e had not hitherto been subject to
dark moods. She gave no reason for her belief, but that she was
suffering from some serious inner malady was evident,--I feared it might
concern the action of her heart--and I was greatly disturbed by it.

Of course I made light of her premonition, but thereafter I watched her
with minute care, and called on the doctor at the slightest sign of
change. We sang to her, we read to her, and Zulime spent long hours
reading to her or sitting beside her. She was entirely happy except
when, at intervals, her mysterious malady,--something she could not
describe,--filled her eyes with terror.

She loved to sit in the kitchen and watch her new daughter presiding
over its activities, and submitted, with pathetic pride, to any change
which Zulime proposed. "I am perfectly contented," she said to me,
"except----"

"Except what, mother?"

"The grandchild. I want to see my grandchild."

One of our regular excursions for several years had been a drive
(usually on Sunday) over the ridge to Lewis Valley, where Frank
McClintock still lived. Among my earliest memories is a terror of this
road, for it led up a long, wooded hill, which seemed to me, as a child,
a dangerous mountain pass. Many, many times since then I had made the
climb, sometimes in the spring, sometimes in midsummer, but now my plans
included my wife. Mother was eager to go. "I can stand the ride if you
will drive and be careful going down hill," she said to me--and so,
although I was a little in doubt about the effect upon her heart, I
hired a team, and early of a clear June morning we started for Mindoro.

It was like riding back into the hopeful, happy past, for both the old
people. Father was full of wistful reminiscences of "the early days,"
but mother, who sat beside Zulime, made no comment, although her face
shone with inward joy of the scene, the talk--until we came to the steep
descent which scared her. Clinging to her seat with pitiful intensity
she saw nothing but dangerous abysses until we reached the level road on
the opposite side of the ridge.

It was glorious June, and in this I now rejoice, for it proved to be the
last time that we made the crossing of the long hill together. I was
glad to have her visit her brother's home once more. Change was coming
to him as well as to her. His prodigious muscles and his boyish gayety
were fading away together. Though still delightfully jolly and
hospitable, his temper was distin