our own love and kindness, and be true to her, and I
shall never lose my love for you."

"Do you know what love is?" said Notely, with clinched teeth, tears
springing from between the wasted fingers pressed against his eyes.
"Do you know what it is to suffer?"

She gave him no flaming retort. She put her head beside him.

The past came back to him, and her poor, burdened, self-sacrificing
life. Wild sobs shook his heart. "All lost! all lost!" he moaned.

"No, only not found yet," she said, looking at him through her tears;
"all waiting."

It was such a simple Basin path, knowing so few things, but unswerving.

"Not here, I know," she said, "for nothing is for long or without loss
and sorrow here. There is always somebody sick or hurt; and the poplar
trees, that the cross was made from, are always trembling and sighing:
but some time Christ will lay his hand upon them, and they will be
still and blessed again."

XVII

GOIN' TO THE DAGARRIER'S

"Ever sence the accident," said Captain Pharo, with a gloom not wholly
impersonal, "my woman 's been d'tarmined to haul me over to a
dagarrier's to have my pictur' took.

"I told 'er that there wa'n't no danger in the old 'Lizy Rodgers,' sech
weather as I go out in. 'But ye carn't never tell,' says she; 'and
asides,' says she, 'ye're a kind o' baldin' off an' dryin' away, more
or less, every year,' says she, 'an' I want yer pictur' took afore----'

"Gol darn it all!" said Captain Pharo, making an unsuccessful attempt
to light his pipe, and kicking out his left leg testily.

"'Afore ye gits to lookin' any meachiner,' says she.

"'When I dies,' says I, 'th' inscription on my monniment won't be by no
drowndin',' says I; 'it'll be jest plain, "Pestered ter death,"' says I.

"Wal, 't that she began a-boohooin', so in course I told 'er, says I,
'I s'pose I c'n go and have my dagarrier took ef you're so set on it,'
says I.

"For with regards t' female grass, major, my exper'ence has all'as made
me think o' that man in Scriptur' 't was told to do somethin'. 'No, by
clam!' says he, 'I ain't a-goin' to,' and hadn't more 'n got the words
outer his mouth afore somehow he found himself a-shutin' straight outer
the front door to go to executin' of it.

"When I thinks o' that tex'--an' I ponders on it more 'n what I does on
mos' any other tex' in Scriptur'--I says to myself, 'Thar' 's Pharo
Kobbe--thar' 's my dagarrier, 'ithout no needs o' goin' nowheres to
have it