bone, flesh of your flesh, and yet, stranger to you than the savage of
the desert--colder to you than the dead for whom you so repiningly
grieve. Ah! are there no bleeding hearts save yours? Is the “last vial”
emptied on your shrinking head?

  But your little children stand looking into your tear-stained face,
imploring you for bread--bread that you know not where to procure; your
ear aches for the kind words which never come to you. Oh, where is your
faith in God? Who says to you in accents sweeter than ever fell from
human lips: “A bruised reed will I not break;” “Let your widows trust in
me.” No kind words? Is it nothing, that those musical little voices call
you “mother?” Is the clasp of those soft arms, the touch of those velvet
lips, nothing? Is it thus you teach them to put their little hands into
that of the Almighty Father, and say, “Give us this day our daily
bread?” Oh, get on your knees before those sweet little teachers, who
know no danger--no harm, who fear no evil while “mother” is near, and
learn of them to watch, and hope, and trust; for sure as the sun shines
above your and their heads, so sure is _His_ promise to those who
believingly claim it.

  “Lonely,” are you? Oh, above all loneliness is his, who, having thrown
away his faith in God, and bereft of earthly idols, stands like some
lightning-reft tree, blossomless, verdureless, scathed, and blasted!

KNICKERBOCKER AND TRI-MOUNTAIN.

  The New York woman doteth on rainbow hats and dresses, confectionery,
the theater, the opera, and flirtation. She stareth gentlemen in the
street out of countenance, in a way that puzzleth a stranger to decide
the question of her respectability. The New York woman thinketh it
well-bred to criticise _in an audible tone_ the dress and appearance of
every chance lady near her, in the street, shop, ferry-boat, car, or
omnibus. If doubtful of the material of which her dress is composed, she
draweth near, examineth it microscopically, and pronounceth it--“after
all--silk.” The New York woman never appeareth without a dress-hat and
flounces, though the time be nine o’clock in the morning, and her
destination the grocer’s, to order some superfine tea. She delighteth in
embroidered petticoats, which she liberally displayeth to curious bipeds
of the opposite sex. She turneth up her nose at a delaine, wipeth up the
pavement with a thousand-dollar silk, and believeth point-lace collars
and handkerchiefs essential to salvation. She scorneth to ride in an
omnibus, and if driven by an impertinent shower therein, sniffeth up
her aristocratic nose at the plebeian occupants, pulleth out her costly
gold watch to--ascertain the time! and draweth off her gloves to show
her diamonds. Arrived at Snob avenue, she shaketh off the dust of her
silken flounces against her fellow-travelers, trippeth up her
aristocratic steps, and holding up her dress sufficiently high to
display to the retreating passengers her silken hose, and dainty boot,
resigneth her parasolette to black John, and maketh her triumphant exit.

  At the opera, the New York woman taketh the most conspicuous box,
spreadeth out her flounces to their fullest circumference, and
betrayeth a constant and vulgar consciousness that she is in her
go-to-meetin-fixins, by arranging her bracelets and shawl, settling her
rings, and fiddling at her coiffure, and the lace kerchief on her neck.
She also talketh incessantly during the opera, to show that she is not a
novice to be amused by it; and leaveth with much bustle, just before the
last act, for the same reason, and also to display her toilette.

  On Sunday morning, the New York woman taketh all the jewelry she can
collect, and in her flashiest silk and bonnet, taketh her velvet-bound,
gilt-clasped prayer-book out for an airing. Arrived at Dives’ church,
she straightway kneeleth and boweth her head; not, as the uninitiated
may suppose, to pray, but privately to arrange her curls; this done, and
raising her head, she sayeth, “we beseech thee to hear us, good Lord!”
while she taketh a minute inventory of the Hon. Mrs. Peters’s Parisian
toilette. After church, she taketh a turn or two in Fifth Avenue, to
display her elaborate dress, and to wonder “why vulgar people don’t
confine themselves to the Bowery.”

THE BOSTON WOMAN.

  The Boston woman draweth down her mouth, rolleth up her eyes, foldeth
her hands, and walketh on a crack. She rejoiceth in anatomical and
chemical lectures. She prateth of Macaulay and Carlyle; belongeth to
many and divers reading-classes, and smileth in a chaste, moonlight kind
of way on literary men. She dresseth (to her praise be it spoken)
plainly in the street, and considereth india-rubbers, a straw bonnet,
and a thick shawl, the fittest costume for damp and cloudy weather. She
dresseth her children more for comfort than show, and bringeth them up
also to walk on a crack. She maketh the tour of the Common twice or
three times a day, without regard to the barometer. She goeth to church
twice or three times on Sunday, sandwiched with Bible-classes and
Sabbath-schools. She thinketh London, Vienna, or Paris--fools to Boston;
and the “Boulevards” and “Tuilleries” not to be mentioned with the Frog
Pond and the Common. She is well posted up as to politics--thinketh,
“as Pa does,” and sticketh to it through thunder and lightning. When
asked to take a gentleman’s arm, she hooketh the tip of her little
finger circumspectly on to his male coat-sleeve. She is as prim as a
bolster, as stiff as a ram-rod, as frigid as an icicle, and not even
matrimony with a New Yorker could thaw her.

THE NEW YORK MALE.

  The New York male exulteth in fast horses, stylish women, long-legged
hounds, a coat-of-arms, and liveried servants. Beside, or behind him,
may be seen his servant, with folded arms and white gloves, driven out
daily by his master, to inhale the gutter breezes of Broadway, to excite
the wonder of the curious, and to curl the lips of republicanism. The
New York male hath many and divers garments; some of which he weareth
bob-tailed; some shanghai, some with velvet collars, some with silk;
anon turned up; anon turned down; and some carelessly a-la-flap. The New
York male breakfasteth late, owing to pressing engagements which keep
him abroad after midnight. About twelve the next morning he lighteth a
cigar to assist his blear-eyes to find the way down-town; and with his
hands in his pockets, and arms akimbo, he navigateth tortuously around
locomotive “hoops;”--indefatigably pursueth a bonnet for several blocks,
to get a peep it its owner; nor getteth discouraged at intervening
parasols, or impromptu shopping errands; nor thinketh his time or shoe
leather wasted. The New York male belongeth to the most ruinous club and
military company; is a connoisseur in gold sleeve-buttons, and
seal-rings, and diamond studs. He cometh into the world with an
eye-glass and black ribbon winked into his left eye, and prideth himself
upon having broken all the commandments before he arrived at the dignity
of coat-tails.

THE BOSTON MALE.

  The Boston male is respectable all over; from the crown of his glossy
hat to the soles of his shiny shoes; and huggeth his mantle of
self-esteem inseparably about him, that he may avoid contaminating
contact with the non-elect of his “set.” The Boston male is for the most
part good-looking; and a stanch devotee of starch and buckram; he
patronizeth jewelry but sparingly, and _never discerneth a diamond in
the rough_. If, as Goethe sayeth, “the unconscious is the alone
complete,” then is the male Bostonian yet in embryo. He taketh, and
readeth all the newspapers and magazines, foreign and domestic; and yet,
strange to say, sweareth by the little tea-table “Transcript.” When the
Boston male traveleth he weareth his best clothes; arrived at his
destination he putteth up at the most showy hotel, ordereth the most
expensive rooms and edibles, and maketh an unwonted “splurge” generally.
He then droppeth the proprieties--_pro tem._--being seized with an
anatomical desire to dissect the great sores of the city; fancying, like
the ostrich, that if his head only be hidden, he is undiscernible.

  The Boston male is conservative as a citizen, prosaic as a lover;
hum-drum as a husband, and hath no sins--_to speak of_!

MY OLD INK-STAND AND I;

OR, THE FIRST ARTICLE IN THE NEW HOUSE.

  Well, old Ink-stand, what do you think of this? Haven’t we got well
through the woods, hey? A few scratches and bruises we have had, to be
sure, but what of that? Didn’t you whisper where we should come out, the
first morning I dipped my pen in your sable depths, in the sky-parlor of
that hyena-like Mrs. Griffin? With what an eagle glance she discovered
that my bonnet-ribbon was undeniably guilty of two distinct washings,
and, emboldened by my shilling de laine, and the shabby shoes of little
Nell, inquired “if I intended taking in slop-work into _her_
apartments?” How distinctly I was made to understand that Nell was not
to speak above a whisper, or in any way infringe upon the rights of her
uncombed, unwashed, unbaptized, uncomfortable little Griffins. Poor
little Nell, who clung to my gown with childhood’s instinctive
appreciation of the hard face and wiry voice of our jailor. With what
venom I overheard her inform Mr. Griffin that “they must look sharp for
the rent of their sky-parlor, as its tenant lived on bread and milk, and
wore her under-clothes rough-dry, because she could not afford to pay
for ironing them!” Do you remember _that_, old Ink-stand? And do you
remember the morning she informed me, as you and I were busily engaged
in out first article, that I must “come and scrub the stairs which led
up to my room;” and when I ventured humbly to mention, that this was not
spoken of in our agreement, do you remember the Siddons-like air with
which she thundered in our astonished ears--“Do it, or tramp!” And do
you remember how you vowed “if I did tramp,” you would stand by me, and
help me out of the scrape? and haven’t you _done_ it, old Ink-stand? And
don’t you wish old Griffin, and all the little Griffins, and their
likes, both big and little, here and elsewhere, could see this bran-new
house that you have helped me into, and the dainty little table upon
which I have installed you, untempted by any new papier-mache modern
marvel?

  Turn my back on _you_, old Ink-stand! Not I. Throw you aside, for your
shabby exterior, as we were thrown aside, when it was like drawing
teeth to get a solitary shilling to buy you at a second-hand shop?
Perish the thought!

  Yes, old Ink-stand, Griffin and all that crew, should see us now.
Couldn’t we take the wind out of their sails? Couldn’t we come into
their front door, instead of their “back gate?” Didn’t they “_always
know_ that there was something in us?” We can forgive them, though,
can’t we? By the title deed, and insurance policy, of this bran-new
pretty house, which their sneers have helped us into, and whose doors
shall always be open to those who have cheered us on, we’ll do it.

  Dropped many a tear into you, have I? Well--who cares? You know, very
well, that every rough word aimed at my quivering ears, was an extra
dollar in my purse; every rude touch of my little Nell, strength and
sinew to my unstrung nerves and flagging muscles. I say, old Ink-stand,
look at Nell now! Does any landlady lay rough hands on those plump
shoulders? Dare she sing and run, and jump and play to her heart’s
content? Didn’t you yourself buy her that hoop and stick, and those
dolls, and that globe of gold-fish? Don’t you feed and clothe her, every
day of her sunshiny life? Haven’t you agreed to do it, long years to
come? and won’t you teach her, as you have me, to defy false friends,
and ill-fortune? And won’t you be to my little Nell a talisman, when my
eyes grow dim, and hers brighten? Say, old Ink-stand?

THE SOUL--AND THE STOMACH.

  There is a good old man. His head is white--his form is bent--his step
slow and tremulous. Life has no charms for him, and the opening grave is
full of terrors; he wanders up and down--up and down--wringing his
withered hands, and says, “I have committed the unpardonable sin; I am
lost--lost--lost.” They who love him, and their name is Legion, look on
dismayed at this good father, good husband, good neighbor, good
Christian; and one of them says to me, “Why, if your God be merciful,
does he afflict his faithful servant thus? God is not good!”

  God is good, though all else fail, and we, like insects, creep and
complain; God is good. It is not religion that makes the old man
gloomy--it is not that the Word of God shall not stand forever; but He
who has bid us care for the soul, bids us also care for the body. “If
one member suffer, all the other members suffer with it.” If we neglect
the laws of health, and abuse our bodies, _even in His service_, he does
not guaranty to the delinquent, a strong mind, an unperverted spiritual
vision--clouds and darkness will come between us and the Sun of
Righteousness, and though we shall feel after Him, we shall grope like
children in the dark. It is an earthly physician which such as that old
man needs; a tonic for the body, not a sermon from the pulpit. Let him
lean upon your arm; lead him forth to the green fields, where every
little bird sings God is good; where waving trees and blossoming flowers
pass the whisper round with myriad voices; take away the old man’s
psalm-book, and let him listen to that anthem, and as the soft breath of
spring lifts his white locks from his troubled brow, the film of disease
will fall from his eyes, and he, too, shall sing that God is _good_.

  Never lay upon the back of Religion what Dyspepsia should shoulder.
The Christian warrior, no more than any other, can afford to neglect or
gorge his “rations” when preparing for battle; nor if either faint by
the way, in consequence, is it to be laid to the commander.

AWE-FUL THOUGHTS.

       “This had, from the very beginning of their acquaintance, induced
     in her that _awe_, which is the most delicious feeling a wife can
     have toward her husband.”

  “Awe!”--awe of a man whose whiskers you have trimmed, whose hair you
have cut, whose cravats you have tied, whose shirts you have “put into
the wash,” whose boots and shoes you have kicked into the closet, whose
dressing-gown you have worn while combing your hair; who has been down
cellar with you at eleven o’clock at night, to hunt for a chicken-bone;
who has hooked your dresses, unlaced your boots, fastened your
bracelets, and tied on your bonnet; who has stood before your
looking-glass, with thumb and finger on his proboscis, scraping his
chin; whom you have buttered, and sugared, and toasted, and tea-ed; whom
have seen asleep with his mouth wide open! Ri--diculous!

A WORD TO PARENTS AND TEACHERS.

  Why _will_ New York women be eternally munching cake and
confectionery? What is more disgusting than to see a lady devouring at a
sitting, ounces of burnt almonds, and sugared wine and brandy-drops, or
packing away, in her rosy mouth, uncounted platesful of jelly-cake or
maccaroons? “But shopping is hungry business;” that is true, and many a
shopper comes hungry distances to perform it; but are cake and
confectionery wholesome diet between meals? and is not ice-cream at such
a time rank poison? Call for a sandwich or a roll, and you may not be
considered suicidal.

  Every body knows that young girls are foreordained to go through a
regular experience in eating slate-pencils, burnt quills, pickles, and
chalk; but this green age passed, one looks for a little common sense. I
have often seen New York women, not content with ruining their own
constitution in this way (and consequently periling their prospective
offspring), buy, before leaving the confectioner’s shop, five or six
pounds of candy for _nursery distribution_, and ask Betty, the next day
(the sapient mother!), “what can ail those children to fret so?” It were
more merciful to purchase a dose of strychnine, and put an immediate end
to their misery, than thus murder them by inches. Are the rosy, robust,
beautiful English children, candy-fed? Are they suffered to gorge
themselves on hot bread, preserves, cake and pastry, _ad libitum_? Do
they have any thing but the plainest puddings, the stalest bread, and
the most unmitigated roast and boiled meat, unpoisoned by those
dyspepsia-breeding gravies of ours?

