command, Zulime took one end of the thick, rough mantel and together we
swung it into place above the arch. Our fireplace was complete!
Breathlessly we waited the signal to apply the match.

At five o'clock the mason from the chimney top cheerily called, "_Let
'er go!_"

Striking a match I handed it to Zulime. She touched it to the shavings.
Our chimney took life. It drew! It roared!!

Pulling the curtains close, to shut out the waning daylight, we drew our
chairs about our hearth whereon the golden firelight was playing. We
forgot our troubles, and Mary Isabel pointing her pink, inch-long
forefinger at it, laughed with glee. Never again would she sit above a
black hole in the floor to warm her toes.

Out of the corners of the room the mystic ancestral shadows leapt, to
play for her sake upon the walls. "She will now acquire the poet's fund
of sweet subconscious memories," I declared. "The color of all New
England home-life is in that fire. Centuries of history are involved in
its flickering shadows. We have put ourselves in touch with our
Anglo-Saxon ancestors at last."

"It already looks as ancient as the house," Zulime remarked, and so
indeed it did, for its rude inner walls had blackened almost instantly,
and its rough, broad, brick hearth fitted harmoniously into the brown
floor. The thick plank mantle (stained a smoky-green) seemed already
clouded with age. Its expression was perfect--to us, and when father
"happened in" and drawing his armchair forward took Mary Isabel in his
arms, the firelight playing over his gray hair and on the chubby cheeks
of the child, he made a picture immemorial in its suggestion, typifying
all the hearths and all the grandsires and fair-skinned babes of New
England history.

[Illustration: The old soldier and pioneer loved to take the children
on his knees and bask in the light of the fire. At such times he made
a picture which typed forth to me all the chimney corners and all the
Anglo-Saxon grandsires for a thousand years. In him I saw the past.
In them I forecast the future. In him an era was dying, in them Life
renewed her swiftly passing web.]

The grim old house had a soul. It was now in the fullest sense a hearth
and a home. Oh, Mother and David, were you with us at that moment? Did
you look upon us from the dusky corners, adding your faint voices to the
chorus of our songs? I hope so. I try to believe so.

* * * * *

That night when Mar