th. He never spoke of
poor Amelia; but he kept a little locket in one end of his purse; none
ever saw it but his sister, who often observed him sitting with it in
his hand, hand hour by hour looking into the fire of a winter's night,
seeming to think of distant things. She never spoke to him then, but
left him alone with his recollections and his dreams. Some of the
neighbors said he "worshipped it;" others called it "a talisman." So
indeed it was, and by its enchantment he became a young man once more,
and walked through the moonlight to meet an angel, and with her enter
their kingdom of heaven. Truly it was a talisman; yet if _you_ had
looked at it, you would have seen nothing in it but a little twist of
golden hairs tied together with a blue silken thread.

Aunt Kindly had never been married; yet once in her life, also, the
right man seemed to offer, and the blossom of love opened with a dear
prophetic fragrance in her heart. But as her father was soon after
struck with palsy, she told her lover they must wait a little while, for
her first duty must be to the feeble old man. But the impatient swain
went off and pinned himself to the flightiest little humming-bird in all
Soitgoes, and in a month was married, having a long life before him for
bitterness and repentance. After the father died, Kindly remained at
home; and when Nathan returned, years after, they made one brotherly and
sisterly household out of what might else have gladdened two connubial
homes. "Not every bud becomes a flower."

Uncle Nathan sat there, his locket in his hand, looking into the fire;
and as the wind roared in the chimney, and the brands crackled and
snapped, he thought he saw faces in the fire; and when the sparks rose
up in a little cloud, which the country children call "the people coming
out of the meeting-house," he thought he saw faces in the fire; they
seemed to take the form of the boys and girls as he had lately seen them
rushing out of the Union School-house, which held all the children
in the village; and as he recognized one after the other, he began
to wonder and conjecture what would be the history of this or that
particular child. While he sat thus in his waking dream, he looked
fixedly at the locket and the blue thread which tied together those
golden rays of a summer sun, now all set and vanished and gone, but
which was once the morning light of all his promised days; and as his
eyes, full of waking dreams, fell on the fire