ve a right to come in here out of the rain," she
said, advancing to the fire and seating herself with a sullen and
dejected aspect.

Little Dr. Pingree, who felt the arrival to be very inopportune,
nevertheless gallantly hastened to replenish the fire.

The poor-mistress hospitably offered to remove the visitor's wet
wrappings, but she shook her head.

"I want to find the relatives of Ephrum Spencer," she said.

"You'll have to go a good ways," said Cap'n 'Kiah.

"The graveyard is chock full of 'em," said Uncle Peter.

"They've kind of died out," explained Cap'n 'Kiah. "They seemed to be
the kind that dies out easy and nateral."

"His uncle Hiram isn't dead, is he?" asked the woman, with the strain of
anxiety in her voice.

"He died about a year ago."

"What's become of his money?" asked the stranger sharply.

"Well, there wa'n't so much as folks thought," said Cap'n 'Kiah. "He
frittered away a good deal on new-fangled merchines and such things that
wa'n't of any account,--had a reg'lar mania for 'em for a year or so
before he died; and then he give some money to his housekeeper and the
man that worked for him, and what was left he give to the town for a new
town-hall; but, along of quarrellin' about where 'twas to set and what
'twas to be built of, and gittin' legal advice to settle the p'ints, I
declare if 'tain't 'most squandered! But, la! if there wa'n't such
quarrellin' amongst folks, what would become of the lawyers? They'd all
be here, a-settin' us by the ears, I expect."

"And there isn't a cent for his own nephew's starving children?" said
the woman bitterly.

"Ephrum's? Oh, la, no! The old man never set by Ephrum, you know: them
two was always contr'y-minded. You don't say, now, that you're Ephrum's
wife?" Cap'n 'Kiah surveyed her with frank curiosity.

"I'm Ephrum's widow."

"You don't say so, now! Well, there's wuss ockerpations than bein' a
widow," remarked Cap'n 'Kiah consolingly.

Miranda had drawn the younger boy to her side. She was chafing his numb
hands and smoothing the damp locks from his forehead.

"Why, how cold your hands have grown!" the child cried. "They're colder
than mine. And how funny and white you look!"

Miranda had felt, from the moment when she first saw the forlorn little
group, that Ephraim was dead, and yet the sure knowledge came as a
shock. But this child was looking at her with Ephraim's eyes: they
warmed her heart.

"_She_ knew me, if none of the rest of y