"Be you sick?" asked Mrs. Merriam. She laid a hard hand on the girl's
arm, and led her into the sitting-room, and put her into the
rocking-chair with the feather cushion. "You look real poorly," said
she. "Sha'n't I get you a little of my elderberry wine?"

"I want to see him," said Evelina, and she almost sobbed.

"I'll go right and speak to him," said Mrs. Merriam. "He's up, I
guess. He gets up early to write. But hadn't I better get you
something to take first? You do look sick."

But Evelina only shook her head. She had her face covered with her
hands, and was weeping softly. Mrs. Merriam left the room, with a
long backward glance at her. Presently the door opened and Thomas
came in. Evelina stood up before him. Her pale face was all wet with
tears, but there was an air of strange triumph about her.

"The garden is dead," said she.

"What do you mean?" he cried out, staring at her, for indeed he
thought for a minute that her wits had left her.

"The garden is dead," said she. "Last night I watered the roses with
boiling water and salt, and I pulled the other flowers up by their
roots. The garden is dead, and I have lost all Cousin Evelina's
money, and it need not come between us any longer." She said that,
and looked up in his face with her blue eyes, through which the love
of the whole race of loving women from which she had sprung, as well
as her own, seemed to look, and held out her little hands; but even
then Thomas Merriam could not understand, and stood looking at her.

"Why--did you do it?" he stammered.

"Because you would have me no other way, and--I couldn't bear that
anything like that should come between us," she said, and her voice
shook like a harp-string, and her pale face went red, then pale
again.

But Thomas still stood staring at her. Then her heart failed her. She
thought that he did not care, and she had been mistaken. She felt as
if it were the hour of her death, and turned to go. And then he
caught her in his arms.

"Oh," he cried, with a great sob, "the Lord make me worthy of thee,
Evelina!"

There had never been so much excitement in the village as when the
fact of the ruined garden came to light. Flora Loomis, peeping
through the hedge on her way to the store, had spied it first. Then
she had run home for her mother, who had in turn sought Lawyer Lang,
panting bonnetless down the road. But before the lawyer had started
for the scene of disaster, the minister, Thomas Merriam,