned them away.

"You have not, I trust, heard any bad news?"

"No sir--not at all!"

"I beg pardon for asking, but Mrs. Rossitur seemed to be in less good spirits than usual."

He had some reason to say so, having found her in a violent fit of weeping.

"You do not need to be told," he went on, "of the need there is that a cloud should now and then come over this lower scene--the danger that if it did not our eyes would look nowhere else?"

There is something very touching in hearing a kind voice say what one has often struggled to say to oneself.

"I know it, sir," said Fleda, her words a little choked,--"and one may not wish the cloud away,--but it does not the less cast a shade upon the face. I guess Hugh has worked his way into the middle of that stump by this time, Mr. Olmney."

They rejoined him; and the baskets being now sufficiently heavy and arms pretty well tired they left the further riches of the pine woods unexplored and walked sagely homewards. At the brow of the table-land Mr. Olmney left them to take a shorter cut to the high-road, having a visit to make which the shortening day warned him not to defer.

"Put down your basket and rest a minute, Hugh," said Fleda. "I had a world of things to talk to you about, and this blessed man has driven them all out of my head."

"But you are not sorry he came along with us?"

"O no. We had a very good time. How lovely it is, Hugh! Look at the snow down there--without a track; and the woods have been dressed by the fairies. O look how the sun is glinting on the west side of that hillock!"

"It is twice as bright since you have come home," said Hugh.

"The snow is too beautiful to-day. O I was right! one may grow morbid over books--but I defy anybody in the company of those chick-a-dees. I should think it would be hard to keep quite sound in the city."

"You are glad to be here again, aren't you?" said Hugh.

"Very! O Hugh!--it is better to be poor and have one's feet on these hills, than to be rich and shut up to brick walls!"

"It is best as it is," said Hugh quietly.

"Once," Fleda went on,--"one fair day when I was out driving in New York, it did come over me with a kind of pang how pleasant it would be to have plenty of money again and be at ease; and then, as I was looking off over that pretty North river to the other shore, I bethought me, 'A little that a righteous man hath is better than the riches of many wicked.'"

Hugh did not answer, for the face she turned to him in its half tearful, half bright submission took away his speech.

"Why you cannot have enjoyed yourself as much as we thought, Fleda, if you dislike the city so much?"

"Yes I did. O I enjoyed a great many things. I enjoyed being with the Evelyns. You don't know how much they made of me,--every one of them,--father and mother and all the three daughters--and uncle Orrin. I have been well petted, I can tell you, since I have been gone."

"I am glad they shewed so much discrimination," said Hugh; "they would be puzzled to make too much of you."

"I must have been in a remarkably discriminating society," said Fleda, "for everybody was very kind!"

"How do you like the Evelyns on a nearer view?"

"Very much indeed; and I believe they really love me. Nothing could possibly be kinder, in all ways of shewing kindness. I shall never forget it."

"Who were you driving with that day?" said Hugh.

"Mr. Thorn."

"Did you see much of him?"

"Quite as much as I wished. Hugh--I took your advice."

"About what?" said Hugh.

"I carried down some of my scribblings and sent them to a Magazine."

"Did you!" said Hugh looking delighted. "And will they publish them?"

"I don't know," said Fleda, "that's another matter. I sent them, or uncle Orrin did, when I first went down; and I have heard nothing of them yet."

"You shewed them to uncle Orrin?"

"Couldn't help it, you know. I had to."

"And what did he say to them?"

"Come!--I'm not going to be cross-questioned," said Fleda laughing. "He did not prevent my sending them."

"And if they take them, do you expect they will give anything for them?--the Magazine people?"

"I am sure if they don't they shall have no more--that is my only possible inducement to let them be printed. For my own pleasure, I would far rather not."

"Did you sign with your own name?"

"My own name!--Yes, and desired it to be printed in large capitals. What are you thinking of? No--I hope you'll forgive me, but I signed myself what our friend the doctor calls 'Yugh.'"

"I'll forgive you if you'll do one thing for me."

"What?"

"Shew me all you have in your portfolio--Do, Fleda--to-night, by the light of the pitch-pine knots. Why shouldn't you give me that pleasure? And besides, you know Molière had an old woman?"

"Well," said Fleda with a face that to Hugh was extremely satisfactory,--"we'll see--I suppose you might as well read my productions in manuscript as in print. But they are in a terribly scratchy condition--they go sometimes for weeks in my head before I find time to put them down--you may guess polishing is pretty well out of the question. Suppose we try to get home with these baskets."

Which they did.

"Has Philetus got home?" was Fleda's first question.

"No," said Mrs. Rossitur, "but Dr. Quackenboss has been here and brought the paper--he was at the post-office this morning, he says. Did you see Mr. Olmney?"

"Yes ma'am, and I feel he has saved me from a lame arm--those pine knots are so heavy."

"He is a lovely young man!" said Mrs. Rossitur with uncommon emphasis.

"I should have been blind to the fact, aunt Lucy, if you had not made me change my shoes. At present, no disparagement to him, I feel as if a cup of tea would be rather more lovely than anything else."

"He sat with me some time," said Mrs. Rossitur; "I was afraid he would not overtake you."

Tea was ready, and only waiting for Mrs. Rossitur to come down stairs, when Fleda, whose eye was carelessly running along the columns of the paper, uttered a sudden shout and covered her face with it. Hugh looked up in astonishment, but Fleda was beyond anything but exclamations, laughing and flushing to the very roots of her hair.

"What is the matter, Fleda?"

"Why," said Fleda,--"how comical!--I was just looking over the list of articles in the January number of the 'Excelsior'"--

"The 'Excelsior'?" said Hugh.

"Yes--the Magazine I sent my things to--I was running over their advertisement here, where they give a special puff of the publication in general and of several things in particular, and I saw--here they speak of 'A tale of thrilling interest by Mrs. Eliza Lothbury, unsurpassed,' and so forth and so forth; 'another valuable communication from Mr. Charleston, whose first acute and discriminating paper all our readers will remember; the beginning of a new tale from the infallibly graceful pen of Miss Delia Lawriston, we are sure it will be so and so; '"The wind's voices," by our new correspondent "Hugh," has a delicate sweetness that would do no discredit to some of our most honoured names!'--What do you think of that?"

What Hugh thought he did not say, but he looked delighted; and came to read the grateful words for himself.

"I did not know but they had declined it utterly," said Fleda,--"it was so long since I had sent it and they had taken no notice of it; but it seems they kept it for the beginning of a new volume."

"'Would do no discredit to some of our most honoured names'!" said Hugh. "Dear Fleda, I am very glad! But it is no more than I expected."

"Expected!" said Fleda. "When you had not seen a line! Hush--My dear Hugh, aren't you hungry?"

The tea, with this spice to their appetites, was wonderfully relished; and Hugh and Fleda kept making despatches of secret pleasure and sympathy to each other's eyes; though Fleda's face after the first flush had faded was perhaps rather quieter than usual. Hugh's was illuminated.

"Mr. Skillcorn is a smart man!" said Barby coming in with a package,--"he has made out to go two miles in two hours and get back again safe!"

"More from the post-office!" exclaimed Fleda pouncing upon it,--"oh yes, there has been another mail. A letter for you, aunt Lucy! from uncle Rolf!--We'll forgive him, Barby--And here's a letter for me, from uncle Orrin, and--yes--the 'Excelsior.' Hugh, uncle Orrin said he would send it. Now for those blessed pine knots! Aunt Lucy, you shall be honoured with the one whole candle the house contains."

The table soon cleared away, the basket of fat fuel was brought in; and one or two splinters being delicately insinuated between the sticks on the fire a very brilliant illumination sprang out. Fleda sent a congratulatory look over to Hugh on the other side of the fireplace as she cosily established herself on her little bench at one corner with her letter; he had the Magazine. Mrs. Rossitur between them at the table with her one candle was already insensible to all outward things.

