er Sunday dress,
her back turned to the door and her face in her hands. She had not heard
Ethan's call because she was sobbing and she did not hear his step till
he stood close behind her and laid his hands on her shoulders.

"Matt--oh, don't--oh, Matt!"

She started up, lifting her wet face to his. "Ethan--I thought I wasn't
ever going to see you again!"

He took her in his arms, pressing her close, and with a trembling hand
smoothed away the hair from her forehead.

"Not see me again? What do you mean?"

She sobbed out: "Jotham said you told him we wasn't to wait dinner for
you, and I thought--"

"You thought I meant to cut it?" he finished for her grimly.

She clung to him without answering, and he laid his lips on her hair,
which was soft yet springy, like certain mosses on warm slopes, and had
the faint woody fragrance of fresh sawdust in the sun.

Through the door they heard Zeena's voice calling out from below: "Dan'l
Byrne says you better hurry up if you want him to take that trunk."

They drew apart with stricken faces. Words of resistance rushed to
Ethan's lips and died there. Mattie found her handkerchief and dried her
eyes; then,--bending down, she took hold of a handle of the trunk.

Ethan put her aside. "You let go, Matt," he ordered her.

She answered: "It takes two to coax it round the corner"; and submitting
to this argument he grasped the other handle, and together they
manoeuvred the heavy trunk out to the landing.

"Now let go," he repeated; then he shouldered the trunk and carried it
down the stairs and across the passage to the kitchen. Zeena, who had
gone back to her seat by the stove, did not lift her head from her book
as he passed. Mattie followed him out of the door and helped him to lift
the trunk into the back of the sleigh. When it was in place they stood
side by side on the door-step, watching Daniel Byrne plunge off behind
his fidgety horse.

It seemed to Ethan that his heart was bound with cords which an unseen
hand was tightening with every tick of the clock. Twice he opened his
lips to speak to Mattie and found no breath. At length, as she turned to
re-enter the house, he laid a detaining hand on her.

"I'm going to drive you over, Matt," he whispered.

She murmured back: "I think Zeena wants I should go with Jotham."

"I'm going to drive you over," he repeated; and she went into the
kitchen without answering.

At dinner Ethan could not eat. If he lifted his eyes th