et, she brought them all into requisition.

"And I feel it my duty to inquire," said Miss Humdrum, "whether it may
happen that _you_ know anything about the event, Ketury."

"I?" said Keturah, weeping, "I didn't know she was dead even! Dear Miss
Humdrum, you are indeed afflicted."

"But I feel compelled to say," pursued Miss Humdrum, eying this wretched
hypocrite severely, "that my girl Jemimy _did_ hear somebody fire a gun
or a cannon or something out in your garden last night, and she scar't
out of her wits, and my poor cat found cold under the hogshead this
morning, Ketury."

"Miss Humdrum," said Keturah, "I cannot, in justice to myself, answer
such insinuations, further than to say that Amram _never_ allows the gun
to go out of his own room. The cannon we keep in the cellar."

"Oh!" said Miss Humdrum, with horrible suspicion in her eyes. "Well, I
hope you haven't it on your conscience, I'm sure. _Good_ morning."

It had been the ambition of Keturah's life to see a burglar. The second
of the memorable nights referred to crowned this ambition by not only
one burglar, but two. She it was who discovered them, she who frightened
them away, and nobody but she ever saw them. She confesses to a natural
and unconquerable pride in them. It came about on this wise:--

It was one of Keturah's wide-awake nights, and she had been wandering
off into the fields at the foot of the garden, where it was safe and
still. There is, by the way, a peculiar awe in the utter hush of the
earliest morning hours, of which no one can know who has not
familiarized himself with it in all its moods. A solitary walk in a
solitary place, with the great world sleeping about you, and the great
skies throbbing above you, and the long unrest of the panting summer
night, fading into the cool of dews, and pure gray dawns, has in it
something of what Mr. Robertson calls "God's silence."

Once, on one of these lonely rambles, Keturah found away in the fields,
under the shadow of an old stone-wall, a baby's grave. It had no
headstone to tell its story, and the weeds and brambles of many years
had overgrown it. Keturah is not of a romantic disposition, especially
on her midnight tramps, but she sat down by the little nameless thing,
and looked from it to the arch of eternal stars that, summer and winter,
seed-time and harvest, kept steadfast watch over it, and was very still.

It is one of the standing grievances of her life that Amram, while never
ta