-"

A loud uproar of applause broke loose in the pause that followed;
then the minister's clear voice called for silence once more.

"The Judge has his big fountain pen filled to its capacity," he said.
"Come forward and sign this--the most remarkable document on record,
I am not afraid to say. Its signing will mean the wiping out of an
old bitterness and the dawning of a new and better day for
Brookville!"

The Reverend Wesley Elliot had mixed his metaphors sadly; but no one
minded that, least of all the minister himself, as he signed his name
in bold black characters to the wondrous screed, over which Judge
Fulsom had literally as well as metaphorically burned the midnight
oil. Deacon and Mrs. Whittle signed; Postmaster and Mrs. Daggett
signed, the latter with copious tears flowing over her smooth rosy
cheeks. Miss Lois Daggett was next:

"I guess I ought to be written down near the front," said she,
"seeing I'm full as much to blame, and like that, as most anybody."

"Come on you, Lute Parsons!" roared the Judge, while a group of
matrons meekly subscribed their signatures. "We want some live
men-folks on this document.... Aw, never mind, if you did! We all
know you wa'n't yourself that night, Lucius.... That's right; come
right forward! We want the signature of every man that went out there
that night, full of cussedness and bad whiskey.... That's the ticket!
Come on, everybody! Get busy!"

Nobody had attended the door for the last hour, Joe Whittle being a
spellbound witness of the proceedings; and so it chanced that nobody
saw two persons, a man and a woman who entered quietly--one might
almost have said timidly, as if doubtful of a welcome in the crowded
place. It was Abby Daggett who caught sight of the girl's face,
shining against the soft dark of the summer night like a pale star.

"Why, my sakes alive!" she cried, "if there ain't Lyddy Bolton and
Jim Dodge, now! Did you ever!"

As she folded the girl's slight figure to her capacious breast, Mrs.
Daggett summed up in a single pithy sentence all the legal
phraseology of the Document, which by now had been signed by
everybody old enough to write their names:

"Well! we certainly are glad you've come home, Lyddy; an' we hope
you'll never leave us no more!"

Chapter XXVIII

"Fanny," said Ellen suddenly; "I want to tell you something."

Mrs. Wesley Elliot turned a complacently abstracted gaze upon her
friend who sat beside her on the vine-sha