tinsel finery which was left over from the
days when the big hall had rung to the laughter of a hundred children and
as many more young people, even Miss Abigail felt a catch in her throat as
she quavered through "King _Will_yum was King _James's_ son!"

When the games were over and the children sat about soberly, eating their
ice-cream and cake, she looked over her shoulder into the big empty room
and shivered. The children went away and she and Miss Molly put out the
lights in silence. When they came out into the moonlight and looked up and
down the deserted street, lined with darkened houses, the face of the
younger woman was frankly tear-stained. "Oh, Miss Abigail," she said;
"let's give it up!"

Miss Abigail waited an instant, perceptible instant before answering, but,
when she did, her voice was full and harsh with its usual vigor.
"Fiddlesticks! You must ha' been losing your sleep. Go tuck yourself up
and get a good night's rest and you won't talk such kind of talk!"

But she herself sat up late into the night with a pencil and paper,
figuring out sums that had impossible answers.

That March she had a slight stroke of paralysis, and was in an agony of
apprehension lest she should not recover enough to plant the flowers for
the summer's market. By May, flatly against the doctor's orders, she was
dragging herself around the garden on crutches, and she stuck to her post,
smiling and making prearranged rustic speeches all the summer. She earned
enough to pay the school-teacher another winter and to buy the fuel for
the schoolhouse, and again the Martins and the Allens stayed over; though
they announced with a callous indifference to Miss Abigail's ideas that
they were going down to Johnsonville at Christmas to visit their relatives
there, and have the children go to the tree the ex-Greenfordites always
trimmed.

When she heard this Miss Abigail set off to the Allen farm on the lower
slope of Hemlock Mountain. "Wa'n't our tree good enough?" she demanded
hotly.

"The _tree_ was all right," they answered, "but the children were so
mortal lonesome. Little Katie Ann came home crying."

Miss Abigail turned away without answering and hobbled off up the road
toward the mountain. Things were black before her eyes and in her heart as
she went blindly forward where the road led her. She still fought off any
acknowledgment of the bitterness that filled her, but when the road, after
dwindling to a wood trail and then to a