t they knew and
cared; now she was certain that, in some fashion, they recognized their
bondage and loyalty to the place, as she recognized her own, and that
they upheld her to her task. She thought them over, as she sat there,
and saw their souls more keenly than if she had met them, men and women,
face to face. There was the shoe-maker among them, who, generations
back, was sitting on his bench when news came of the battle of
Lexington, and who threw down hammer and last, and ran wildly out into
the woods, where he stayed three days and nights, calling with a loud
voice upon Almighty God to save him from ill-doing. Then he had drowned
himself in a little brook too shallow for the death of any but a
desperate man. He had been the disgrace of the Joyces; they dared not
think of him, and they know, even to this day, that he is remembered
among their townsmen as the Joyce who was a coward, and killed himself
rather than go to war. But here he stood--was it the man, or some secret
intelligence of him?--and Dilly, out of all his race, was the one to
comprehend him. She saw, with a thrill of passionate sympathy, how he
had believed with all his soul in the wickedness of war, and how the
wound to his country so roused in him the desire of blood that he fled
away and prayed his God to save him from mortal guilt,--and how, finding
that he saw with an overwhelming delight the red of anticipated
slaughter, and knew his traitorous feet were bearing him to the ranks,
he chose the death of the body rather than sin against the soul. And
Dilly was glad; the blood in her own veins ran purer for his sake.

There was old Delilah Joyce, who went into a decline for love, and
wasted quite away. She had been one of those tragic fugitives on the
island of being, driven out into the storm of public sympathy to be
beaten and undone; for she was left on her wedding day by her lover, who
vowed he loved her no more. But now Dilly saw her without the pathetic
bravery of her silken gown which was never worn, and knew her for a
woman serene and glad. That very day she had unfolded the gown in the
attic, where it had lain, year upon year, wrapped about by the poignant
sympathy of her kin, a perpetual reminder of the hurts and faithlessness
of life. It had become a relic, set aside from modern use. She felt now
as if she could even wear it herself, though silk was not for her, or
deck some little child in its shot and shimmering gayety. For it came
to