ctly less buoyant. He still played the
fiddle; but like his brother, David, he found less and less joy in it,
for his stiffened fingers refused to do his bidding. The strings which
once sang clear and sweet, failed of their proper pitch, and these
discords irritated and saddened him.

Aunt Lorette, his handsome, rosy-cheeked wife, was beginning to complain
smilingly, of being lame and "no account," but she provided a beautiful
chicken dinner, gayly "visiting" while she did it, with mother sitting
by to watch her at the job as she had done so many times before.

Lorette, like all the rest of us, felt under the necessity of putting
her best foot forward in order that "Zuleema" should not be disappointed
in any way, and to Zulime she was like a character in a novel; indeed,
they all tried to live up to her notion of them. For her, father told
his best stories of bears and Indians, for her, Uncle Frank fiddled his
liveliest tunes, and for her Aunt Lorette recounted some of the comedies
which the valley had from time to time developed, and which (as she
explained) "had gone into one of Hamlin's books. Of course he fixed 'em
up a little," she added, "you couldn't expect him to be satisfied with a
yarn just as I told it, but all the same he got the idea of at least two
of his stories from me."

Valiant Aunt Lorette! Her face was always sunny, no matter how deep the
shadow in her heart; and her capacity for work was prodigious. She was
an almost perfect example of the happy, hard-working farmer's wife, for
her superb physical endowment and her serene temperament had survived
the strain of thirty years of unremitting toil. Her life had been, thus
far, a cheerful pilgrimage. She did not mind the loneliness of the
valley. The high hill which lay between her door and the village could
not wall her spirit in. She rejoiced in the stream of pure water which
flowed from the hillside spring to the tank at her kitchen door, and she
took pride in the chickens and cows and pigs which provided her table
with abundant food.

"Oh, yes, I like to go to town--once in a while," she replied, in answer
to Zulime's question. "But I'd hate to live there. I don't see how
people get along on a tucked up fifty-foot lot where they have to buy
every blessed thing they eat."

How good that dinner was! Hot biscuit, chicken, shortcake, coffee and
the most delicious butter and cream. At the moment it did seem a most
satisfactory way to live. We forgot t