ne mite
about it--it's nothing at all. Come, let's go back to the house," he
said.

Ellen said no more, but she walked up from the field holding tightly
to her father's poor, worn hand, and her heart was in a tumult. To
behold any convulsion of nature is no light experience, and when it
is a storm of the spirit in one beloved the beholder is swept along
with it in greater or less measure. Ellen trembled as she walked.
Her father kept looking at her anxiously and remorsefully. Once he
reached around his other hand and chucked her playfully under the
chin. "Scared most to death, was she?" he asked, with a shamefaced
blush.

"I know something is the matter, and I think it would be better for
you to tell me, father," replied Ellen, soberly.

"There's nothing to tell, child," said Andrew. "Don't you worry your
little head about it." Between his anxiety lest the girl should be
troubled, and his intense humiliation that she should have
discovered him in such an abandon of grief which was almost like a
disclosure of the nakedness of his spirit, he was completely
unnerved. Ellen felt him tremble, and heard his voice quiver when he
spoke. She felt towards her father something she had never felt
before--an impulse of protection. She felt the older and stronger of
the two. Her grasp on his hand tightened, she seemed in a measure to
be leading him along.

When they reached the yard between the houses Andrew cast an
apprehensive glance at the windows. "Has she gone?" he asked.

"Who, the dressmaker?"

"Yes."

"She hadn't when I came out. I saw you come past the house, and I
thought you walked as if you didn't feel well, so I thought I would
run out and see."

"I was all right," replied Andrew. "Have you got to try on anything
more to-night?"

"No."

"Well, then, let's run into grandma's a minute."

"All right," said Ellen.

Mrs. Zelotes was sitting at her front window in the dusk, looking
out on the street, as was her favorite custom. The old woman seldom
lit a lamp in the summer evening, but sat there staring out at the
lighted street and the people passing and repassing, with her mind
as absolutely passive as regarded herself as if she were travelling
and observing only that which passed without. At those times she
became in a fashion sensible of the motion of the world, and lost
her sense of individuality in the midst of it. When her son and
granddaughter entered she looked away from the window with the
expres