table, but when he would have lifted the fallen
head it was in the arms of Isabel, and her dilated eyes were on him in a
look of passionate aversion.

"Ring!" she cried. "Ring for Sarah--and go!

"No! stop! don't ring! he's coming to! Only go! go quickly and forever!
Say not a word,--oh, not a word! I heard it all! Despise me too, for I
listened at the door!

"Oh, my husband! Arthur, look at me, Arthur. Look, Arthur; it's your
Isabel. Oh, Arthur, my husband, my husband!"

IX

THE YOUNG YEAR SMILES

Martin Kelly, pious Irishman and out-door factotum of the Byington
place, paused from the last snow-shovelling of the season to reply to a
wandering salesman of fruit trees.

"Mr. Airthur Winslow or Mr. Linnard Boyington,--naw, sor! ye can see
nayther the wan nor th' other, whatsomiver! How can ye see thim, moy
graciouz! whin 'tis two weeks since the two o' thim was tuck the same
noight wid the pneumonias, boy gorra! and the both of thim has thim on
the loongs!"

The nursery agent asked how it had happened so.

"Hawh! ask yer grandmother! All ye can say is they was roipe to catch
the maladee, whatsomiver! Ye cannot always tell how 'tis catched, and
whin ye cannot tell, moy graciouz! ye have got the wurrst koind!"

The two sick men recovered very nearly at the same time.

One day when Leonard had read all his accumulated mail and had seen
three or four men officially in his bedchamber, he told Ruth that a
certain criminal case, the trial of which had been waiting for his
recovery, would take him to the county-seat, and would keep him there
many days, probably weeks, except for brief visits to his office and yet
briefer moments at home.

Ruth gave him a look of tender approval, laid a hand in his, and bent
into the evening fire her far-off smile. Thus, and only thus, he knew
she had divined what had befallen.

A day or two afterward Mrs. Morris brought him a note from Arthur. He
wrote an answer while she stayed, and while Ruth listened elatedly to
her sprightly account of how well Isabel still bore the burden of
nursing a most loving but most nervous husband.

The missive from Arthur was a short but complete and propitiative
acknowledgment of his error and fraility. It offered no change in the
agreement as to Isabel, but it professed a high yet humble resolve to
fall no more, and it ended with a manly offer to resign his pulpit, and
even to lay aside his sacred calling, if Leonard retained any belief