; twelve, fifteen years old, that commandment!

That we love one another.

Who was speaking? Who had written these words? The first letter sounded
just like Mrs. Emerson, who had said she was a very poor correspondent,
but that she should just "drop down" on Nancy one of these days; but
this second letter never came from Mrs. Emerson.--Well, there would be
an explanation some time; a pleasant one; one to smile over, and tell
'Zekiel and repeat to the neighbors; but not an unexpected, sacred,
beautiful explanation, such a one as the heart of a woman could imagine,
if she were young enough and happy enough to hope. She washed her cup
and plate; replaced the uneaten beans in the brown pot, and put them
away with the round loaf, folded the cloth (Lobelia Brewster said
Nancy always "set out her meals as if she was entertainin' company from
Portland"), closed the stove dampers, carried the lighted lamp to a
safe corner shelf, and lifted 'Zekiel to his cushion on the high-backed
rocker, doing all with the nice precision of long habit. Then she
wrapped herself warmly, and locking the lonely little house behind her,
set out to finish her work in the church.

V. At this precise moment Justin Peabody was eating his own beans
and brown bread (articles of diet of which his Detroit landlady was
lamentably ignorant) at the new tavern, not far from the meeting-house.

It would not be fair to him to say that Mrs. Burbank's letter had
brought him back to Edgewood, but it had certainly accelerated his
steps.

For the first six years after Justin Peabody left home, he had drifted
about from place to place, saving every possible dollar of his uncertain
earnings in the conscious hope that he could go back to New England
and ask Nancy Wentworth to marry him. The West was prosperous and
progressive, but how he yearned, in idle moments, for the grimmer and
more sterile soil that had given him birth!

Then came what seemed to him a brilliant chance for a lucky turn of his
savings, and he invested them in an enterprise which, wonderfully as
it promised, failed within six months and left him penniless. At that
moment he definitely gave up all hope, and for the next few years he put
Nancy as far as possible out of his mind, in the full belief that he was
acting an honorable part in refusing to drag her into his tangled and
fruitless way of life. If she ever did care for him,--and he could not
be sure, she was always so shy,--she mu