f kindness, steeped the boneset and camomile in
whisky, and set a cup of it near his chair. Then he had gone up to
Throng's bedroom and straightened out and shook and "made" the corn-husk
bed, which had gathered into lumps and rolls. Before he came down he
opened a door near by and entered another room, shutting the door, and
sitting down on a chair. A stovepipe ran through the room, and it was
warm, though the window was frosted and the world seemed shut out. He
looked round slowly, keenly interested. There was a dressing-table made
of an old box; it was covered with pink calico, with muslin over this.
A cheap looking-glass on it was draped with muslin and tied at the top
with a bit of pink ribbon. A common bone comb lay near the glass, and
beside it a beautiful brush with an ivory back and handle. This was the
only expensive thing in the room. He wondered, but did not go near it
yet. There was a little eight-day clock on a bracket which had been made
by hand--pasteboard darkened with umber and varnished; a tiny little
set of shelves made of the wood of cigar-boxes; and--alas, the shifts
of poverty to be gay!--an easy-chair made of the staves of a barrel and
covered with poor chintz. Then there was a photograph or two, in little
frames made from the red cedar of cigar-boxes, with decorations of
putty, varnished, and a long panel screen of birch-bark of Indian
workmanship. Some dresses hung behind the door. The bedstead was small,
the frame was of hickory, with no footboard, ropes making the support
for the husk tick. Across the foot lay a bedgown and a pair of
stockings.

Pierre looked long, at first curiously; but after a little his forehead
gathered and his lips drew in a little, as if he had a twinge of pain.
He got up, went over near the bed, and picked up a hairpin. Then he came
back to the chair and sat down, turning it about in his fingers, still
looking abstractedly at the floor.

"Poor Lucy!" he said presently; "the poor child! Ah, what a devil I was
then--so long ago!"

This solitary room--Lydia's--had brought back the time he went to the
room of his own wife, dead by her own hand after an attempt to readjust
the broken pieces of life, and sat and looked at the place which had
been hers, remembering how he had left her with her wet face turned to
the wall, and never saw her again till she was set free for ever. Since
that time he had never sat in a room sacred to a woman alone.

"What a fool, what a fool,