And soon the other two were as delightfully absorbed. The bright light of the fire shone upon three motionless and rapt figures, and getting no greeting from them went off and danced on the old cupboard doors and paper hangings, in a kindly hearty joviality that would have put any number of stately wax candles out of countenance. There was no poverty in the room that night. But the people were too busy to know how cosy they were; till Fleda was ready to look up from her note and Hugh had gone twice carefully over the new poem,--when there was a sudden giving out of the pine splinters. New ones were supplied in eager haste and silence, and Hugh was beginning "The wind's voices" for the third time when a soft-whispered "Hugh!" across the fire made him look over to Fleda's corner. She was holding up with both hands a five-dollar bank note and just shewing him her eyes over it.

"What's that?" said Hugh in an energetic whisper.

"I don't know!" said Fleda, shaking her head comically;--"I am told 'The wind's voices' have blown it here, but privately I am afraid it is a windfall of another kind."

"What?" said Hugh laughing.

"Uncle Orrin says it is the first fruits of what I sent to the 'Excelsior,' and that more will come; but I do not feel at all sure that it is entirely the growth of that soil."

"I dare say it is," said Hugh; "I am sure it is worth more than that. Dear Fleda, I like it so much!"

Fleda gave him such a smile of grateful affection!--not at all as if she deserved his praise but as if it was very pleasant to have.

"What put it into your head? anything in particular?"

"No--nothing--I was looking out of the window one day and seeing the willow tree blow; and that looked over my shoulder; as you know Hans Andersen says his stories did."

"It is just like you!--exactly as it can be."

"Things put themselves in my head," said Fleda, tucking another splinter into the fire. "Isn't this better than a chandelier?"

"Ten times!"

"And so much pleasanter for having got it ourselves. What a nice time we had, Hugh?"

"Very. Now for the portfolio, Fleda--come!--mother is fast; she won't see or hear anything. What does father say, mother?"

In answer to this they had the letter read, which indeed contained nothing remarkable beyond its strong expressions of affection to each one of the little family; a cordial which Mrs. Rossitur drank and grew strong upon in the very act of reading. It is pity the medicine of kind words is not more used in the world--it has so much power. Then, having folded up her treasure and talked a little while about it, Mrs. Rossitur caught up the Magazine like a person who had been famished in that kind; and soon she and it and her tallow candle formed a trio apart from all the world again. Fleda and Hugh were safe to pass most mysterious-looking little papers from hand to hand right before her, though they had the care to read them behind newspapers, and exchanges of thought and feeling went on more swiftly still, and softly, across the fire.

Looks, and smiles, and whispers, and tears too, under cover of a Tribune and an Express. And the blaze would die down just when Hugh had got to the last verse of something, and then while impatiently waiting for the new pine splinters to catch he would tell Fleda how much he liked it, or how beautiful he thought it, and whisper enquiries and critical questions; till the fire reached the fat vein and leaped up in defiant emulation of gas-lights unknown, and then he would fall to again with renewed gusto. And Fleda hunted out in her portfolio what bits to give him first, and bade him as she gave them remember this and understand that, which was necessary to be borne in mind in the reading. And through all the brightening and fading blaze, and all the whispering, congratulating, explaining, and rejoicing going on at her side, Mrs. Rossitur and her tallow candle were devoted to each other, happily and engrossingly. At last, however, she flung the Magazine from her and turning from the table sat looking into the fire with a rather uncommonly careful and unsatisfied brow.

"What did you think of the second piece of poetry there, mother?" said Hugh;--"that ballad?--'The wind's voices' it is called."

"'The wind's voices'?--I don't know--I didn't read it, I believe."

"Why mother! I liked it very much. Do read it--read it aloud."

Mrs. Rossitur took up the Magazine again abstractedly, and read--

"'Mamma, what makes your face so sad? The sound of the wind makes me feel glad; But whenever it blows, as grave you look, As if you were reading a sorrowful book.'

"'A sorrowful book I am reading, dear,-- A book of weeping and pain and fear,-- A book deep printed on my heart, Which I cannot read but the tears will start.

"'That breeze to my ear was soft and mild, Just so, when I was a little child; But now I hear in its freshening breath The voices of those that sleep in death.'

"'Mamma,' said the child with shaded brow, 'What is this book you are reading now? And why do you read what makes you cry?' 'My child, it comes up before my eye.

"'Tis the memory, love, of a far-off day When my life's best friend was taken away;-- Of the weeks and months that my eyes were dim Watching for tidings--watching for him.

"'Many a year has come and past Since a ship sailed over the ocean fast, Bound for a port on England's shore,-- She sailed--but was never heard of more.'

"'Mamma'--and she closer pressed her side,-- 'Was that the time when my father died?-- Is it his ship you think you see?-- Dearest mamma--won't you speak to me?'

"The lady paused, but then calmly said, 'Yes, Lucy--the sea was his dying bed, And now whenever I hear the blast I think again of that storm long past.

"'The winds' fierce bowlings hurt not me, But I think how they beat on the pathless sea,-- Of the breaking mast--of the parting rope,-- Of the anxious strife and the failing hope.'

"'Mamma,' said the child with streaming eyes, 'My father has gone above the skies; And you tell me this world is mean and base Compared with heaven--that blessed place.'

"'My daughter, I know--I believe it all,-- I would not his spirit to earth recall. The blest one he--his storm was brief,-- Mine, a long tempest of tears and grief.

"'I have you, my darling--I should not sigh. I have one star more in my cloudy sky,-- The hope that we both shall join him there, In that perfect rest from weeping and care.'"

"Well, mother,--how do you like it?" said Hugh whose eyes gave tender witness to his liking for it.

"It is pretty--" said Mrs. Rossitur.

Hugh exclaimed, and Fleda laughing took it out of her hand.

"Why mother!" said Hugh,--"it is Fleda's."

"Fleda's!" exclaimed Mrs. Rossitur, snatching the Magazine again. "My dear child, I was not thinking in the least of what I was reading. Fleda's!--"

She read it over anew, with swimming eyes this time, and then clasped Fleda in her arms and gave her, not words, but the better reward of kisses and tears. They remained so a long time, even till Hugh left them; and then Fleda released from her aunt's embrace still crouched by her side with one arm in her lap.

They both sat thoughtfully looking into the fire till it had burnt itself out and nothing but a glowing bed of coals remained.

"That is an excellent young man!" said Mrs. Rossitur.

"Who?"

"Mr. Olmney. He sat with me some time after you had gone."

"So you said before," said Fleda, wondering at the troubled expression of her aunt's face.

"He made me wish," said Mrs. Rossitur hesitating,--"that I could be something different from what I am--I believe I should be a great deal happier"--

The last word was hardly spoken. Fleda rose to her knees and putting both arms about her aunt pressed face to face, with a clinging sympathy that told how very near her spirit was; while tears from the eyes of both fell without measure.

"Dear aunt Lucy--dear aunt Lucy--I wish you would!--I am sure you would be a great deal happier--"

But the mixture of feelings was too much for Fleda; her head sank lower on her aunt's bosom and she wept aloud.

"But I don't know anything about it!" said Mrs. Rossitur, as well as she could speak,--"I am as ignorant as a child!--"

"Dear aunty! that is nothing--God will teach you if you ask him; he has promised. Oh ask him, aunt Lucy! I know you would be happier!--I know it is better--a million times!--to be a child of God than to have everything in the world--If they only brought us that, I would be very glad of all our troubles!--indeed I would!"

"But I don't think I ever did anything right in my life!" said poor Mrs. Rossitur.

"Dear aunt Lucy!" said Fleda, straining her closer and with her very heart gushing out at these words,--"dear aunty--Christ came for just such sinners!--for just such as you and I."

"You,"--said Mrs. Rossitur, but speech failed utterly, and with a muttered prayer that Fleda would help her, she sunk her head upon her shoulder and sobbed herself into quietness, or into exhaustion. The glow of the firelight faded away till only a faint sparkle was left in the chimney.

There was not another word spoken, but when they rose up, with such kisses as gave and took unuttered affection, counsel and sympathy, they bade each other good-night.

Fleda went to her window, for the moon rode high and her childish habit had never been forgotten. But surely the face that looked out that night was as the face of an angel. In all the pouring moonbeams that filled the air, she could see nothing but the flood of God's goodness on a dark world. And her heart that night had nothing but an unbounded and unqualified thanksgiving for all the "gentle discipline" they had felt; for every sorrow and weariness and disappointment;--except besides the prayer, almost too deep to be put into words, that its due and hoped-for fruit might be brought forth unto perfection.

