roached the house, I got from it, somehow, the impression that it was
a place of night-long watchfulness; and I was not surprised by the fact
that before I had time to ring or knock at the door Mrs. Trescott
herself opened it, with an expression on her face which spoke of long
vigils, and of fear passing on to certainty. She peered past me for an
expected Something on the street. Her leisure and its new habits had
assimilated her in dress and make-up to the women of the wealthier sort
in the city; but there was an immensity of trouble in the agonized eye
and the pitiful droop of her mouth, which I should have rejoiced to see
exchanged again for the ill-groomed exterior and the old fret of the
farm. Her first question ignored all reference to the things leading to
my being there, "in the dead vast and middle of the night," but went
past me to the core of her trouble, as her eye had gone on from me to
the street, in the search for the thing she dreaded.

"Where is he, Mr. Barslow?" said she, in a hushing whisper; "where is
he?"

"He is a little sick," said I, "and Mr. Elkins is bringing him home. I
came on to tell you." "Then he is not--" she went on, still in that
hushed voice, and searching me with her gaze.

"No, I assure you!" I answered. "He is in no immediate danger, even."

Josie came quietly forward from the dusk of the room beyond, where I saw
she had been listening, reminding me, in spite of the incongruity of the
idea, of that time when she emerged from the obscurity of her garden,
and stood at the foot of the windmill tower, leaning on her father's
arm, her hands filled with petunias, the night we first visited the
Trescott farm. And then my mind ran back to that other night when she
had thrown herself into his arms and begged him to take her away; and he
had said, "W'y, yes, little gal, of course I'll take yeh away, if yeh
don't like it here!" I think that I, perhaps, was more nearly able than
any one else in the world beside herself to gauge her grief at this long
death in which she was losing him, and he himself.

She took my hand, pressed it silently, and began caressing her mother
and whispering to her things which I could not hear. Mrs. Trescott sat
upon a sort of divan, shaking with terrible, soundless sobs, and
clasping and unclasping her hands, but making no other gesture. I stood
helpless at the hidden abyss of woe so suddenly uncovered before me and
until this very moment screened by the convent