she fitted the bridal-gowns to their white
shoulders, as if under the touch of their lovers.

They walked before her and met her like doppelgaengers, wearing the
self-same old joy of her own face, but she looked at them
unswervingly. It is harder to look at the likeness of one's joy than
at one's old sorrow, for the one was dearer. If Charlotte's task
whereby she earned her few shillings had been the consoling and
strengthening of poor forsaken, jilted girls, instead of the arraying
of brides, it would have been a happier and an easier one.

But she sat sewing fine, even stitches by the light of the evening
candle, hearing the soft murmur of voices from the best rooms, where
the fond couples sat, smiling like a soldier over her work. She
pinned on bridal veils and flowers, and nobody knew that her own face
instead of the bride's seemed to smile mockingly at her through the
veil.

She was much happier, although she would have sternly denied it to
herself, when she was watching with the sick and putting her
wonderful needle-work into shrouds, for it was in request for that
also.

Except for an increase in staidness and dignity, and a certain
decorous change in her garments, Charlotte Barnard did not seem to
grow old at all. Her girlish bloom never faded under her sober
bonnet, although ten years had gone by since her own marriage had
been broken off.

Barney used to watch furtively Charlotte going past. He knew quite
well when she was helping such and such a girl get ready to be
married. He saw her going home, a swift shadowy figure, after dark,
with her few poor shillings in her pocket. That she should go out to
work filled him with a fierce resentment. With a childish and
masculine disregard for all except bare actualities, he could not see
why she need to, why she could not let him help her. He knew that
Cephas Barnard's income was very meagre, that Charlotte needed her
little earnings for the barest necessaries; but why could she not let
him give them to her?

Barney was laying up money. He had made his will, whereby he left
everything to Charlotte, and to her children after her if she
married. He worked very hard. In summer he tilled his great farm, in
winter he cut wood.

The winter of the tenth year after his quarrel with Charlotte was a
very severe one--full of snow-storms and fierce winds, and bitterly
cold. All winter long the swamps were frozen up, and men could get
into them to cut wood. Barney wen