ore _this_ window-picture his heart sunk under the heaviest and
cruelest of his exasperations. Other bafflements tormented him; here
alone stood the visible, beautiful emblem of absolute discomfiture. For
here was the silent, lifted hand which forbade him pursue his
defrauders. Follow their man[oe]uvres as he might, always somewhere
short of the end of their windings he found this man's fortune and
reputation lying square across the way like a smooth, new fortification
under a neutral flag. Seven times he had halted before them disarmed and
dumb, and turned away with a chagrin that burnt his brain and gnawed his
very bones.

There came a footstep, a rap at the door, and Parson Tombs entered,
radiant with tidings. "John!" he began, but his countenance and voice
fell to an anxious tenderness; "why, Brother March, I--I didn't
suspicion you was this po'ly, seh. Why, John, you hadn't ought to try to
sit up until yo' betteh!"

"It rests me to get out of bed a little while off and on. How are you,
these days, sir? How's Mrs. Tombs?"

"Oh, we keep a-goin', thank the Lawd. Brother March, I've got pow'ful
good news."

"Is it something about my mother? She was here about an hour ago."

"Yass, it is! The minute she got back to ow house--and O, John, it jest
seems to me like her livin' with us ever since Widewood was divided up
has been a plumb provi_dence_!--I says, s'I, 'Wha'd John say?' and when
she said she hadn't so much as told you, 'cause you wa'n't well enough,
we both of us, Mother Tombs and me, we says, s'I, 'Why, the sicker he is
the mo' it'll help him! Besides, he's sho' to hear it; the ve'y wind'll
carry it; which he oughtn't never to find it out in that hilta-skilta
wa-ay! Sister March, s'I, 'let me go tell him!' And s'she, jestingly,
'Go--if you think it's safe.' So here I am!" The old man laughed
timorously.

"Well?" John kept his hands in his lap, where each was trying to wrench
the fingers off the other. "What is it?"

"Why, John, the Lawd has provided! For one thing and even that the
smallest, Sister March's Widewood lands air as good as hers again!"

"What has happened?" cried the pale youth.

"O, John, the best that ever could! What Mother Tombs and I and the
Sextons and the Coffins and the Graveses and sco'es o' lovin' friends
and relations have been a hopin' faw all this year an' last! Sister
March has engaged her hand to Brother Garnet!"

"I think I'll lie down," said John, beginning to rise. The