e, but it's all over. With no
understanding of woman's sensibilities, I shook that fragile child in my
rude grasp, and frightened her forever. What will you call your baby?"

"Agnes says it shall be _Euphemia_, meaning 'of good report.' You know
it came near being a young lady of bad report."

"As for me, Andrew, I shall make the contract for the steeple and
completion of the new church, and then take a foreign journey. Since I
stopped sneezing I have no way to disguise my sensibilities, and am more
an object of suspicion than ever."

Duff Salter peeped at the beautiful mother and hung a chain of gold
around the baby's neck, and was about slipping out when Podge Byerly
appeared. She made a low bow and shrank away.

"Follow her," whispered Andrew Zane. "If she is cool now she will be
cold hereafter, unless you nurse her confidence."

With a sense of great youthfulness and demerit, Duff Salter entered the
parlors and found Podge sitting in the shadows of that thrice notable
room where death and grief had been so often carried and laid down. The
little teacher was pale and thin, and her eyes wore a saddened light.

"I am very glad to see you again," said Duff Salter. "I wanted your
forgiveness."

Striking the centre of sympathy by these few words, the late deaf man
saw Podge's throat agitated.

"If you knew," he continued, "how often I accused myself since your
illness, you would try to excuse me."

After a little silence Podge said,

"I don't remember just what happened, Mr. Salter. Was it you who sent me
many beautiful and dainty things while I was sick? I thought it might
be."

"You guessed me, then? At least I was not forgotten."

"I never forgot you, sir; but ever since my illness you seem to have
been a part of the dread river and its dead. I have often tried to
restore you as I once thought of you, but other things rise up and I
cannot see you. My head was gone, I suppose."

"Alas, no! I drove away your heart. If that would come back, the
wandering head would follow, little friend. Are you afraid of me?"

"Sometimes. One thing, I think, is your deafness. While you were deaf
you seemed so natural that we talked freely before you, prattling out
our fancies undisguised. We wouldn't have done it if we knew that you
heard as well as we. That makes me afraid too. Oh! why did you deceive
us so?"

"I only deceived myself. A foolish habit, formed in pique, of affecting
not to hear, adhered to me long befor