ing her valuables
and packing her trunk, even as she had done once before in the course
of this remarkable history. Perhaps some recollection of this was in her
mind; for she stopped to lean her burning cheeks upon her hand, as if
she saw again the figure of the child standing in the doorway, and heard
once more a childish voice asking, "Is it Mamma?" But the epithet now
stung her to the quick, and with a quick, passionate gesture she dashed
it away with a tear that had gathered in her eye. And then it chanced
that, in turning over some clothes, she came upon the child's slipper
with a broken sandal string. She uttered a great cry here--the first she
had uttered--and caught it to her breast, kissing it passionately again
and again, and rocking from side to side with a motion peculiar to her
sex. And then she took it to the window, the better to see it through
her now streaming eyes. Here she was taken with a sudden fit of coughing
that she could not stifle with the handkerchief she put to her feverish
lips. And then she suddenly grew very faint. The window seemed to recede
before her, the floor to sink beneath her feet; and staggering to the
bed, she fell prone upon it with the sandal and handkerchief pressed
to her breast. Her face was quite pale, the orbit of her eyes dark; and
there was a spot upon her lip, another on her handkerchief, and still
another on the white counterpane of the bed.

The wind had risen, rattling the window sashes and swaying the white
curtains in a ghostly way. Later, a gray fog stole softly over the
roofs, soothing the wind-roughened surfaces, and in-wrapping all things
in an uncertain light and a measureless peace. She lay there very
quiet--for all her troubles, still a very pretty bride. And on the
other side of the bolted door the gallant bridegroom, from his temporary
couch, snored peacefully.

A week before Christmas Day, 1870, the little town of Genoa, in the
State of New York, exhibited, perhaps more strongly than at any other
time, the bitter irony of its founders and sponsors. A driving snowstorm
that had whitened every windward hedge, bush, wall, and telegraph pole,
played around this soft Italian Capital, whirled in and out of the great
staring wooden Doric columns of its post office and hotel, beat upon the
cold green shutters of its best houses, and powdered the angular, stiff,
dark figures in its streets. From the level of the street, the four
principal churches of the town s