ant.

But another and even greater surprise greeted him as he toiled up the
rocky slope towards his farmhouse. The windows of the sitting-room,
which were usually blank and black by night, were glittering with
unfamiliar light. Like most farmers, he seldom used the room except for
formal company, his wife usually avoiding it, and even he himself now
preferred the dining-room or the kitchen. His first suggestion that his
wife had visitors gave him a sense of pleasure on her account, mingled,
however, with a slight uneasiness of his own which he could not account
for. More than that, as he approached nearer he could hear the swell of
the organ above the roar of the swaying pines, and the cadences were
not of a devotional character. He hesitated for a moment, as he had
hesitated at the fire in the woods; yet it was surely his own house! He
hurried to the door, opened it; not only the light of the sitting-room
streamed into the hall, but the ruddier glow of an actual fire in the
disused grate! The familiar dark furniture had been rearranged to catch
some of the glow and relieve its sombreness. And his wife, rising from
the music-stool, was the room's only occupant!

Mrs. Rylands gazed anxiously and timidly at her husband's astonished
face, as he threw off his waterproof and laid down his carpet-bag. Her
own face was a little flurried with excitement, and his, half hidden in
his tawny beard, and, possibly owing to his self-introspective nature,
never spontaneously sympathetic, still expressed only wonder! Mrs.
Rylands was a little frightened. It is sometimes dangerous to meddle
with a man's habits, even when he has grown weary of them.

"I thought," she began hesitatingly, "that it would be more cheerful for
you in here, this stormy evening. I thought you might like to put your
wet things to dry in the kitchen, and we could sit here together, after
supper, alone."

I am afraid that Mrs. Rylands did not offer all her thoughts. Ever
since Mr. Hamlin's departure she had been uneasy and excited, sometimes
falling into fits of dejection, and again lighting up into hysterical
levity; at other times carefully examining her wardrobe, and then with a
sudden impulse rushing downstairs again to give orders for her husband's
supper, and to make the extraordinary changes in the sitting-room
already noted. Only a few moments before he arrived, she had covertly
brought down a piece of music, and put aside the hymn-books, and taken,
wit