in the dim light.

They drove directly to the cottage, and on the porch Therese was
waiting for them. She took Fanny's two hands and pressed them warmly
between her own; then led her into the house with an arm passed about
her waist. She shook hands with Hosmer, and stood for a while in
cheerful conversation, before leaving them.

The cottage was fully equipped for their reception, with Minervy in
possession of the kitchen and the formerly reluctant Suze as
housemaid: though Therese had been silent as to the methods which she
had employed to prevail with these unwilling damsels.

Hosmer then went out to look after their baggage, and when he
returned, Fanny sat with her head pillowed on the sofa, sobbing
bitterly. He knelt beside her, putting his arm around her, and asked
the cause of her distress.

"Oh it's so lonesome, and dreadful, I don't believe I can stand it,"
she answered haltingly through her tears.

And here was he thinking it was so home-like and comforting, and
tasting the first joy that he had known since he had gone away.

"It's all strange and new to you, Fanny; try to bear up for a day or
two. Come now, don't be a baby--take courage. It will all seem quite
different by and by, when the sun shines."

A knock at the door was followed by the entrance of a young colored
boy carrying an armful of wood.

"Miss T'rese sont me kin'le fiar fu' Miss Hosma; 'low he tu'nin'
cole," he said depositing his load on the hearth; and Fanny, drying
her eyes, turned to watch him at his work.

He went very deliberately about it, tearing off thin slathers from the
fat pine, and arranging them into a light frame-work, beneath a
topping of kindling and logs that he placed on the massive brass
andirons. He crawled about on hands and knees, picking up the stray
bits of chips and moss that had fallen from his arms when he came in.
Then sitting back on his heels he looked meditatively into the blaze
which he had kindled and scratched his nose with a splinter of pine
wood. When Hosmer presently left the room, he rolled his big black
eyes towards Fanny, without turning his head, and remarked in a tone
plainly inviting conversation "yo' all come f'om way yonda?"

He was intensely black, and if Fanny had been a woman with the
slightest sense of humor, she could not but have been amused at the
picture which he presented in the revealing fire-light with his elfish
and ape like body much too small to fill out the tattered and
i