rough the open windows.

"Mother, can't I go out an' play ball a little while?" sounded in a
long wail from the dusk outside the door.

"You go to bed," answered his mother. Then the slamming of a door
shook the house.

"If he wa'n't sick, I'd whip him," said Deborah, between tight lips;
the spiritual whip which Ephraim held by right of his illness over
her seemed to sing past her ears. She shook Caleb with the force with
which she might have shaken Ephraim. "You'd better get up an' go to
bed now, instead of sleepin' in your chair," she said, imperatively;
and Caleb obeyed, staggering, half-dazed, across the floor into the
bedroom. Deborah was only a few years younger than her husband, but
she had retained her youthful vigor in much greater degree. She never
felt the drowsiness of age stealing over her at nightfall. Indeed,
oftentimes her senses seemed to gain in alertness as the day wore on,
and many a night she was up and at work long after all the other
members of her family were in bed. There came at such times to
Deborah Thayer a certain peace and triumphant security, when all the
other wills over which her own held contested sway were lulled to
sleep, and she could concentrate all her energies upon her work. Many
a long task of needle-work had she done in the silence of the night,
by her dim oil lamp; in years past she had spun and woven, and there
was in a clothes-press up-stairs a wonderful coverlid in an intricate
pattern of blue and white, and not a thread of it woven by the light
of the sun.

[Illustration: "Many a long task of needle-work had she done"]

None of the neighbors knew why Deborah Thayer worked so much at
night; they attributed it to her tireless industry. "The days wa'n't
never long enough for Deborah Thayer," they said--and she did not
know why herself.

There was deep in her heart a plan for the final disposition of these
nightly achievements, but she confided it to no one, not even to
Rebecca. The blue-and-white coverlid, many a daintily stitched linen
garment and lace-edged pillow-slip she destined for Rebecca when she
should be wed, although she frowned on Rebecca's lover and spoke
harshly to her of marriage. To-night, while Rebecca lay sobbing in
her little bedroom, the mother knitted assiduously until nearly
midnight upon a wide linen lace with which to trim dimity curtains
for the daughter's bridal bedstead.

Deborah needed no lamplight for this knitting-work; she was so
famili