  It is pitiful, this dwarfing of American children with improper food,
want of exercise, and cork-screw clothes. It is inhuman to require of
their enfeebled minds and bodies, in ill-ventilated schoolrooms, tasks
which the most vigorous child should never have imposed upon his tender
years. As if a child’s physique were not of the first importance!--as if
all the learning in the world could be put to any practical use by an
enfeebled body! As if a parent _had a right_, year after year, thus to
murder the innocents.

  Think of one of those candy-and-cake-fed young girls, bending over her
tasks in school, from nine o’clock till three, with perhaps ten or
fifteen minutes intermission (spent in the close air of the
school-room) and two days out of a week at three, after another ten
minutes’ intermission, and another cake-and-candy feed, commencing
drawing, or music lessons, to last till five; her mother, meanwhile,
rocking away as comfortably, in her chair at home, as if her daughter’s
spine were not crooking irretrievably. I will not speak of the utter
impossibility that this young girl should have a _steady hand_ for
drawing, under such circumstances, because any fool can understand that
to be impossible.

  I ask what _right_ have you to require of your child, your growing,
restless child, what it would be impossible for you to do yourself? You
know very well that you could not keep your mind on the stretch for so
many hours to any profit; or your body in one position for such a length
of time, without excessive pain and untold weariness. Then add to this
the tasks which must be conned on the return home for the next day’s
lesson, and one marvels no longer at the sickly, sallow, narrow-chested,
leaden-eyed young girls we are in the habit of meeting.

  What _would_ I have? I would have teachers less selfishly consult
their own convenience, in insisting upon squeezing into the forenoon
what should be divided between forenoon and afternoon, as in the good
old-fashioned way of keeping school, with time to eat a wholesome dinner
between. A teacher’s established constitution may possibly stand this
modern nonsense (though I am told not long); but that _children_ should
be thus victimized, without at least a remonstrance on the part of their
natural guardians, I can only ascribe to the criminal indifference of
parents to the welfare of their offspring.

LADY DOCTORS.

  And so the female doctors are prospering and getting practice. I am
sure I am heartily glad of it, for several reasons; one of which is,
that it is an honest and honorable deliverance from the everlasting,
non-remunerating, consumptive-provoking, monotonous needle. Another is,
that it is a more excellent way of support, than by the mercenary and
un-retraceable road, through the church-door to the altar, into which so
many non-reliant women are driven. Having said this I feel at liberty to
remark that we all have our little fancies, and one of mine is, that a
hat is a pleasanter object of contemplation in a sick-room than a
bonnet. I think, too, that my wrist reposes more comfortably in a big
hand than a little one, and if my mouth is to be inspected, I prefer
submitting it to a beard than to a flounce. Still, this may be a narrow
prejudice--I dare say it is--but like most of my prejudices, I am afraid
no amount of fire will burn it out of me.

  A female doctor! Great Esculapius! Before swallowing her pills (of
which she would be the first), I should want to make sure that I had
never come between her and a lover, or a new bonnet, or been the
innocent recipient of a gracious smile from her husband. If I desired
her undivided attention to my case, I should first remove the
looking-glass, and if a consultation seemed advisable, I should wish to
arm myself with a gridiron, or a darning-needle, or some other
appropriate weapon, before expressing such a wish. If my female doctor
recommended a blister on my head, I should strongly doubt its necessity
if my hair happened to be handsome, also the expediency of a
scar-defacing plaster for my neck, if it happened to be plump and white.
Still, these may be little prejudices; very like they are; but this I
will say, before the breath is taken out of me by any female doctor,
that while I am in my senses I will never exchange my gentlemanly,
soft-voiced, soft-stepping, experienced, intelligent, handsome doctor,
for all the female M. D.’s who ever carved up dead bodies or live
characters--or tore each other’s caps.

THE CHERUB IN THE OMNIBUS.

  They stepped in together--the man and his wife--honest, healthy
country-folk. She--rosy and plump; he--stalwart, broad-chested, and
strong-limbed, as God intended man and woman to be. I might not have
noticed them particularly, but they had a baby; and such a baby! None
of your flabby city abortions; but a flesh-and-blood baby--a baby to
make one’s mouth water--ay, and _eyes, too_! Such a baby as might have
been born in the Garden of Eden, had the serpent never crept in; born of
parents fed on strawberries and pomegranates--pure in soul, pure in
body, and healthy and vigorous as purity _alone_ can be.

  Such a baby! such eyes--such a skin--such bewildering lips--such a
heaven-born smile; my eyes overflowed as I looked at it. I was not
worthy to hold that baby, but my heart yearned for it, and I held out my
hands invitingly.

  See! the little trusting thing leaps from its father’s arms and sits
smiling on my knee. Ah! little baby, turn away those soft blue eyes from
mine; is it not enough that my soul is on its knees to you? Is it not
enough, that for every bitter word wrung from my tortured soul by wrong
and suffering, I could cry: “God be merciful to me a sinner?”

  And yet, little baby, I was once like thee. Like thee, I stretched out
the trusting hand to those who----ah, little baby--I am not like thee
now; yet stay with me, and perhaps I shall be. Jesus “took a little
child and set him in the midst.” Take hold of my hand, and lead me to
heaven.

  Going? then God be with thee, as surely as he has been with me, in thy
pure presence. I shall see thee again, little baby, if I heed thy
teachings; thou hast done thy silent mission.

FANNY FORD.

CHAPTER I.

  It was a mad freak of dame Nature to fashion Mary Ford after so dainty a
model, and then open her blue eyes in a tumble-down house in Peck-lane.
But Mary cares little for that. Fortune has given her wheel a whirl
since then, and Jacob Ford is now on the top. Mary sees the young and
the old, the grave and the gay, the wise and the ignorant, smile on her
sweet face; as she passes, men murmur “beautiful,” and women pick flaws
in her face and figure. She can not sleep for serenades, and her little
room is perfumed, from May to January, with the rarest of hot-house
flowers. Lovers, too, come wooing by the score. And yet, Mary is no
coquette; no more than the sweet flower, which nods, and sways, and
sends forth its perfume for very joy that it blossoms in the bright
sunshine, all unconscious how it tempts the passer-by to pluck it for
his own wearing. A queenly girl was the tailor’s daughter, with her
Juno-like figure, her small, well-shaped head, poised so daintily on the
fair white throat; with her large blue eyes, by turns brilliant as the
lightning’s flash, then soft as a moonbeam; with her pretty mouth, and
the dimple which lay _perdu_ in the corner, with the flossy waves of her
dark brown hair; with her soft, white hands, and twinkling little feet;
with her winsome smile, and floating grace of motion.

  Percy Lee was conquered. Percy--who had withstood blue eyes and black,
gray eyes and hazel. Percy--for whom many a fair girl had smiled and
pouted in vain. Percy the bookworm. Percy--handsome as Apollo, cold as
Mont Blanc. Percy Lee was fettered at last, and right merrily did
mischievous Cupid forge, one by one, his chains for the stoic. No poor
fish ever so writhed and twisted on the hook, till the little word was
whispered which made him in lover’s parlance, “the happiest of men.”

  Of course, distanced competitors wondered what Mary Ford could see to
admire in that book-worm of a Percy. Of course, managing mammas, with
marriageable daughters, were shocked that Miss Ford should have angled
for him so transparently; and the young ladies themselves marveled that
the aristocratic Percy should fancy a tailor’s daughter; of course the
lovers, in the seventh heaven of their felicity, could afford to let
them think and say what they pleased.

  The torpid sexagenarian, or frigid egotist, may sneer; but how
beautiful is this measureless first love, before distrust has chilled,
or selfishness blighted, or the scorching sun of worldliness evaporated
the heart’s dew; when we trust with childhood’s sweet faith, because we
love; when care and sorrow are undiscernible shapes in the distance;
when at every footstep we ring the chime of joy from out the flowers.
What can earth offer after this sparkling draught has been quaffed? How
stale its after spiritless effervescences!

  Percy’s love for Mary was all the more pure and intense, that he had
hitherto kept his heart free from youthful entanglements. Fastidious and
refined to a degree, perhaps this with him was as much a matter of
necessity as of choice. In Mary both his heart and taste were satisfied;
true, he sometimes wondered how so delicate and dainty a flower should
have blossomed from out so rude a soil; for her father’s money could
neither obliterate nor gild over the traces of his innate vulgarity; in
fact, his love for his daughter was his only redeeming trait--the only
common ground upon which the father and lover could meet. The petty
accumulation of fortune by the penny, had narrowed and hardened a heart
originally good and unselfish; the love of gold for its own sake had
swallowed up every other thought and feeling. Like many persons of
humble origin, whose intellects have not expanded with their coffers,
Jacob Ford overrated the accident of birth and position, and hence was
well pleased with Mary’s projected alliance with Percy.

  “Well, to be sure, Lucy, beauty _is_ a great thing for a girl,” he one
day said to his wife. “I did not dream of this when Mary used to climb
up on the counter of my little dark shop in Peck-lane, and sit playing
with the goose and shears.”

  “Nor I,” replied Lucy, as she looked around their handsome apartment,
with a satisfied smile; “nor I, Jacob, when, after paying me one
Saturday night for my week’s work, you said, ‘Lucy, you can be mistress
of this shop if you like.’ I was _so_ proud and happy: for, indeed, it
was lonesome enough, Jacob, stitching in that gloomy old garret I often
used to think how dreadful it would be to be sick and die there alone,
as poor Hetty Carr did. It was a pity, Jacob, you did not pay her more,
and she so weakly, too. Often she would sit up all night, sewing, with
that dreadful cough racking her.”

  “Tut--tut--wife,” said Jacob; “she was not much of a seamstress; you
always had a soft heart, Lucy, and were easily imposed upon by a whining
story.”

  “It was too true, Jacob; and she had been dead a whole day before any
one found it out; then, as she had no friends, she was buried at the
expense of the city, and the coffin they brought was too short for her,
and they crowded her poor thin limbs into it, and carried her away in
the poor’s hearse. Sometimes, Jacob, I get very gloomy when I think of
this, and look upon our own beautiful darling; and, sometimes,
Jacob--you won’t be angry with me?” asked the good woman, coaxingly, as
she laid her hand upon his arm--“sometimes I’ve thought our money would
never do us any good.”

  “Pshaw!” exclaimed Jacob, impatiently shaking off his wife’s hand;
“pshaw, Lucy, you are like all other women, weak and superstitious. A
man must look out for number one. Small profits a body would make to
conduct business on your principles. Grab all you can, keep all you get,
is every body’s motto; why should I set up to be wiser than my
neighbors?”

  Lucy Ford sighed. A wife is very apt to be convinced by her husband’s
reasoning, if she loves him; and perhaps Lucy might have been, had she
not herself known what it was to sit stitching day after day in her
garret, till her young brain reeled, and her heart grew faint and sick,
or lain in her little bed, too weary even to sleep, listening to the
dull rain as it pattered on the skylight, and wishing she were dead.

  A pressure of soft lips upon her forehead, and a merry laugh, musical
as the ringing of silver bells, roused Lucy from her reverie.

  “Good-by--mother dear,” said Mary; “I could not go to ride with Percy
without a kiss from you. Come to the window--look! Are not those pretty
horses of Percy’s? They skim the ground like birds! And see what a
pretty carriage! Now acknowledge that my lover’s taste is perfect.”

  “Yes--when he chose you,” said Jacob, gazing admiringly on Mary’s
bright face and graceful form. “You would grace a court, Mary, if you
are old Jacob Ford’s daughter.”

  Mary threw her arms around the old man’s neck, and kissed his bronze
cheek. To her the name of father was another name for love; nurtured in
this kindly atmosphere, she could as little comprehend how a child could
cease to worship a parent, as she could comprehend how a parent, when
his child asked for bread, should mock his misery with a stone.
Unspoiled by the world’s flatteries, she had not learned to undervalue
her doting father’s love, that it was expressed in ungrammatical phrase;
she had not yet learned to blush at any old-fashioned breach of
etiquette (on his part), in the presence of her fastidious young
friends; and by her marked deference to her parents in their presence,
she in a measure exacted the same from them. It was one of the loveliest
traits in Mary’s character, and one for which Percy, who appreciated her
refinement, loved and respected her the more.

  “Have your fortune told, lady?” asked a withered old woman, of Mary,
as she tripped down the steps to join Percy.

  “Of course,” said the laughing girl: “suppose you tell me whom I am to
marry,” with a gay glance at Percy; and she ungloved her small white
hand, while the dame’s withered fingers traced its delicate lines.

  “Retribution is written here,” said the old woman, solemnly; “your sun
will set early, fair girl.”

  “Come away, Mary,” said Percy, with a frown, shaking his whip at the
woman, “the old thing is becrazed.”

  “Time will show,” muttered the beldame, pocketing the coin with which
Mary had crossed her hand; “time will show; brighter eyes than yours,
fair lady, have wept themselves dim.”

  “What can she mean?” said Mary, drawing involuntarily close to the
side of her lover. “I almost wish we had not seen her.”

  The spirits of youth are elastic. The April cloud soon passed from
Mary’s brow, and before the fleet horses had skimmed a mile, her laugh
rang out as merrily as ever.

  The lovers had both a trained eye for natural beauty, and the lovely
road through which they passed, with its brown houses half hidden in
foliage--the lazy grazing cattle--the scent of new-mown hay and breath
of flowers--the rude song of the plowman and the delicate twitter of the
bird--the far-off hills, with their tall trees distinctly defined
against the clear blue sky--the silver stream and velvet meadows--the
wind’s wild anthem, now swelling as if in full chorus, then soft and
sweet as the murmur of a sleeping babe, all filled their hearts with a
quiet joy.

  “Life is very sweet,” said Mary, turning her lustrous eyes upon her
lover. “People say that happiness and prosperity harden the heart; when
I am most blest I feel most devotional. In vain might the infidel tell
me ‘there is no God,’ with such a scene as this before me, or fetter my
grateful heart-pulses as they adored the Giver.”

  “You dear little saint,” said Percy, with a light laugh, “how well you
preach. Well--my mother was neck-deep in religion; the prayers and hymns
she taught me, stay by me now, whether I will or no. I often catch
myself saying ‘Now I lay me,’ when I go to bed, from the mere force of
habit; but your rosy lips were never made to mumble pater nosters, Mary:
leave that to crafty priests, and disappointed nuns. Religion, my pet,
is another name for humbug, all the world over; your would-be-saint
always cheats in proportion to the length of his face and his prayers.
Bah! don’t let us talk of it.”

