They had reached the house. Her breath was quick and short as if she
and not Gideon had borne the burden. He placed the bucket in its
accustomed place, and then gently took her hand in his. The act
precipitated the last drop of feeble coquetry she had retained, and the
old tears took its place. Let us hope for the last time. For as Gideon
stooped and lifted her ailing babe in his strong arms, he said softly,
"Whatever God has wrought for me since we parted, I know now He has
called me to but one work."

"And that work?" she asked, tremulously.

"To watch over the widow and fatherless. And with God's blessing,
sister, and His holy ordinance, I am here to stay."

SARAH WALKER

It was very hot. Not a breath of air was stirring throughout the
western wing of the Greyport Hotel, and the usual feverish life of its
four hundred inmates had succumbed to the weather. The great veranda
was deserted; the corridors were desolated; no footfall echoed in the
passages; the lazy rustle of a wandering skirt, or a passing sigh that
was half a pant, seemed to intensify the heated silence. An
intoxicated bee, disgracefully unsteady in wing and leg, who had been
holding an inebriated conversation with himself in the corner of my
window pane, had gone to sleep at last and was snoring. The errant
prince might have entered the slumberous halls unchallenged, and walked
into any of the darkened rooms whose open doors gaped for more air,
without awakening the veriest Greyport flirt with his salutation. At
times a drowsy voice, a lazily interjected sentence, an incoherent
protest, a long-drawn phrase of saccharine tenuity suddenly broke off
with a gasp, came vaguely to the ear, as if indicating a
half-suspended, half-articulated existence somewhere, but not definite
enough to indicate conversation. In the midst of this, there was the
sudden crying of a child.

I looked up from my work. Through the camera of my jealously guarded
window I could catch a glimpse of the vivid, quivering blue of the sky,
the glittering intensity of the ocean, the long motionless leaves of
the horse-chestnut in the road,--all utterly inconsistent with anything
as active as this lamentation. I stepped to the open door and into the
silent hall.

Apparently the noise had attracted the equal attention of my neighbors.
A vague chorus of "Sarah Walker," in querulous recognition, of "O Lord!
that child again!" in hopeless protest, rose faintly from th