onized visage. She patted
the sufferer softly on the head, and then went to the stair-door.

"I think he'll go to sleep now," she said, lifting her voice to the
new-comer, and with a backward nod toward the couch. "Come out into the
kitchen while I get breakfast, or into the sitting-room, or somewhere,
so as not to disturb him. He's promised me to lie perfectly quiet, and
try to sleep."

When they had passed together out of the room, she turned. "Soulsby,"
she said with half-playful asperity, "I'm disappointed in you. For a man
who's knocked about as much as you have, I must say you've picked up an
astonishingly small outfit of gumption. That poor creature in there is
no more drunk than I am. He's been drinking--yes, drinking like a
fish; but it wasn't able to make him drunk. He's past being drunk; he's
grief-crazy. It's a case of 'woman.' Some girl has made a fool of him,
and decoyed him up in a balloon, and let him drop. He's been hurt bad,
too."

"We have all been hurt in our day and generation," responded Brother
Soulsby, genially. "Don't you worry; he'll sleep that off too. It takes
longer than drink, and it doesn't begin to be so pleasant, but it can be
slept off. Take my word for it, he'll be a different man by noon."

When noon came, however, Brother Soulsby was on his way to summon one
of the village doctors. Toward nightfall, he went out again to telegraph
for Alice.

CHAPTER XXXII

Spring fell early upon the pleasant southern slopes of the Susquehanna
country. The snow went off as by magic. The trees budded and leaved
before their time. The birds came and set up their chorus in the elms,
while winter seemed still a thing of yesterday.

Alice, clad gravely in black, stood again upon a kitchen-stoop, and
looked across an intervening space of back-yards and fences to where the
tall boughs, fresh in their new verdure, were silhouetted against the
pure blue sky. The prospect recalled to her irresistibly another sunlit
morning, a year ago, when she had stood in the doorway of her own
kitchen, and surveyed a scene not unlike this; it might have been with
the same carolling robins, the same trees, the same azure segment of
the tranquil, speckless dome. Then she was looking out upon surroundings
novel and strange to her, among which she must make herself at home as
best she could. But at least the ground was secure under her feet; at
least she had a home, and a word from her lips could summon her husband