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Chapter XXVII

I become not a cart as well as another man, a plague on my bringing up.

Shakspeare.

Every day could not be as bright as the last, even by the help of pitch pine knots. They blazed indeed, many a time, but the blaze shone upon faces that it could not sometimes light up. Matters drew gradually within a smaller and smaller compass. Another five dollars came from uncle Orrin, and the hope of more; but these were carefully laid by to pay Philetus; and for all other wants of the household excepting those the farm supplied the family were dependent on mere driblets of sums. None came from Mr. Rossitur. Hugh managed to collect a very little. That kept them from absolute distress; that, and Fleda's delicate instrumentality. Regular dinners were given up, fresh meat being now unheard-of, unless when a kind neighbour made them a present; and appetite would have lagged sadly but for Fleda's untiring care. She thought no time nor pains ill bestowed which could prevent her aunt and Hugh from feeling the want of old comforts; and her nicest skill was displayed in varying the combinations of their very few and simple stores. The diversity and deliciousness of her bread stuffs, Barby said, was "beyond everything!" and a cup of rich coffee was found to cover all deficiencies of removes and entremêts; and this was always served, Barby said further, as if the President of the United States was expected. Fleda never permitted the least slackness in the manner of doing this or anything else that she could control.

Mr. Plumfield had sent down an opportune present of a fine porker. One cold day in the beginning of February Fleda was busy in the kitchen making something for dinner, and Hugh at another table was vigorously chopping sausage meat.

"I should like to have some cake again," said Fleda.

"Well, why don't you?" said Hugh, chopping away.

"No eggs, Mr. Rossitur,--and can't afford 'em at two shillings a dozen. I believe I am getting discontented--I have a great desire to do something to distinguish myself--I would make a plum pudding if I had raisins, but there is not one in the house."

"You can get 'em up to Mr. Hemps's for sixpence a pound," said Barby.

But Fleda shook her head at the sixpence and went on moulding out her biscuits diligently.

"I wish Philetus would make his appearance with the cows--it is a very odd thing they should be gone since yesterday morning and no news of them."

"I only hope the snow ain't so bright it'll blind his eyes," said Barby.

"There he is this minute," said Hugh. "It is impossible to tell from his countenance whether successful or not."

"Well where are the cows, Mr. Skillcorn?" said Barby as he came in.

"I have went all over town," said the person addressed, "and they ain't no place."

"Have you asked news of them, Philetus?"

"I have asked the hull town, and I have went all over, 'till I was a'most beat out with the cold,--and I ha'n't seen the first sight of 'em yet!"

Fleda and Hugh exchanged looks, while Barby and Mr. Skillcorn entered into an animated discussion of probabilities and impossibilities.

"If we should be driven from our coffee dinners to tea with no milk in it!"--said Hugh softly in mock dismay.

"Wouldn't!" said Fleda. "We'd beat up an egg and put it in the coffee."

"We couldn't afford it," said Hugh smiling.

"Could!--cheaper than to keep the cows. I'll have some sugar at any rate, I'm determined. Philetus!"

"Marm."

"I wish, when you have got a good pile of wood chopped, you would make some troughs to put under the maple trees--you know how to make them, don't you?"

"I do!"

"I wish you would make some--you have pine logs out there large enough, haven't you?"

"They hadn't ought to want much of it--there's some gregious big ones!"

"I don't know how many we shall want, but a hundred or two at any rate; and the sooner the better. Do you know how much sugar they make from one tree?"

"Wall I don't," said Mr. Skillcorn, with the air of a person who was at fault on no other point;--"the big trees give more than the little ones--"

Fleda's eyes flashed at Hugh, who took to chopping in sheer desperation; and the muscles of both gave them full occupation for five minutes. Philetus stood comfortably warming himself at the fire, looking first at one and then at the other, as if they were a show and he had paid for it. Barby grew impatient.

"I guess this cold weather makes lazy people of me!" she said bustling about her fire with an amount of energy that was significant. It seemed to signify nothing to Philetus. He only moved a little out of the way.

"Didenhover's cleared out," he burst forth at length abruptly.

"What!" said Fleda and Barby at once, the broom and the biscuits standing still.

"Mr. Didenhover."

"What of him?"

"He has tuk himself off out o" town."

"Where to?"

"I can't tell you where teu--he ain't coming back, 'tain't likely."

"How do you know?"

"'Cause he's tuk all his traps and went, and he said farming didn't pay and he wa'n't a going to have nothin' more to deu with it;--he telled Mis' Simpson so--he lived to Mis' Simpson's; and she telled Mr. Ten Eyck."

"Are you sure, Philetus?"

"Sure as 'lection!--he telled Mis' Simpson so, and she telled Mr. Ten Eyck; and he's cleared out."

Fleda and Hugh again looked at each other. Mr. Skillcorn having now delivered himself of his news went out to the woodyard.

"I hope he ha'n't carried off our cows along with him," said Barby, as she too went out to some other part of her premises.

"He was to have made us quite a payment on the first of March," said Fleda.

"Yes, and that was to have gone to uncle Orrin," said Hugh.

"We shall not see a cent of it. And we wanted a little of it for ourselves.--I have that money from the Excelsior, but I can't touch a penny of it for it must go to Philetus's wages. What Barby does without hers I do not know--she has had but one five dollars in six months. Why she stays I cannot imagine; unless it is for pure love."

"As soon as the spring opens I can go to the mill again," said Hugh after a little pause. Fleda looked at him sorrowfully and shook her head as she withdrew her eyes.

"I wish father would give up the farm," Hugh went on under his breath. "I cannot bear to live upon uncle Orrin so."

Fleda's answer was to clasp her hands. Her only words were, "Don't say anything to aunt Lucy."

"It is of no use to say anything to anybody," said Hugh. "But it weighs me to the ground, Fleda!"

"If uncle Rolf doesn't come home by spring--I hope, I hope he will!--but if he does not, I will take desperate measures. I will try farming myself, Hugh. I have thought of it, and I certainly will. I will get Earl Douglass or somebody else to play second fiddle, but I will have but one head on the farm and I will try what mine is worth."

"You could not do it, Fleda."

"One can do anything!--with a strong enough motive."

"I'm afraid you'd soon be tired, Fleda."

"Not if I succeeded--not so tired as I am now."

"Poor Fleda! I dare say you are tired."

"It wasn't that I meant," said Fleda, slightly drawing her breath;--"I meant this feeling of everything going wrong, and uncle Orrin, and all--"

"But you are weary," said Hugh affectionately. "I see it in your face."

"Not so much body as mind, after all. Oh Hugh! this is the worst part of being poor!--the constant occupation of one's mind on a miserable succession of trifles. I am so weary sometimes!--If I only had a nice book to rest myself for a while and forget all these things--I would give so much for it!--"

"Dear Fleda! I wish you had!"

"That was one delight of being in New York--I forgot all about money from one end of it to the other--I put all that away;--and not having to think of meals till I came to eat them. You can't think how tired I get of ringing the changes on pork and flour and Indian meal and eggs and vegetables!--"

Fleda looked tired and pale; and Hugh looked sadly conscious of it.

"Don't tell aunt Lucy I have said all this!" she exclaimed after a moment rousing herself,--"I don't always feel so--only once in a while I get such a fit--And now I have just troubled you by speaking of it!"

"You don't trouble any one in that way very often, dear Fleda," said Hugh kissing her.

"I ought not at all--you have enough else to think of--but it is a kind of relief sometimes. I like to do these things in general,--only now and then I get tired, as I was just now, I suppose, and then one sees everything through a different medium."

"I am afraid it would tire you more to have the charge of Earl Douglass and the farm upon your mind;--and mother could be no help to you,--nor I, if I am at the mill."

"But there's Seth Plumfield. O I've thought of it all. You don't know what I am up to, Mr. Rossitur. You shall see how I will manage--unless uncle Rolf comes home, in which case I will very gladly forego all my honours and responsibilities together."

