im to bed and wait on him, and when he'd come to himself she'd
never say a word about what had happened, and I reckon it was her
grace that saved him.

"And, it's another curious thing, child," she continued, "how two
people'll live together for years and years and never know how much
they love each other. Milly told me that when Sam burst out cryin' and
said he didn't know she cared that much for him, it come over her all
at once that she must 'a' been a mighty poor sort o' wife to him, for
him not to know she loved him well enough to stay with him through
thick and thin. But I reckon it's that way with most married folks.
They jog along together, and they have their ups and downs, and may be
they think many a time they don't love each other like they did when
they first married, but jest let a trouble come up, and they'll find
out that all the love they used to have is there yet, and more
besides.

"I ricollect Parson Page sayin' once that love and money was alike in
one respect, they'd both draw interest, and I reckon many a married
couple's richer than they think they are."

To find our treasure of love greater than we had dared to dream--what
rarer joy has earth? And when the poor derelict soul clung to his wife
and found in her a help sufficient for his needs, his was a rapture
not less profound than that of the poet-husband when he opened the
sonnets in which a woman's soul had poured itself, counting the ways
and measuring the depth and the height of her wifely love.

Aunt Jane pushed her spectacles up on her forehead, folded her hands,
and leaned back in her chair, lost in the reverie that generally
followed the telling of a story, while I gazed at the tremulous fire
light, and felt the cord of human sympathy drawing me closer to the
people of her day and time.

As an artist finishes a picture, and then goes lovingly back to
strengthen a line or deepen a tint, so every story told by Aunt Jane
made more vivid to me her portraits of these men and women who were
the friends of her youth. I had known Sam, the jovial, careless,
sceptical one; Milly, quick of temper, sharp of tongue, swift to act
and swift to repent--just a plain farmer and a plain farmer's wife.
But by the light of this tale of triumph I saw them again. Sam, the
man who met and vanquished the dragon of thirst, Milly, the woman
whose love was strong enough to hold and redeem; and in my thought
each rises to heroic stature and stands touched for