"_Woe is me now, for my
soul is wearied_!"

"Now," concluded Miss Lavinia, "you can put out the light. Rose Mary,
and if me and Amandy was to open our eyes on the other side of the
river it would be but a good thing for us. Lay the Bible in that
newspaper on top of that pile of _Christian Advocates_, with a string
to tie 'em all up after morning lesson, to be carried away. The Lord
bless and keep you, child, and don't forget to latch the front door on
us all for the last time!"

Softly Rose Mary drew the door partly closed and left them in the
quiet of the fast-deepening purple dusk. She peeped into Uncle
Tucker's room and assured herself by his sonorous breathing that rest
at last was comforting him, and for a moment in her own room she bent
over the little cot where the General and his two spotted servitors
lay curled up in a tangle and fast in the depths of sleep. Then she
opened wide the old hall door that had for more than a century swung
over the sill marked off by the length of the intrepid English
foremother who had tramped the wilderness trail to possess what she,
herself, was giving up.

And as she stood desperate, at bay, with her nest storm tossed and
threatened, suddenly the impossibility of it all came down upon her,
and stern with a very rigidity of resolve she went into the house,
lighted a candle by the old desk in the hall, and wrote swiftly a few
words of desperate summons to the Senator. She knew that Friday night
always found him over the fields at Boliver, and she told him briefly
the situation and asked him to come over in the early morning to the
rescue--and sacrifice.

When she had first come out on the porch she had seen young Bob ride
up to the store on one of his colts, and she ran fleetly down to the
front gate and called to him. He consented instantly to ride over and
deliver the note for her, but he shot an uneasy glance at her from
beneath his wide hat as he put the letter in his pocket.

"Is anything wrong, Miss Rose Mary?" he asked anxiously but
respectfully.

"No, Bob, dear, nothing that--that I can't make--right," she answered
in a soft, tearless voice, and as he got on his horse and rode away
she came slowly up the long front walk that was moonflecked from the
leaves of the tall trees. Then once more she stood on the old door
sill--at bay.

And as she looked at the old Ridge across the sweet, blooming
clover-fields, with the darkened house behind her, again the waters of