  “Don’t--dear Percy,” said Mary. “I like you less well when you talk
so; religion is the only sure basis of character. Every superstructure
not built on this foundation--”

  “Must topple over, I suppose,” said Percy. “Don’t you believe it, my
angel. I am a living example to the contrary; but Cupid knows I would
subscribe to any article of faith emanating from your rosy lips;” and
Percy drew rein at the door of his father-in-law’s mansion, and leaping
out, assisted Mary to alight.

  “Such a lovely drive as we have had, dear mother,” said Mary, throwing
her hat upon the table. “Percy has just gone off with a client on
business; he will be back presently. Dear Percy! he’s just the best
fellow in the world--a little lax on religious points, but he loves me
well enough to be influenced there. Now I will sit down at this window
while I sew, and then I shall see Percy when he comes up the street.”

  Nimbly her fingers moved; her merry song keeping time the while. Now a
blush flitting over her cheek, then a smile dimpling it. She was
thinking of their beautiful home that _was_ to be, and how like a fairy
dream her life would pass, with that deep, rich voice lingering ever in
her ear; cares, if they came, lightened by each other’s presence, or
turned to joys by mutual sympathy. And then, she was so _proud_ of him;
A woman’s love is so deepened by that thought.

  God pity her, who, with a great soul, indissolubly bound, must walk
ever backward with a mantle (alas! all too transparent), to cover her
husband’s mental nakedness!

CHAPTER II.

  “A gentleman, sir, to see you,” said a servant to Jacob Ford, as he
ushered in his old friend, Mr. Trask.

  “Ah, Trask, how are you? Glad to see you,” said Jacob, with one of his
vice-like shakes of the hand. “Come for a rubber at whist? That’s right.
I was thinking to-day, how long it was since you and I had a quiet hour
together. How’s trade, Trask? You _ought_ to be making money. Why,
what’s the matter, man?” clapping him on the shoulder; “never saw you
this way before; hang me if you don’t look as solemn as old Parson
Glebe. Why don’t you speak? Why do you stare at me so?”

  “Jacob,” replied Mr. Trask, and there he stopped.

  “Well--that’s my name; Jacob Ford: as good a name as you’ll find on
’change. I never have done any thing to make me ashamed of it.”

  “I wish every body could say as much,” said Trask, gravely.

  “What are you driving at?” asked Jacob Ford; “don’t talk riddles to
me--they get me out of temper. If you have any thing to tell, out with
it. I’ve seen fifty years’ wear and tear; I’m not frightened by
trifles.”

  “But this is no trifle, Ford. I can’t do it,” said the soft-hearted Mr.
Trask. “Jacob, my old friend--I--can’t do it,” and he sat down and
covered his face with his hands.

  “Come--come,” said Jacob; “take heart, man. If you have got into a
scrape, Jacob Ford is not the man to desert an old friend; if a few
hundreds or more will set it all right, you shall have it.”

  “For God’s sake, stop,” said Trask; “the shadow has fallen on _your_
threshold, not on _mine_.”

  “Mine?” replied Jacob, with a bewildered look. “Mine? defalcations?
banks broke? hey? Jacob Ford a beggar, after fifty years’ toil?”

  “Worse--worse,” said Trask, making a violent effort to speak. “Percy
Lee is arrested for embezzlement, and I have proofs of his guilt.
There--now I’ve said it.”

  “Man! do you _know_ this?” said Jacob, in a hoarse whisper, putting
his white lips close to his friend’s ear, as if he feared the very walls
would tell the secret.

  “Before God, ’tis true,” said Trask, solemnly.

  “Then God’s curse light on the villain,” said Jacob Ford. “My Mary--my
bright, beautiful Mary! Oh! who will tell _her_? Listen, Trask, that’s
her voice--singing. Oh, God--oh God, this is too dreadful”--and the old
man bowed his head upon his breast, and wept like a child.

  “What does all this mean?” asked Lucy Ford, opening the door.
“Jacob--husband--Trask--what is it?” and she looked from one to the
other, in bewildered wonder.

  “Tell her, Trask,” whispered Jacob.

  “Don’t weep so, dear Jacob,” said Lucy; “if money has gone, we can
both go to work again; we both know how. Mary will soon have a home of
her own.”

  Jacob sprang to his feet, and seizing Lucy by the arm, hissed in her
ear, “Woman, don’t you name him. May God’s curse blight him. May he die
alone. May his bones bleach in the winds of heaven, and his soul be
forever damned. Lucy--Percy Lee is a--a--swindler! There--now go break
_her_ heart, if you can. Lucy?--Trask?”--and Jacob, overcome with the
violence of his feelings, wept again like a child; while poor Lucy,
good Lucy, hid her face on her husband’s breast, repressing her own
anguish that she might not add to his.

  “Who’s going to tell _her_, I say?” said Jacob. “May my tongue wither
before I do it. My darling--my loving, beautiful darling--who will tell
her?”

  “I,” said the mother, with ashen lips, as she raised herself slowly
from her husband’s breast, and moved toward the door.

  Clutching at the balustrade for support, Lucy dragged herself slowly
up stairs. Ah! well might she reel to and fro as she heard Mary’s voice:

     “Bring flowers, bring flowers for the bride to wear,
      They were born to blush in her shining hair;
      She is leaving the home of her childhood’s mirth,
      She hath bid farewell to her father’s hearth,
      Her place is now by another’s side;
      Bring flowers for the locks of the fair young bride.”

  A trembling hand was laid upon Mary’s shoulder. She shook back her
long bright hair, and looked smilingly up into her mother’s face.

  “Mary,” said Lucy, solemnly, “you will never marry Percy Lee.”

  “Dead? Percy dead? Oh--no--no,” gasped the poor girl. “_My_
Percy!--no--no!”

  “Worse--worse,” said Lucy, throwing her protecting arms around her
child. “Mary, Percy Lee is a swindler; he is unworthy of you; you must
forget him.”

  “Never,” said Mary--“never! Who _dare_ say that? Where is he?--take me
to him;” and she sunk fainting to the floor.

  “I have killed her,” said the weeping mother, as she chafed her cold
temples, and kissed her colorless lips. “I have killed her,” she
murmured, bending over her, as Mary passed from one convulsive fit to
another.

  “Will she die, Jacob?” asked Lucy, looking mournfully up into her
husband’s pallid face. “Will she die, Jacob?”

  “Better so,” groaned the old man. “God’s curse on him who has done
this. She was my all. What’s my gold good for, if it can not bring back
the light to _her_ eye, the peace to _her_ heart? My gold that I have
toiled for, and piled up in shining heaps: what is it good for?”

  “The curse was on it, Jacob,” groaned Lucy. “Oh, Jacob, I told you so.
God forgive us; it was cankered gold.”

  “Why did the villain blast _my_ home?” asked Jacob, apparently
unconscious of what Lucy had said; “kill my one ewe lamb; all Jacob had
to love--all that made him human? Lucy, I never prayed, but perhaps _He_
would hear me for her;” and he knelt by his child. “Oh God, make my soul
miserable forever, if thou wilt, but spare _her_--take the misery out of
_her_ heart.”

  “If it be Thy will,” responded Lucy.

  “Don’t say that, Lucy,” said Jacob. “I must have it so;--what has she
done, poor lamb?”

CHAPTER III.

  Percy Lee a defaulter--a swindler! The news flew like wildfire.

  “No great catch, after all,” said a rival beauty, tossing her ringlets.

  “I expected something of that sort,” said a modern Solomon.

  “Hope he’ll be imprisoned for life,” said a charitable tailor, whom
Jacob Ford had eclipsed, “this will bring Jacob’s pride down a trifle,
I’m thinking.”

  “How lucky you did not succeed in catching him,” said a mother,
confidentially, to her daughter.

  “I?” exclaimed the young lady. “I? Is it possible you can be so
stupid, mamma, as to suppose I would waste a thought on Percy Lee! I
assure you he offered himself to Mary Ford in a fit of pique at my
rejection. Don’t imagine you are in all my secrets,” said the dutiful
young lady, tossing her head. “Well--her disappearance from society is
certain--thank goodness--not that she interferes with _me_; but her
pretended simplicity is so disgusting! What the men in our set could see
to admire in her, passes me; but _chacun à son gout_.”

  “Of course, Lee will get clear,” said a rough dray-man to his comrade.
“These big fish always flounder out of the net; it is only the minnows
who get caught. Satan! it makes me swear to think of it. I will be sure
to stand at the court-house door when he is brought for trial, and
insult him if I can. I hope the aristocratic hound will swing for it.”

  “Come, now, Jo,” said his friend, taking out his penknife, and sitting
down on a stump to whittle. “You are always a railing at the
aristocracy, as you call ’em. I never knew a man who talks as you do,
who was not an aristocrat at heart, worshiping the very wealth and
station he sneered at. Don’t be a fool, John. We are far happier, or
might be, with our teams, plenty of jobs, and good health, than these
aristocrats, as you call them, who half the time are tossing on their
pillows, because this ship hasn’t arrived in port, or that land
speculation has burst up, or stocks depreciated, or some such cursed
canker at the root of all their gourds. Now there’s poor Jacob Ford; of
what use are all his riches, now his daughter’s heart is broke? And
Percy Lee, too--will his fine education and book learning get him out of
the clutches of the law? Have a little charity, Jo. It hurts a man worse
to fall from such a height into a prison, than it would you or me, from
a dray-cart. Gad--I pity him; his worst enemy couldn’t pile up the agony
any higher.”

  “Pity him!” said Jo, mockingly--“a swindling rascal like that--to
break a pretty girl’s heart!”

  “Jo,” said his friend, shutting up his penknife, and looking him
steadily in the eye, “have you always said no to the tempting devil in
_your_ heart? Did you never charge a stranger more than the law allows
for a job? Did no poor girl ever curse the hour she saw the light, for
your sake?”

  “Well, Mr. Parson, what if all that were true?” asked Jo, with an
abortive attempt at a laugh. “I can’t see what it has to do with what we
are talking about; hang it.”

  “Just this,” answered his friend. “He who is without sin, only, is to
cast the first stone.”

  “O, get out,” said Jo, cracking his whip over his horse’s head, and
taking refuge, like many other cornered disputants, in flight.

  And Percy Lee! From the hour in which he passed from the heaven of
Mary’s smile, up to the present moment, in which he paced like a caged
lion up and down his narrow bounds, what untold agonies were his! Why
had he wrecked happiness, love, honor, all in one fatal moment? Why had
he prostituted his God-given talents so madly to sin? Let those answer
who have in like manner sinned, and who have expiated that sin, by a
life-long brand upon the brow and a life-long misery in the heart. “Let
him who thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall.”

CHAPTER IV.

  “I can’t remember,” said Mary, two months after Percy’s arrest, “I can’t
remember,” raising herself, and laying her emaciated hand upon her brow.
“Have I been sick, mamma?”

  “Yes, Mary,” replied her mother, repressing her tears of joy at the
sound of her child’s voice.

  “Where’s Percy, mamma?”

  But before Lucy could answer, she again relapsed into stupor. Another
hour passed--there was reason in her glance. “Mamma? Percy--take me to
him”--said Mary, with a burst of tears, as she strove vainly to rise
from her couch.

  “By-and-by, darling,” said her mother, coaxingly, laying her gently back
upon the pillow, as she would an infant, “by-and-by, Mary, when you are
stronger.”

  “No--_now_” she replied, a spasm of pain contracting her features. “Is
he--is he--_there_? How long have I lain here?”

  “Two months, Mary.”

  “Two months,” exclaimed poor Mary, in terror, “two months. O, mamma,
if you ever loved me, if you want me to live--take me to him. Two
months! He will think!--O, dear, mamma, take me to Percy!”

  “Yes--yes, you _shall_ go,” said Jacob, “only don’t cry. I would shed
my heart’s blood to save you one tear. You shall go, Mary, even to that
curs--”

  “Well--well, I won’t say it,” said the old man, kissing her forehead;
“but mind, it is only for _your_ sake--here--Lucy, quick, she is
fainting.”

  Another week passed by, poor Mary making superhuman efforts to sit up,
to gain strength to accomplish her heart’s wish. Jacob would look at
her wasted figure, till the curse rose to his lip, and then rush
suddenly from her presence.

  “I did not think I could do this, even for her,” muttered Jacob, on the
morning of their visit to the prison. “I don’t know what has come over
me, Lucy--sometimes I wonder if I _am_ Jacob. I don’t care for any
thing, so she don’t grieve.”

  The carriage came--in silence the sad trio moved toward the prison.

  “Can’t do it,” whispered Jacob to Lucy, as they stopped before the door;
“I thought I could go in with her; but I can’t do it, not even for Mary.
The old feeling has come back. I can’t look on that man’s face without
crushing him as I would a viper;” and the old man left them in the
turnkey’s office, returned to the carriage, twitched down the blinds,
and threw himself back upon the seat.

  Ah! how much the poor heart may bear! Mary sat in the prison
office--still--motionless!--but a bright spot burned upon her cheek, and
her tone was fearful in its calmness, and Lucy asked her again “if she
were strong enough to go through with it.” How distinctly the turnkey’s
clock ticked! What a quantity of false keys and other implements which
had been taken from refractory prisoners, were on exhibition in the
glass case! How the clerk stared at them as they registered their names
in the book! What a mockery for that little bird to sing in his cage,
over Mary’s head! How crushed and broken-hearted the poor woman looked
in the black bonnet, on the bench, waiting to see her prodigal son! How
sad his young wife beside her, with the unconscious baby sleeping on her
breast! The room grew smaller--the air grew stifled.

  “You can go now, ma’am,” said the turnkey, rattling his keys and
addressing Lucy.

  “In a moment, please,” said Lucy, with a quivering lip, as Mary fell
from her chair:--“Some water quick, please, sir”--and she untied the
strings of Mary’s hat.

  “Now,” said Mary, after a pause. And again the bright spot burned upon
her cheek--and as with faltering step, she followed the turnkey, the
young wife’s tears fell on her baby’s face, while she murmured, “God
help her, and it’s my own heart that has the misery, too.”

CHAPTER IV.

  The huge key grated in the lock. In the further corner of the cell,
crouched Percy--his chin in his palms, his eyes bloodshot, and his face
livid as death.

