et of lilacs, with the old scent of the spring
blossoms yet hanging on their boughs; along the bank, where her foot had
sunk deep into plushy moss, where he had gathered a cluster of fern and
put it into her hand. Its pale feathery green was not more quaint or
pure than the delicate love in the uncouth man beside her,--not nearer
kin to Nature. Did she know that? Had it been like the breath of God
coming into her nostrils to be so loved, appreciated, called home, as
she had been to-night? Was she going back to feel that breath again?
Neither pain nor pleasure was on her face: her breath came heavy and
short, her eyes shone, that was all. Out now into the open road,
stopping and glancing around with every broken twig, being a cowardly
creature, yet never leaving the track of the footsteps in the dust,
where she had gone before. Coming at last to the old-fashioned gabled
house, where she had gone when site was a child, set in among stiff rows
of evergreens. A breathless quiet always hung about the place: a pure,
wholesome atmosphere, because pure and earnest people had acted out
their souls there, and gone home to God. He had led her through the
gate here, given her to drink of the well at the side of the house. "My
mother never would taste any water but this, do you remember, Lizzy?"
They had gone through the rooms, whispering, if they spoke, as though it
were a church. Here was the pure dead sister's face looking down from
the wall; there his mother's worn wicker work-stand. Her work was in it
still. "The needle just where she placed it, Lizzy." The strong man was
weak as a little child with the memory of the old mother who had
nursed and loved him as no other could love. He stood beside her chair
irresolute; forty years ago he had stood there, a little child bringing
all his troubles to be healed: since she died no hand had touched it.
"Will you sit there, Lizzy? You are dearer to me than she. When I come
back, will you take their place here? Only you are pure as they, and
dearer, Lizzy. We will go home to them hand in hand." She sat in the
dead woman's chair. _She_. Looking in at her own heart as she did it.
Yet her love for him would make her fit to sit there: she believed that.
He had not kissed her,--she was too sacred to the simple-hearted man for
that,--had only taken her little hand in both his, saying, "God bless
you, little Lizzy!" in an unsteady voice.

"He may never say it again," the girl said, when she crep