er of life he had led. He knew him to be selfish from
ignorance, and because he had early formed the habits which impose
self-indulgence. Something in the young man's bearing won his heart--a
certain impetuous simplicity and frankness which made him long to be
of service to a nature unlike his own. Osgood found Peter genial,
shrewd, and sad. Such a man he had never met. It seemed to him that
Peter could set him straight in his own estimation; there was no
nonsense about the old man, and yet he could see deep feeling in his
dark, cavernous eyes. The feeling which had oppressed him passed
away, and another took its place which contained restoration, and
faith in the future. He got into Peter's way by attempting to help
fodder the cattle and "slick up" the barn. When the work was done, and
while Peter fastened the barn-doors with an ox-bow, Osgood looked
about him. It was a March afternoon; no wind blew, and no sun shone;
but the gray round of the sky, which neither woods nor hills hid from
his sight, rolled over him in soft commotion. The reddish, barren
fields stretched in their flatness beyond his vision, and the narrow
roads of yellow sand ran to nowhere. The world of God, he thought, he
saw for the first time; and, away from the world of men, felt himself
a _man_.

He looked so kindly upon Maria when he entered the house that she
delayed the stream of the tea-kettle which she held over the teapot to
admire him. The supper was the dinner--cold, with an addition of warm
biscuits; and again Osgood ate himself into Peter's good graces.

The evening was passed in silence. Peter smoked, Maria mended, and
Osgood reflected. A violent storm arose in the night, which lasted
three days. They were improved by Maria and Peter in overhauling
garden-seeds in the garret, and in setting up a leach-tub in the
wood-house. Osgood assisted. When he was alone with Maria she talked
to him of the boy who was lost at sea, and of the girl who died in
childhood; with the hungry eyes of a bereaved mother she looked upon
him, and his heart was touched with a new tenderness. When he was
alone with Peter the old man sounded the depths of the young man's
soul with wise, pathetic, quaint speech; he went over the ground of
his own life, which had been passed on the spot where he now was, with
the exception of several mackerel voyages, and one in a merchant
vessel to some of the southern ports of Europe. But when together
Peter and Maria never talked