Manning, happy and sad together, cried and smiled in a
breath. But Marion was radiant as a diamond; her gray eyes flashed
light. Not even when saying good-by could she pretend to be anything but
supremely happy, even for a moment. By chance Bro had her last look as
the carriage rolled away; he went over to the mill carrying it with him,
and returned no more that night.

Wilbarger began to wonder after a while when that Rhode Island
capitalist would begin work in his cotton-fields; they are wondering
still. In course of time, and through the roundabout way he had chosen,
Bro received the deeds of sale; he made his will, and left them to
Marion. Once Mrs. Manning asked him about the screw.

"I have heard nothing of it for some time," he replied; and she said no
more, thinking it had also, like the valve, proved a failure. In the
course of the winter the little work-room was dismantled and the
partitions taken down; there is nothing there now but the plain wall of
the mill. The red lights no longer shine across the marsh to Vickery
Island, and there is no one there to see them. The new keeper lives in a
cabin at the bridge, and plays no tricks on the superintendent, who, a
man of spirit still, but not quite so sanguine as to the future of
Wilbarger, still rolls by on his hand-car from northeast to southeast.

Bro has grown old; he is very patient with everybody. Not that he ever
was impatient, but that patience seems now his principal characteristic.
He often asks to hear portions of Marion's letters read aloud, and
always makes gently the final comment: "Yes, yes; she _is_ happy!"

It is whispered around Wilbarger that he "has had a stroke"; Mrs.
Manning herself thinks so.

Well, in a certain sense, perhaps she is right.

KING DAVID.

I met a traveler on the road;
His face was wan, his feet were weary;
Yet he unresting went with such
A strange, still, patient mien--a look
Set forward in the empty air,
As he were reading an unseen book.

RICHARD WATSON GILDER.

The scholars were dismissed. Out they trooped--big boys, little boys,
and full-grown men. Then what antics--what linked lines of scuffling;
what double shuffles, leaps, and somersaults; what rolling laughter,
interspersed with short yelps and guttural cries, as wild and free as
the sounds the mustangs make, gamboling on the plains! For King David's
scholars were black--black as the ace of spades. He did not say that;