eart, so long benumbed, quickened when she saw it. How
write of the sharpness of that pain to those who have never known
it? The sight of every gable brought its agony,--the store with the
checker-paned windows, the harness shop, the meeting-house, the white
parsonage on its little hill. Rias Richardson ran out of the store in
his carpet slippers, bareheaded in the cold, and gave one shout. Lem
heeded him not; did not stop there as usual, but drove straight to the
tannery house and pulled up under the butternut tree. Milly Skinner ran
out on the porch, and gave one long look, and cried:--

"Good Lord, it's Cynthy!"

"Where's Jethro?" demanded Lem.

Milly did not answer at once. She was staring at Cynthia.

"He's in the tannery shed," she said, "choppin' wood." But still she
kept her eyes on Cynthia's face. "I'll fetch him."

"No," said Cynthia, "I'll go to him there."

She took the path, leaving Millicent with her mouth open, too amazed to
speak again, and yet not knowing why.

In the tannery shed! Would Jethro remember what happened there almost
six and thirty years before? Would he remember how that other Cynthia
had come to him there, and what her appeal had been?

Cynthia came to the doors. One of these was open now--both had been
closed that other evening against the storm of sleet--and she caught
a glimpse of him standing on the floor of chips and bark--tan-bark no
more. Cynthia caught a glimpse of him, and love suddenly welled up into
her heart as waters into a spring after a drought. He had not seen her,
not heard the sound of the sleigh-bells. He was standing with his foot
upon the sawbuck and the saw across his knee, he was staring at the
woodpile, and there was stamped upon his face a look which no man or
woman had ever seen there, a look of utter loneliness and desolation, a
look as of a soul condemned to wander forever through the infinite, cold
spaces between the worlds--alone.

Cynthia stopped at sight of it. What had been her misery and affliction
compared to this? Her limbs refused her, though she knew not whether she
would have fled or rushed into his arms. How long she stood thus, and he
stood, may not be said, but at length he put down his foot and took the
saw from his knee, his eyes fell upon her, and his lips spoke her name.

"Cynthy!"

Speechless, she ran to him and flung her arms about his neck, and he
dropped the saw and held her tightly--even as he had held that other
Cynthia in t