ot pretty, though she had a very airy
and graceful way of comporting herself. Her eyes were large and dark,
with a strange, melancholy gleam in them.

I never knew the secrets of Mrs. Philanders heart. She had often a tired,
tense look about the mouth, and seemed often sorely discontent; but she
had the sweetest voice I ever heard. She was familiarly called Madeline.

Grandpa or Cap'n Keeler was over eighty years old. He had a tall,
powerful frame--at least, it spoke of great power in the past--and I
thought his eye must have been uncommonly dark and keen once.

From his manly irascibility of temperament, and his frequent would-be
authoritativeness of tone, one might have inferred, from a passing
glimpse, that Grandpa Keeler was something of a tyrant in the family; but
I soon learned that his sway was of an extremely vague and illusory
nature.

Grandma Keeler was twenty years his junior. She had not married him until
she was herself quite advanced in life, and had had one husband.

"To be sure," I heard her say once, "I ain't quite so far advanced as
husband, but, then, it don't make no difference how young the girl is,
you know."

She used to sit down and laugh--one of Grandma's "r'al good laughs" was
incompatible with a standing posture--until the tears rolled down her
cheeks, and she had to wipe them off with the corner of her apron.

She had been thrown from a wagon once--how often and thrillingly have I
heard dear Grandma Keeler relate the particulars of that accident! She
had broken at that time, I believe, nearly every bone in her body. Long
was the story of her fall, but longer still the tale of her recuperation.
In due course of time, she had grown together again; could now use all
her limbs, and was in superabundant flesh. There was an unnatural sort of
stiffness about her movements, however, her way of walking particularly.
She advanced but slowly, and allowed her weight to fall from one foot to
Another without any perceptible bend of any joint whatever.

I have stood at one end of a room and seen Grandma Keeler approaching
from the other, when it seemed as though she was not making any progress
at all, but merely going through with an odd sort of balancing process
in order to maintain her equilibrium.

As for Grandma Keeler's face, there was enough in it to make several
ordinary scrimped faces. Besides large physical proportions, there was
enough in it of generosity, enough of whole-heartedness, a w