tings were over. The men
were smoking; all were seated in chairs tipped back against the wall.
Joe Bent, a smallish man, with a weak, good-natured face, asked in a
hoarse whisper:

"How is she, Mis' Ridings?"

"She seems quite strong, Mr. Bent. I think you had all better go to bed;
if I want you I can call you. Doctor give me directions."

"All right," responded the relieved man. "I'll sleep on the lounge in
the other room. If you want me, just rap on the door."

When, after making other arrangements, Martha went back to the bedroom,
she was startled to hear the sick woman muttering to herself, or perhaps
because she had forgotten Martha's absence.

"But the shadows on the meadow didn't stay; they passed on, and then the
sun was all the brighter on the flowers. We used to string
sweet-williams on spears of grass--don't you remember?"

Martha gave her a drink of the opiate in the glass, adjusted her on the
pillow, and threw open the window, even to the point of removing the
screen, and the gibbous moon flooded the room with light. She did not
light a lamp, for its flame would heat the room. Besides, the moonlight
was sufficient. It fell on the face of the sick woman, till she looked
like a thing of marble--all but her dark eyes.

"Does the moon hurt you, Tilly? Shall I put down the curtain?"

The woman heard with difficulty, and when the question was repeated said
slowly:

"No, I like it." After a little--"Don't you remember, Mattie 'how
beautiful the moonlight seemed? It seemed to promise happiness--and
love--but it never come for us. It makes me dream of the past now--just
as it did o' future then; an' the whip-poor-wills too----"

The night was perfectly beautiful, such a night as makes dying an
infinite sorrow. The summer was at its liberalest. Innumerable insects
of the nocturnal sort were singing in unison with the frogs in the
pools. A whip-poor-will called, and its neighbor answered it like an
echo. The leaves of the trees, glossy from the late rain, moved
musically to the light west wind, and the exquisite perfume of many
flowers came in on the breeze.

When the failing woman sank into silence, Martha leaned her elbow on the
window sill, and, gazing far into the great deeps of space, gave herself
up to unwonted musings upon the problems of human life. She sighed
deeply at times. She found herself at moments in the almost terrifying
position of a human soul in space. Not a wife, not a mother, but jus