tter, but it's of no use. Aunt Roxy, I feel my life
going,--going just as steadily and as quietly every day as the sand goes
out of your hour-glass. I want to live,--oh, I never wanted to live so
much, and I can't,--oh, I know I can't. Can I now,--do you think I can?"

Mara looked imploringly at Miss Roxy. The hard-visaged woman sat down on
the wash-bench, and, covering her worn, stony visage with her checked
apron, sobbed aloud.

Mara was confounded. This implacably withered, sensible, dry woman,
beneficently impassive in sickness and sorrow, weeping!--it was awful,
as if one of the Fates had laid down her fatal distaff to weep.

Mara sprung up impulsively and threw her arms round her neck.

"Now don't, Aunt Roxy, don't. I didn't think you would feel bad, or I
wouldn't have told you; but oh, you don't know how hard it is to keep
such a secret all to one's self. I have to make believe all the time
that I am feeling well and getting better. I really say what isn't true
every day, because, poor grandmamma, how could I bear to see her
distress? and grandpapa,--oh, I wish people didn't love me so! Why
cannot they let me go? And oh, Aunt Roxy, I had a letter only yesterday,
and he is so sure we shall be married this fall,--and I know it cannot
be." Mara's voice gave way in sobs, and the two wept together,--the old
grim, gray woman holding the soft golden head against her breast with a
convulsive grasp. "Oh, Aunt Roxy, do you love me, too?" said Mara. "I
didn't know you did."

"Love ye, child?" said Miss Roxy; "yes, I love ye like my life. I ain't
one that makes talk about things, but I do; you come into my arms fust
of anybody's in this world,--and except poor little Hitty, I never loved
nobody as I have you."

"Ah! that was your sister, whose grave I have seen," said Mara, speaking
in a soothing, caressing tone, and putting her little thin hand against
the grim, wasted cheek, which was now moist with tears.

"Jes' so, child, she died when she was a year younger than you be; she
was not lost, for God took her. Poor Hitty! her life jest dried up like
a brook in August,--jest so. Well, she was hopefully pious, and it was
better for her."

"Did she go like me, Aunt Roxy?" said Mara.

"Well, yes, dear; she did begin jest so, and I gave her everything I
could think of; and we had doctors for her far and near; but _'twasn't
to be_,--that's all we could say; she was called, and her time was
come."

"Well, now, Aunt Roxy