sublime, unconscious contempt of death!); turning from them vaguely, as
though in some far Basin the dawn were breaking!

"Uncle Benny," said he, holding out his wasted hand, "the school-house
is very dark--I'll go home now."

* * * * * *

So Vesty's heart was broken in her, and to me she came, as to a father,
or more as to a friendly, favoring ghost.

"Take me back to the Basin!"

"Yes."

She sat in a kind of patient apathy, numb, her heart faithful with the
dead.

"How little Gurd will call for you when he sees you again!" I spoke;
but to waken her was to bring such a torrent of tears, choking, she
entreated me not.

But, "It is well, I believe," I said to her; "there is life enough! Be
sure he does not lack for life. What! do you think we have found the
best of it, and all of it, here? I imagine God has enough! It is not
because His bread fails Him that any go hungry, or because He lacks for
gold that any are poor, but only for His purpose--we must guess--and
when the poor, shattered school-house grows dark the light breaks
elsewhere."

Vesty had not slept for two nights; the sweet face was haggard.

Again passing among crowds of restless, hurrying life, faces cold and
strange, or often staring curiously, the haunted look of one lost came
again into her eyes.

"I must go and take care of Gurd," she said, "as well as I can, while I
live. O God! I hope he never may get lost, out in the world."

"No; how could he, in God's world?"

"When we get back to the Basin then you will be tired of staying there
in the bleak and cold. You will never wait for me to pay you; you will
laugh at me, and you will go back to the world."

"Vesty!"

Wearily she turned her heavy eyes on me--a ghost; there was the forced,
unconscious cry in them of the child, or even of the woman.

Sacredly I shielded their glance, and ghostly; it was as though I had
not seen.

"You mistake my courage. There is no winter," I said, smiling, "strong
enough to drive me from the Basin."

XXII

"NEIGHBORIN'"

Vesty never said "Stay!" but that unconscious look in her eyes made a
sort of forlorn fireplace of hope to me, desolate, open to all the
winds. As God wills. I wait.

I went often to Captain Leezur; the nervine lozenges were potent.

"We all'as dew neighbor a great deal in winter," said he approvingly,
stretching those dear felts before the blaze.

"Is that a piece of the log we