all's ready," answered Dorcas, with her eyes fixed on the fire.

"I knew it! There's no fail to you, wife!--never has been!--never will
be!"

Dorcas rose and went behind her husband, took his head in her two
faithful hands, kissed his forehead, and went upstairs.

"Little Dorcas" was fastening her hair in countless _papillotes_. She
smiled bashfully, as her mother entered the room, and showed her white,
even teeth, between her rosy lips.

"I wonder if I ever did look so pretty as that child does!" said the
mother to herself.

But she said to Dorcas only this:--

"Here's your great-aunt's pin and ring. They used to be mine, when I was
young and foolish. Take care of 'em, and don't you be foolish, child!"

"I wonder what mother meant!" soliloquized the daughter, when her mother
had kissed her and said good-night; "she certainly had tears in her
eyes!"

In the gray dawn of the next morning, Swan Day rode out of Walton in the
same stage-coach and with the same "spike-team" of gray horses which
had brought him thither thirty-six hours before. When the coach reached
Troy, and the bright sun broke over the picturesque scenery of the
erratic Ashuelot, he drew his breath deeply, as if relieved of a burden.
Presently the coach stopped, the door opened, and the coachman held out
his hand in silence.

"Fare, is it?"

"Fare."

Opening his pocket-book, he saw the note which he had written to Dorcas,
appointing an interview, and which he had forgotten to send to her.

As he rode on, he tore the letter into a thousand minute fragments,
scattering them for a mile in the coach's path, and watching the wheels
grind them down in the dust.

"'T isn't the only thing I haven't done that I meant to!" said he, with
a sad smile over his sallow face.

He buttoned his coat closely to his chin, raised the collar to his ears,
and shut his eyes.

The coachman peeped back at his only passenger, touched the nigh leader
with the most delicate hint of a whipcord, and said confidentially to
the off wheel,--

"What a sleepy old porpus that is in there!"

* * * * *

THE LAST CRUISE OF THE MONITOR.

An actor in the scenes of that wild night when the Monitor went down
craves permission to relate the story of her last cruise.

Her work is now over. She lies a hundred fathoms deep under the stormy
waters off Cape Hatteras. But "the little cheese-box on a raft" has made
herself a name which will not