om sick-rooms.

Daylight faded. Outside the lamplighter passed, torching the grimy
lamps. Miss Anna spoke almost in a whisper: "Shall I have some
light sent in?"

"No, Anna."

"Did you tell him what the doctors have said about his health?"

"No; there was bad news enough without that for one day. And then
happiness might bring back health to him. The trouble that
threatens him will have to be put down as one of the consequences
of all that has occurred to him--as part of what he is and of what
he has done. The origin of disease may lie in our troubles--our
nervous shocks, our remorses, and better strivings."

The supper hour came.

"I do not wish any supper, Anna."

"Nor I. How long they stay together!"

"They have a great deal to say to each other, Anna."

"I know, I know. Poor children!"

"I believe he is only twenty-five."

"When Isabel comes up, do you think I ought to go to her room and
see whether she wants anything?"

"No, Anna."

"And she must not know that we have been sitting up, as though we
felt sorry for them and could not go on with our own work."

"I met Marguerite and Barbee this afternoon walking together. I
suppose she will come back to him at last. But she has had her
storm, and he knows it, and he knows there will never be any storm
for him. She is another one of those girls of mine--not sad, but
with half the sun shining on them. But half a sun shining
steadily, as it will always shine on her, is a great deal."

"Hush!" said Miss Anna, in a whisper, "he is gone! Isabel is
coming up the steps."

They heard her and then they did not hear her, and then again and
then not again.

Miss Anna started up:

"She needs me!"

He held her back:

"No, Anna! Not to help is to help."

X

One afternoon late in the autumn of the following year, when a
waiting stillness lay on the land and shimmering sunlight opened up
the lonely spaces of woods and fields, the Reaper who comes to all
men and reaps what they have sown, approached the home of the
Merediths and announced his arrival to the young master of the
house: he would await his pleasure.

Rowan had been sitting up, propped by his pillows. It was the room
of his grandfather as it had been that of the man preceding; the
bed had been their bed; and the first to place it where it stood
may have had in mind a large window, through which as he woke from
his nightly sleep he might look far out upon the land, upon rol