ned the little
trinket; a warm, thick lock of hair lay within, and she touched it
gently with her finger. "Should you like the locket, because 't was your
mother's?"

She hesitated; and though the parson's tone halted also, he answered at
once:--

"No, Mary Ellen, not if you'll keep it. I should rather think 'twas with
you."

She put her two treasures in her pocket, and gave him the other.

"I guess that's your share," she said, smiling faintly. "Don't read it
here. Just take it away with you."

The manuscript had been written in the cramped and awkward hand of his
youth, and the ink upon the paper was faded after many years. He turned
the pages, a smile coming now and then.

"'Thou hast doves' eyes,'" he read,--"'thou hast doves' eyes!'" He
murmured a sentence here and there. "Mary Ellen," he said at last,
shaking his head over the manuscript in a droll despair, "it isn't a
sermon. Parson Sibley had the rights of it. It's a love-letter!" And the
two old people looked in each other's wet eyes and smiled.

The woman was the first to turn away.

"There!" said she, closing the lid of the chest; "we've said enough.
We've wiped out old scores. We've talked more about ourselves than we
ever shall again; for if old age brings anything, it's thinking of other
people--them that have got life before 'em. These your rubbers?"

The parson put them on, with a dazed obedience. His hand shook in
buckling them. Mary Ellen passed him his coat, but he noticed that she
did not offer to hold it for him. There was suddenly a fine remoteness
in her presence, as if a frosty air had come between them. The parson
put the sermon in his inner pocket, and buttoned his coat tightly over
it. Then he pinned on his shawl. At the door he turned.

"Mary Ellen," said he pleadingly, "don't you ever want to see the sermon
again? Shouldn't you like to read it over?"

She hesitated. It seemed for a moment as if she might not answer at all.
Then she remembered that they were old folks, and need not veil the
truth.

"I guess I know it 'most all by heart," she said quietly. "Besides, I
took a copy before I put it in there. Good-night!"

"Good-night!" answered the parson joyously. He closed the door behind
him and went crunching down the icy path. When he had unfastened the
horse and sat tucking the buffalo-robe around him, the front door was
opened in haste, and a dark figure came flying down the walk.

"Mr. Bond!" thrilled a voice.

"Whoa!"