  As Mary tottered through the door, Percy raised his head, and, with a
stifled groan, fell at her feet. Pressing his lips to the hem of her
robe, he waved her off with one hand, as if his touch were
contamination. Mary’s arms were thrown about his neck, and the words, “I
love you,” fell upon his doomed ear, like the far-off music of heaven.
When Percy would have spoken, Mary laid her hand upon his mouth--not
even to _her_, should he humiliate himself by confession. And so, in
tears and silence, the allotted hour passed--He only, who made the
heart, with its power to enjoy or suffer, knew with what agonizing
intensity.

  “Well, I’ve seen a great many pitiful sights in my day,” said the old
jailor, as the carriage rolled away with Mary; “but never any thing that
made my eyes water like the sight of that poor young cretur. Sometimes I
think there ain’t no justice up above there, when I see the innocent
punished that way with the guilty. I hope these things will all be made
square in the other world; I can’t say they are clear to my mind here. I
get good pay here, but I’d rather scull a raft than stay here to have my
feelin’s hurt all the time this way. If I didn’t go in so strong for
justice, I should be tempted, when I think of that young woman, to
forget to lock that fellow’s cell some night. ‘Five years’ hard labor!’
_’Tis_ tough, for a gentleman born--well, supposing he got out? if he is
a limb of the devil, as some folks say, he will break her heart over
again some day or other. It would be a shorter agony to let her weep
herself dead at once. God help her.”

CHAPTER V.

  The Bluff Hill penitentiary was called “a model prison.” A “modern
Howard” was said to have planned it, and passed his oracular judgment,
ratified by the authorities of the State in which it was located, upon
its cells, prison-yards, work-shops, chapel, eating-rooms, and ingenious
instruments of torture.

  That the furnaces failed to keep the prisoners from freezing in
winter, or that there was no proper ventilation in summer, was,
therefore, nobody’s meddling business. Better that _they_ should suffer,
year in and year out, than that a flaw should be publicly picked in any
scheme set afoot by the “modern Howard.” The officers elected to preside
over Bluff Hill prison, were as stony as its walls, and showed curious
visitors round the work-shops, amid its rows of pallid faces, pointing
out here a disgraced clergyman, there a ruined lawyer, yonder a wrecked
merchant, with as much nonchalance as a brutal keeper would stir up the
caged beasts in a menagerie, for the amusement of the crowd; with as
little thought that these fallen beings were _men_ and brothers, as if
the Omniscient eye noted no dark stain of sin, hidden from human sight,
on _their_ souls.

  They gave you leave to stop as long as you pleased, and watch the
muscles of your victim’s face, work with emotion under your gaze. You
could take your own time to speculate upon the scowl of defiance, or the
set teeth of hate, as you flaunted leisurely past their prison uniform,
in your silk and broadcloth; or you could stand under the fair blue sky,
in the prison-yard, when the roll beat for dinner, and see them in
file, by twos--guarded--march with locked step and folded arms, to their
eating-room. The beardless boy branded in your remembering eye for life,
wherever you might hereafter meet him, for this his first crime, how
hard soever against fearful odds, he might struggle upward to virtue and
heaven. You might follow the sad procession to thair meals, where the
fat, comfortably-fed chaplain craved a blessing over food, from which
the very dog at his door would have turned hungry away; or you could go
into the prison hospital, and view the accommodation (?) for the
sick--the cots so narrow that a man could not turn in them; or you could
investigate “The Douche,” which the keeper would tell you, with a bland
smile, “conquered even old prison birds;” or you could peep into the
cells (philanthropically furnished by this “modern Howard” with a
Bible), so dark that at the brightest noonday no prisoner could read a
syllable; or you could see the row of coffins standing on an end in the
hall, kept on hand “for sudden emergencies;” or any other horrors of the
place, for which your morbid curiosity was appetized.

  Or, if you had a human heart beating within your breast, if you could
remember ever kneeling to ask forgiveness of your God, you could turn
away soul-sick from such unfeeling exhibitions, and refuse to insult
their misery--fallen as they were--by your curious gaze. You could
remember in your own experience, moments of fearful temptation, when the
hot blood poured like molten lead through _your_ veins. You could place
in the balance, as God does--as man does not--neglected
childhood--undisciplined youth. You could remember, that at a kindly
word, whispered in those felon cars, the hardest rock might melt; and
you could wish that if prisons must be, they who pass under their iron
portals might pass unrecognizable in after life by the world’s stony
eyes--you could wish that when freedom’s air again fanned their pallid
temples, no cursed scornful finger might lash to fury the hydra-headed
monster Sin, in their scarred hearts.

  Heaven speed the day when the legislative heart, pitiful as God’s,
shall temper this sword of justice with more mercy.

  “Which is he?” asked an over-dressed, chubby, vulgar-looking fellow,
to the keeper of Bluff Hill prison.

  “That tall fellow yonder,” replied the keeper, “with the straight
nose, and high forehead--that’s he--see? reefing off flax yonder.”

  “Don’t say,” said the man, with his bloated eyes gloating over Percy.
“How old is he?”

  “Nineteen only,” said the keeper.

  “Humph!” said the man, loud enough for Percy to
hear--“_Pre_--co--cious; wasn’t intended for that sort of work, I fancy,
by the look of his hands; they are as small and white as a woman’s. Ask
him some question, can’t ye? I wish I was keeper here; I’d like to
break his spirit,” said Mr. Scraggs, as Percy answered the keeper’s
question without raising his eyes. “Bah! how these fuzzy bits of lint
and flax fly about the room; my throat and nose are full. I should think
this would kill a fellow off before long.”

  “It does,” said the keeper, coolly.

  “And what’s that horrible smell? Faugh--it makes me sick.”

  “That? Oh, that’s the oil used in the machinery.”

  “Why the fury don’t you ventilate, then?” asked Mr. Scraggs, thinking
more of his _own_ lungs than the prisoners’, adding, with a laugh, as he
recollected himself, “I don’t suppose the Governor of your State is
particular on that p’int;” then, with another stare at Percy, he said,
“they say he seduced old Ford’s daughter before he stole the money.”

  The words had hardly left his lips, when, with a bound like a panther,
Percy instantly felled him to the earth, the blood spouting from his own
mouth and nostrils with the violence of his passion.

  Scraggs lay for some hours insensible, though not dangerously wounded,
and Percy was led off in irons, to reflect on this new misery in
solitary confinement.

CHAPTER VI.

  “I stepped in to inquire after poor Mary, this morning,” said a
neighbor of Lucy Ford. “Poor dear! she’s to be pitied!”

  They who have suffered from the world’s malice, know that the most
simple words may be made to convey an insult, by the tone in which they
are uttered. Lucy Ford was naturally unsuspicious, but there was
something in Miss Snip’s tone which grated harshly on her ear.

  “I regret to say Mary is no better,” Lucy replied, with her usual
gentle manner. “If I could persuade her to take more nourishment, I
should be glad; but she sits rocking to and fro, seemingly unconscious
of every thing.”

  “I should like to see the poor dear,” said Miss Snip.

  Lucy hesitated; then blushing, as if she felt ashamed of her doubts,
she led the way to Mary’s room. Every thing about it bore marks of the
taste of the occupant. There lay her silent guitar; there a half
finished drawing; here a book with the pearl folder still between the
leaves, where she and Percy had left it. The beautiful tea-rose he had
given her, drooped its buds in the window, for want of care, and the
canary’s cage was muffled, lest its song should quicken painful
memories. And there sat Mary, as her mother had said, rocking herself to
and fro, with her hands crossed listlessly on her lap, her blue-veined
temples growing each day more startlingly transparent.

  “Quite heart-rending, I declare,” said Miss Snip, “and as if the poor
dear hadn’t enough to bear, just think of the malice of people. I said
it was a shame and that of course nobody would believe it of Miss Mary,
and I never spoke of it, except to lawyer Beadle’s wife, and one or two
of our set; but a rumor is a rumor, and when it is once set rolling, it
has got to go to the bottom of the hill; but nobody, I’m sure, that ever
knew Miss Mary, would believe she would be seduced by Percy Lee!”

  “Lord-a-mercy! you don’t suppose she heard me?” exclaimed Miss Snip,
as Mary fell forward upon the floor.

  “Cursed viper!” shouted Jacob Ford, emerging from the ante-room, and
unceremoniously ejecting Miss Snip through the door. “Cursed viper!”

  “That’s what I call pretty treatment, now,” muttered Miss Snip, as she
stopped in the hall, to settle her false curls; “very pretty
treatment--for a disinterested act of neighborly kindness. Philanthropy
never is rewarded with any thing but cuffs in this world, but I shan’t
allow it to discourage me. I know that I have my mission here below,
whether I have the praise of men or not. All great reformers are
abused--that’s one consolation. I’ll step over to Mrs. Bunce’s now, and
see if it _is_ true that her husband takes a drop too much. They _do_
say so, but I don’t believe a word of it.”

  “Lucy,” said Jacob--and the poor old man’s limbs shook beneath
him--“this must be the last arrow in the quiver. Nothing can come after
this. Let her be, Lucy,”--and he withdrew his wife’s hands, as she
bathed Mary’s temples--“let her be: ’tain’t no use to rouse her up to
her misery--to kill her by inches this way. I am ready to lie down side
of her. Lucy--I couldn’t muster heart to tell you, till a worse blow
came, that we are beggars. ’Tain’t no matter now.”

  “God be merciful!” said Lucy, overwhelmed with this swift accumulation
of trouble.

  “Yes, you may well say that. Just enough left to keep us from starving.
My heart has been with _her_, you see,” said Jacob, looking at Mary,
“and my head hasn’t been clear about things, as it used to be, and so it
has come to this. I wouldn’t mind it, if she only--” and Jacob dropped
his head hopelessly upon his breast. Then raising it again, and wiping
his eyes, as he looked at Mary, he said: “She never will look more like
an angel than she does now. I thought she’d live to close these old
eyes, and that my grand-children would play about my knee, but you see
how it has gone, Lucy.”

  The red flag of the auctioneer, so often the signal of distress,
floated before Jacob Ford’s door. Strange feet roved over the old house;
strange eyes profaned the household gods. Careless fingers tested the
quality of Mary’s harp and guitar; and voices which in sunnier days had
echoed through those halls in blandest tones, now fell upon the ear,
poisonous with cold malice. When once the pursuit is started, and the
game scented, every hound joins in the cry; each fierce paw must have
its clutch at the quivering heart, each greedy tongue lap up the ebbing
life-blood. Never was beauty’s crown worn more winningly, more
unobtrusively, less triumphantly, than by Mary Ford; but to those whom
nature had less favored, it was the sin never to be forgiven; and so
fair lips _hoped_ the stories were not true about her, while they
reiterated them at every street corner; and bosom friends, when inquired
of as to their truth, rolled up their eyes, sighed like a pair of
bellows, and with a deprecating wave of the hand, replied, in melancholy
tones, “don’t ask _me_,” thus throwing the responsibility upon the
listener to construe it into little or much; pantomimic looks and
gestures not yet having been pronounced indictable by the statute book;
others simply nodded their heads, in a mysterious manner, as if they had
it at their charitable option to send the whole family to perdition,
with a monosyllable.

CHAPTER VII.

  Jacob Ford’s new home was a little cottage, just on the outskirts of
the city; for Lucy said, “maybe the flowers, and the little birds, and
the green grass might tempt Mary out of doors, where the wind might fan
her pale cheek.” It was beautiful to see Lucy stifling her own sorrow,
while she moved about, performing uncomplainingly the household
drudgery. Mary would sit at the window, twisting her curls idly over
her fingers, or leaning out, as if watching for Percy. Sometimes she
would sit on the low door-step, when the stars came out, with her head
in Jacob’s lap, while his wrinkled fingers strayed soothingly over her
temples. She seldom or never spoke; did mechanically what she was bid,
except that she drew shuddering back, when they would have led her
across the threshold. Once she wept when Jacob brought her a violet,
which he found under the cottage window. Jacob said, “dear heart! why
should a little blossom make the poor thing cry?” Lucy’s womanly heart
better solved the riddle: it was Percy’s favorite flower.

  Their rustic neighbors leaned over each other’s fences, and wondered
“who on airth them Fords was,” and why “the old man didn’t take no
interest in fixin’ his lot. The trees wanted grafting, the grass wanted
mowing, the gooseberries were all over mildew, the strawberries, choked
with weeds; and it did really ’pear to them as though the old fellow
must be ’ither a consarned fool, or an idiot, to let things run out that
way. And the poor sick girl, she looked like a water-lily--so white, so
bowed down; why didn’t they put her into a shay, and drive her out, to
bring a little color into her waxen cheeks?”

  The thrifty housewives said, “it was clear to them that the old lady
hadn’t _her_ wits, narry more than the old man, for she left her
clothes’-line out all night, when every body knew that dew and rain
would rot it; but what could you expect from shiftless city folks?”

  For all this the country people were kind-hearted. New neighbors did
not grow on every bush. Topics were scarce in Milltown, and every new
one was hunted down like a stray plum in a boarding-school pudding. Yes,
you might have gone further, and found worse people than the
Milltown-ites. The little sun-burnt children learned to loiter on their
way to school, “to pick a nosegay for the pretty pale lady.” Widow
Ellis, under the hill, picked her biggest strawberries, and put them in
a tempting little basket, covered with green leaves, for her curly-pated
Tommy to carry to “poor Miss Mary.” Miss Trodchom baked an extra loaf of
’lection-cake, “in hopes the Fords’ daughter might nibble a bit, poor
thing.” And farmer Jolly dropped his whip on purpose, over Jacob’s
fence, to get a chance to tell the old man “that he had a mare as was as
easy as a cradle, and a prettyish side-saddle that the sick girl might
have, and welcome, if she took a notion.” And Mr. Parish, the minister,
came, but he could not make much of Jacob, who told him “that if it was
religion to be willing to see one’s own flesh and blood suffer, he did
not want it.”

  Poor old Jacob! Every earthly reed had broken beneath him, his
unsteady steps were tottering toward the grave, and yet he threw aside
the only sure Staff. He did not know, poor old man, so gradually had his
heart hardened by contact with the world, “that it is easier for a
camel to go through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter the
kingdom of God.” Through no rift in the dark cloud which shadowed him,
could he see bright Mercy’s sunbeam. One by one the lights had gone out
in his sky, and still he groped about, blind to the rays of Bethlehem’s
star. Poor old Jacob!

