ing softer
with age," rejoined Molly, still puzzled.

"Don't worry, honey, she's a good woman at bottom, but mortal slow of
larnin', and thar's a lot of Sarah in that boy of hers."

"I suppose there is, grandfather, for all their fierce quarrelling. They
have the kind of love that will die for you and yet will not so much as
suffer you to live. That's the way Mrs. Revercomb loves, and it's the
way Abel is loving me now."

"Let him larn, pretty, let him larn. He'll be worth twice as much at
fifty as he is to-day, an' so will you for that matter. They're fools
that say love is for the young, Molly, don't you believe 'em."

Sarah, meanwhile, passed slowly down the flagged walk under the gnarled
old apple trees in the orchard. A few heavy-winged insects, awaking from
the frost of the night, droned over the piles of crushed winesaps, and
she heard the sound as though it came to her across a distance of
forty years. They were not easy years; she was worn by their hardness,
crippled by their poverty, embittered by their sorrows. "I've had a hard
life," she thought. "I've had a hard life, an' it warn't fair." For the
first time it occurred to her that the Providence she had served had
not used her honourably in return. "Even Abner al'ays thought that Mary
Hilliard was the prettiest," she added, after a minute.

As she crossed the lawn at Jordan's Journey, Uncle Abednego, the butler,
appeared at the back door, and detained her with an excited wave of the
hand.

"Lawd A'mighty, dar's bad times yer, Miss Sary!" he cried, "Miss Angela
she's been mos' dead fur goin' on two hours, en we all's done sont
Cephus on de bay horse arter Marse Jonathan!"

CHAPTER XV

SHOWS THE TYRANNY OF WEAKNESS

Three days later the bay horse returned at a gallop with Jonathan Gay
in the saddle. At the head of the steps Kesiah was standing, and she
answered the young man's anxious questions with a manner which she tried
to make as sympathetic as the occasion required. This effort to adjust
her features into harmony with her feelings had brought her brows
together in a forbidding scowl and exaggerated the harsh lines between
mouth and chin.

"Am I in time?" he asked in a trembling voice, and his hand reached out
to her for support.

"The immediate danger is over, Jonathan," she answered, while she led
him into the library and closed the door softly behind them. "For hours
we despaired of her recovery, but the doctors say now that if t