t
we've had yet, Ike," and Draxy held out her hand.

Ike looked at the hand, but he did not touch it.

"Maybe God'll let me thank ye yet, ma'am," he said, and was gone.

As he went through the kitchen a sudden misgiving seized him of terror of
Hannah.

"Supposin' she sh'd take into her head to be agin me," thought he. "They
say the Elder himself's 'fraid on her. I don't s'pose she'd dare to try to
pizen me outright, an' anyhow there's allers eggs an' potatoes. But I'll
bring her round fust or last;" and, made wary by love, Ike began on the
spot to conciliate her, by offering to bring a pail of water from the
well.

This small attention went farther than he could have dreamed. When Draxy
first told Hannah that Ike was to come and live with them, she said
judiciously,--

"It will make your work much easier in many ways, Hannah."

Hannah answered:--

"Yes, missus. He'll bring all the water I spose, an that alone's wuth any
man's keep--not that I've ever found any fault with the well's bein' so
far off. It's 's good water's there is in the world, but it's powerful
heavy."

The arrival of the two cows crowned Hannah's liking of the plan. If she
had a passion in life it was for cream and for butter-making, and it had
been a sore trial to her in her life as the Elder's housekeeper, that she
must use stinted measures of milk, bought from neighbors. So when poor Ike
came in, trembling and nervous, to his first night's lodging under the
Elder's roof, he found in the kitchen, to his utter surprise, instead of a
frowning and dangerous enemy, a warm ally, as friendly in manner and mien
as Indian blood would permit.

Thus the little household settled down for the winter: Draxy and the Elder
happy, serene, exalted more than they knew, by their perfect love for each
other, and their childlike love of God, blending in one earnest purpose
of work for souls; Hannah and Ike anything but serene, and yet happy after
their own odd fashions, and held together much more closely than they knew
by the common bond of their devotion to the Elder and his wife.

In the other side of the house were also two very thankful and contented
hearts. Reuben and Jane were old people now: Reuben's hair was snowy
white, and Jane was sadly bent; but the comfort and peace which had come
so late into their lives had still come early enough to make the sunset a
bright one. It was a sight to do all hearts good to see the two sitting
together on the piaz