the shadow that follows us all in the
light, another, like that, but something deeper, began to go with Roger
Pierce,--not falling with the other, a dial-mark to show the light that
cast it, but capriciously to right or left; on whomever or whatever was
nearest him at the moment, there that Shadow lay; and as time crept on,
the Shadow pertinaciously crept with it, till it was forever hanging
about him, ready to chill with vague terror, or harden as with a frost,
either his fellows or himself.

One peculiar trait this Shadow had: the more the restless child thought
of his visitant, the deeper it grew,--shrinking in size, but becoming
more intensely dark, till it seemed like part of a heavy thunder-cloud,
only that no lightning ever played across its blank gloom.

The first time that the Shadow ever stood before him as an actual
presence was when, a mere child, he was busied one day in the warm May
sunshine making a garden by the school-house, in a line with other
little squares, tracked and moulded by childish fingers, and set with
branches of sallow silvered with downy catkins, half-opened dandelions,
twigs of red-flowered maple, mighty reservoirs of water in sunken
clam-shells, and paths adorned with borders of broken china and
glittering bits of glass. Next to Roger's garden-bed was one that
belonged to two little boys who were sworn friends, and one of these was
busy weaving a fence for his garden, of yellow willow-twigs, which the
other cut and sharpened.

Roger looked on with longing eyes.

"Will you help me, Jimmy?" said he.

"I can't," answered the quiet, timid child.

"No!" shouted Jacob,--the frank, fearless voice bringing a tint of color
into his comrade's cheek. "Jim shan't help you, Roger Pierce! Do you
ever help anybody?"

Then the Shadow fell beside Roger, as he stood with anger and shame
swelling in his throat; it fell across the blue violets he had taken
from Jacob to dress his own garden, and they drooped and withered; it
crossed the path of shining pebbles that he had forced the younger
children to gather for him, and they grew dull as common stones; it
reached over into Jacob's positive, honest face, and darkened it, and
Jimmy, looking up, with fear in his mild eyes, whispered, softly,--"Come
away! it's going to rain;--don't you see that dark cloud?"

Roger started, for the Shadow was darkening about himself; and as he
moodily returned home, it seemed to grow deeper and deeper, till his
moth