long time; and then she
went out in the garden and cut all the most beautiful flowers, and
tied them in wreaths and bouquets, and carried them out to the north
side of the house, where her cousin Evelina was buried, and covered
her grave with them. And then she knelt down there, and hid her face
among them, and said, in a low voice, as if in a listening ear, "I
pray you, Cousin Evelina, forgive me for what I am about to do."

And then she returned to the house, and sat at her needlework as
usual; but the old woman kept looking at her, and asking if she were
sick, for there was a strange look in her face.

She and old Sarah Judd had always their tea at five o'clock, and put
the candles out at nine, and this night they did as they were wont.
But at one o'clock in the morning young Evelina stole softly down the
stairs with her lighted candle, and passed through into the kitchen;
and a half-hour after she came forth into the garden, which lay in
full moonlight, and she had in her hand a steaming teakettle, and she
passed around among the shrubs and watered them, and a white cloud of
steam rose around them. Back and forth she went to the kitchen; for
she had heated the great copper wash-kettle full of water; and she
watered all the shrubs in the garden, moving amid curling white
wreaths of steam, until the water was gone. And then she set to work
and tore up by the roots with her little hands and trampled with her
little feet all the beautiful tender flower-beds; all the time
weeping, and moaning softly: "Poor Cousin Evelina! poor Cousin
Evelina! Oh, forgive me, poor Cousin Evelina!"

And at dawn the garden lay in ruin, for all the tender plants she had
torn up by the roots and trampled down, and all the stronger-rooted
shrubs she had striven to kill with boiling water and salt.

Then Evelina went into the house, and made herself tidy as well as
she could when she trembled so, and put her little shawl over her
head, and went down the road to the Merriams' house. It was so early
the village was scarcely astir, but there was smoke coming out of the
kitchen chimney at the Merriams'; and when she knocked, Mrs. Merriam
opened the door at once, and stared at her.

"Is Sarah Judd dead?" she cried; for her first thought was that
something must have happened when she saw the girl standing there
with her wild pale face.

"I want to see the minister," said Evelina, faintly, and she looked
at Thomas's mother with piteous eyes.