"I hope he will come!" said Hugh.

But this hope was to be disappointed. Mr. Rossitur wrote again about the first of March, saying that he hoped to make something of his lands in Michigan, and that he had the prospect of being engaged in some land agencies which would make it worth his while to spend the summer there. He bade his wife let anybody take the farm that could manage it and would pay; and to remit to Dr. Gregory whatever she should receive and could spare. He hoped to do something where he was.

It was just then the beginning of the sugar season; and Mrs. Douglass having renewed and urged Earl's offer of help, Fleda sent Philetus down to ask him to come the next day with his team. Seth Plumfield's, which had drawn the wood in the winter, was now busy in his own sugar business. On Earl Douglass's ground there happpened to be no maple trees. His lands were of moderate extent and almost entirely cultivated as a sheep farm; and Mr. Douglass himself though in very comfortable circumstances was in the habit of assisting, on advantageous terms, all the farmers in the neighbourhood.

Philetus came back again in a remarkably short time; and announced that he had met Dr. Quackenboss in the way, who had offered to come with his team for the desired service.

"Then you have not been to Mr. Douglass's?"

"I have not," said Philetus;--"I thought likely you wouldn't calculate to want him teu."

"How came the doctor to know what you were going for?"

"I told him."

"But how came you to tell him?"

"Wall I guess he had a mind to know," said Philetus, "so I didn't keep it no closer than I had teu."

"Well," said Fleda biting her lips, "you will have to go down to Mr. Douglass's nevertheless, Philetus, and tell him the doctor is coming to-morrow, but I should be very much obliged to him if he will be here next day. Will you?"

"Yes marm!"

"Now dear Hugh, will you make me those little spouts for the trees!--of some dry wood--you can get plenty out here. You want to split them up with a hollow chisel about a quarter of an inch thick, and a little more than half an inch broad. Have you got a hollow chisel?"

"No, but I can get one up the hill. Why must it be hollow?"

"To make little spouts, you know,--for the sap to run in. And then, my dear Hugh! they must be sharpened at one end so as to fit where the chisel goes in--I am afraid I have given you a day's work of it. How sorry I am you must go to-morrow to the mill!--and yet I am glad too."

"Why need you go round yourself with these people?" said Hugh. "I don't see the sense of it."

"They don't know where the trees are," said Fleda.

"I am sure I do not. Do you?"

"Perfectly well. And besides," said Fleda laughing, "I should have great doubts of the discreetness of Philetus's auger if it were left to his simple direction. I have no notion the trees would yield their sap as kindly to him as to me. But I didn't bargain for Dr. Quackenboss."

Dr. Quackenboss arrived punctually the next morning with his oxen and sled; and by the time it was loaded with the sap-troughs, Fleda in her black cloak, yarn shawl, and grey little hood came out of the house to the wood-yard. Earl Douglass was there too, not with his team, but merely to see how matters stood and give advice.

"Good day, Mr. Douglass!" said the doctor. "You see I'm so fortunate as to have got the start of you."

"Very good," said Earl contentedly,--"you may have it;--the start's one thing and the pull's another. I'm willin' anybody should have the start, but it takes a pull to know whether a man's got stuff in him or no."

"What do you mean?" said the doctor.

"I don't mean nothin' at all. You make a start to-day and I'll come ahint and take the pull to-morrow. Ha' you got anythin' to boil down in, Fleda?--there's a potash kittle somewheres, ain't there? I guess there is. There is in most houses."

"There is a large kettle--I suppose large enough," said Fleda.

"That'll do, I guess. Well what do you calculate to put the syrup in--ha' you got a good big cask, or plenty o' tubs and that? or will you sugar off the hull lot every night and fix it that way? You must do one thing or t'other, and it's good to know what you're a going to do afore you come to do it."

"I don't know, Mr. Douglass," said Fleda;--"whichever is the best way--we have no cask large enough, I am afraid."

"Well I tell you what I'll do--I know where there's a tub, and where they ain't usin' it nother, and I reckon I can get 'em to let me have it--I reckon I can--and I'll go round for't and fetch it here to-morrow mornin' when I come with the team. 'Twon't be much out of my way. It's more handier to leave the sugarin' off till the next day; and it had ought to have a settlin' besides. Where'll you have your fire built?--in doors or out?"

"Out--I would rather, if we can. But can we?"

"La, 'tain't nothin' easier--it's as easy out as in--all you've got to do is to take and roll a couple of pretty sized billets for your fireplace and stick a couple o' crotched sticks for to hang the kittle over--I'd as lieve have it out as in, and if anythin' a leetle liever. If you'll lend me Philetus, me and him'll fix it all ready agin you come back--'tain't no trouble at all--and if the sticks ain't here we'll go into the woods after 'em, and have it all sot up."

But Fleda represented that the services of Philetus were just then in requisition, and that there would be no sap brought home till to-morrow.

"Very good!" said Earl amicably,--"very good! it's just as easy done one day as another--it don't make no difference to me, and if it makes any difference to you, of course we'll leave it to-day, and there'll be time enough to do it to-morrow; me and him'll knock it up in a whistle.--What's them little shingles for?"

Fleda explained the use and application of Hugh's mimic spouts. He turned one about, whistling, while he listened to her.

"That's some o' Seth Plumfield's new jigs, ain't it. I wonder if he thinks now the sap's a goin to run any sweeter out o' that 'ere than it would off the end of a chip that wa'n't quite so handsome?"

"No, Mr. Douglass," said Fleda smiling,--"he only thinks that this will catch a little more."

"His sugar won't never tell where it come from," remarked Earl, throwing the spout down. "Well,--you shall see more o' me to-morrow. Good-bye, Dr. Quackenboss!"

"Do you contemplate the refining process?" said the doctor, as they moved off.

"I have often contemplated the want of it," said Fleda; "but it is best not to try to do too much. I should like to make sure of something worth refining in the first place."

"Mr. Douglass and I," said the doctor,--"I hope--a--he's a very good-hearted man, Miss Fleda, but, ha! ha!--he wouldn't suffer loss from a little refining himself.--Haw! you rascal--where are you going! Haw! I tell ye--"

"I am very sorry, Dr. Quackenboss," said Fleda when she had the power and the chance to speak again,--"I am very sorry you should have to take this trouble; but unfortunately the art of driving oxen is not among Mr. Skillcorn's accomplishments."

"My dear Miss Ringgan!" said the doctor, "I--I--nothing I assure you could give me greater pleasure than to drive my oxen to any place where you would like to have them go."

Poor Fleda wished she could have despatched them and him in one direction while she took another; the art of driving oxen quietly was certainly not among the doctor's accomplishments. She was almost deafened. She tried to escape from the immediate din by running before to shew Philetus about tapping the trees and fixing the little spouts, but it was a longer operation than she had counted upon, and by the time they were ready to leave the tree the doctor was gee-hawing alongside of it; and then if the next maple was not within sight she could not in decent kindness leave him alone. The oxen went slowly, and though Fleda managed to have no delay longer than to throw down a trough as the sled came up with each tree which she and Philetus had tapped, the business promised to make a long day of it. It might have been a pleasant day in pleasant company; but Fleda's spirits were down to set out with, and Dr. Quackenboss was not the person to give them the needed spring; his long-winded complimentary speeches had not interest enough even to divert her. She felt that she was entering upon an untried and most weighty undertaking; charging her time and thoughts with a burthen they could well spare. Her energies did not flag, but the spirit that should have sustained them was not strong enough for the task.

