e bridge well down toward the end of her
nose. A not at all romantic figure she made, standing beside the
sputtering gas jet, her spectacles balanced on her nose, her thin neck
and forearms exposed, and her old face studying the lid of the pill box
held in her toil- and age-worn hands. The box dropped from her fingers
and rolled along the floor. He saw an awful look slowly creep over her
features as the terrible thought crept over her mind. As she began to
turn her face toward him, with a motion of the head like that of a
machine on unoiled bearings, he closed his eyes; but he felt her
looking at him.

"Dr. Schulze!" she said, an almost soundless breathing of the name that
always meant the last resort in mortal illness.

He was trying to think of lies to tell her, but he could think of
nothing. The sense of light upon his eyelids ceased. He presently felt
her slowly getting into bed. A pall-like silence; then upon his cheek, in
long discontinued caress, a hand whose touch was as light and soft as the
fall of a rose leaf--the hand of love that toil and age cannot make
harsh, and her fingers were wet with her tears. Thus they lay in the
darkness and silence, facing together the tragedy of the eternal
separation.

"What did he say, dearest?" she asked. She had not used that word to him
since the first baby came and they began to call each other "father" and
"mother." All these years the children had been between them, and each
had held the other important chiefly as related to them. Now it was as
in their youth--just he and she, so close that only death could come
between them.

"It's a long way off," said Hiram. He would not set ringing in her ears
that knell which was clanging to him its solemn, incessant, menacing "Put
your house in order!"

"Tell me what he said," she urged gently.

"He couldn't make out exactly. The medicine'll patch me up."

She did not insist--why fret him to confess what she knew the instant
she read "Schulze" on the box? After an hour she heard him breathing as
only a sleeper can breathe; but she watched on until morning. When they
were dressing, each looked at the other furtively from time to time, a
great tenderness in his eyes, and in hers the anguish of a dread that
might not be spoken.

On the day after Mrs. Whitney's arrival for the summer, she descended in
state from the hills to call upon the Rangers.

When the front bell rang Mrs. Ranger was in the kitchen--and was dressed
for