happiness, had sent him raging home, to kill her "in
her tracks." Could a tramp, pledged to the traditions of an awful
brotherhood, do less? No, even in honor, no! Amelia never knew how the
tide of public apprehension surged about her, nor how her next-door
neighbor looked anxiously out, the first thing on rising, to exclaim,
with a sigh of relief, and possibly a dramatic pang, "There! her smoke's
a-goin'."

Meantime, the tramp fell into all the usages of life indoors; and
without, he worked revolution. He took his natural place at the head of
affairs, and Amelia stood by, rejoicing. Her besetting error of doing
things at the wrong moment had disarranged great combinations as well as
small. Her impetuosity was constantly misleading her, bidding her try,
this one time, whether harvest might not follow faster on the steps of
spring. Enoch's mind was of another cast. For him, tradition reigned,
and law was ever laying out the way. Some months after their marriage,
Amelia had urged him to take away the winter banking about the house,
for no reason save that the Mardens clung to theirs; but he only replied
that he'd known of cold snaps way on into May, and he guessed there was
no particular hurry. The very next day brought a bitter air, laden with
sleet, and Amelia, shivering at the open door, exulted in her feminine
soul at finding him triumphant on his own ground. Enoch seemed, as
usual, unconscious of victory. His immobility had no personal flavor. He
merely acted from an inevitable devotion to the laws of life; and
however often they might prove him right, he never seemed to reason that
Amelia was consequently wrong. Perhaps that was what made it so pleasant
to live with him.

It was "easy sleddin'" now. Amelia grew very young. Her cheeks gained a
bloom, her eyes brightened. She even, as the matrons noticed, took to
crimping her hair. They looked on with a pitying awe. It seemed a
fearsome thing, to do so much for a tramp who would only kill you in the
end. Amelia stepped deftly about the house. She was a large woman, whose
ways had been devoid of grace; but now the richness of her spiritual
condition informed her with a charm. She crooned a little about her
work. Singing voice she had none, but she grew into a way of putting
words together, sometimes a line from the psalms, sometimes a name she
loved, and chanting the sounds, in unrecorded melody. Meanwhile, little
Rosie, always irreproachably dressed, with a jealous