It was a blustering day of early March; with that uncompromising brightness of sky and land which has no shadow of sympathy with a heart overcast. The snow still lay a foot thick over the ground, thawing a little in sunny spots; the trees quite bare and brown, the buds even of the early maples hardly shewing colour; the blessed evergreens alone doing their utmost to redeem the waste, and speaking of patience and fortitude that can brave the blast and outstand the long waiting and cheerfully bide the time when "the winter shall be over and gone." Poor Fleda thought they were like her in their circumstances, but she feared she was not like them in their strong endurance. She looked at the pines and hemlocks as she passed, as if they were curious preachers to her; and when she had a chance she prayed quietly that she might stand faithfully like them to cheer a desolation far worse and she feared far more abiding than snows could make or melt away. She thought of Hugh, alone in his mill-work that rough chilly day, when the wind stalked through the woods and over the country as if it had been the personification of March just come of ape and taking possession of his domains. She thought of her uncle, doing what?--in Michigan,--leaving them to fight with difficulties as they might,--why?--why? and her gentle aunt at home sad and alone, pining for the want of them all, but most of him, and fading with their fortunes. And Fleda's thoughts travelled about from one to the other and dwelt with them all by turns till she was heart-sick; and tears, tears, fell hot on the snow many a time when her eyes had a moment's shield from the doctor and his somewhat more obtuse coadjutor. She felt half superstitiously as if with her taking the farm were beginning the last stage of their falling prospects, which would leave them with none of hope's colouring. Not that in the least she doubted her own ability and success; but her uncle did not deserve to have his affairs prosper under such a system and she had no faith that they would.

"It is most grateful," said the doctor with that sideway twist of his jaw and his head at once, in harmony,--"it is a most grateful thing to see such a young lady--Haw I there now I--what are you about? haw,--haw then!--It is a most grateful thing to see--"

But Fleda was not at his side; she had bounded away and was standing under a great maple tree a little ahead, making sure that Philetus screwed his auger up into the tree instead of down, which he had several times shewed an unreasonable desire to do. The doctor had steered his oxen by her little grey hood and black cloak all the day. He made for it now.

"Have we arrived at the termination of our--a--adventure?" said he as he came up and threw down the last trough.

"Why no, sir," said Fleda, "for we have yet to get home again."

"'Tain't so fur going that way as it were this'n," said Philetus. "My! ain't I glad."

"Glad of what?" said the doctor. "Here's Miss Ringgan's walked the whole way, and she a lady--ain't you ashamed to speak of being tired?"

"I ha'n't said the first word o' being tired!" said Philetus in an injured tone of voice,--"but a man ha'n't no right to kill hisself, if he ain't a gal!"

"I'll qualify to your being safe enough," said the doctor. "But Miss Ringgan, my dear, you are--a--you have lost something since you came out--"

"What?" said Fleda laughing. "Not my patience?"

"No," said the doctor, "no,--you're--a--you're an angel! but your cheeks, my dear Miss Ringgan, shew that you have exceeded your--a--"

"Not my intentions, doctor," said Fleda lightly. "I am very well satisfied with our day's work, and with my share of it, and a cup of coffee will make me quite up again. Don't look at my cheeks till then."

"I shall disobey you constantly," said the doctor;--"but, my dear Miss Fleda, we must give you some felicities for reaching home, or Mrs. Rossitur will be--a--distressed when she sees them. Might I propose--that you should just bear your weight on this wood-sled and let my oxen and me have the honour--The cup of coffee, I am confident, would be at your lips considerably earlier--"

"The sun won't be a great haighth by the time we get there," said Philetus in a cynical manner; "and I ha'n't took the first thing to-day!"

"Well who has?" said the doctor; "you ain't the only one. Follow your nose down hill, Mr. Skillcorn, and it'll smell supper directly. Now, my dear Miss Ringgan!--will you?"

Fleda hesitated, but her relaxed energies warned her not to despise a homely mode of relief. The wood-sled was pretty clean, and the road decently good over the snow. So Fleda gathered her cloak about her and sat down flat on the bottom of her rustic vehicle; too grateful for the rest to care if there had been a dozen people to laugh at her; but the doctor was only delighted, and Philetus regarded every social phenomenon as coolly and in the same business light as he would the butter to his bread, or any other infallible every-day matter.

Fleda was very glad presently that she had taken this plan, for besides the rest of body she was happily relieved from all necessity of speaking. The doctor though but a few paces off was perfectly given up to the care of his team, in the intense anxiety to shew his skill and gallantry in saving her harmless from every ugly place in the road that threatened a jar or a plunge. Why his oxen didn't go distracted was a question; but the very vehemence and iteration of his cries at last drowned itself in Fleda's ear and she could hear it like the wind's roaring, without thinking of it. She presently subsided to that. With a weary frame, and with that peculiar quietness of spirits that comes upon the ending of a days work in which mind and body have both been busily engaged, and the sudden ceasing of any call upon either, fancy asked no leave and dreamily roved hither and thither between the material and the spirit world; the will too subdued to stir. Days gone by came marshalling their scenes and their actors before her; again she saw herself a little child under those same trees that stretched their great black arms over her head and swaying their tops in the wind seemed to beckon her back to the past. They talked of their old owner, whose steps had so often passed beneath them with her own light tread,--light now, but how dancing then!--by his side; and of her father whose hand perhaps had long ago tapped those very trees where she had noticed the old closed-up soars of the axe. At any rate his boyhood had rejoiced there, and she could look back to one time at least in his manhood when she had taken a pleasant walk with him in summer weather among those same woods, in that very ox-track she believed. Gone--two generations that she had known there; hopes and fears and disappointments, akin to her own, at rest,--as hers would be; and how sedately the old trees stood telling her of it, and waving their arms in grave and gentle commenting on the folly of anxieties that came and went with the wind. Fleda agreed to it all; she heard all they said; and her own spirit was as sober and quiet as their quaint moralizing. She felt as if it would never dance again.

The wind had greatly abated of its violence; as if satisfied with the shew of strength it had given in the morning it seemed willing to make no more commotion that day. The sun was far on his way to the horizon, and many a broad hill-side slope was in shadow; the snow had blown or melted from off the stones and rocks leaving all their roughness and bareness unveiled; and the white crust of snow that lay between them looked a cheerless waste in the shade of the wood and the hill. But there were other spots where the sunbeams struck and bright streams of light ran between the trees, smiling and making them smile. And as Fleda's eye rested there another voice seemed to say, "At evening-time it shall be light,"--and "Sorrow may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." She could have cried, but spirits were too absolutely at an ebb. She knew this was partly physical, because she was tired and faint, but it could not the better be overcome. Yet those streaks of sunlight were pleasant company, and Fleda watched them, thinking how bright they used to be once; till the oxen and sled came out from the woods, and she could see the evening colours on the hill-tops beyond the village, lighting up the whole landscape with promise of the morrow. She thought her day had seen its brightest; but she thought too that if she must know sorrows it was a very great blessing to know them at Queechy.

The smoke of the chimney-tops came in sight, and fancy went home,--a few minutes before her.

"I wonder what you'll take and do to yourself next!" said Barby in extreme vexation when she saw her come in. "You're as white as the wall,--and as cold, ain't you? I'd ha' let Philetus cut all the trees and drink all the sap afterwards. I wonder which you think is the worst, the want o' you or the want o' sugar."

A day's headache was pretty sure to visit Fleda after any over-exertion or exhaustion, and the next day justified Barby's fears. She was the quiet prisoner of pain. But Earl Douglass and Mr. Skillcorn could now do without her in the woods; and her own part of the trouble Fleda always took with speechless patience. She had the mixed comfort that love could bestow; Hugh's sorrowful kiss and look before setting off for the mill, Mrs. Rossitur's caressing care, and Barby's softened voice, and sympathizing hand on her brow, and hearty heart-speaking kiss, and poor little King lay all day with his head in her lap, casting grave wistful glances up at his mistress's face and licking her hand with intense affection when even in her distress it stole to his head to reward and comfort him. He never would budge from her side, or her feet, till she could move herself and he knew that she was well. As sure as King came trotting into the kitchen Barby used to look into the other room and say, "So you're better, ain't you, Fleda? I knowed it!"

After hours of suffering the fit was at last over; and in the evening, though looking and feeling racked, Fleda would go out to see the sap-boilers. Earl Douglass and Philetus had had a very good day of it, and now were in full blast with the evening part of the work. The weather was mild, and having the stay of Hugh's arm Fleda grew too amused to leave them.

