mong the massive chords, the profound melancholy, the
blind groping of any Fifth Symphony or piercing Stabat Mater, she
answered it, singing Elijah's hymn of rest; and as she sang, there grew
in her voice a strength, a sweetness, that satisfied the very soul. When
the nine-o'clock bell rang in from the village through the winter
night's crystal clearness, little Jane would lightly nudge her mother
and steal away to bed; and in the ruddy twilight of the felling fire the
two talked softly, talked,--but never of that dark thing lying most
deeply in the heart of either. Perhaps, by-and-by, when the thrilling
wound should be only a scar, if ever that time should come, the one
would be able to speak, the other to hear.

Week after week, now, Ray began to occupy himself about the house more
and more, resuming in succession odd little jobs that during all this
time had remained unfinished as on the day he went. He seemed desirous
of taking up the days exactly as he had left them, of bridging over this
gap and chasm, of ignoring the fatal summer. Something so dreadful had
fallen into his life that it could not assimilate itself with the
tissues of daily existence. The work must be slow that would volatilize
such a black body of horror till it leavened all the being into power
and grace undreamed of before.

But little Jane did not philosophize upon what she was so glad to see;
she hailed every sign of outside interest as a symptom of returning
health, and gave him a thousand occasions. Yesterday there were baskets
to braid, and to-day he must initiate her in the complications of a
dozen difficult sailor's-knots that he knew, and to-morrow there would
be woodchuck-traps to make and show her how to set. For Janet's chief
vexation had overtaken her in the absence of fresh eggs for breakfast,
an absence that would be enduring, unless the small game of the forest
could be lured into her snares and parcelled among the apathetic hens.
Many were the recipes and the consultations on the subject, till at last
Ray wrote out for her, in black-letter, a notice to be pinned up in the
sight of every delinquent: "Twelve eggs, or death!" Whether it were the
frozen rabbit-meat flung among them the day before, or whether it were
the timely warning, there is no one to tell; but the next morning twelve
eggs lay in the various hiding-places, which Mrs. Vennard declared to be
as good eggs as ever were laid, and custards and cookies renewed their
reig