ot naturalized. Ellen was little better; I do not suppose she ever had
read a newspaper in her life; yet, curiously enough, her language was
tolerably correct, her manner quiet and thorough-bred,--even the
inflections of her voice were low, and as composed as if she had learned
self-poise in the hurly-burly of society. That belonged to her
character, however, as much as to the solitude in which she had been
brought up.

The mother sank rapidly this winter; but the two children, accustomed to
her illness, were blind to the change.

When the States one by one seceded during that winter and spring, and
the country was rife with war and the terror of it, the Coldwater people
fished on dully as ever. Joe brought home stories of "fighting beyond
there," and of men he had met on the Sandusky wharf who had gone, and
then whittled and whistled as usual: the tale sounding to the two women
fearful and far-off, as if it had been in the Crimea. "Though I _had_
heard of the Virginians," said Ellen simply, when she told the story.
"There was Mr. Barker, a Methodist preacher, told us once of the
'man-hunters,' as he called them, and how they chained their slaves and
burned them alive, and hunted men with dogs. But I took him up wrong. I
thought they all were black." Ellen's idea of them was as vague as ours
is of the cannibals, and not very different, I suspect.

So far off did this country of the man-hunters seem, where "there was
fighting," that, when Joe wandered about uneasily in one of his weekly
visits, and told again and again, with furtive glances at his mother,
how half the deckhands on the schooner had gone into a regiment forming
in Sandusky, and how it was a good chance to see the world, Ellen sewed
quietly on, scarcely looking up. That Joe could have any interest in
this dim horror of a war never crossed her poor brain.

The next day after the schooner sailed her mother grew suddenly worse,
and began to sink, going faster every day for a week. It was the first
time Ellen had been left alone to face danger. "If Joe was here!" the
two poor creatures cried, through all their fright and pain. If Joe were
there, Ellen thought all would be well again. But Thursday, his usual
day for coming, passed without him. That night the mother died. Two
women of the village, hearing the story from the doctor, came to the
house in time to make the body ready for burial,--the "natural," as they
called Ellen, sitting quietly by the bed, her