on the fire. "Tell
me more about Aunt Jane," Ruth suggested. "I'm getting to be somebody's
relative, instead of an orphan, stranded on the shore of the world."

"She's hard to analyse," began the older woman. "I have never been
able to reconcile her firmness with her softness. She's as hard as New
England granite, but I think she wears it like a mask. Sometimes, one
sees through. She scolds me very often, about anything that occurs to
her, but I never pay any attention to it. She says I shouldn't live here
all alone, and that I deserve to have something dreadful happen to me,
but she had all the trees cut down that stood on the hill between
her window and mine, and had a key made to my lower door, and made
me promise that if I was ill at any time, I would put a signal in my
window--a red shawl in the daytime and a light at night. I hadn't any
red shawl and she gave me hers.

"One night--I shall never forget it--I had a terrible attack of
neuralgia, during the worst storm I have ever known. I didn't even
know that I put the light in the window--I was so beside myself with
pain--but she came, at two o'clock in the morning, and stayed with me
until I was all right again. She was so gentle and so tender--I shall
always love her for that."

The sweet voice vibrated with feeling, and Ruth's thoughts flew to
the light in the attic window, but, no--it could not be seen from Miss
Ainslie's. "What does Aunt Jane look like?" she asked, after a pause.

"I haven't a picture, except one that was taken a long time ago, but
I'll get that." She went upstairs and returned, presently, putting an
old-fashioned ambrotype into Ruth's hand.

The velvet-lined case enshrined Aunt Jane in the bloom of her youth. It
was a young woman of twenty or twenty-five, seated in a straight-backed
chair, with her hands encased in black lace mitts and folded in the lap
of her striped silk gown. The forehead was high, protruding slightly,
the eyes rather small, and very dark, the nose straight, and the
little chin exceedingly firm and determined. There was an expression of
maidenly wistfulness somewhere, which Ruth could not definitely locate,
but there was no hint of it in the chin.

"Poor little Aunt Jane," said Ruth. "Life never would be easy for her."

"No," returned Miss Ainslie, "but she would not let anyone know."

Ruth strolled over to the window, thinking that she must be going,
and Miss Ainslie still held the picture in her hand. "She had a