er loneliness and lighten her grief. But, as I have said, she was a
stranger among them, and she seems to have been naturally of a reserved
disposition, preferring solitude in her affliction; for she so repelled
their attentions, that, one by one, even her husband's friends deserted
her. Then, too, her house was three miles from the nearest neighbor, and
this was necessarily a barrier to frequent social intercourse. She very
rarely went into the village, even to church, and thus people came to
know very little of her manner of life; it was only guessed at by those
few acquaintance who, at rare intervals, made their way to the Blount
farm-house.

Among them it was remarked, that the widow, still quite young, was
unnaturally stern and cold, and that her two sons, who were growing up
in this sad isolation, were strangely like their mother, not only in
appearance, but in manners. Their names were James and John. There was
but little over a year between them, and they were so much alike that
most persons found a difficulty in distinguishing one from the other.
Both had fierce, black eyes, short, crisp, black hair, and swarthy
skins,--quite unlike our freckled-face Yankee boys,--so that the older
villagers declared, with a sigh, that there was not a trace of the
good-hearted father about them; they wholly resembled their strange
mother. The boys themselves did nothing to lessen this disagreeable
impression; they were unusually grave and reserved for their years,
taking no interest in the sports of other children; and after a time,
it became painfully evident to those who watched them that they had no
fondness for each other; on the contrary, that affection which would
naturally have sprung from their nearness in age and their constant
companionship seemed to be entirely wanting, and its place usurped by an
absolute dislike.

When this was first discovered, it was supposed to account for the
widow's aversion to society. This idea, being once started, made those
idle busybodies there are in every village eager to discover if the
suspicion were correct. Through the men hired to work on the farm, it
was ascertained that the poor mother, with all her sternness and her
iron law, had difficulty in keeping peace between the boys. Twenty times
a day they would fall into angry dispute about some trifle; and so
violent were these altercations, that it was said that she durst not for
a moment have them both out of her sight, lest one sh