mean, Phoebe?'--
She could not have told what checked the expression of her
growing wonder.

'O lie down, ma'am, please! Why I only mean,' said Phoebe
speaking with perfect simplicity--'You know God calls us all to
die somehow--and if he called me to die so, it wouldn't make
much difference. I shouldn't think of it when I'd got to
heaven.'

Again some undefined feeling sealed Wych Hazel's lips. She lay
down as she was desired, and with her hand over her eyes
thought, and wondered, and fell asleep.

For some hours thereafter the sunbeams were hardly quieter
than the party they lighted on the miller's floor. Wych Hazel
slept; Mrs. Saddler was even more profoundly wrapped in
forgetfulness; Mr. Falkirk sat by keeping guard. The miller's
daughter had run up the hill to her home for a space. As to
Rollo, he had not been seen. His gun was his companion, and
with that it was usual for him to be in the woods much of the
time. He came back from his wanderings however as the day
began to fall, and now sat on a stone outside the mill door,
very busy. The little lake at his feet still and dark, with
the side of the woody glen doubled in its mirror, and the
sunlight in the tops of the trees reflected in golden glitter
from the middle of the pool, was a picture to tempt the eye:
but Rollo's eye, if it glanced, came back again. He was
picking the feathers from a bird he had shot, and doing it
deftly. Sauntering leisurely up the miller approached him.

'Now that's what I like,' he remarked; 'up to anything, eh?
You don't seem so much used up as the rest on 'em. Even the
little one talked herself to sleep at last!'

'Have you got a match, Mr. Miller?'

'No--I haven't,' said the man of flour--'I always light my pipe
with a burning glass. Won't that serve your turn? So there she
sits, asleep, and my Phoebe sits and looks at her.'

'I've something else that will serve my turn,' said the hunter
applying to his gun. 'But stay--I do not care to see any more
fire to-day than is necessary.'--And drawing his work off to a
safe place, he went on to kindle tinder and make a nice little
fire.--'Haven't you learned how to make bread yet, Mr. Miller?'

'Not a bit!' said he laughing. 'And when you've got a wife and
four daughters you won't do much fancy cookig neither, I
guess. But there's Phoebe--'

'A mistake, Mr. Miller,' said the fancy cook. 'Best always to
be independent of your wife--and of everything else.'

And impaling his bir