for the commencement, the coming home, and
all the excitement which followed, with three men, one after another,
offering themselves to me, and the drenching that night in the rain, and
then watching by Maude without a wink of sleep, it is enough to make a
behemoth sick, and I am so dizzy and hot--'

She had reached the Tramp House by this time, and, feeling that she
could go no farther without resting herself, she went in, and seating
herself upon the bench, laid her tired, aching head upon the table, and
felt again for a few moments that strange sensation as if the top of her
head were rising up and up until she could not reach it with her hand,
for she tried, and thought of Ann Eliza, with her hair piled so high on
her head.

'The loss of an inch or two might improve me,' she said, though I'd
rather keep my scalp.'

Then she seemed to be drifting away into the realms of sleep, and all
around her were confusion and bewilderment. The window, across which
the woodbine was growing, changed places with the door; the floor rose
up and bowed to her, while the room was full of faces, beckoning to and
smiling upon her. Faces like the one she knew so well, the pale face in
the chair; faces like her own, as she remembered it when a child; faces
like the dark woman dead so long ago and buried in the Tracy lot, and
faces like Arthur's as she had seen him oftenest, when he spoke so
lovingly, and called her little Cherry. Then the scene changed, and the
old Tramp House was full of wondrous music, which came floating in at
every crevice and through the open door and windows, while she listened
intently in her dreams as the grand chorus went on. It as was if Arthur,
from the top of the highest peak beyond the Rocky Mountains, and
Gretchen, from her lonely grave in far-off Germany, were calling to each
other across two continents, their voices meeting and mingling together
in the Tramp House in a jubilistic strain, now wild and weird like the
cry of the dying woman looking out into the stormy night, now soft and
low as the lullaby a fond mother sings to her sleeping child, and now
swelling louder and louder, and higher and higher, until the rafters
rang with the joyous music, and the whole world outside was filled with
the song of gladness.

Wake up, Jerrie! Wake from the dream of rapture to a reality far more
rapturous, for the time is at hand, the hour has come, heralded by the
shadow which falls over the floor as Peterkin's bu