tep a long while. "If Thomas Payne has got
anybody out West, I guess she'll be glad to see him," she thought.
The fancy pained her, and yet she seemed to see Thomas Payne and
Barney side by side, the one like a young prince--handsome and
stately, full of generous bravery--the other vaguely crouching
beneath some awful deformity, pitiful yet despicable in the eyes of
men, and her whole soul cleaved to her old lover. "What we've got is
ours," she said to herself.

As she sat there a band of children went past, with a shrill, sweet
clamor of voices. They were out hanging May-baskets and bunches of
anemones. That was the favorite sport of the village children during
the month of May. The woods were full of soft, innocent, seeking
faces, bending over the delicate bells nodding in the midst of whorls
of dark leaves. Every evening, after sundown, there were mysterious
bursts of laughter and tiny scamperings around doors, and great balls
of bloom swinging from the latchets when they were opened; but no
person in sight, only soft gurgles of mirth and delight sounded
around a corner of darkness.

After Charlotte went to bed that night she thought she heard somebody
at the south door. "It is the children with some may-flowers," she
thought. But presently she reflected that it was very late for the
children to be out.

After a little while she got up, and stole down-stairs to the door,
feeling her way through the dark house.

She opened the south door cautiously, and put her hand out. There
were no flowers swinging from the latch as she half expected. Her
bare feet touched something on the door-step; she stooped, and there
was a great package.

Charlotte took it up, and went noiselessly back to her room with it.
She lighted a candle, and unfastened the paper wrappings. She gave a
little cry. There were yards of beautiful silk shimmering with lilac
and silver and rose-color, and there was also a fine lace mantle.

Charlotte looked at them; she was quite pale and trembling. She
folded the silk and lace again carefully, and put them in a chest out
of sight. Then she went back to bed, and lay there crying wildly.

"Poor Barney! poor Barney!" she sobbed to herself.

The next evening, after Cephas and Sarah had gone to bed, Charlotte
crept out of the house with the package under her shawl. It was still
early. She ran nearly all the way to Barney Thayer's house; she was
afraid of meeting somebody, but she did not.

She knocked