ork-barrel, had cherished certain strong and
unrelenting opinions concerning Martha's final destination, which were
not shared by Miss Cummins. Martha, therefore, was not laid with the
elect, but was put to rest in the orchard, under the kindly,
untheological shade of the apple trees; and they scattered their tinted
blossoms over her little white headstone, shed their fragrance about her
quiet grave, and dropped their ruddy fruit in the high grass that
covered it, just as tenderly and respectfully as if they had been
regulation willows. The Reverend Joshua thus succeeded in drying up the
springs of human sympathy in Miss Avilda's heart when most she needed
comfort and gentle teaching; and, distrusting God for the moment, as
well as his inexorable priest, she left her place in the old
meeting-house where she had "worshiped" ever since she had acquired
adhesiveness enough to stick to a pew, and was not seen there again for
many years. The Reverend Joshua had died, as all men must and as most
men should; and a mild-voiced successor reigned in his place; so the
Cummins pew was occupied once more.

Samantha Ann Ripley had had her heart history too,--one of a different
kind. She had "kept company" with David Milliken for a little matter of
twenty years, off and on, and Miss Avilda had expected at various times
to lose her friend and helpmate; but fear of this calamity had at length
been quite put to rest by the fourth and final rupture of the bond, five
years before.

There had always been a family feud between the Ripleys and the
Millikens; and when the young people took it into their heads to fall in
love with each other in spite of precedent or prejudice, they found that
the course of true love ran in anything but a smooth channel. It was, in
fact, a sort of village Montague and Capulet affair; but David and
Samantha were no Romeo and Juliet. The climate and general conditions of
life at Pleasant River were not favorable to the development of such
exotics. The old people interposed barriers between the young ones as
long as they lived; and when they died, Dave Milliken's spirit was
broken, and he began to annoy the valiant Samantha by what she called
his "meechin'" ways. In one of his moments of weakness he took a widowed
sister to live with him, a certain Mrs. Pettigrove, of Edgewood, who
inherited the Milliken objection to Ripleys, and who widened the breach
and brought Samantha to the point of final and decisive ruptur