  It was Sabbath morning. Jacob stood at his cottage door, gazing out.
Each tiny blade of grass bent quivering under its glistening dew-drop.
The little ground-birds on the gravel walk were picking up their early
breakfast; the robins were singing overhead. The little swallows flew
twittering round the cottage eaves. The leaves were rustling with their
mysterious music. The silver mist wreathed playfully over the
hill-sides, whose summits lay bathed in sunshine. Every thing seemed
full of joyous life. Where was the Master hand which regulated all that
harmony? The birds sang--the leaves danced--the brooks sparkled--the bee
hummed--why did He make _man_ only to suffer? It was all a riddle to
poor Jacob. He took his staff, and sauntered away under the drooping
lindens. The Sabbath bell was calling the simple villagers to church.
Across the meadows, down the grassy lane--the rosy maiden, the bent old
man, and the lisping little child. Jacob looked after them as they went.
Jacob never had been to church--not since he was a little child. Sunday
he always posted his books, squared up his accounts, wrote business
letters and the like of that; shortening the day at both ends by getting
up later and going to bed earlier. Sunday to him was no different from
any other day in the week--except that he transferred his business from
his counting-room to his parlor; and yet--here he was, leaning on his
staff, before the village church, almost wishing to go in with its
humble people. He looked about as if he expected somebody to be
astonished that Jacob Ford should be standing so near a church door; but
nobody seemed to notice it, or look at all surprised. By-and-by he crept
on a little further, and seated himself on a stone bench in the porch,
with his chin upon his staff. The butterfly and the bee passed in and
out; even the little birds flew in at the church door, and out at the
open window; and still old Jacob sat there--he could scarcely have told
why. Now he hears the choir sing,

     “Jesus, I my cross have taken,
        All to leave, and follow Thee;
      Naked--poor--despised--forsaken--
        Thou from hence my all shalt be.

     “Though the world despise and leave me,
        They have left my Saviour too;
      Human hearts and hopes deceive me,
        Thou art not like them, untrue.”

  As the song died away, old Jacob’s tears flowed down his cheeks; the
words soothed his troubled spirit like a mother’s lullaby.

  “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give
you rest.”

  Who promised that?

  How did the minister know how “heavy laden” was Jacob’s spirit?

  How did _he_ know that for sixty years he had been drawing water from
broken cisterns? Chasing shadows even to the grave’s brink?

  How did _he_ know that on that balmy Sabbath morning, his heart was
aching for _something_ to lean on that would not pass away?

  “Come unto me.”

  Old Jacob took his staff, and tottered out into the little church-yard
He did not know he was praying, when his soul cried out, “Lord help me;”
but still his lips kept murmuring it, as he passed down the grassy road,
and under the drooping lindens, for each time he said it, his heart
seemed to grow lighter; each time it seemed easier for old Jacob to
“come.” And so he entered his low doorway, and as he stooped to kiss his
daughter’s cheek, the bitterness seemed to have gone from out his heart,
and he felt that he could forgive even Percy, for His sake of whom he
had just so recently craved forgiveness.

  “What is it?” asked Lucy, awed by the strange expression of Jacob’s
face, and laying her hand tenderly upon his arm; “what is it, Jacob?”

  “Peace!” whispered the old man, reverently; “God’s peace--here Lucy;”
and he laid his hand on his heart.

  Lucy took old Jacob’s staff and set it in the corner. Good, kind Lucy!
She did not think when she did so, that he would need it no more. She
did not know when the sun went down that night, that death’s dark shadow
fell across her cottage threshold. She did not know, poor Lucy, when she
slumbered away the night hours so peacefully by his side, that, leaning
on a surer Staff, old Jacob had passed triumphantly through the dark
valley; and when at length the little twittering sparrows woke her with
their morning song, and she looked into the old man’s cold, still face,
the pale lips, though they moved not, seemed to whisper, “Peace,
Lucy--God’s peace.”

CHAPTER VIII.

  “Is it possible you care for that girl yet, Tom? A rejected lover,
too? Where’s your spirit, man? Pshaw--there’s many a fairer face than
Mary Ford’s; besides, she is more than half crazy. Are you mad, Tom? You
wouldn’t catch me sighing for a girl who had cried her eyes out for the
villainy of my rival.”

  “Curse him!” said Tom Shaw, striking his boots with a light cane he
held in his hand; “_he_ is safe enough, at any rate, for some time to
come; good for a couple more years, I hope, for striking that fellow in
prison. When he comes out, if he ever does, he will find his little bird
in my nest. Half-witted or whole-witted, it matters little to me. I am
rich enough to please my fancy, and the girl’s face haunts me.”

  “Pooh!” said Jack; “you are just like a spoiled child--one toy after
another, the last one always the best. I know you--you’ll throw this
aside in a twelvemonth; but marriage, let me tell you, my fine fellow,
is a serious joke.”

  “Not to me,” said Tom, “for the very good reason that I consider it
dissolved when the parties weary--or at any rate, I shall act on that
supposition, which amounts to the same thing, you know.”

  “Not in law,” said Jack.

  “Nonsense,” replied Tom; “I am no fool; trust me for steering my bark
clear of breakers. At any rate, I’ll marry that girl, if perdition comes
after it--were it only to spite Percy. How he will gnash his teeth when
he hears of it, hey? The old man is dead, and the old woman is left
almost penniless. I’ll easily coax her into it. In fact, I mean to drive
out there this very afternoon. Mary Ford shall be Mrs. Tom Shaw, d’ye
hear?”

  “Good day, Pike! Haven’t got a pitchfork you can lend a neighbor, have
ye? Ours is broke clean in two; I’m dreadful hard put to it for
horseflesh, or I would drive to the village and buy a new one. You see
that pesky boy of mine has lamed our mare; it does seem to me, Pike,
that boys allers will be boys--the more I scold at him, the more it
don’t do no good.”

  “And the more it won’t,” said the good-natured farmer Rice. “Scolding
never does any good no how--the boy is good enough by natur’--good as
you was, I dare say, when you was his age. I wouldn’t give a cent for a
boy that hain’t no friskiness about him, no sperrit like; but you see
you don’t know how to manage him. You are allers scolding, just as you
say. It’s ‘John, go weed those parsnips; ten to one, you careless dog,
you’ll pull up the parsnips instead of the weeds;’--or, ‘John, go carry
that corn to mill; ten to one, you’ll lose it out of the wagon going.’ I
tell you, Pike, it is enough to discourage any lad, such a constant
growling and pecking; now I want my boys to love me when they grow up. I
don’t want them glad to see the old man’s back turned. I don’t want them
happier any where than at their own home. That’s the way drunkards and
profligates are made--that’s the way the village tavern thrives. I tell
you, Pike, if you lace up natur too tight, she’ll bust out somewhere.
Better draw it mild.”

  “O, don’t talk to me, neighbor,” said Rice, impatiently. “Them’s
modern notions; thrash children, I say. When I was a lad, if I did my
duty, it was well; if I didn’t, I knew what to expect. It is well enough
for your children to love you; of course they oughter, when you’ve
brought them into the world; but I say they’ve got to mind, _any_ how;
‘obey your parents;’ that’s it; plain as preaching.”

  “Yes,” said farmer Rice, “I believe in that; but there’s another verse
in the same book, that runs this way--‘Parents provoke not your children
to anger, lest they be discouraged.’”

  “Well--well,” said Mr. Pike, uneasily, “I hate argufying, as I do bad
cider. Your neighbor, Mr. Ford, dropped off sudden like, didn’t he?
What’s the matter of him?”

  “Some say one thing--some another; but I think, neighbor, it was just
here. That ere old man has been in harness these sixty years--it was a
sort of second natur to him to be _active_. Well, he was taken right out
of the whirl and hubbub of the city, where people can’t hardly stop long
enough to bury one another, and sot right down in this quiet place,
where there’s nothing a-going but frogs and crickets, with nothing to do
but to brood over his troubles. Well, you see such a somerset at his
time o’ life wan’t the thing; of course it upsot him. He’d lean over
this fence, and lean over that, and put on his hat, and take it off, and
walk a bit, and sit down a bit, and act just like an old rat in a trap,
trying to gnaw his way out. It was just as if you should pull up that
old oak-tree, that has grown in that spot till its roots strike out half
a mile round, and set it out in some foreign sile; it wouldn’t
thrive--of course not.”

  “No,” said Mr. Pike, “I see, I see--it would be just so with me, if I
was set down where _he_ came from--that etarnal rumbling and whiz buzz
would drive me clean distracted. The last time I staid in the city over
night, I thought every minute the last day had come, there was such a
tearin’ round. But what’s become of the old woman and her sick darter?”

  “_She_ took it hard--she did--but the girl is sort of
image-like--don’t feel nothing, I reckon. Pretty, too--it’s a nation
pity. They’ve got enough left to keep them alive, milk and fresh air,
like the rest on us. _I_ don’t want no better fare. There’s some talk,
so my old woman says, about a fellow who drives out here, who is going
to marry the girl;--nothing but woman’s gabble, I guess; you know if
they didn’t talk they wouldn’t say nothing.”

  “Fact,” said Mr. Pike, profoundly, “I often think on’t; but come, I
can’t stay prating here all day--where’s the pitchfork you was going to
lend me?”

  “There it is,” said Mr. Rice; “and now remember what I told you about
that boy of yourn; there’s more good in that Zekiel, than you think
for;--remember now, a little oil makes machinery work easy, Pike.”

  “Yes, oil of birch,” said farmer Pike, chuckling at his own wit, and
cracking his horse-whip at a happy little vagrant robin, as he went
through the gate and down the road.

CHAPTER IX.

  Summer had danced by--the chill wind whistled through the trees--the
nuts were dropping in showers, and the leaves rusted beneath the
traveler’s foot; the golden-rod and barberry clusters alone remained to
deck the hedges, and the striped snake crawled out on the rock to sun
himself only at midday. Widow Ford’s cottage looked lonely and desolate,
stripped of its leafy screen; but the squirrels might be seen leaping
from tree to tree as merrily as if old Jacob still sat watching them in
the door-way. Lucy moved about, sweeping, dusting, replenishing the
fire--but the silver hair glistened on her temples, and her step was
slow and weary. Now and then she would lean against the mantel, and look
at Mary--and then wander restlessly into the little bedroom--then, back
again to the mantel.

  “You still think it best to consummate this marriage?” said the
clergyman to Lucy, in a low voice.

  “Only that I would not leave her alone,” said Lucy, tremulously. “I
shall soon be in the church-yard by the side of Jacob. Mr. Shaw knows
all--he loves her, and wishes to make her his wife. I believe he will be
kind to her. As for Mary, poor thing, you see how it is,” and she
glanced at her daughter, who sat with locked fingers--her long lashes
sweeping her colorless cheek. One might have taken her for some
beautiful statue, with those faultless marble features, and that
motionless attitude.

  Mr. Parish sighed, as he looked at Mary; but he had little time to
discuss matters, if that were his intention, for the sound of
approaching carriage-wheels announced Mr. Shaw.

  “At twelve, then, to-morrow,” said he, as he took up his hat, “if you
are of the same mind, I will perform the ceremony as you desire.”

  Mr. Parish walked home in a very thoughtful mood. Through his
acquaintances in the city, he had learned the history of the family. He
knew the length and breadth of the shadow which had fallen across their
hearth-stone. He saw that it was true, as Lucy had said, that her own
strength was fast failing; still it seemed to him sacrilege to bestow
Mary’s hand in marriage, when her heart was so benumbed and dead. He
would have offered her a shelter in his own house, had he been master of
it; but, unfortunately, he had married a lady who lost no opportunity to
remind him that her dowry of twenty thousand dollars was payment in full
for the total abnegation of his free will. This was not the first
occasion on which the clanking of this gentleman’s golden fetters had
sounded unmusically in his reverend ears; in truth, he would much have
preferred his liberty, even at the expense of eking out a small salary
by farming, as did the neighboring country clergy. Mrs. Parish lost no
opportunity to remind her husband that he was sold, by such pleasant
remarks as the following: That it was time _her_ house was re-painted,
or _her_ barn re-roofed, or _her_ carry-all re-cushioned. When she felt
_unusually_ hymeneal, she would say, “Mr. Parish, you can use _my_
horses to-day, if you will drive carefully.” That she invariably and
sweetly deferred to her husband’s opinion in company, was no proof of
the absence of a private conjugal understanding, that he was to consider
himself merely her echo.

  Little did his brother clergymen who exchanged with him in their
thread-bare suits of black, dream of the price at which his pleasant
parsonage surroundings were purchased. Little did they dream, when they
innocently brought along their wives and babies on such occasions, the
suffering it entailed on “brother Parish.”

  No, poor simple souls, they went home charmed with the hospitality of
their host and hostess, charmed with their conjugal happiness, and
marveling as they returned to their own houses, what made their rooms
seem so much smaller, and their fare so much more frugal than before.
Had they been clairvoyantly endowed, they might have seen brother
Parish, after he had smilingly bowed them down the nicely rolled gravel
walk to their wagons, return meekly to the parlor, to be reminded for
the hundredth time, by Mrs. Parish, of that twenty thousand dollar
obligation. Well might personal feelings come in, to strengthen his
ministerial scruples, lest he should join carelessly in wedlock, hands
which death only could unclasp.

  “He oughter be ashamed of hisself marrying that poor crazed thing,
even if the old lady is willing,” said farmer Jones’ wife, as Tom Shaw’s
smiling face peered out of the carriage window, on his wedding day. “It
hardens the heart awful to live in the city; riches can’t make that poor
cretur happy; a pebble stun and a twenty dollar piece, are all one to
her. Now my daughter Louizy is no beauty; she is clumsy and freckled,
and brown as a butternut; but she is too fair in my eyes, to be sold
that way. I wish I knew what crazed that Mary Ford. Ah--here comes
parson Parish; maybe I’ll get it out of him.”

  “Good day, sir--met the bridal carriage, I suppose, on the road--queer
wedding that, of Miss Mary’s. Is it true, that Squire Ford’s house took
fire, and Miss Mary lost her wits by the fright?”

  “I never heard of it,” replied the parson--taking the Maltese cat in
his lap, and manipulating her slate-colored back.

  Mrs. Jones _might_ have added, “Nor I either,” but nothing daunted,
she tried another question.

  “Scarlet fever p’rhaps, parson? that allers leaves suthing behind it,
most commonly. My George would have been left blind, likely, if he
hadn’t been left deaf. They say it was scarlet fever that done it.”

  “Do they?” asked the parson.

  “Confound it,” thought Mrs. Jones; “I’m sure the man knows, for he was
very thick there at the cottage. I’ll see if my gooseberry wine won’t
loosen his tongue a little;” and she handed the minister a glass.

  “Sometimes I’ve wondered, parson, what made old Ford walk round so
like an unquiet sperrit. _He_ didn’t do nothing he hadn’t oughter, did
he? It wasn’t that that crazed Miss Mary, I s’pose? That old man got up
and sat down fifty times a minute.”

