the little black silk apron,--and the cards laid up on a
shelf! O, to go out of life,--anywhere, anyhow, out of life! No, the
Sixth Commandment had nothing to do with ending one's self!

An unearthly, echoing shriek broke through the noise of the
storm,--nothing is more unearthly than a locomotive in a storm. Sharley
stood up,--sat down again. A red glare struck the white mist, broadened,
brightened, grew.

Sharley laid her head down with her small neck upon the rail, and--I am
compelled to say that she took it up again faster than she laid it down.
Took it up, writhed off the track, tumbled down the banking, hid her
face in a drift, and crouched there with the cold drops on her face till
the hideous, tempting thing shot by.

"I guess con-sumption would be--a--little better!" she decided,
crawling to her feet.

But the poor little feet could scarcely carry her. She struggled to the
street, caught at the fences for a while, then dropped.

Somebody stumbled over her. It was Cousin Sue--Halcombe Dike's Cousin
Sue.

"Deary me!" she said; and being five feet seven, with strong Yankee arms
of her own, she took Sharley up in them, and carried her to the house as
if she had been a baby.

Sharley did not commit the atrocity of fainting, but found herself
thoroughly chilled and weak. Cousin Sue bustled about with brandy and
blankets, and Sharley, watching her through her half-closed eyes,
speculated a little. Had _she_ anybody's wedding-cards laid up on a
shelf? She had the little black apron at any rate. Poor Cousin Sue!
Should she be like that? "Poor Cousin Charlotte!" people would say.

Cousin Sue had gone to see about supper when Sharley opened her eyes and
sat strongly up. A gentle-faced woman sat between her and the light, in
a chair cushioned upon one side for a useless arm. Halcombe had made
that chair. Mrs. Dike had been a busy, cheery woman, and Sharley had
always felt sorry for her since the sudden day when paralysis crippled
her good right hand; three years ago that was now; but she was not one
of those people to whom it comes natural to say that one is sorry for
them, and she was Halcombe's mother, and so Sharley had never said it.
It struck her freshly now that this woman had seen much ill-fortune in
her widowed years, and that she had kept a certain brave, contented look
in her eyes through it all.

It struck her only as a passing thought, which might never have come
back had not Mrs. Dike pushed her cha