d turned away in silence.

CHAPTER VII.

THANKSGIVING AGAIN.

Seven years had passed and once more the Thanksgiving tide was in
Mapleton. This year it had come cold and frosty. Chill driving autumn
storms had stripped the painted glories from the trees, and remorseless
frosts had chased the hardy ranks of the asters and golden-rods back and
back till scarce a blossom could be found in the deepest and most
sequestered spots. The great elm over the Pitkin farm-house had been
stripped of its golden glory, and now rose against the yellow evening
sky, with its infinite delicacies of net work and tracery, in their way
quite as beautiful as the full pomp of summer foliage. The air without
was keen and frosty, and the knotted twigs of the branches knocked
against the roof and rattled and ticked against the upper window panes as
the chill evening wind swept through them.

Seven long years had passed since James sailed. Years of watching, of
waiting, of cheerful patience, at first, and at last of resigned sorrow.
Once they heard from James, at the first port where the ship stopped. It
was a letter dear to his mother's heart, manly, resigned and Christian;
expressing full purpose to work with God in whatever calling he should
labor, and cheerful hopes of the future. Then came a long, long silence,
and then tidings that the _Eastern Star_ had been wrecked on a reef in
the Indian ocean! The mother had given back her treasure into the same
beloved hands whence she first received him. "I gave him to God, and God
took him," she said. "I shall have him again in God's time." This was how
she settled the whole matter with herself. Diana had mourned with all the
vehement intensity of her being, but out of the deep baptism of sorrow
she had emerged with a new and nobler nature. The vain, trifling,
laughing Undine had received a soul and was a true woman. She devoted
herself to James's mother with an utter self-sacrificing devotion,
resolved as far as in her lay to be both son and daughter to her. She
read, and studied, and fitted herself as a teacher in a neighboring
academy, and persisted in claiming the right of a daughter to place all
the amount of her earnings in the family purse.

And this year there was special need. With all his care, with all his
hard work and that of his family, Deacon Silas never had been able to
raise money to annihilate the debt upon the farm.

There seemed to be a perfect fatality about it. Let them