ld my brother kill Mr. Barbary, if he was his friend? Was not
Elbridge always kind, mother? I'm sure he was to me, and used to let me
ride old Sorrel before him to the mill!"

"Ever kind? He was. There was not a day he did not make glad his poor
mother's heart, with some generous act of devotion to her. No sun set on
the day which did not cheer her lonely hearth with a new light of
gladness and peace from his young eyes."

"Margaret, you forget. He was soft of heart, but proud of spirit, and
haughty beyond his age; you may not remember, even I could not always
look down his anger, or silence his loudness of speech. Why should he
kill Mr. Barbary? I will tell you, child: the preacher, too, had
discerned well your brother's besetting sin, and, being fearless in
duty, from the Sabbath pulpit he spake of it plainly and with such point
that it could not fail to come home directly to the bosom of the young
man. This was on the very Lord's day before Mr. Barbary disappeared from
amongst us. It rankled in your brother's bosom like poison; his passions
were wild and ungoverned, and this was cause enough. If he had been
innocent, why did Elbridge Peabody flee this neighborhood, like a thief
in the night?"

"Why did my brother Elbridge leave us, mother?" said the child, bending
eagerly towards the widow, who wrung her hands and was silent.

"He may come back," said the child, shaking his flaxen locks, and not
abashed in the least by her silence. "He may come back yet and explain
all to us."

"Never!"

At that very moment a red rooster, who stood with his burnished wings on
the garden wall, near enough to have heard all that had passed, lifted
up his throat, and poured forth a clear cry, which rang through the
placid air far and wide.

"He will--I know he will," said little Sam Peabody, leaping down from
his judgment-seat in the window. "Chanticleer knows he will, or he would
not speak in that way. He hasn't crowed once before, you know,
grandfather, since Elbridge went away; we'll hear from brother soon, I
know we shall--I know we shall!"

The little fellow, in his glee, clapped his hands and crowed too. The
grandfather, looking on his gambols, smiled, but was presently sad
again.

"Would to Heaven he may," he said. "If they come who should, to-day, we
may learn of him--for to-day my children should come up from all the
quarters of the land where they are scattered--the East, the West, the
North, the South--to join wit