ere. Nancy had only departed two days before.

"What a charming wedding it was!" Doris mused, patting the loom; "every
time I think of it something new and unusual recurs."

Joan rubbed away and laughed gaily.

"Father Noble looked like a precious old saint," she said. "I declare
when he told about Mary I was almost afraid he'd be translated before he
had a chance to marry Nan."

How little Joan realized that she was touching upon a mighty thing; how
little either she or Doris were really ever to know.

Doris came to the hearth and sat down in a deep chair, her face had
suddenly grown serious.

"I was thinking of that incident," she said.

"Joan, I have always misjudged Mary. She has always puzzled me. I have
thought her hard and selfish--the people here have thought her mean."
Doris paused, and Joan looked around and remarked:

"She's a blessed trump. Nan always understood Mary better than I; Mary
liked Nan the best of all, but I'm going to cultivate Mary. There is
something about her like these hidden words--it must be brought out."

"To think of her caring for and loving that poor, deserted creature on
that lonely peak all this time!" Doris went back to the story. "Father
Noble says the trail up there is the worst on the mountain, yet Mary
went every day. She mended the cabin and kept the old woman clean and
clothed and happy--to the very end. Think of her alone in that cabin at
night when the poor soul passed away! Mary was always so timid, too,
and superstitious--and we never suspecting!"

"And then," Joan took up the thread, "those ten miles to get Father
Noble so that there might be a proper funeral, and Nancy's wedding
having to wait while they saw the thing properly through. Oh! Aunt
Dorrie, it's like a glorious old comedy with so much humanity in it that
it hurts. Can you not just _see_ that funeral as Father Noble described
it?"

Joan stood up, her eyes shining; the polishing cloth held out daintily
from the pretty blue gown.

"'Twilight and evening star' effect, and those silent, amazed folks that
Mary had compelled to come up the trail; the children and dogs and that
comical boy tolling an old, cracked dinner bell; the procession to the
clump of trees where the old women's children and grandchildren are
buried--why, Aunt Doris, I see it all like a wonderful picture! There's
no place on earth like these hills."

Doris saw it, too, as Joan graphically portrayed it--but she was
thinking still o