y were to be sent; they could watch the movements of the
men in white oil-cloth who moved in a ghostly fashion about the barge;
they could hear the tap of hammers; but nothing came of it all.

They sat in the darkness, waiting; and there came to Nelson a strange
sensation of being alone and apart from all the breathing world with
this woman. He did not perceive that Tim had quietly returned with a box
which did very well for a seat, and was sitting with his knees against
the chair-rungs. He seemed to be somehow outside of all the tumult and
the spectacle. It was the vainglorying triumph of this world. He was the
soul outside, the soul that had missed its triumph. In his perplexity
and loneliness he felt an overwhelming longing for sympathy; neither did
it strike Nelson, who believed in all sorts of occult influences, that
his confidence in a stranger was unwarranted. He would have told you
that his "psychic instincts" never played him false, although really
they were traitors from their astral cradles to their astral graves.

He said in a hesitating way: "You must excuse me being kinder dull; I've
got some serious business on my mind and I can't help thinking of it."

"Is that so? Well, I know how that is; I have often stayed awake nights
worrying about things. Lest I shouldn't suit and all that--especially
after mother took sick."

"I s'pose you had to give up and nurse her then?"

"That was what Ebenezer and Ralph were for having me do; but mother--my
mother always had so much sense--mother says, 'No, Alma, you've got a
good place and a chance in life, you sha'n't give it up. We'll hire a
girl. I ain't never lonesome except evenings, and then you will be home.
I should jest want to die,' she says, 'if I thought I kept you in a kind
of prison like by my being sick--now, just when you are getting on
so well.' There never WAS a woman like my mother!" Her voice shook a
little, and Nelson asked gently:

"Ain't your mother living now?"

"No, she died last year." She added, after a little silence, "I somehow
can't get used to being lonesome."

"It IS hard," said Nelson. "I lost my wife three years ago."

"That's hard, too."

"My goodness! I guess it is. And it's hardest when trouble comes on a
man and he can't go nowhere for advice."

"Yes, that's so, too. But--have you any children?"

"Yes, ma'am; that is, they ain't my own children. Lizzie and I never had
any; but these two we took and they are most like my ow