ent; from the tiresomeness of being amused, and
the troublesomeness of seeming to be amused without being; from an
ecstasy of suffering and an agony of transport; in short, a hoped-for
refuge from herself and Jerome.

"Hurry up, Mell! Hurry up! He's mos' gone!"

"What, mother! You don't mean--?"

"Yes, I does, Mell. He was tuck wuss in the night. He won't know ye,
I'm 'fraid."

But he did, and opening his eyes he smiled faintly, as she hung over
his ugly face--uglier now, after the ravages of disease, than ever
before; dried up by scorching fevers to a semblance of those
parched-up things we see in archaeological museums; deeply lined and
seamed and furrowed, as if old Time had never had any other occupation
since he was a boy but to make marks upon it; uglier than ever, but
with an expression upon it which had never been there before--that
solemn dignity which Death gives to the homeliest features.

"Father! father!" sobbed Mell, "don't die! Don't leave your little
Mell! Don't leave me now, when I've just begun to love you as I
ought!"

Ha, Mell! Just begun! He has reached a good old age, and you are a
woman grown, and you have just begun to love your father! It is too
late, Mell. He does not need your love now. He is trying to tell you
that, or something else. Put your ear a little closer.

"What did you say, father! Try to tell me again."

And he did; she heard every word:

"Good-bye, little Mell! I ain't gwine ter morteefy ye no mo'!"

CHAPTER VI.

A DEAL IN FUTURES.

"Why do you fret so much about it?" asked Rube, sitting beside his
promised wife about a week after the old man was laid to rest. "You
loved your father, of course, but--"

"There's the point!" exclaimed Mell. "I did not love him--not as a
child ought to love a parent. What did it matter that his looks
were common and his speech rude? His thoughts were true, his
motives good, his actions honest, and now I mourn the blindness which
made me value him, not for what he was, but what he looked to be. In
self-forgetfulness and sacrificing devotion to me he was sublime. He
went in rags that I might dress above my station; he ate coarse food
that I might be served with dainties; he worked as a slave that I
might hold my hands in idleness; and how did I requite him? I was
ashamed of him; I held him in contempt. Oh, oh! My, my!"

"Come, now," remonstrated Rube, trying to stem the torrent of this
lachrymatory deluge, and wondering what had be