ow if you wouldn't
run in, long towards noon, an' warm up suthin' for 'em."

"Yes, indeed," said Mary Dunbar. "I'll be there."

She rose, and Mattie, albeit she dearly loved to gossip, felt that she
must rise, too, and be on her way. She tried to amplify on what she had
already said, but Mary did not seem to be listening; so, treading
carefully, lest the dust and dew beset her precious shoes, she took her
way down the hill, like a busy little ant, born to scurry and gather.

Mary looked hastily about the room, to see if its perfect order needed a
farewell touch; and then she drank her cup of tea, and stepped out into
the morning. The air was fresh and sweet. She wore no shawl, and the
wind lifted the little brown rings on her forehead, and curled them
closer. Mary held a hand upon them, and hurried on. She had no more
thought of appearances than a woman in a desert land, or in the desert
made by lack of praise; for she knew no one looked at her. To be clean
and swift was all her life demanded.

Adam sat by the stove, where the ashes were still warm. It was not a day
for fires, but he loved his accustomed corner. He was a middle-aged man,
old with the suffering which is not of years, and the pathos of his
stricken state hung about him, from his unkempt beard to the dusty black
clothing which had been the Tiverton minister's outworn suit. One would
have said he belonged to the generation before his brother.

"That you, Mary?" he asked, in his shaking voice. "Now, ain't that good?
Come to set a spell?"

"Where is he?" responded Mary, in a swift breathlessness quite new to
her.

"In there. We put up a bed in the clock-room."

It was the unfinished part of the house. The Veaseys had always meant to
plaster, but that consummation was still afar. The laths showed
meagrely; it was a skeleton of a room,--and, sunken in the high
feather-bed between the two windows, lay Johnnie Veasey, his buoyancy
all gone, his face quite piteous to see, now that its tan had faded.
Mary went up to the bed-side, and laid one cool, strong hand upon his
wrist. His eyes sought her with a wild entreaty; but she knew, although
he seemed to suffer, that this was the misery of delirium, and not the
conscious mind. Adam had come trembling to the door, and stood there,
one hand beating its perpetual tattoo upon the wall. Mary looked up at
him with that abstracted gaze with which we weigh and judge.

"He's feverish," said she. "Mattie didn't tell