  “So I have heard,” answered the impenetrable parson, sipping his wine.

  “She wasn’t crossed in love nor nothing, was she?” asked the
persevering querist; “that sometime plays witchwork with a woman.”

  “Oh, that reminds me,” said the parson. “I hear Zekiel Jones is
engaged to your Louisa.”

  “My Louizy!” screamed Mrs. Jones, walking straight into the trap; “My
Louizy engaged to Zekiel Jones! a fellow who don’t know a hoe-handle
from a hay-cutter. I guess there’ll be a tornady in this house afore
that marriage comes off. I do wish people would mind their own business,
and not meddle with what don’t consarn ’em. Now who told you that,
parson?”

  “Well, I really don’t remember,” replied the minister; “but you know
it matters little, so there’s no truth in it,” and dexterously escaping
through the dust he had raised, he bowed himself down the garden walk;
while Mrs. Jones stood with her arms a-kimbo, in the doorway,
ejaculating: “Zekiel Jones and my Louizy--a fellow who goes to sleep in
the middle of the day in haying time, and a gal who can churn forty
pounds of butter a day! Gunpowder and milk! I guess so.”

CHAPTER X.

  “How shall we manage to kill time to-day, Jack?” asked Tom Shaw;
“race-course--billiards--club--pistol gallery?”

  “Kill time! You--a bridegroom of six months! Well, you can’t say you
weren’t warned. You remember I told you you would soon weary of your new
toy. A six-months’ bridegroom!” and Tom laughed merrily.

  “Long enough to make love to a statue, were it ever so faultless,”
replied Tom, with a yawn. “I’m bored to death, Jack, and I don’t care
who knows it. My mother-in-law, who, to do her justice, is clever
enough, strolls over the house like a walking tomb-stone. My wife is as
lifeless as if half the women in town were not dying for me. It’s cursed
monotonous; hang me if I’m not sick of it.”

  “Does your wife never speak to you?” asked Jack.

  “Never,” said Tom; “there she sits in her chair, playing with her
fingers, or else at the window, looking this way, and that, as if she
were expecting somebody; when she does so, it seems to worry the old
lady, who looks nervously at me, and tries to coax her away--the Lord
only knows why; and two or three times I have seen her coax away a faded
flower that Mary has a fancy for holding between her fingers. It’s all
Greek to me. Confound it, I feel as if I were in a nest of lunatics. It
makes me as nervous as the devil. Come, let’s be off. What has become of
Susy, the little ballet-girl? Did she take my marriage to heart?”

  “Not she, the delicious little monkey; she tossed her pretty head, and
said with an arch smile: ‘Mark what I say: he’ll be back to me in six
months.’”

  “Pretty prophet!” replied Tom.

  The two young men locked arms and sauntered down the crowded street,
whiffing their cigars; now attracted by some brilliant shop-window, now
bandying jests with those miserable women, who, but for just such as
they, might have lifted their womanly brows to the starry sky--pure as
when first kissed by a mother’s loving lips. Pale seamstresses glided
by, unguarded, save by Him who noticeth the sparrow’s fall. Young men of
their own age, weary of the slowly accumulating gains of honest toil,
looked enviously upon their delicately kidded hands, fine apparel, and
care-for-naught air. Passing, at length, the long line of carriages in
front of the opera house, they disappeared under the lighted vestibule,
and took possession of one of the boxes.

  Fair young girls were there, unveiling to the libidinous eye, at
Fashion’s bidding, charms of which they should have been chary to the
moon. Faded belles throwing out bait at which nobody even nibbled.
Married men groaned, looked at their watches, and leaning back in their
seats, computed the rise and fall of stocks; married women gazed
anxiously around to see if their laces, diamonds, or cashmeres were
eclipsed by their neighbors’. Every body was bored to death, stifled by
the heat, blinded, by the gas, and scientifically inappreciative of the
music, but every body willing to endure ten times as much, rather than
not be “in the fashion.” The moon, to be sure, silvered the pretty
fountain in the park, close by, and the cool, sweet evening breeze
played through the blossoming trees; but the “working people” were
stretched upon its benches; the poor man’s child laid his soft cheek to
the cool grass; the ragged little urchin, escaping from the stifled air
of the noisome lane, threw up his brimless hat in the gravel walk. The
parks were plebeian, opera boxes were beyond the reach of “the vulgar.”

  But look! Now the audience show signs of animation. All is astir. See,
the ballet! A fleecy cloud sails in, enveloping “Susy.” Susy, the
favorite pro tem.--Susy, with her jetty locks, creamy skin, and dimpled
shoulders. Susy, with her pretty ankles and rounded waist. Susy, with
her jeweled arms and rose-banded hair. Susy, with her rounded bosom and
twinkling feet. Young men and old men level their glasses in breathless
admiration, as Susy languishingly twirls, and tip-toes, and pirouettes.
Young girls, who have long since ceased blushing at such exhibitions,
wish, for the nonce, that _they_ were Susy, as bouquets and diamond
rings are thrown upon the stage. Tom Shaw’s eyes sparkle, and relieving
his enthusiasm by some expressive expletives, he leaves Jack for a
behind-the-scene _tête-à-tête_ with the _danseuse_.

CHAPTER XI.

     “Day dawned--within a curtained room,
      Filled to faintness with perfume,
      A lady lay at point of doom.
      Morn broke--an infant saw the light,
      But for the lady, fair and bright,
      She slumbered in undreaming night.”

  Life and death had passed each other on the threshold! Lucy Ford’s
tears were the baptism of Mary’s motherless babe. The poor weary heart,
whose pulse had beat so unevenly above it, had ceased its flutterings.
It was nothing new to see Mary lie with marble face, folded hands, and
softly-fringed, closed eyes. But, _sometimes_, the thin hand had been
kindly outstretched toward Lucy; _sometimes_, the glossy head had raised
itself, and leaned tenderly on the maternal bosom; _sometimes_, the blue
eye had lingered lovingly on her wrinkled face. Small comfort, God
knows--and yet it was much to poor Lucy. She looked at the little
gasping, helpless thing before her--a tenant already for her rifled
heart--a new claimant for her love and care. Oh, how could she else but
welcome it? With soft folds she wrapped its fragile limbs, with
motherly care she soothed it on her sunken breast, and with a prayer to
God, as she pressed her lips to Mary’s brow, she promised Death to be
faithful to the trust of Life.

  Days and nights--weeks, months and years came and went, blanching the
prisoner’s lip and cheek, but failing to subdue a love which yet had not
saved him from incurring a doom so terrible. Had Mary forgotten him?
for, since that dreadful, happy day, when he clasped her in his cell, he
had heard nothing save the damning sneer of the villain Scraggs. Perhaps
she was dead--and his bloodless lip quivered at the thought.
Nay--worse--perhaps they might have married her, in her despair, to
another. Percy tossed on his narrow cot in agony.

  He even welcomed the day-light, which recalled him to his task. Oh,
those long, long nights, when locked in his cell, remorse kept him
silent company! or worse, the dreary, idle Sunday, when taken out once
to chapel, then remanded back to his dark cell, he lay thinking of the
pleasant Sabbaths he had passed with Mary, in the little parlor, on the
sofa by her side. He could see her now, in the pretty blue dress she
wore to please him; the ring he had given her, sparkling on her white
hand--her glossy hair, worn the very way _he_ liked to see it, the book
opened at the passage _he_ liked best, the little flower pressed between
its leaves, because _he_ gave it. Then the little arbor in the
garden--where they used to sit the pleasant Sabbath evenings--the song
Mary sang him there--with her head upon his breast. Oh, happiness--oh,
misery!

  Percy knew it was summer, for as he passed through the prison-yard he
saw that the green blades of grass were struggling up between the
flag-stones, and now and then, he heard the chirp of a passing bird. The
sky, too, was softly blue, and the breeze had been where clover and
daisies had bloomed, and rifled their sweetness.

  Percy looked down on his shrunken limbs, clad in his felon garb--then
on his toil-worn hands. He passed them slowly over his shaven crown.
Merciful Heaven! he--Percy Lee--Mary’s lover! Fool--thrice-accursed
fool; life--liberty--happiness--love--all laid at the feet of the
tempting fiend--for this! No tears relieved the fierce fire, which
seemed consuming his heart and brain. How long could he bear this? Was
his cell to be his grave? Once, seized with a sudden illness, he had
been taken to the prison hospital, where the doctor tried pleasant
little experiments on the subjects who came under his notice. Around him
were poor wretches, groaning under every phase of bodily and mental
discomfort. Now roused out of some Heaven-sent slumber, when it suited
the doctor to show them to visitors; or to descant upon the commencement
and probable duration of their disease, coupled with accounts of
patients who had died in those beds, and whom he _could_ have cured
under different circumstances.

  It was here that Percy shed the only tears which had moistened his
eyes since his incarceration. A party of visitors were passing through
the wards, listening to the doctor’s egotistical details, and peeping
into the different cots. A sweet little girl had strayed away from the
rest of her party, and was making her tour of childish observation
alone. Her eye fell upon Percy. She stood for a moment, gazing at him
with the intensest pity written on her sweet face. Then gliding up to
his side, she drooped her bright curls over his pillow, and placing a
flower between his fingers, she whispered, “I’ll pray to God to make you
well and let you go home.”

  “Mary! come here,” said a shrill female voice, recalling the child;
“don’t you know that is a horrid bad man! he might kill you.”

  “No, he is not,” said the little creature, confidently, with a piteous
glance of her soft, blue eyes at Percy; “no, he is not.”

  “What makes you think so?” asked one of the party.

  “I don’t know,” replied the child; “something tells me so--here;” and
she laid her hand on her breast.

  “Won’t you please let him go home?” asked she of the doctor.

  “_Home._”

  As the sweet pleader passed out, the room seemed to grow suddenly
dark, and Percy turned his face to his pillow, and wept aloud.

  Heavenly childhood! that the world should ever chill thy Christ-like
heart. That scorn should uproot pity. That suspicion should stifle love.
That selfishness should dry up thy tears, and avarice lock thine open
palm, with its vice-like grasp! Oh, weep not ye who straighten childhood
for the grave; over whose household idols the green grass waves;
heaven’s bright rain showers and spring flowers bloom. Let the bird
soar, while his song is sweetest, before one stain soil his plumage, or
with maimed wing he flutter helplessly. Let him soar. The cloud which
hides him from thy straining eye, doth it not hide him from the archer?

CHAPTER XII.

  “The top o’ the mornin’ to yez, Bridget,” said Pat, poking his head
into the kitchen. “Is the ould lady up yet? Sorry a plight masther was
in the night--dhrunk as a baste--and he cares no more for his own flesh
and blood than I do for a Protestant--bad ’cess to ’em.”

  “Thrue for you, Patrick, and may I niver confess again to the praste,
if his light o’ love is not misthress here before long; he is as
bould-faced about it as if poor Misthress Mary wasn’t fresh under the
sod. God rest her sowl.”

  Bridget’s prediction was not long being verified. Upholsterers were
soon in attendance, re-modeling and re-furnishing poor Mary’s
apartments, of which the pretty _danseuse_ shortly took unblushing and
triumphant possession. It was understood in the house, that her will was
to be law; and implicit obedience to the same the surest passport to
head-quarters. Poor Lucy, willing to bear any thing rather than
separation from the child--chased from one room to another--finally took
refuge with her charge in the attic, whither poor Mary’s portrait had
long since been banished. For the little Fanny’s sake, she patiently
endured every humiliation; she heeded not the careless insolence of the
new _régime_ of servants. She bore every caprice of the tyrannical
little _danseuse_. Patiently her feeble limbs tottered up stairs and
down, performing the offices of nurse and servant to her grandchild;
patiently she soothed it when ill, or amused it when fretful;
uncomplainingly she bore from her son-in-law his maudling curses, when
they passed each other on the stairs, or in the hall. Every thing--any
thing, but separation from Mary’s child, which nestled every day closer
to her heart; and whose soft eyes and glossy curls reminded her every
day more forcibly of her lost daughter. Every day she prayed to God to
spare the withered trunk till the vine which clambered round it should
gather strength to brave the winds and storms. Fanny slept securely on
her breast, while the bacchanalian song resounded through the house, and
obscene jests, and curses loud and deep, made night hideous. And when
the moonbeams penetrated the little window, and, falling upon Mary’s
portrait, revealed her in all her beauty, before the shadow had fallen
on her fair brow, or dimmed her lustrous eyes, or robbed that dimpled
mouth of its sunny smile, poor Lucy would nestle closer to little Fanny,
and pray God that so bitter a cup might pass from _her_.

  Dear little Fanny! with her plump little arms thrown carelessly over
her curly head, her pearly teeth just gleaming through her parted lips,
as if some kind angel even then were promising her exemption from such a
doom.

  Time crept on, blanching Lucy’s cheek to deadly paleness, tinting
Fanny’s with a lovelier rose; thinning Lucy’s silver hair, piling the
golden clusters round Fanny’s ivory brow; bending Lucy’s shrunken limbs,
rounding Fanny’s into symmetry and grace.

  True, the child never left the attic; but what place, how
circumscribed soever, will not Love beautify and brighten? True,
“mamma’s” pictured semblance responded not to the little upturned face
and lisping lips, but who shall say that age and infancy were the _only_
tenants of that lonely room?

  Fanny knew that she had a “papa” somewhere in the house, but “papa”
was always “sick,” or “busy,” so grandmamma said; that must be the
reason why he never came up to see his little girl. Sometimes Fanny
amused herself by climbing up to the little window, overlooking the
square where a silvery fountain tossed its sparkling diamonds to the
sun, who turned them all sorts of pretty colors, and sent them quivering
back again. Little Fanny liked that! Then she saw little children
playing round the fountain, sailing their tiny boats on its bosom, and
clapping their hands gleefully when they rode safely into port. Great
shaggy Newfoundland dogs, too, jumped into the water, and swam, with
their black noses just above the surface, and ever and anon sprang out
upon the mossy bank, shaking their shaggy coats upon the more dainty
ones of mamma’s little pets, quite regardless of lace, silk, or ribbon.
It was a pretty sight, and little Fanny wanted to go to the fountain
too; but grandmamma was so feeble, and she had so much running to do up
and down stairs, that she had no strength left to walk; and then
grandmamma had to make all Fanny’s little dresses, and keep them tidy
and nice; and by the time the sun moved off of mamma’s picture in the
afternoon, she was quite ready to go to bed with little Fanny.

