ll the familiar and registered batteries of
life she could walk without flinching, and yield to none; but here
was something new, which savored perchance of the uncanny, and a
power not of the legitimate order of things. There was something
frightful and abnormal to her in Jerome's pale face, which did not
seem his own, his young eyes full of authority of age, and the
intimation of repelling force in his slight, childish form.

Paulina Maria might have driven a fierce watch-dog from her path with
her intrepid will; she might have pushed aside a stouter arm in her
way; but this defence, whose persistence in the face of apparent
feebleness seemed to indicate some supernatural power, made her
quail. From her spare diet and hard labor, from her cleanliness and
rigid holding to one line of thought and life, the veil of flesh and
grown thin and transparent, like any ascetic's of old, and she was
liable to a ready conception of the abnormal and supernatural.

With one half-stern, half-fearful glance at the forbidding child in
her path, she turned about and went away, pausing, however, in the
vantage-point of the road and calling back in an indignant voice,
which trembled slightly, "You needn't think you're goin' to send
folks home this way many times, Jerome Edwards!" Then, with one last
baffled glance at the pale, strange little figure in the Edwards
door, she went home, debating grimly with herself over her weakness
and her groundless fear.

Jerome waited until she was out of sight, gave one last look down the
road to be sure no other invaders were approaching his fortress, and
then went on to the barn. When he rolled back the door and entered,
the old white horse stirred in his stall and turned to look at him.
There was something in the glance over the shoulder of that long
white face which caused the heart of the boy to melt within him. He
pressed into the stall, flung up his little arms around the great
neck, and sobbed and sobbed, his face hid against the heaving side.

The old horse had looked about, expecting to see Jerome's father
coming to feed and harness him into the wood-wagon, and Jerome knew
it, and there was something about the consciousness of loss and
sorrow of this faithful dumb thing which smote him in a weaker place
than all human intelligence of it.

Abel Edwards had loved this poor animal well, and had set great store
by his faithful service; and the horse had loved him, after the dumb
fashion of