roceedings, could "holler" unmolested where he
presided.

"Mr. Sheriff," he said, solemnly, "remove that child from the presence
of the court."

And the said Elnathan Daniel Kittredge went out gleefully kicking in the
arms of the law.

The hundred or so grinning faces in the courtroom relapsed quickly into
gravity and excited interest. The rows of jeans-clad countrymen seated
upon the long benches on either side of the bar leaned forward with
intent attitudes. For this was a rich feast of local gossip, such as
had not been so bountifully spread within their recollection. All the
ancient Quimbey and Kittredge feuds contrived to be detailed anew in
offering to the judge reasons why father or mother was the more fit
custodian of the child in litigation.

As Absalom sat listening to all this, his eyes were suddenly arrested
by his wife's face--half draped it was, half shadowed by her sun-bonnet,
its fine and delicate profile distinctly outlined against the
crystalline and frosted pane of the window near which she sat. The snow
without threw a white reflection upon it; its rich coloring in contrast
was the more intense; it was very pensive, with the heavy lids drooping
over the lustrous eyes, and with a pathetic appeal in its expression.

And suddenly his thoughts wandered far afield. He wondered that it had
come to this; that she could have misunderstood him so; that he had
thought her hard and perverse and unforgiving. His heart was all at once
melting within him; somehow he was reminded how slight a thing she was,
and how strong was the power that nerved her slender hand to drag his
heavy weight, in his dead and helpless unconsciousness, down to the bars
and into the safety of the sheltering laurel that night, when he lay
wounded and bleeding under the lighted window of the cabin in the Cove.
A deep tenderness, an irresistible yearning had come upon him; he was
about to rise, he was about to speak he knew not what, when suddenly
her face was irradiated as one who sees a blessed vision; a happy light
sprang into her eyes; her lips curved with a smile; the quick tears
dropped one by one on her hands, nervously clasping and unclasping
each other. He was bewildered for a moment. Then he heard Peter gruffly
growling a half-whispered curse, and the voice of the judge, in the
exercise of his discretion, methodically droning out his reasons for
leaving so young a child in the custody of its mother, disregarding the
paramoun