he sat down.

"Vesty," said Elder Skates, and cleared his throat huskily; "Vesty,
will you start 'The Tempests broke on Thee'?"

Vesty's voice:

"'O Christ, it broke on Thee!
Thy open bosom was my ward,
It braved the storm for me.
Thy form was scarred, Thy visage marred,--
O Christ, it broke on Thee!'"

Great preachers have I heard dry-eyed, and skilled plaintive music
enough; but now I looked out through the broken Basin windows, on the
clear Basin sky, through a mist.

"Vesty," said Elder Skates, "let 's keep right along into 'Beautiful
Valley o' Eden'!"

"'How often amid the wild billows,
I dream of thy rest, sweet rest,
Sweet rest.'"

sang Vesty, with eyes darkly circled and sunken, and the beautiful,
strong hand, labor-worn, and the thin old shawl fallen back from her
shoulders.

There was a different tone now in the parting salutations of the Basins.

"I'm a-comin' up to help ye paper," said one woman to another; "ye got
sick last year, and I'm a-comin', whether ye want me to or not."

"Oh, I want ye bad enough, Mar'ette."

But I knew what a struggle had been gone through with when I heard Miss
Pray say:

"Car' Ann, if ye want to borry my ice-cream freezer I ain't a-usin' it
for to-morrer."

Miss Pray alone of the Basins had acquired the monumental honor of
possessing an ice-cream freezer, esteemed by others with a no less
sacred jealousy than by herself; but she had hitherto refused all
intimations tending toward social interchange and fellowship in the
matter.

"Vesty's kind o' poorin' away," said one matron, looking wistfully
after the girl.

"No wonder, with that great boy, and all she does. Aunt Low-ize tried
to hold him, jest while Vesty was singin', an' she had to take him out
and walk twict around Blueberry Hill t' keep him still; he's one o'
this 'ere all-alive, jumpin' kind. I sh'd think he'd kill her."

I overtook Vesty in the lane; she was gathering flowers in Sunday
pastime for the baby.

She turned to look at me with quiet gladness, kindness.

"I love to hear Captain Seabale. He doesn't come very often," said
she, "but he makes me cry."

"I believe he made me cry," I answered. I watched her shaking a
handful of flowers over the laughing boy. "How far do you think pity
could ever go, Vesty?"

"Why?"--there was that high, grave study of me in her eyes, that
haunting thought that I was sly! But for all her pains, too simple was
she! No discovery