ce peering out into the darkness there to-night! She
would have done for the witch of Endor, watching to see if Samuel were
coming up." And as he went down more slowly, revolving in his mind what
plausible excuse he could give to his mother for his tardiness, he
thought, "Well, I do hope she'll be at least tolerably good-looking."

Already the younger of the two women who were coming to live under his
roof was "she," in his thoughts.

Chapter II.

In the mean time, the young widow, Mercy Philbrick, and her old and almost
childish mother, Mercy Carr, were coming by slow and tiring stage journeys
up the dreary length of Cape Cod. For thirty years the elder woman had
never gone out of sight of the village graveyard in which her husband and
four children were buried. To transplant her was like transplanting an old
weather-beaten tree, already dead at the top. Yet the physicians had said
that the only chance of prolonging her life was to take her away from the
fierce winds of the sea. She herself, while she loved them, shrank from
them. They seemed to pierce her lungs like arrows of ice-cold steel, at
once wounding and benumbing. Yet the habit and love of the seashore life
were so strong upon her that she would never have been able to tear
herself away from her old home, had it not been for her daughter's
determined will. Mercy Philbrick was a woman of slight frame, gentle,
laughing, brown eyes, a pale skin, pale ash-brown hair, a small nose; a
sweet and changeful mouth, the upper lip too short, the lower lip much too
full; little hands, little feet, little wrists. Not one indication of
great physical or great mental strength could you point out in Mercy
Philbrick; but she was rarely ill; and she had never been known to give
up a point, small or great, on which her will had been fully set. Even the
cheerfulness of which her minister, Harley Allen, had written to Stephen,
was very largely a matter of will with Mercy. She confronted grief as she
would confront an antagonist force of any sort: it was something to be
battled with, to be conquered. Fate should not worst her: come what might,
she would be the stronger of the two. When the doctor said to her,--

"Mrs. Philbrick, I fear that your mother cannot live through another
winter in this climate," Mercy looked at him for a moment with an
expression of terror. In an instant more, the expression had given place
to one of resolute and searching inquiry.

"You thin