y winters before; his outline
as he had knelt, his hat on the step beside him. God was good. Surely
her husband must kneel there again: a son on each side as he had said;
George just here, Jim just there. By long watching the spot as she
worshipped it became as if she saw the three returned ones there
kneeling; the two slim outlines of her boys, the more bulky form between
them; their hands clasped, their heads shaped against the eastern wall.
The fancy grew almost to an hallucination: she could never turn her worn
eyes to the step without seeing them there.

Nevertheless they did not come. Heaven was merciful, but it was not yet
pleased to relieve her soul. This was her purgation for the sin of
making them the slaves of her ambition. But it became more than
purgation soon, and her mood approached despair. Months had passed since
the brig had been due, but it had not returned.

Joanna was always hearing or seeing evidences of their arrival. When on
the hill behind the port, whence a view of the open Channel could be
obtained, she felt sure that a little speck on the horizon, breaking the
eternally level waste of waters southward, was the truck of the _Joana's_
mainmast. Or when indoors, a shout or excitement of any kind at the
corner of the Town Cellar, where the High Street joined the Quay, caused
her to spring to her feet and cry: ''Tis they!'

But it was not. The visionary forms knelt every Sunday afternoon on the
chancel-step, but not the real. Her shop had, as it were, eaten itself
hollow. In the apathy which had resulted from her loneliness and grief
she had ceased to take in the smallest supplies, and thus had sent away
her last customer.

In this strait Emily Lester tried by every means in her power to aid the
afflicted woman; but she met with constant repulses.

'I don't like you! I can't bear to see you!' Joanna would whisper
hoarsely when Emily came to her and made advances.

'But I want to help and soothe you, Joanna,' Emily would say.

'You are a lady, with a rich husband and fine sons! What can you want
with a bereaved crone like me!'

'Joanna, I want this: I want you to come and live in my house, and not
stay alone in this dismal place any longer.'

'And suppose they come and don't find me at home? You wish to separate
me and mine! No, I'll stay here. I don't like you, and I can't thank
you, whatever kindness you do me!'

However, as time went on Joanna could not afford to pay