ely, "I am tired of this. God did make me.
I want rest. I want love, peace, religion, in my life."

She said nothing. She forgot herself, her timid shyness now, and looked
into his eyes, a noble, helpful woman, sounding the depths of the turbid
soul laid bare for her.

He laid his big, ill-jointed hand on her knee.

"I thought," he said.--great drops of sweat coming out on his sallow
lips,--"God meant you to help me. There is my life, little girl. You may
do what you will with it. It does not value much to me."

And Grey, woman-like, gathered up the despised hand and life, and sobbed
a little as she pressed them to her heart. An hour after, they went
together up the old porch-steps, halting a moment where the grape-vines
clustered thickest about the shingled wall. The house was silent; even
the village slept in the moonlight: no sound of life in the great
sweep of dusky hill and valley, save the wreaths of mist over the
watercourses, foaming and drifting together silently: before morning
they would stretch from base to base of the hills like a Dead Sea, ashy
and motionless. They stood silent a moment, until the chirp of some
robin, frightened by their steps in its nest overhead, had hummed
drowsily down into sleep.

"It is not good-night, but good-bye, that I must bid you, Grey," he
said, stooping to see her face.

"I know. But you will come again. God tells me that."

"I will come. Remember, Grey, I am going to save life, not to take it.
Corrupt as I am, my hands are clean of this butchery for the sake of
interest."

Grey's eyes wandered. She knows nothing about the war, to be candid:
only that it is like a cold pain at her heart, day and night,--sorry
that the slaves are slaves, wondering if they could be worse off than
the free negroes swarming in the back-alleys yonder,--as sorry, being
unpatriotic, for the homeless women in Virginia as for the stolen horses
of Chambersburg. Grey's principles, though mixed, are sound, as far as
they go, you see. Just then thinking only of herself.

"You will come back to me?" clinging to his arm.

"Why, I must come back," cheerfully, choking back whatever stopped
his breath, pushing back the curling hair from her forehead with a
half-reverential touch. "I have so much, to do, little girl! There is
a farm over yonder I mean to earn enough to buy, where you and I shall
rest and study and grow,--stronger and healthier, more helpful every
day. We'll find our work and place i