ay
light was shining on the distant river; the road was untraveled and
untenanted for miles together, except by the Northern rider and his
Southern steed.

THE HILTONS' HOLIDAY.

I.

There was a bright, full moon in the clear sky, and the sunset was
still shining faintly in the west. Dark woods stood all about the old
Hilton farmhouse, save down the hill, westward, where lay the shadowy
fields which John Hilton, and his father before him, had cleared and
tilled with much toil,--the small fields to which they had given the
industry and even affection of their honest lives.

John Hilton was sitting on the doorstep of his house. As he moved his
head in and out of the shadows, turning now and then to speak to his
wife, who sat just within the doorway, one could see his good face,
rough and somewhat unkempt, as if he were indeed a creature of the
shady woods and brown earth, instead of the noisy town. It was late in
the long spring evening, and he had just come from the lower field as
cheerful as a boy, proud of having finished the planting of his
potatoes.

"I had to do my last row mostly by feelin'," he said to his wife. "I'm
proper glad I pushed through, an' went back an' ended off after
supper. 'T would have taken me a good part o' to-morrow mornin', an'
broke my day."

"'T ain't no use for ye to work yourself all to pieces, John,"
answered the woman quickly. "I declare it does seem harder than ever
that we couldn't have kep' our boy; he'd been comin' fourteen years
old this fall, most a grown man, and he'd work right 'longside of ye
now the whole time."

"'T was hard to lose him; I do seem to miss little John," said the
father sadly. "I expect there was reasons why 't was best. I feel able
an' smart to work; my father was a girt strong man, an' a monstrous
worker afore me. 'T ain't that; but I was thinkin' by myself to-day
what a sight o' company the boy would ha' been. You know, small's he
was, how I could trust to leave him anywheres with the team, and how
he'd beseech to go with me wherever I was goin'; always right in my
tracks I used to tell 'em. Poor little John, for all he was so young
he had a great deal o' judgment; he'd ha' made a likely man."

The mother sighed heavily as she sat within the shadow.

"But then there's the little girls, a sight o' help an' company,"
urged the father eagerly, as if it were wrong to dwell upon sorrow and
loss. "Katy, she's most as good as a boy, except that she a