he cause along."

And then she tried to smile a little mite. But I declare that smile wuz
more pitiful than tears would have been.

Everybody has seen smiles that seemed made up, more than half, of unshed
tears, and withered hopes, and disappointed dreams, etc., etc.

Submit's smile wuz of that variety, one of the very curiusest of 'em,
too. Wall, she gin, I guess, about two of 'em, and then she went and sot
down.

CHAPTER XXVII.

And now I am goin' to relate the very singulerist thing that ever
happened in Jonesville, or the world--although it is eppisodin' to tell
on it now, and also a-gettin' ahead of my story, and hitchin', as you
may say, my cart in front of my horse. But it has got to be told and I
don't know but I may as well tell it now as any time.

Mebby you won't believe it. I don't know as I should myself, if it wuz
told to me, that is, if it come through two or three. But any way it is
the livin' truth.

That very night as Submit Tewksbury sat alone at her supper table,
a-lookin' at that vacent spot on the table-cloth opposite to her, where
the plate laid for Samuel Danher had set for over twenty years, she
heard a knock at the door, and she got up hasty and wiped away her tears
and opened the door. A man stood there in the cold a-lookin' into the
warm cosy little room. He didn't say nothin', he acted strange. He gin
Submit a look that pierced clear to her heart (so they say). A look
that had in it the crystallized love and longin' of twenty years of
faithfulness and heart hunger and homesickness. It wuz a strange look.

Submit's heart begun to flutter, and her face grew red and then white,
and she sez in a little fine tremblin' voice,

"Who be you?"

And he sez,

"I am Samuel Danker."

And then they say she fainted dead away, and fell over the rockin'
chair, he not bein' near enough to ketch her.

And he brung her to on a burnt feather that fell out of the chair
cushion when she fell. There wuz a small hole in it, so they say, and
the feather oozed out.

I don't tell this for truth, I only say that _they say_ thus and so.

[Illustration: "I AM SAMUEL DANKER."]

But as to Samuel's return, that I can swear to, and so can Josiah. And
that they wuz married that very night of his return, that too can be
swore to. A old minister who lived next door to Submit--superanuated,
but life enough in him to marry 'em safe and sound, a-performin' the
ceremony.

It made a great stir in Jones