ating about
your history, and starting these very queries you have answered
to-night."

"But you have never asked me."

"No; how could I? But I am glad to know. Now I understand the great
patience--the tender, pathetic patience--which I have often remarked in
you. Only those who have suffered long and silently can ever attain to
it."

"An' so people say, 'Poor old Joe!' an' they don't know what they mean,
when they say it. They think I am a man without the ambitions an'
passions of other men; a simple, good fellow, without too much brain,
an' only the heart of a fool. But they don't know me--they don't know
me!"

"How could they, without hearing what you have just told me, or without
knowing you as I know you?"

"They never will know. I don't want to be pitied for my mistakes. 'Poor
old Joe' is proud, as well as poor."

Mrs. Smiley sat silent, gazing at the river's silver ripples. Her
shapely hands were folded in her lap; her whole attitude quiet,
absorbed. Whether she was thinking of what she had heard, or whether she
had forgotten it, no one could have guessed from her manner; and Chillis
could not wait to know. The fountains of the deep had been stirred until
they would not rest.

"Was there no other question you asked yourself about the old mountain
man which he can answer? Did you never wonder whether he ever had loved
at all?"

"You have made me wonder, to-night, whether, at some period of your
life, you have not loved some woman of your own race and color. You must
have had some opportunities of knowing white women."

"Very few. An' my pride was agin seekin' what I knew was not for me; for
the woman I fancied to myself was no common white woman. White Rose, I
carried a young man's heart in my bosom until I was near sixty, _an'
then I lost it_." He put out a hand and touched one of hers, ever so
lightly. "I need not tell you any more."

A silence that made their pulses seem audible followed this confession.
A heavy shadow descended upon both hearts, and a sudden dreary sense of
an unutterable and unalterable sorrow burdened their spirits.

After a little, "Mr. Chillis! Mr. Chillis!" wailed the woman's pathetic
voice; and "O, my lovely lady!" sighed the man's.

"What shall I do? what shall I do? I am so sorry. What shall I do?"

"Tell me to go. I knew it would have to end so. I knew that Rumway would
drive me to say what I ought not to say; for he is not worthy of you--no
man that I know of is. Ef