  Poor old grandmamma! Fanny handed her her spectacles, and a cricket to
put her poor tired feet upon, and picked up the spools of cotton when
they rolled upon the floor, and learned too to thread her needles quite
nicely, for grandmamma’s eyes were getting dim; and sometimes Fanny
would try to make the bed, but her hand was so tiny that she could not
even cover one of the small roses of its patch-work quilt. Dear little
thing! He who blessed little children, recorded of her, “She hath done
what she could.”

  One day Fanny heard a great noise--a great bumping and tumbling, as if
some heavy body were falling down the stairs. Then she heard a deep
groan--and then _such_ a shriek! If she lived to be as old as grandma,
that shriek would never go out of her ears; then there was a great
running to and fro, Patrick and Bridget wrung their hands, and said
ochone! ochone! and then grandmamma’s face grew very white, as she took
Fanny by the hand and hurried down stairs; and when they got into the
lower entry, there lay a gentleman very still on the floor. A beautiful
lady was kneeling on the floor beside him, chafing his temples--but it
was of no use; feeling of his pulse--but it was quite still. Then the
beautiful lady shrieked again--oh, so dreadfully! and then she fell
beside him like one dead.

  Fanny’s grandma whispered to her, that the gentleman “was her papa,”
and that he had fallen down stairs and broken his neck--grandma did not
say that he was drunk when he did it. Fanny crept up to him, for she had
wanted so much to see her papa--so she put her little rosy face close to
his, and said, “Wake up, please, papa, and see me.” But he did not open
his eyes at all; then she put her hand on his face, and then she seemed
frightened--her little lip quivered, and she clung to her grandmother’s
dress--then some men came and carried papa up stairs, and the
maid-servants laid the beautiful lady on the sofa, in the parlor; and
she and grandma went back up into the attic--and all that day, grandma
did not seem to see mamma’s picture at all; and when Fanny came up to
her, she wept and said, “God help you--my poor lamb.”

CHAPTER XIII.

  The bell sounded at Bluff Hill Prison, to call the prisoners to their
tasks. They passed out from their cells and crossed, two by two, the
prison-yard to their workshops. Percy and a stout negro were the last
couple in the file. Just as they were about passing in, the African, who
had received the punishment of the douche the day previous, for
dilatoriness at his task, sprang upon the officer in waiting, and seized
him by the throat. Percy, whose pugilistic science was a match for the
African’s muscle, grappled with and secured him in an instant,
receiving, as he did so, a severe bite from the fellow’s teeth, in his
left shoulder. The negro was handcuffed, and Percy carried to the
hospital, to have his wound dressed. The officer, in the flush of his
gratitude, assured him, as he left, that the case should be laid before
the governor, and would undoubtedly result in his pardon.

  Percy’s eye brightened, as he bowed his head in reply, but in truth he
took no credit for the deed; it was only following an irresistible
impulse to save the life of a fellow-creature.

  Liberty! it would be sweet! But, pshaw! why dream of it? Men were
proverbially ungrateful. Ten to one, the officer would never think of
his promise again; or if he did, the governor would lay it on the table,
to be indefinitely postponed, or forgotten, or rejected, with a thousand
other troublesome applications. No--suns would rise and set just as they
had done, and time for him would be marked only by the prison-bell, with
its clanging summons to labor. He should see, every day, as he had done,
the poor lame prisoner sunning himself in his favorite corner in the
yard--he should see the prisoners’ mattresses, hung on the rails to
air--he should see the gleam of the blacksmith’s forge, and hear the
stroke of the stonecutter’s hammer; the shuttle would fly, and the wheel
turn round. He should sit down to his wooden plate, his square bit of
salt meat, and his one potato, and drink water out of his rusty tin cup.
He should gasp out the starry nights in his stifling cell; he should
hear the rustling of silken robes, as ladies went the prison rounds, and
his heart would beat quick as he thought of Mary; he should burn forever
with the fire of remorse and shame--yet never consume; the taper would
flicker and flicker--yet never go out.

  So Percy sat carelessly down on the hospital bench, to have his wound
dressed; and listened to the asthmatic breathing of the sick man at his
side, and saw the hospital cook stirring in a cauldron some diluted
broth, and watched the doctor, as he compounded a plaster, and leisurely
smoked a cigar; and looked at a green branch which the wind ever and
anon swept across the grated window, showering its snowy blossoms, as if
in mockery, on the prison floor.

  O, no--liberty was not for him--and why should it be? Had he not
forfeited it by his own rash act?--was not his punishment just?--had he
not lost the confidence of his fellow men?--crushed the noblest and
purest heart that ever God warmed into life and love? It was all too
true, and there had been moments when he meekly accepted his punishment,
when he toiled in his prison uniform, not as if under the eye of a
taskmaster, but willingly, almost cheerfully, as if by expiatory penance
he could atone to himself for the wrong he had done that guileless
heart. O, did it still beat? and for him? for the thousandth time he
questioned. Could Mary look on him? smile on him? _love_ him still? O,
what mockery were liberty else! What mattered it how brightly the sun
shone, if it shone not on their love purified and intensified by sorrow?
What matter how green the earth, if they walked not through it side by
side? What mattered it how fresh the breeze--how blue the sky--how soft
the moonbeams--how sweet the flowers--how bright the stars--if day and
night found not their twin hearts beating like one? Better his cell
should be his tomb.

CHAPTER XIV.

  “I like to live here,” said little Fanny, running up to Lucy, with her
sun-bonnet hanging at the back of her neck; her cheeks glowing, and her
apron full of acorns, pebbles, pine leaves, grasses and flowers; “see
here, I tied them up with a blade of grass for you, and here’s a white
clover; a great bumble bee wanted it, he buzzed and buzzed, but I ran
off with it; won’t you go with me, grandmother, and help me find a
four-leaved clover? Don’t sew any more on those old vests. Who taught
you to make vests?” asked the little chatterbox.

  “O, I learned many--many--years ago,” replied Lucy, with a sigh, as
she thought of Jacob; “and now you see, dear, what a good thing it is to
learn something useful when one is young. If I did not know how to make
these vests, I could not pay for this room we live in, you know; here,
thread my needle, darling, either the eye is too small, or my eye is too
dim; I can’t see as well as I used.”

  “I wish I could do something useful,” said Fanny, as she handed back
the needle. “I can only brush up the hearth, and fill the tea-kettle,
and pick up your spools, and thread your needle, and--what else,
grandma?”

  “Make this lonely old heart glad, my darling,” said Lucy, pressing her
lips to Fanny’s forehead.

  “Why didn’t my papa ever come kiss me?” asked Fanny. “Was I too
naughty for my papa to love?”

  “No--no, my darling,” said Lucy, turning away her head to restrain her
tears, “you are the best little girl that--but run away, Fanny,” said
she, fearing to trust herself to speak. “Go find grandma a pretty
four-leaved clover.”

  The child sprang up and bounded toward the door. Standing poised on
one foot on the threshold, with her little neck bending forward, she
exclaimed eagerly, “Oh, grandma, I dare not; there’s a man climbing over
the stile into the meadow, with a pack on his back; won’t he hurt me?”

  “No,” said Lucy, peering over her spectacles at the man, and then
resuming her seat, “it is only a peddler, Fanny; shops are scarce in the
country, so they go round with tapes, needles, and things, to sell the
farmers’ wives. I am glad he has come, for I want some more sewing-silk
to make these button-holes.”

  “Good day, ma’am,” said the peddler, unlading his
 pack. “Would you like to buy any thing to-day?
Combs--collars--needles--pins--tapes--ribbons--laces?
buy any thing to-day, ma’am?”

  “May I look?” whispered Fanny to Lucy, attracted by the bright show in
the box.

  “There’s a ribbon for your hair,” said the peddler, touching her curls
caressingly; “and here is a string of beads for your neck. You will let
me give them to you, won’t you? because I have no little girl to love;”
and his voice trembled slightly.

  “May I love him, grandma?” whispered Fanny, for there was something in
the peddler’s voice that brought tears into her eyes. “May I give him
some milk to drink, and a piece of bread?” and hardly waiting for an
answer, she flew to the cupboard, and returned with her simple lunch.

  “Thank you,” said the peddler, in a low voice, without raising his
eyes.

  The sewing-silk was purchased, and the box rearranged, and strapped
up, but still the peddler lingered. Lucy, thinking he might be weary,
invited him to stop and rest awhile.

  “I will sit here on the door-step awhile, if you please, with the
little girl,” said the peddler. “Are you fond of flowers?” said he to
Fanny, again touching her shining curls.

  “Oh, yes,” she replied; “only I don’t like to go alone to get
them--the cows stare at me so with their great big eyes, and the little
toads hop over my feet, and I am afraid they will bite; they won’t bite,
will they?” asked Fanny, looking confidingly up in his face.

  “I should not think any thing could harm _you_,” replied the peddler,
drawing his fingers across his eyes.

  “What are you crying for?” asked Fanny, “’cause you haven’t any little
girl to love you?”

  “The dust, dear, in the road, quite blinded me to-day,” replied the
peddler.

  “I will bring you some water for them, in my little cup,” said Fanny.
“Grandma bathes her eyes when they ache, sewing on those tiresome
vests.”

  “No--no”--said the peddler, catching her by the hand as she sprang
up--“don’t go away--sit down--here--close by me--I will make a wreath of
flowers for your hair; your eyes are as blue as this violet.”

  “They are mamma’s eyes,” said Fanny. “Grandma calls them ‘mamma’s
eyes.’ We have a pretty picture of mamma--see--that’s it,” and she
bounded across the room and drew aside a calico curtain which screened
it. “There, isn’t it pretty?--why don’t you look?”

  The peddler slowly turned his head, and replied, in a husky voice,
“Yes, dear.”

  “Mamma is dead,” said Fanny, re-seating herself by his side. “What
makes you shiver? are you cold?--he is sick, grandma,” said Fanny,
running up to Lucy.

  “A touch of my old enemy, the ague, ma’am,” said the peddler,
respectfully--and Lucy returned to her needle.

  “Yes, my mamma is dead,” said Fanny. “Are you sorry my mamma is dead?
Sometimes I talk to her--grandma likes to have me; but mamma’s picture
never speaks back. Don’t you wish my mamma would speak back?” said
Fanny, looking up earnestly in his face.

  The peddler nodded--bending lower over the wreath he was twining.

  “My papa is dead, too,” said Fanny--“are you sorry my papa is dead?
Nobody loves me but grandma and God.”

  “And I”--said the peddler, touching her curls again with his fingers.

  “Why do you keep touching my hair?” asked the little chatterbox.

  “Because it is so like--oh, well--I am sure I don’t know,” said the
peddler, placing the wreath over her bright face, and touching his lips
to her forehead. “Good-by, dear, don’t forget me. I will make you a
prettier wreath sometime, shall I?”

  “O yes,” said Fanny; “let me tell grandma. Grandma is so deaf she
can’t hear us;” and the child ran back into the room to tell the news.

  “I like peddlers,” said little Fanny, as she watched her new friend
saunter slowly down the road. “He gave me this pretty wreath and this
ribbon; I am sorry he didn’t like mamma’s picture; he hardly looked at
it at all.”

  “The peddler never heard of your mamma, my darling; you must not
expect strangers to feel as you and grandma do about it.”

  “Yes,” replied Fanny, in a disappointed tone;--“but it is a pity,
because I like him. There he goes; now he has climbed the fence, and is
crossing the meadow. Good by, Mr. Peddler.”

  Yes--across the meadow, down the little grassy lane, over the
stile--far into the dim--dim woods, where no human eye could penetrate,
prostrate upon the earth, shedding such tears as manhood seldom sheds,
lay the peddler. Still in his ears lingered that bird-like voice, still
in his veins thrilled the touch of that tiny hand, and those silken
curls, in whose every glossy wave shone out Mary’s self. Mary--yet not
Mary; Mary’s child--yet not _his_ child!--And Lucy, too;--O, the sorrow
written in every furrow of that kindly face, and--O God--by whom?

  The stars glimmered through the trees, the night-winds gently rocked
the little merry birds to sleep--midnight came on with its solemn
spirit-whispers--followed the gray dawn with its misty tears, and
still--there lay the peddler, stricken, smitten, on Nature’s kindly
breast; for there, too (but all unconscious of his misery--deaf to his
penitence), lay pillowed the dear head which had erst drooped so
lovingly upon his breast.

CHAPTER XV.

  “Very well done; button-holes strong and even, lining smooth;
stitching, like rows of seed pearl. This is no apprentice work,” said
Mr. John Pray, as he held Lucy’s vests up to the light for a more minute
inspection. “That’s a vest, now, as is a vest; won’t disgrace John
Pray’s shop; it would gladden even the eyes of my old boss, Jacob Ford;
and mighty particular he was, too, and mighty small wages the old man
paid, as I have occasion to know. Well, I made a vow then, and thank God
I have had grace to keep it, that if ever John Pray became a master
workman, he would do as he would be done by. So, I don’t ask what wages
other tailors give; that don’t matter to me. I don’t want to die with
any body’s groans in my ears. So, when a piece of work is finished and
handed in, I say, ‘Now, John Pray, what should _you_ think was a fair
price for _you_ to receive, if _you_ had done that ’ere job?’ That’s it;
no dodging behind that question. ’Specially when a man has been through
the opera_tive_ mill himself. So, there’s your pay, Zekiel, weighed out
in that ere pair of Bible scales; and you may tell the old lady, as you
call her, that if she had served a regular apprenticeship at the trade,
she couldn’t have done better. What did you say her name was? However,
that’s no consequence--as long as she does the work well. Here’s some
more vests for her.”

  “Well, I really don’t know,” said Zekiel, “I never heern tell her
name. She’s a bran new neighbor, and as I was coming into town every day
with my cart, she axed me, civil like, if I’d bring these vests to you.
So, I brung ’em. I don’t mind doing a good turn for a fellow creetur,
now and then, specially when it ’taint no bother,” added Zekiel, with a
grin.

  “What did you spoil it for by saying that?” said John Pray. “I was
just going to clap you on the back for a clever fellow.”

  “You might go further, and clap a worse fellow on the back,” answered
Zekiel. “But I never boasts, I don’t. ’Tain’t no use. If the ministers
tell the truth, we’ve all got to be weighed in the big scales up above,
where there ain’t no false weights--bad deeds agin good deeds. Farmer
Reed, I’m thinking, will be astonished when the balance on his account
is struck. But, good day; my parsnips and cabbages ought to be in the
market, instead of wilting at your door--even though you city folks
don’t know the taste of a fresh vegetable. Good day.”

CHAPTER XVI.

