ur devotion."

"Well, there ain't no need, goodness knows!" grumbled Diploma Crotty,
"but if so you be, you'll go and lay down now, Miss Vesty, like a good
girl. There! there's Mis' Weight comin' up the steps this minute of
time. I'll go and tell her you're on the bed and can't see her."

Was it Miss Vesta, gentle Miss Vesta, who answered? It might have been
Miss Phoebe, with head erect and flashing eyes of displeasure.

"You will tell the simple truth, Diploma, if you please. Tell Mrs.
Weight that I do not desire to see her. She should know better than to
call at this house to-day on any pretence whatever. My dear sister would
have been highly incensed at such a breach of propriety. I--" the fire
faded, and the little figure drooped, wavered, rested for a moment on
the arm of the faithful servant. "I thank you, my good Diploma. I will
go and lie down now, as you thoughtfully suggest."

CHAPTER XII.

THE PEAK IN DARIEN

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken:
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific, and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise--
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

--_John Keats._

Behind the yellow walls of the post-office Mr. Homer Hollopeter mourned
deeply and sincerely for his cousin. The little room devoted to
collecting and dispensing the United States mail, formerly a dingy and
sordid den, had become, through Mr. Homer's efforts, cheerfully seconded
by those of Will Jaquith, a little temple of shining neatness, where
even Miss Phoebe's or Miss Vesta's dainty feet might have trod
without fear of pollution. It was more like home to Mr. Homer than the
bare little room where he slept, and now that it was his own, he
delighted in dusting, polishing, and cleaning, as a woman might have
done. The walls were brightly whitewashed, and adorned with portraits of
Keats and Shelley; on brackets in two opposite corners Homer and
Shakespeare gazed at each other with mutual approval. The stove was
black and glossy as an Ashantee chief, and the clock, once an unsightly
mass of fly-specks and cobwebs, now showed a white front as immaculate
as Mr. Homer's own. Opposite the clock hung a large photograph, in a
handsome gilt frame, of a mountain peak towering alone against a clear
sky.

When Mr. Homer entered the post-office the day after Miss Phoebe's
funeral, he carried in his hand a fine wrea