cure returns of the same inexpressibly sad pain.

The garnishing of sepulchres is an employment which by no means went out
with the Scribes and Pharisees. Under the circumstances, the death of my
pretty young maid, although she was only an Irish girl, produced a deep
impression in the village. Very soon, now that it could do no good,
it was generally agreed that the imputations against her were wholly
unfounded. It was pretty distinctly whispered that they had arisen out
of things said by Mrs. Deacon Adams, in her wrath, because Bridget had
left her service to enter mine; and I now ascertained that this Mrs.
Adams was a woman of bitter tongue, and enduring, hot, and unscrupulous
in anger and in revengefulness. I have inquired sufficiently; I know it
is true. The vulgar malice of a hard woman has murdered a fair and good
maiden with the invisible arrows of her wicked words.

But she begins already to be punished, coarse cast-iron as she is.
People do not exactly like to talk with her. She is growing thin. She
has been ill,--a thing, I am told, never dreamed of before. Of course
she reported to her husband the reproaches with which I had surprised
her on the very day of Bridget's death. She had called in by chance, and
had not even heard of her illness; had herself begun to retail to me the
kind of talk with which she had poisoned the village, not knowing that
her evil work was finished; and it was the scornful carelessness of her
reply to my first reproof that stung me to answer her so bitterly. It
was two weeks before good, white-haired, old Deacon Adams came to the
house of his pastor. His face looked careworn enough. He stayed long
in the study with my husband, and went away sadly. I happened to pass
through our little hall just as the Deacon opened the study-door to
depart; and I caught his last words, very sorrowful in tone,--

"She might git well, ef she could stop dreamin' on't, and git the weight
off 'm her mind. But words that's once spoken can't be called back as
you call the cows home at night."

SHALL WE COMPROMISE?

In that period of remote antiquity when all birds of the air and beasts
of the field were able to talk, it befell that a certain shepherd
suffered many losses through the constant depredations of a wolf.
Fearing at length that his means of subsistence would be quite taken
away, he devised a powerful trap for the creature, and set it with
wonderful cunning. He could hardly sleep that n