  Rain--rain--rain; patter, patter. No sunshine to help Lucy’s purblind
eyes in stitching the dark vests; no sunshine to kiss open the
buttercups for Fanny. The birds took short and hasty flights from tree
to tree; the farmers slouched their hats over their faces, and whipped
up their teams; the little school children hurried back and forth with
their satchels, without stopping to look for chipmunks or for
ground-birds’ nests; the bells on the baker’s cart lost their usual
merry tinkle, and the old fishman’s horn, as he went his Friday round,
gave forth a discordant, spiritless whine.

  Little Fanny had righted her grandmother’s work-basket, read “Jack and
his Bean-Stalk,” made houses on the slate, put the black kitten to sleep
in the old barrel, blown soap bubbles, till she was tired, in the tin
bowl, and had finally crept up on the little cot bed and fallen asleep.

  Lucy sat back in her chair, and began counting over the money Zekiel
had brought her. It would relieve their present necessities. Fanny
should have some new clothes out of it, when farmer Smith’s rent was
paid. But the future? Lucy’s eyes were growing dimmer every day, and her
limbs more feeble. She might drop off suddenly, and then who would
befriend poor little Fanny? What lessons of sorrow had that loving
little heart to learn? By what thorny path would she thread life’s
toilsome journey?

  Dear little Fanny! She could no more live without love than flowers
without sunshine. That _she_ should ever weep tears, that no kindly hand
should wipe away; that she should hunger or thirst--shiver with winter’s
cold--faint under summer heat; that a harsh voice should ever drive the
blood from her lip or cheek--that her round limbs should bend with
premature toil--that sin should tempt her helplessness--that sorrow
should invite despair--that wrong should ever seem right to Mary’s
child! Poor Lucy bowed her head and wept.

  The peddler looked in through the little casement window. He saw the
falling tears, he saw Lucy’s sorrowful gaze at the rosy little dreamer.
He needed no explanation of the tableau. He knocked at the door; Lucy’s
tones were tremulous, as she bade him come in.

  “I thought you might be wanting some more silk,” said he,
respectfully, with his eyes fixed upon little Fanny.

  “Sit down--sit down,” said Lucy; for the tones of his voice were
kindly, and her heart in its loneliness craved sympathy. “It is dull
weather we have, sir; one don’t mind it when all is right _here_,” and
she laid her hand on her heart.

  “True,” said the peddler, in a low voice, still gazing at Fanny.

  “The child sleeps,” said Lucy. “It was of her I was thinking when you
came in; it would be very bitter to die and leave her alone, sir;” and
Lucy’s tears flowed again.

  “Have you no relatives--no friends, to whom you could intrust her?”
asked the peddler, with his eyes bent on the ground.

  “None, God help us,” replied Lucy.

  “Sir,” and Lucy drew her chair nearer to the peddler, “a great sorrow
may sometimes be in the heart, when smiles are on the face.”

  The peddler nodded, without trusting himself to speak.

  “This poor heart has borne up until now, with what strength it might;
but now”--and she glanced at little Fanny--“O, sir--if I could but take
her with me.”

  “God will care for her,” said the peddler, stooping to remove his hat,
that Lucy might not see his emotion.

  “Sometimes I feel that,” replied Lucy; “and then again--O, sir,
trouble makes the heart so fearful. My poor daughter--she was our idol,
sir--the sunbeam in our home; so good--so beautiful--so light-hearted,
till the trouble came. It was like a lightning bolt, sir--it scathed and
withered in one moment what was before so fresh and fair; it blighted
all our hopes, it blackened our hearth-stone, it killed my husband--poor
Jacob. Pardon me, sir, I talk as if you had known our history. It was
Mary’s lover, sir; he was taken up for swindling, at our very door;--and
yet I loved the lad--for the ground she walked on he loved--for Mary’s
sake.”

  “_She_ forgave him?” asked the peddler, in a voice scarcely audible.

  “She?--poor dear--she? All the world could not have made her believe
ill of him. She? Why, sir, she would sit at the window for hours,
watching the way he used to come. It crazed her, poor thing; and then
she would come and go just as she was bid. Her father saw her fade, day
by day, and cursed _him_;--he forgot business--every thing went
wrong--one way and another our money went, and then Jacob died.”

  “He forgave _him_--your daughter’s lover, before he died?” asked the
peddler, tremulously.

  “You have a kind heart, sir,” said Lucy. “Yes, Jacob’s heart softened
at the last;--he said we all needed God’s mercy. His last words were
‘Peace.’”

  “God be thanked,” murmured the peddler; then adding, quickly, “it must
have made _you_ so much happier; you say you loved the lad.”

  “Yes,” said Lucy, “_even now_. We all err, sir. He was only
nineteen--young to marry; but Mary’s heart was bound up in him. He
didn’t mean it, sir--I don’t know how it was. God help us all.

  “Well, we buried Jacob; then we had none to look to--Mary and I. We
were poor. I was feeble. Then Mary’s lover came--the rich Mr. Shaw. You
are ill, sir?”

  “No--no,” replied the peddler; “go on--your story interests me.”

  “Well, he wanted to marry Mary, although he saw how it was. It was all
one to her, you know, sir. She was crazed like--though so sweet and
gentle. I did it for the best, sir,” said Lucy, mournfully. “I thought
when I died Mary would have a home.”

  “Go on,” said the peddler. “He treated her kindly?” he asked, with a
dark frown.

  “For a little,” answered Lucy. “He wearied after a while. I might have
known it--I was to blame, sir--her heart was broken. When the babe
opened its eyes, she closed her’s, and I _alone_ mourned for her.”

  “O, God!” groaned the peddler.

  “It moves you, sir,” said Lucy; “perhaps you, too, have known
trouble.”

  The peddler bowed his head without replying.

  “Then, sir, he brought a gay young thing into the house--his
mistress--not his wife. He never looked upon his child; he cursed
me and it. I gave it our name; I called it Fanny Ford; and we
crept away, the babe and I, up in the attic;--then all was
confusion--extravagance--ruin;--then he died, sir--and since--you see us
here--you know now, sir, why I, leaning over the grave’s brink, yet
shrink back and cling to life for _her_ sake,” and she looked at Fanny.

  “Would you trust her with me?” asked the peddler, with his eyes bent
upon the ground. “I am all alone in the world--I have none to love--none
who love me--I am poor, but while I have a crust, she shall never want.”

  “It is a great charge,” replied Lucy. “If you should weary, sir?”

  “Then may God forget me,” said the peddler, earnestly, kneeling at
Lucy’s feet.

  Lucy bent on him a gaze searching as truth, but she read nothing in
that upturned face to give the lie to those solemn words. Pointing to
Fanny, she said,

  “Before God--and as you hope for peace at the last?”

  The peddler bowed his head upon Lucy’s withered hand, and faltered
out, “I promise.”

CHAPTER XVII.

  “Good morning, Zekiel,” said John Pray. “Glad to see you--you must
tell the old lady to go ahead and finish this pile of vests in a
twinkling; business is brisk now. Why, what’s this?” said he. “These
vests unfinished? How’s that? Don’t the pay suit? What’s the trouble
now?”

  “Don’t,” said Zekiel--“don’t--stop a bit--I’m as tough as any man--but
there’s some things I can’t stand;” and he dashed a tear away.

  “What’s the matter now?” asked John. “Is the old lady dissatisfied
with her pay?”

  “Don’t--I say,” said Zekiel;--“hold up--don’t harrow a man that
way--she’s dead--I tell you stone dead. She never’ll make no more vests
for nobody. I never shall forget what I saw there this morning, never.

  “You see she was old and infirm, and wan’t fit to work for any body
any how; but she had a little gran’child, fresh as a rose-bud, and she
did it for her, you see. Well, this morning I harnessed the old gray
horse--the black one is lame since Sunday--and reined up at her door, as
usual, to get the bundle. I knocked, and nobody came; then I knocked
again, then little rose-bud came tip-toeing to the door, with her finger
on her pretty lip, so--and whispered, ‘grandma is asleep; she has not
woke up this great while.’ So I said--‘You’d better speak to her and
say, here’s Zekiel, come for the bundle, cause you know she is partiklar
like about sending it.’ So the little rose-bud went up to the bed-side,
and said--‘Grandma, here is Zekiel, come for the vests.’ The old lady
didn’t say nothing, and rose-bud asked me to speak to her. I went up,
and--John Pray--the old lady was stone dead, and how was I going to tell
that to little rose-bud?”

  “You don’t mean to tell me that the child was all alone with the
corpse--nobody to see to the poor thing?” asked John.

  “But I do, though,” said Zekiel; “it was enough to break a body’s
heart, and she so innocent like. I never was so put to it in my life, to
know what to do. There she had gone and tidied up the kitchen, hung the
tea-kettle on the fire as well as she knew how, and sat waiting for her
gran’mother to ‘wake up,’ as she called it. How could I tell her she was
_dead_? Blast me if I could, to this minute.”

  “But you didn’t come away and leave her so?” asked John.

  “No,” replied Zekiel, “for a peddler came in, and little rose-bud ran
up, glad-like, to see him; then I beckoned him one side, and told him
just how it was, and he turned as white as a turnip, and great big tears
rolled down his face, as he took little rose-bud up in his arms and
kissed her. Then he told me he was a kind of a relation like, and poor,
but that he would take the child and do the best he could by her; and I
knew he must be clever, for children are powerful ’cute, and never take
to cranky folks, any how--and so I left them, and came blubbering into
town. I vow it was enough to make the very stones cry, to see little
rose-bud take on so, after the old lady.”

  There was no litigious will to be read, no costly effects to quarrel
about, in Lucy Ford’s poor cottage, and yet Golconda’s mines were all
too poor to buy the priceless treasures to which the peddler fell
heir--Mary’s picture and Mary’s child!

  With such talismans, what should he fear? what could he not
accomplish? He no longer walked with his head bowed upon his breast. The
pure love of that sinless little one restored his long-lost
self-respect. Life was dear to him. His eye regained its luster; his
step its firmness. Even his humble calling, now more than ever
necessary, became to him dignified and attractive. Fanny should have an
education worthy of Mary’s child. For the present, till he had amassed a
little capital, he must find her a home in some quiet farmer’s family,
where he could oversee her, in his occasional visits.

  Dear little Fanny! with her smiles and tears, she had already twined
herself round every fiber of his heart. “Cousin John,” as the peddler
taught her to call him, “was to take care of her always, and she was to
love him dearly--dearly--better than any body, but mamma and grandma.”

CHAPTER XVIII.

  Ah! there is Mrs. Quip’s head, poked out of the north chamber window.
A sure sign that it is five o’clock to the minute. Now she scuds across
the yard, making a prodigious flutter with her flying calico long-short,
among the hens and chickens, who take refuge in an upturned old barrel.
Snatching some sticks from the wood-pile, she scuds back again to the
kitchen, twitches a match from the mantel, lights the fire, hangs on the
tea-kettle, jerks out the table, rattles on the cups and saucers,
plates, knives, forks, etc., and throws open every blind, door, and
window. This done, she flies up stairs, pokes Susan in the ribs, drags
Mary out on the floor, throws a mug of water in “that lazy John’s face,”
and intimates that “breakfast will be on the table in less than fifteen
minutes.”

  John rubs the water out of his eyes, muttering a few unmentionable
words. Susan and Mary make a transient visit to the looking-glass, and
descend the stair’s just as the coffee smokes upon the table. Mrs. Quip
frightens the chickens into the barrel again with her calico long-short
and the great bell that she ring at the barn-door to “call the men folks
to breakfast,” and takes her accustomed seat at the table.

  “Brown bread or white? baked beans or salt meat? doughnuts, cheese, or
apple-pie? which’ll you have?” said Mrs. Quip to little Fanny.

  “Ma’am?” said Fanny, with a bewildered look.

  “Oh, dear; Susan Quip, for gracious’ sake find out what that peddler’s
child wants; hurry, all of you. Baking to be done to-day; yesterday’s
ironing to finish; them new handkerchers to hem; John’s trowsers to
mend; buttery shelves to scour; brown bread sponge to set; yeast to
make; pickles to scald; head-cheese to fix: hurry, all of you. Susan
Quip, there’s the cat in the buttery, smack, and--scissors--right into
that buttermilk, arter a mouse. Scat--scat; Susan Quip, that’s your
doings--leaving the buttery door open. John Quip, do you drownd that cat
to-day. Don’t talk to me of kittens; kittens is as plenty as peddlers’
children. Hand me that coffee, Susan Quip. Lord-a-mercy, there’s the
fishman: run, John--two mackerel, not more than sixpence a-piece; pinch
’em in the stomach, to see if they are fresh. If they are flabby, don’t
take ’em; if they ain’t, do. Yes, every thing to do, to-day, and a
little more beside. Soft soap to----Heavens and earth, John Quip, that
mackerel man hasn’t given you the right change by two cents. Here, stop
him! John Quip--Susan--get out of the way, all of you; I’ll go myself,”
and the calico long-short started in full pursuit of the mackerel
defaulter.

  Poor little Fanny! no Green Mountain boy, set down in the rush of the
city, ever felt half so crazy. Mrs. Quip, with her snap-dragon,
touch-me-not-manners, high-pitched voice, and heavy tramp, was such a
contrast to her dear grandmother, with her soft tones, noiseless step,
and gentle ways. Fanny was afraid to move for fear she should cross Mrs.
Quip’s track. She did not know whether she were hungry or thirsty. She
marveled at the railroad velocity with which the food disappeared, and
pitied Mrs. Quip _so_ much for having such a quantity of things to do
all in a minute!

  The next day after Fanny’s arrival at Butternut farm, was Sunday. Mrs.
Quip was up betimes, as usual, but her activity took a devotional turn.
She was out to the barn fifty times a minute, to see “if the horse and
waggin was getting harnessed for meetin’,”--not but _Mr._ Quip was still
above ground, but as far as he had any voice in family matters, he might
as well have been under. Mrs. Quip was up in Susan’s room (or, as she
pronounced it, _Sew_san), to see if she was learning her catechise; she
was padlock-ing John Quip’s Sunday temptation, in the shape of the
“Thrilling Adventures of Jack Bowsprit;” she was giving the sitting-room
as Sabbatical and funereal an aspect as possible, by setting the chairs
straight up against the walls, shutting all the blinds, and putting into
the cupboard every thing that squinted secular-wise.

  Fanny, oppressed by the gloom within doors, crept out into the warm
sunshine, and seating herself under a tree in the yard, was looking at a
few clover blossoms which she had plucked beside her. She was thinking
of the pleasant Sundays she had passed with her dear grandmother, and
how she used to sit on the door-step of the cottage, and tell her how
God taught the little birds to build their cradle nests, and find their
way through the air; and how He provided even for the little ants, who