do!" cried Mercy. "You know I do!"

"Yes, I know you do, or I should not have said that. You know I am all
alone in the world, do you not?"

"Yes," moaned Mercy.

"Very well. Now remember that you and Lizzy are my two children, and that
the greatest happiness I can have, the greatest help in my loneliness, is
the love of my two daughters. You will not refuse me this help, will you?
You will let me be just as I was before, will you not?"

Mercy did not answer.

"Will you try, Mercy?" he said in a tone almost of the old affectionate
authority; and Mercy again moaned rather than said,--

"Yes."

Then Parson Dorrance kissed her hair where his hand had lain a few moments
before, and said,--

"Now I must go. Good-by, my child."

But Mercy did not look up; and he closed the door gently, leaving her
sitting there bowed and heart-stricken, in the little room so gay with the
bright flowers she had gathered on her "sweet yesterday."

Chapter X.

The winter set in before its time, and with almost unprecedented severity.
Early in the last week in November, the whole country was white with snow,
the streams were frozen solid, and the cold was intense. Week after week
the mercury ranged from zero to ten, fifteen, and even twenty below, and
fierce winds howled night and day. It was a terrible winter for old
people. They dropped on all sides, like leaves swept off of trees in
autumn gales. It was startling to read the death records in the
newspapers, so large a proportion of them were of men and women past
sixty. Mrs. Carr had been steadily growing feebler all summer; but the
change had seemed to Mercy to be more mental than physical, and she had
been in a measure blinded to her mother's real condition. With the
increase of childishness and loss of memory had come an increased
gentleness and love of quiet, which partially disguised the loss of
strength. She would sit in her chair from morning till night, looking out
of the window or watching the movements of those around her, with an
expression of perfect placidity on her face. When she was spoken to, she
smiled, but did not often speak. The smile was meaningless and yet
infinitely pathetic: it was an infant's smile on an aged face; the
infant's heart and infant's brain had come back. All the weariness, all
the perplexity, all the sorrow, had gone from life, had slipped away from
memory. This state had come on so gradually that even Mercy hardly
realized the ext