It was a very pretty scene. The sap-boilers had planted themselves near the cellar door on the other side of the house from the kitchen door and the wood-yard; the casks and tubs for syrup being under cover there; and there they had made a most picturesque work-place. Two strong crotched sticks were stuck in the ground some six or eight feet apart and a pole laid upon them, to which by the help of some very rustic hooks two enormous iron kettles were slung. Under them a fine fire of smallish split sticks was doing duty, kept in order by a couple of huge logs which walled it in on the one side and on the other. It was a dark night, and the fire painted all this in strong lights and shadows; threw a faint fading Aurora like light over the snow, beyond the shade of its log barriers; glimmered by turns upon the paling of the garden fence, whenever the dark figures that were passing and repassing between gave it a chance; and invested the cellar-opening and the outstanding corner of the house with striking and unwonted dignity, in a light that revealed nothing except to the imagination. Nothing was more fancifully dignified or more quaintly travestied by that light than the figures around it, busy and flitting about and shewing themselves in every novel variety of grouping and colouring. There was Earl Douglass, not a hair different from what he was every day in reality, but with his dark skin and eyes, and a hat that like its master had concluded to abjure all fashions and perhaps for the same reason, he looked now like any bandit and now in a more pacific view could pass for nothing less than a Spanish shepherd at least, with an iron ladle in lieu of crook. There was Dr. Quackenboss, who had come too, determined as Earl said, "to keep his eend up," excessively bland and busy and important, the fire would throw his one-sidedness of feature into such aspects of gravity or sternness that Fleda could make nothing of him but a poor clergyman or a poor schoolmaster alternately. Philetus, who was kept handing about a bucket of sap or trudging off for wood, defied all comparison; he was Philetus still; but when Barby came once or twice and peered into the kettle her strong features with the handkerchief she always wore about her head were lit up into a very handsome gypsy. Fleda stood some time unseen in the shadow of the house to enjoy the sight, and then went forward on the same principle that a sovereign princess shews herself to her army, to grace and reward the labours of her servants. The doctor was profuse in enquiries after her health and Earl informed her of the success of the day.

"We've had first rate weather," he said;--"I don't want to see no better weather for sugar-makin'; it's as good kind o' weather as you need to have. It friz everythin' up tight in the night, and it thew in the sun this mornin' as soon as the sun was anywhere; the trees couldn't do no better than they have done. I guess we ha'n't got much this side o' two hundred gallon--I ain't sure about it, but that's what I think; and there's nigh two hundred gallon we've fetched down; I'll qualify to better than a hundred and fifty, or a hundred and sixty either. We should ha' had more yet if Mr. Skillcorn hadn't managed to spill over one cask of it--I reckon he wanted it for sass for his chicken."

"Now, Mr. Douglass!"--said Philetus, in a comical tone of deprecation.

"It is an uncommonly fine lot of sugar trees," said the doctor, "and they stand so on the ground as to give great felicities to the oxen."

"Now, Fleda," Earl went on, busy all the while with his iron ladle in dipping the boiling sap from one kettle into the other,--"you know how this is fixed when we've done all we've got to do with it?--it must be strained out o' this biler into a cask or a tub or somethin' 'nother,--anythin' that'll hold it,--and stand a day or so;--you may strain it through a cotton cloth, or through a woollen cloth, or through any kind of a cloth!--and let it stand to settle; and then when it's biled down--Barby knows about bilin' down--you can tell when it's comin' to the sugar when the yellow blobbers rises thick to the top and puffs off, and then it's time to try it in cold water,--it's best to be a leetle the right side o' the sugar and stop afore it's done too much, for the molasses will dreen off afterwards--"

"It must be clarified in the commencement," put in the doctor.

"O' course it must be clarified," said Earl,--"Barby knows about clarifyin'--that's when you first put it on--you had ought to throw in a teeny drop o' milk fur to clear it,--milk's as good as a'most anything,--or if you can get it calf's blood's better "--

"Eggs would be a more preferable ingredient on the present occasion, I presume," said the doctor. "Miss Ringgan's delicacy would be--a--would shrink from--a--and the albumen of eggs will answer all the same purpose."

"Well anyhow you like to fix it," said Earl,--"eggs or calf's blood--I won't quarrel with you about the eggs, though I never heerd o' blue ones afore, 'cept the robin's and bluebird's--and I've heerd say the swamp black bird lays a handsome blue egg, but I never happened to see the nest myself;--and there's the chippin' sparrow,--but you'd want to rob all the birds' nests in creation to get enough of 'em, and they ain't here in sugar time, nother; but anyhow any eggs'll do I s'pose if you can get 'em--or milk'll do if you ha'n't nothin' else--and after it is turned out into the barrel you just let it stand still a spell till it begins to grain and look clean on top"--

"May I suggest an improvement?" said the doctor. "Many persons are of the opinion that if you take and stir it up well from the bottom for a length of time it will help the coagulation of the particles. I believe that is the practice of Mr. Plumfield and others."

"'Tain't the practice of as good men as him and as good sugar-bilers, besides," said Earl; "though I don't mean to say nothin' agin Seth Plumfield nor agin his sugar, for the both is as good as you'd need to have; he's a good man and he's a good farmer--there ain't no better man in town than Seth Plumfield, nor no better farmer, nor no better sugar nother; but I hope there's as good; and I've seen as handsome sugar that wa'n't stirred as I'd want to see or eat either."

"It would lame a man's arms the worst kind!" said Philetus.

Fleda stood listening to the discussion and smiling, when Hugh suddenly wheeling about brought her face to face with Mr. Olmney.

"I have been sitting some time with Mrs. Rossitur," he said, "and she rewarded me with permission to come and look at you. I mean!--not that I wanted a reward, for I certainly did not--"

"Ah Mr. Olmney!" said Fleda laughing, "you are served right. You see how dangerous it is to meddle with such equivocal things as compliments. But we are worth looking at, aren't we? I have been standing here this half hour."

He did not say this time what he thought.

"Pretty, isn't it?" said Fleda. "Stand a little further back, Mr. Olmney--isn't it quite a wild-looking scene, in that peculiar light and with the snowy background? Look at Philetus now with that bundle of sticks--Hugh! isn't he exactly like some of the figures in the old pictures of the martyrdoms, bringing billets to feed the fire?--that old martyrdom of St. Lawrence--whose was it--Spagnoletto!--at Mrs. Decatur's--don't you recollect? It is fine, isn't it, Mr. Olmney?"

"I am afraid," said he shaking his head a little, "my eye wants training. I have not been once in your company I believe without your shewing me something I could not see."

"That young lady, sir," said Dr. Quackenboss from the far side of the fire, where he was busy giving it more wood,--"that young lady, sir, is a pattron to her--a--to all young ladies."

"A patron!" said Mr. Olmney.

"Passively, not actively, the doctor means," said Fleda softly.

"Well I won't say but she's a good girl," said Mr. Douglass in an abstracted manner, busy with his iron ladle,--"she means to be a good girl--she's as clever a girl as you need to have!"

Nobody's gravity stood this, excepting Philetus, in whom the principle of fun seemed not to be developed.

"Miss Ringgan, sir," Dr. Quackenboss went on with a most benign expression of countenance,--"Miss Ringgan, sir, Mr. Olmney, sets an example to all ladies who--a--have had elegant advantages. She gives her patronage to the agricultural interest in society."

"Not exclusively, I hope?" said Mr. Olmney smiling, and making the question with his eye of Fleda. But she did not meet it.

"You know," she said rather quickly, and drawing back from the fire, "I am of an agricultural turn perforce--in uncle Rolf's absence I am going to be a farmer myself."

"So I have heard--so Mrs. Rossitur told me,--but I fear--pardon me--you do not look fit to grapple with such a burden of care."

Hugh sighed, and Fleda's eyes gave Mr. Olmney a hint to be silent.

"I am not going to grapple with any thing, sir; I intend to take things easily."

"I wish I could take an agricultural turn too," said he smiling, "and be of some service to you."

"O I shall have no lack of service," said Fleda gayly;--"I am not going unprovided into the business. There is my cousin Seth Plumfield, who has engaged himself to be my counsellor and instructor in general; I could not have a better; and Mr. Douglass is to be my right hand; I occupying only the quiet and unassuming post of the will, to convey the orders of the head to the hand. And for the rest, sir, there is Philetus!"

