ior, but could not
shut its ghastly sauciness and treachery from the chambers of my
memory. The habit of faith and affection was strong: I was no longer
concerned for my friend John Cather, but was mightily ashamed of this
failure in duty to the grotesque old hook-and-line man who had without
reserve of sacrifice or strength nourished me to the lusty years of
that night. As I lay in bed, I recall, downcast, self-accusing,
flushed with shame, I watched the low clouds scud across the starlit
sky, and I perceived, while the torn, wind-harried masses rushed
restlessly on below the high, quiet firmament, that I had fallen far
away from the serenity my uncle would teach me to preserve in every
fortune.

"I'll not fail again!" thinks I. "Not I!"

'Twas an experience profitable or unprofitable, as you shall presently
judge.

XVIII

A LEGACY OF LOVE

Moses Shoos, I recall, carried the mail that winter. 'Twas a thankless
task: a matter of thirty miles to Jimmie Tick's Cove and thirty back
again. Miles hard with peril and brutal effort--a way of sleet and
slush, of toilsome paths, of a swirling mist of snow, of stinging,
perverse winds or frosty calm, of lowering days and the haunted dark
o' night--to be accomplished, once a week, afoot and alone, by way of
barren and wilderness and treacherous ice. 'Twas a thankless task,
indeed; but 'twas a task to which the fool of Twist Tickle addressed
himself with peculiar reverence.

"Mother," says he, "always 'lowed that a man ought t' serve his Queen:
an' mother knowed. 'Moses,' says she, afore she died, 'a good man
haves just _got_ t' serve the Queen: for an good men don't,' says she,
'the poor Lady is bound t' come t' grief along o' rascals. Poor,
_poor_ Lady!' says she. 'She've a wonderful lot t' put up with along
o' stupid folk an' rascals. I'm not knowin' how she bears it an'
lives. 'Tis a mean, poor dunderhead, with heart an' brains in his
gullet,' says she, 'that wouldn't serve the Queen. God save the
Queen!' says mother. 'What's a man worth,' says she, 'that on'y
serves hisself?'"

Not much, thinks I!

"An' mother knowed," says Moses, softly. "Ay, Dannie," he declared,
with a proud little grin, "I bet you _mother_ knowed!"

'Twas this exalted ideal of public service, fashioned in the wisdom of
the simple by the amazing mother who bore him, that led the fool, as
by the hand, from a wilderness of snow and night and bewildered
visions, wherein no aspiration of h