ly
into her room, holding her candle high above her bed, and standing
over, peered down at her.

As she gazed, a half-smile crept into her rugged face. "Pretty
creatur!" she said aloud; then, with deft and careful fingers she
tucked the bed-clothes close around the sleeping girl, smiled broadly,
and crept out.

The next morning when Marion waked, through the odd little oriel
window the late winter light was struggling fitfully in. At first she
could not tell where she was: the rafters over her head, the bare
white walls that surrounded her, the blue-and-white homespun quilt
that covered her, were unlike any thing she had ever seen before.

She was on her feet in a moment, half frightened at the dim light. Had
another night come? Had she slept over Thanksgiving?

When she went to the kitchen, Aunt Betty was there busy over the
cooking-stove. She was about making an apology for her lateness, but
she was interrupted by,--

"'Taint never too late to pray; you may read the Bible." She pointed
without another word to the old family Bible. Marion took it, opened
it slowly, waiting to be told where to read.

"Thanksgiving," said Aunt Betty briefly.

"It's all Thanksgiving my father says. He thinks the Bible was given
us to make us happy."

"Thirty-fourth Psalm, then," and a quiet look came into the old seamed
face.

When Marion had read it, her aunt rose from her chair, stepped behind
it, tilted it on its front legs, and folding her hands on its top
began to pray.

Like the grace at table, it was the same old prayer that had gone up
from that same old kitchen for one hundred and twenty years. Its
quaint simplicity was a marvel to the young girl who listened, but a
breath of its devotion reached and touched her heart.

Then followed breakfast. Marion wondered, as they two sat at the table
alone, how the old aunt could have borne the loneliness for so many
long years.

To her, on her first Thanksgiving away from her cheerful home, there
was something positively uncanny in the silence which settled down
over the house; even the old yellow dog, with his nose between his
front paws, slept soundly, and the great red rooster that had lighted
upon the forked stick that before the back door had held the farm
milk-pails for more than a century, instead of calling for his
Thanksgiving breakfast, as orthodox New England roosters are expected
to do, just flapped his wings lazily, and turned a much becombed head
imploringly