year to year to develop in the
spiritual sphere as the bodily form shrinks and fades. While the cheek
grows thin and the form spare, the will-power grows daily stronger;
though the outer man perish, the inner man is renewed day by day. The
worn hand that seems so weak yet holds every thread and controls every
movement of the most complex family life, and wonders are daily
accomplished by the presence of a woman who seems little more than a
spirit. The New England wife-mother was the one little jeweled pivot on
which all the wheel work of the family moved.

"Well, haven't we done a good day's work, cousin?" says Diana, when
ninety pies of every ilk--quince, apple, cranberry, pumpkin, and mince--
have been all safely delivered from the oven and carried up into the
great vacant chamber, where, ranged in rows and frozen solid, they are to
last over New Year's day! She adds, demonstratively clasping the little
woman round the neck and leaning her bright cheek against her whitening
hair, "Haven't we been smart?" And the calm, thoughtful eyes turn
lovingly upon her as Mary Pitkin puts her arm round her and answers:

"Yes, my daughter, you have done wonderfully. We couldn't do without
you!"

And Diana lifts her head and laughs. She likes petting and praising as a
cat likes being stroked; but, for all that, the little puss has her claws
and a sly notion of using them.

CHAPTER II.

BIAH CARTER.

It was in the flush and glow of a gorgeous sunset that you might have
seen the dark form of the Pitkin farm-house rising on a green hill
against the orange sky.

The red house, with its overhanging canopy of elm, stood out like an old
missal picture done on a gold ground.

Through the glimmer of the yellow twilight might be seen the stacks of
dry corn-stalks and heaps of golden pumpkins in the neighboring fields,
from which the slow oxen were bringing home a cart well laden with farm
produce.

It was the hour before supper time, and Biah Carter, the deacon's hired
man, was leaning against a fence, waiting for his evening meal; indulging
the while in a stream of conversational wisdom which seemed to flow all
the more freely from having been dammed up through the labors of the day.

[Illustration: Biah]

Biah was, in those far distant times of simplicity a "mute inglorious"
newspaper man. Newspapers in those days were as rare and unheard of as
steam cars or the telegraph, but Biah had within him all the making of a
thr