ng complimented the minister upon the sagacity
of his discourse, again assisted by Caleb, she mounted to the rear seat
of the surrey and rolled back up the hill.

That was as much as the townspeople ever saw of "Cal Hunter's maiden
sister" unless there happened to be a prolonged siege of sickness in
the village or a worse accident than usual. Then she came and camped
on the scene until the crisis was over, soft-voiced, soft-fingered and
serenely sure of herself. Sarah had never married, and even though she
had in the long interval which, year by year, had brought to Caleb a
more placid rotundity grown slender and slenderer still, and
flat-chested and sharp-angled in face and figure, Caleb knew that
underneath it all there had been no shrinkage in her soul--knew that
there were no bleak expanses in her heart, or edges to her pity.

They often joked each other about their state of single blessedness,
did Caleb and his sister. Often, hard upon his easy boast of
satisfaction with things as they were, she would quote the fable of the
fox and the high-hanging grapes, only to be taunted a moment later with
her own celibacy. But the taunt and the fable had long been stingless.
For Sarah Hunter knew that one end of Caleb's heavy gold watch chain
still carried a bit of a gold coin, worn smooth and thin from years of
handling; she knew that the single word across its back, even though it
had long ago been effaced so far as other eyes were concerned, was
still there for him to see. And Caleb, rummaging one day for some lost
article or other, in a pigeonhole in Sarah's desk in which he had no
license to look, had come across a picture of a tall and black-haired
lad, brave in white trousers and an amazing waistcoat. Caleb
remembered having been told that he had died for another with that same
smile which the picture had preserved--the tall and jaunty youngster.
And so their comprehension was mutual. They understood, did Caleb and
his sister.

But sure as he was of Sarah's fundamental kindness, Caleb experienced a
twinge of guilty uncertainty that August afternoon as he closed the
iron gate behind the grotesque little figure which had already started
across his lawn. For the moment he had forgotten that the sun was low
in the west; he had overlooked the fact that it was customary for the
Hunter establishment to sup early during the warm summer months. But
when he turned to find Sarah watching, stiff and uncompromising, from