Mr. Olmney looked, half laughing, at Mr. Skillcorn, who was at that moment standing with his hands on his sides, eying with concentrated gravity the movements of Earl Douglass and the doctor.

"Don't shake your head at him!" said Fleda. "I wish you had come an hour earlier, Mr. Olmney."

"Why?"

"I was just thinking of coming out here," said Fleda, her eyes flashing with hidden fun,--"and Hugh and I were both standing in the kitchen, when we heard a tremendous shout from the woodyard. Don't laugh, or I can't go on. We all ran out, towards the lantern which we saw standing there, and so soon as we got near we heard Philetus singing out, 'Ho, Miss Elster!--I'm dreadfully on't!'--Why he called upon Barby I don't know, unless from some notion of her general efficiency, though to be sure he was nearer her than the sap-boilers and perhaps thought her aid would come quickest. And he was in a hurry, for the cries came thick--'Miss Elster!--here!--I'm dreadfully on't'--"

"I don't understand--"

"No," said Fleda, whose amusement seemed to be increased by the gentleman's want of understanding,--"and neither did we till we came up to him. The silly fellow had been sent up for more wood, and splitting a log he had put his hand in to keep the cleft, instead of a wedge, and when he took out the axe the wood pinched him; and he had the fate of Milo before his eyes, I suppose, and could do nothing but roar. You should have seen the supreme indignation with which Barby took the axe and released him with 'You're a smart man, Mr. Skillcorn!'"

"What was the fate of Milo?" said Mr. Olmney presently.

"Don't you remember,--the famous wrestler that in his old age trying to break open a tree found himself not strong enough; and the wood closing upon his hands held him fast till the wild beasts came and made an end of him. The figure of our unfortunate wood-cutter though, was hardly so dignified as that of the old athlete in the statue.--Dr. Quackenboss, and Mr. Douglass,--you will come in and see us when this troublesome business is done?"

"It'll be a pretty spell yet," said Earl;--"but the doctor, he can go in,--he ha'n't nothin' to do. It don't take more'n half a dozen men to keep one pot a bilin'."

"Ain't there ten on 'em, Mr. Douglass?" said Philetus.

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Chapter XXVIII

He that has light within his own clear breast, May sit i' the centre and enjoy bright day.

Milton.

The farming plan succeeded beyond Fleda's hopes; thanks not more to her wisdom than to the nice tact with which the wisdom was brought into play. The one was eked out with Seth Plumfield's; the other was all her own. Seth was indefatigably kind and faithful. After his own day's work was done he used to walk down to see Fleda, go with her often to view the particular field or work just then in question, and give her the best counsel dictated by great sagacity and great experience. It was given too with equal frankness and intelligence, so that Fleda knew the steps she took and could maintain them against the prejudice or the ignorance of her subordinates. But Fleda's delicate handling stood her yet more in stead than her strength. Earl Douglass was sometimes unmanageable, and held out in favour of an old custom or a prevailing opinion in spite of all the weight of testimony and light of discovery that could be brought to bear upon him. Fleda would let the thing go. But seizing her opportunity another time she would ask him to try the experiment, on a piece of the ground; so pleasantly and skilfully that Earl could do nothing but shut his mouth and obey, like an animal fairly stroked into good humour. And as Fleda always forgot to remind him that she had been right and he wrong, he forgot it too, and presently took to the new way kindly. In other matters he could be depended on, and the seed-time and harvest prospered well. There was hope of making a good payment to Dr. Gregory in the course of a few months.

As the spring came forward Fleda took care that her garden should,--both gardens indeed. There she and Philetus had the game in their own hands, and beautifully it was managed. Hugh had full occupation at the mill. Many a dollar this summer was earned by the loads of fine fruit and vegetables which Philetus carried to Montepoole; and accident opened a new source of revenue. When the courtyard was in the full blaze of its beauty, one day an admiring passer-by modestly inquired if a few of those exquisite flowers might be had for money. They were given him most cheerfully that time; but the demand returned, accompanied by the offer, and Fleda obliged herself not to decline it. A trial it was to cut her roses and jessamines for anything but her own or her friends' pleasure, but according to custom she bore it without hesitation. The place became a resort for all the flower-lovers who happened to be staying at the Pool; and rose-leaves were changed into silver pennies as fast as in a fairy-tale.

But the delicate mainspring that kept all this machinery in order suffered from too severe a strain. There was too much running, too much considering, too much watchfulness. In the garden pulling peas and seeing that Philetus weeded the carrots right,--in the field or the woodyard consulting and arranging or maybe debating with Earl Douglass, who acquired by degrees an unwonted and concentrated respect for womankind in her proper person; breakfast waiting for her often before she came in; in the house her old housewifery concerns, her share in Barby's cares or difficulties, her sweet countenancing and cheering of her aunt, her dinner, her work;--then when evening came, budding her roses or tying her carnations or weeding or raking the ground between them, (where Philetus could do nothing,) or training her multiflora and sweet-briar branches;--and then often after all, walking up to the mill to give Hugh a little earlier a home smile and make his way down pleasant. No wonder if the energies which owed much of their strength to love's nerving, should at last give out, and Fleda's evening be passed in wearied slumbers. No wonder if many a day was given up to the forced quietude of a headache, the more grievous to Fleda because she knew that her aunt and Hugh always found the day dark that was not lightened by her sunbeam. How brightly it shone out the moment the cloud of pain was removed, winning the shadow from their faces and a smile to their lips, though solitude always saw her own settle into a gravity as fixed as it was soft.

"You have been doing too much, Fleda," said Mrs. Rossitur one morning when she came in from the garden.

"I didn't know it would take me so long," said Fleda drawing a long breath;--"but I couldn't help it. I had those celery plants to prick out,--and then I was helping Philetus to plant another patch of corn."

"He might have done that without help I should think."

"But it must be put in to-day, and he had other things to do."

"And then you were at your flowers?--"

"O well!--budding a few roses--that's only play. It was time they were done. But I am tired; and I am going up to see Hugh--it will rest me and him too."

The gardening frock and gloves were exchanged for those of ordinary wear, and Fleda set off slowly to go up to the saw-mill.

She stopped a moment when she came upon the bridge, to look off to the right where the waters of the little run came hurrying along through a narrow wooded chasm in the hill, murmuring to her of the time when a little child's feet had paused there and a child's heart danced to its music. The freshness of its song was unchanged, the glad rush of its waters was as joyous as ever, but the spirits were quieted that used to answer it with sweeter freshness and lighter joyousness. Its faint echo of the old-time laugh was blended now in Fleda's ear with a gentle wail for the rushing days and swifter fleeing delights of human life;--gentle, faint, but clear,--she could hear it very well. Taking up her walk again with a step yet slower and a brow yet more quiet, she went on till she came in sight of the little mill; and presently above the noise of the brook could hear the saw going. To her childish ears what a signal of pleasure that had always been; and now,--she sighed, and stopping at a little distance looked for Hugh. He was there; she saw him in a moment going forward to stop the machinery, the piece of timber in hand having walked its utmost length up to the saw; she saw him throwing aside the new-cut board, and adjusting what was left till it was ready for another march up to headquarters. When it stopped the second time Fleda went forward. Hugh must have been busy in his own thoughts, for he did not see her until he had again adjusted the log and set the noisy works in motion. She stood still. Several huge timbers lay close by, ready for the saw; and on one of them where he had been sitting Fleda saw his Bible lying open. As her eye went from it to him it struck her heart with a pang that he looked tired and that there was a something of delicacy, even of fragility, in the air of face and figure both.

He came to meet her and welcomed her with a smile that coming upon this feeling set Fleda's heart a quivering. Hugh's smile was always one of very great sweetness, though never unshadowed; there was often something ethereal in its pure gentleness. This time it seemed even sweeter than usual, but though not sadder, perhaps less sad, Fleda could hardly command herself to reply to it. She could not at the moment speak; her eye glanced at his open book.

"Yes, it rests me," he said, answering her.

