rld expression of her whole figure. She was very deaf; scarcely
could I make her comprehend that I wanted to see her grand-daughter; at
last she understood, and asked me to sit down till Hetty should come
from school; and before long, a tall, thin figure opened the gate and
came slowly up the path.

I had a good opportunity to observe the constant, dutiful, self-denying
Yankee girl,--girl no longer, now that twenty years of unrewarded
patience had lined her face with unmistakable graving. But I could not
agree with Eben's statement that she was not pretty; she must have been
so in her youth; even now there was beauty in her deep-set and heavily
fringed dark eyes, soft, tender, and serious, and in the noble and
pensive Greek outline of the brow and nose; her upper lip and chin were
too long to agree well with her little classic head, but they gave a
certain just and pure expression to the whole face, and to the large
thin-lipped mouth, flexible yet firm in its lines. It is true, her hair
was neither abundant, nor wanting in gleaming threads of gray; her skin
was freckled, sallow, and devoid of varying tint or freshness; her
figure angular and spare; her hands red with hard work; and her air at
once sad and shy;--still, Hetty Buel was a very lovely woman in my eyes,
though I doubt if Lizzy would have thought so.

I hardly knew how to approach the painful errand I had come on, and with
true masculine awkwardness I cut the matter short by drawing out from my
pocket-book the Panama chain and ring, and placing them in her hands.
Well as I thought I knew the New England character, I was not prepared
for so quiet a reception of this token as she gave it. With a steady
hand she untwisted the wire fastening of the chain, slipped the ring
off, and, bending her head, placed it reverently on the ring-finger of
her left hand;--brief, but potent ceremony; and over without preface or
comment, but over for all time.

Still holding the chain, she offered me a chair, and sat down
herself,--a little paler, a little more grave, than on entering.

"Will you tell me how and where he died, Sir?" said she,--evidently
having long considered the fact in her heart as a fact; probably having
heard Seth Crane's story of the Louisa Miles's loss.

I detailed my patient's tale as briefly and sympathetically as I knew
how. The episode of Wailua caused a little flushing of lip and cheek, a
little twisting of the ring, as if it were not to be worn, af