ter all;
but as I told of his sacred care of the trinket for its giver's sake,
and the not unwilling forsaking of that island wife, the restless motion
passed away, and she listened quietly to the end; only once lifting her
left hand to her lips, and resting her head on it for a moment, as
I detailed the circumstances of his death, after supplying what was
wanting in his own story, from the time of his taking passage in Crane's
ship, to their touching at the island, expressly to leave him in the
Hospital, when a violent hemorrhage had disabled him from further
voyaging.

I was about to tell her I had seen him decently buried,--of course
omitting descriptions of the how and where,--when the grandmother, who
had been watching us with the impatient querulousness of age, hobbled
across the room to ask "what that 'are man was a-talkin' about."

Briefly and calmly, in the key long use had suited to her infirmity,
Hetty detailed the chief points of my story.

"Dew tell!" exclaimed the old woman; "Eben Jackson a'n't dead on dry
land, is he? Left means, eh?"

I walked away to the door, biting my lip. Hetty, for once, reddened to
the brow; but replaced her charge in the chair and followed me to the
gate.

"Good day, Sir," said she, offering me her hand,--and then slightly
hesitating,--"Grandmother is very old. I thank you, Sir! I thank you
kindly!"

As she turned and went toward the house, I saw the glitter of the Panama
chain about her thin and sallow throat, and, by the motion of her hands,
that she was retwisting the same wire fastening that Eben Jackson had
manufactured for it.

Five years after, last June, I went to Simsbury with a gay picnic party.
This time Lizzy was with me; indeed, she generally is now.

I detached myself from the rest, after we were fairly arranged for the
day, and wandered away alone to "Miss Buel's."

The house was closed, the path grassy, a sweetbrier bush had blown
across the door, and was gay with blossoms; all was still, dusty,
desolate. I could not be satisfied with this. The meeting-house was
as near as any neighbor's, and the graveyard would ask me no curious
questions; I entered it doubting; but there, "on the leeward side," near
to the grave of "Bethia Jackson, wife of John Eben Jackson," were two
new stones, one dated but a year later than the other, recording the
deaths of "Temperance Buel, aged 96," and "Hester Buel, aged 44."

* * * * *

AMO