prattle of little Hannah, an' kept from rustin' by the farm work.
I was lonesome, very lonesome, when the evenin' shadows crept over the
ground, an' the crickets began to sing, the katydids to scold, an' the
hoot owl to give his mournful cry over in the grove where Micah lay.

[Illustration: "ONE OF HIS MEN BROUGHT ME A LETTER--THE FIRST I'D HAD
FOR YEARS"]

There was daybreak at last, though nearly a month after neighbor King
had gone. One of his men brought me a letter--the first I'd had for
years--an' I looked at it a long time before I opened it, wondering
what strange news it had for me to know, why I should have it, an'
what I should do with it now it had come. I knew the writin'. It was
neighbor King's. Was it good news, or news to shrivel my heart up as
with fire? I tore off an end an' pulled out the sheet. It didn't take
long to read it.

CHICAGO, _August 17, 187-._

MRS. PYNCHEON: I find that my wife has been dead a year.

HORACE KING.

The letter dropped from my hand. It was the heart-breaking end of a
love story--the closin' up of one of those little tragedies which the
world seldom hears about. Such love stories are happening all the
while among poor people, an' so are too common for the way-up world;
yet they are full of heartaches, an' hot, droppin' tears, an' great
sobs that are like moans. An' so my neighbor King had come to the end
of his tragedy; had found the idol of his young life an' love put away
in her grave, an' the waitin' an' hopin' was at an end. What that good
man must have suffered durin' those ten long years, nobody but himself
could know. Now that he was free, possibly he would sell his farm an'
go back to the city to live, an' I, to whom he had been so good an'
grand, would soon be forgotten. Ah! that was a bitin' thought. It
almost crazed me, now that I knew how much I loved him, to think of
being left alone to grow old an' wrinkled an' withered, an' no words
of comfort to cheer me up along the path walked by nobody but myself.
I knew he was too great a man to plough his talents into the soil or
to hide the light of his intellect in the jungles of his fields of
wheat or corn. That letter made me feel, somehow, that everything was
suddenly changed; that my little world was not the same as it had been
ten minutes before. The tears came into my eyes, an' I'm not sure but
I was sobbin' under a forlorn, lonesome feelin', when I heard a step
behind me, an' before I could put a