e room, and kept the sunshine
all away. The woman who had seen the vision of the old doctor became a
widow the next month, and so much sickness and death took place in the
house that at last no one would live there, and it was shut up by its
owner.

In due course of time the father and mother of Sophonisba and Faithful
were laid in Dorchester burial-ground. Mr. T---- had never been a rich man
by any means, and when he died there was little left for the two girls,
even after the sale of the homestead. They did not, however, consider
themselves poor, but with their fifteen hundred dollars in the bank and
their trade of milliner and dressmaker thought themselves very well to do
in the world. Sophonisba, the elder, was at that time a little under
fifty--an energetic, hard-working woman, with a constitution of wrought
iron and bend leather, and no more under the influence of what are called
"nerves" than if they had been left out of her system entirely. If ever a
woman was born into this world an old maid, it was Sophonisba T----. Her
fine name was the only romantic thing about her. She had had more than one
offer of marriage in her day, but she had no talent for matrimony, and had
turned such a very cold shoulder on her admirers that the swains became
dispirited, and betook themselves to the courtship of more impressible
damsels. There was no hidden romance or tale of unreturned affection in
Miss Sophonisba's experience. The simple fact was, she had never wished to
be married. Miss Faithful was five years her sister's junior. She had
never found room in her heart for a second love since John Clark went down
in the Federalist. She had been a young and pretty girl then, and now she
was a thin, silent, rather nervous little body, depending entirely upon
her sister with a helpless kind of affection that was returned on Miss
Sophonisba's part by a devotion which might almost be called passionate.

"I tell you what it is, Faithful," said Miss Sophonisba one evening, as
they sat over their tea, "if they raise the rent on us here, I won't
stay."

The sisters had lived in the house ever since the death of their mother,
five years before. Their business had prospered, and they were
conveniently situated, but, for all that, Miss Sophonisba had no mind to
pay additional rent.

"No?" said Faithful, inquiringly.

"That I won't! We pay all it's worth now, and more too. It ain't the extra
four shillings," said Miss Sophonisba, rubbing