"Rests you, dear Hugh!--"

He smiled again. "Here is somebody else that wants resting, I am afraid," said he, placing her gently on the log; and before she had found anything to say he went off again to his machinery. Fleda sat looking at him and trying to clear her bosom of its thick breathing.

"What has brought you up here through the hot sun?" said he, coming back after he had stopped the saw, and sitting down beside her.

Fleda's lip moved nervously and her eye shunned meeting his. Softly pushing back the wet hair from his temples, she said,

"I had one of my fits of doing nothing at home--I didn't feel very bright and thought perhaps you didn't,--so on the principle that two negatives make an affirmative--"

"I feel bright," said Hugh gently.

Fleda's eye came down to his, which was steady and clear as the reflection of the sky in Deepwater lake,--and then hers fell lower.

"Why don't you, dear Fleda?"

"I believe I am a little tired," Fleda said, trying but in vain to command herself and look up,--"and there are states of body when anything almost is enough to depress one--"

"And what depresses you now?" said he, very steadily and quietly.

"O--I was feeling a little down about things in general," said Fleda in a choked voice, trying to throw off her load with a long breath;--"it's because I am tired, I suppose--"

"I felt so too, a little while ago," said Hugh. "But I have concluded to give all that up, Fleda."

Fleda looked at him. Her eyes were swimming full, but his were clear and gentle as ever, only glistening a little in sympathy with hers.

"I thought all was going wrong with us," he went on. "But I found it was only I that was wrong; and since that I have been quite happy, Fleda."

Fleda could not speak to him; his words made her pain worse.

"I told you this rested me," said he reaching across her for his book; "and now I am never weary long. Shall I rest you with it? What have you been troubling yourself about to-day?"

She did not answer while he was turning over the leaves, and he then said,

"Do you remember this, Fleda?--'Truly God is good to Israel, even to them that are of a clean heart.'"

Fleda bent her head down upon her hands.

"I was moody and restless the other day," said Hugh,--"desponding of everything;--and I came upon this psalm; and it made me ashamed of myself. I had been disbelieving it, and because I could not see how things were going to work good I thought they were going to work evil. I thought we were wearing out our lives alone here in a wearisome way, and I forgot that it must be the very straightest way that we could get home. I am sure we shall not want anything that will do us good; and the rest I am willing to want--and so are you, Fleda?"

Fleda squeezed his hand,--that was all. For a minute he was silent, and then went on, without any change of tone.

"I had a notion awhile ago that I should like it if it were possible for me to go to college; but I am quite satisfied now. I have good time and opportunity to furnish myself with a better kind of knowledge, that I shall want where college learning wouldn't be of much use to me; and I can do it, I dare say, better here in this mill than if we had stayed in New York and I had lived in our favourite library."

"But dear Hugh," said Fleda, who did not like this speech in any sense of it,--"the two things do not clash. The better man the better Christian always, other things being equal. The more precious kind of knowledge should not make one undervalue the less?"

"No,"--he said; but the extreme quietness and simplicity of his reply smote Fleda's fears; it answered her words and waived her thought; she dared not press him further. She sat looking over the road with an aching heart.

"You haven't taken enough of my medicine," said Hugh smiling. "Listen, Fleda--'All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant and his testimonies.'"

But that made Fleda cry again.

"'All his paths,' Fleda--then, whatever may happen to you, and whatever may happen to me, or to any of us.--I can trust him. I am willing any one should have the world, if I may have what Abraham had--'Fear not; I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward;'--and I believe I shall, Fleda; for it is not the hungry that he has threatened to send empty away."

Fleda could say nothing, and Hugh just then said no more. For a little while, near and busy as thoughts might be, tongues were silent. Fleda was crying quietly, the utmost she could do being to keep it quiet; Hugh, more quietly, was considering again the strong pillars on which he had laid his hope, and trying their strength and beauty; till all other things were to him as the mist rolling off from the valley is to the man planted on a watch tower.

His meditations were interrupted by the tramp of horse, and a party of riders male and female came past them up the hill. Hugh looked on as they went by; Fleda's head was not raised.

"There are some people enjoying themselves," said Hugh. "After all, dear Fleda, we should be very sorry to change places with those gay riders. I would not for a thousand worlds give my hope and treasure for all other they can possibly have, in possession or prospect."

"No, indeed!" said Fleda energetically, and trying to rouse herself;--"and besides that, Hugh, we have as it is a great deal more to enjoy than most other people. We are so happy--"

In each other, she was going to say, but the words choked her.

"Those people looked very hard at us, or at one of us," said Hugh. "It must have been you, I think, Fleda"

"They are welcome," said Fleda; "they couldn't have made much out of the back of my sun bonnet."

"Well, dear Fleda, I must content myself with little more than looking at you now, for Mr. Winegar is in a hurry for his timber to be sawn, and I must set this noisy concern a going again."

Fleda sat and watched him, with rising and falling hopes and fears, forcing her lips to a smile when he came near her, and hiding her tears at other times; till the shadows stretching well to the east of the meridian, admonished her she had been there long enough; and she left him still going backward and forward tending the saw.

As she went down the hill she pressed involuntarily her hands upon her heart, for the dull heavy pain there. But that was no plaster for it; and when she got to the bridge the soft singing of the little brook was just enough to shake her spirits from the doubtful poise they had kept. Giving one hasty glance along the road and up the hill to make sure that no one was near she sat down on a stone in the edge of the woods, and indulged in such weeping as her gentle eyes rarely knew; for the habit of patience so cultivated for others' sake constantly rewarded her own life with its sweet fruits. But deep and bitter in proportion was the flow of the fountain once broken up. She struggled to remind herself that "Providence runneth not on broken wheels," she struggled to repeat to herself, what she did not doubt that "all the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth" to his people;--in vain. The slight check for a moment to the torrent of grief but gave it greater head to sweep over the barrier; and the self-reproach that blamed its violence and needlessness only made the flood more bitter. Nature fought against patience for awhile; but when the loaded heart had partly relieved itself patience came in again and she rose up to go home. It startled her exceedingly to find Mr. Olmney standing before her, and looking so sorrowful that Fleda's eyes could not bear it.

"My dear Miss Ringgan!--forgive me--I hope you will forgive me,--but I could not leave you in such distress. I knew that in you it could only be from some very serious cause of grief."

"I cannot say it is from anything new, Mr. Olmney--except to my apprehensions."

"You are all well?" he said inquiringly, after they had walked a few steps in silence.

"Well?--yes, sir,--" said Fleda hesitatingly,--"but I do not think that Hugh looks very well."

The trembling of her voice told him her thought. But he remained silent.

"You have noticed it?" she said hastily, looking up.

"I think you have told me he always was delicate?"

"And you have noticed him looking so lately, Mr. Olmney?"

"I have thought so,--but you say he always was that. If you will permit me to say so, I have thought the same of you, Miss Fleda."

Fleda was silent; her heart ached again.

"We would gladly save each other from every threatening trouble," said Mr. Olmney again after a pause;--"but it ought to content us that we do not know how. Hugh is in good hands, my dear Miss Ringgan."

"I know it, sir," said Fleda unable quite to keep back her tears,--"and I know very well this thread of our life will not bear the strain always,--and I know that the strands must in all probability part unevenly,--and I know it is in the power of no blind fate,--but that--"

"Does not lessen our clinging to each other. Oh no!--it grows but the tenderer and the stronger for the knowledge."

Fleda could but cry.

"And yet," said he very kindly,--"we who are Christians may and ought to learn to take troubles hopefully; for 'tribulation worketh patience; and patience,' that is, quiet waiting on God, 'works experience' of his goodness and faithfulness; 'and experience worketh hope; and that hope, we know, 'maketh not ashamed.'"

"I know it," said Fleda;--"but, Mr. Olmney, how easily the brunt of a new affliction breaks down all that chain of reasoning!"

"Yes!--" he said sadly and thoughtfully;--"but my dear Miss Fleda, you know the way to build it up again. I would be very glad to bear all need for it away from you!"

They had reached the gate. Fleda could not look up to thank him; the hand she held out was grasped, more than kindly, and he turned away.

Fleda's tears came hot again as she went up the walk; she held her head down to hide them and went round the back way.

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