t forward eagerly.

"Jane, I wish thee'd take me home."'

"To be sure, Joseph," cheerfully. "In the morning. It is too chilly
to-night. Is thee comfortable?" drawing his head closer to her breast.
"O God! He'll live!" silently clutching at the bed-rail until her hand
ached. "Go to sleep, dear."

Whatever sobs or tears choked her voice just then, she forced them back:
they might disturb him. He closed his eyes a moment.

"I have something to say to thee, Jane."

"No. Thee must rest."

"I'd sleep better, if I tell thee first."

There was a moment's silence. The woman's face was pale, her eyes
burning, but she only smiled softly, holding him steadily.

"It has been so long!"--passing his hand over his forehead vaguely.

"Yes."

She could not command a smile now.

"It was all wasted. I've been worth nothing."

How close she held him then to her breast! How tender the touches grew
on his face!

"I was not strong enough to kill myself even, the other day, when I was
so tired. So cowardly! Not worth much, Jane!"

She bent forward over him, to keep the others from hearing this.

"Thee's tired too, Jane?" looking up dully.

"A little, Joseph."

Another silence.

"To-morrow, did thee say, we would go home?"

"Yes, to-morrow."

He shut his eyes to sleep.

"Kiss him," said the Doctor to her. "It will make him more certain."

Her face grew crimson.

"He has not asked me yet," she said.

Sometime early in the summer, nearly four years after, Miss Defourchet
came down to make her uncle another visit,--a little thinned and jaded
with her winter's work, and glad of the daily ride into the fresh
country-air. One morning, the Doctor, jumping into the barouche beside
her, said,--

"We'll make a day of it, Mary,--spend it with some old friends of ours.
They are such wholesome, natural people, it refreshes me to be with them
when I am tired."

"Starke and his wife?" she asked, arranging her scarf. "I never desire
to be with him, or with any man recreant to his work."

"Recreant, eh? Starke? Well, no; he works hard, digs and ditches, and is
happy. I think he takes his work more humbly and healthily than any man
I know."

Miss Defourchet looked absently out at the gleaming river. Her interest
had always been languid in the man since he had declined either to fight
fate or drown himself. The Doctor jerked his hat down into the bottom of
the carriage and pulled open his cravat.

"Hah! do you catch that riv