round 'im. At last he
cleared mother out, and just before he looked as black as he did when
he passed the house while ago. You're good to me, an' I'd like you to
stay. 'Fi's you I'd leave 'im alone."

"Jane," said Alida coldly, "I don't wish you ever to speak to me of
such things again," and she hastily left the room.

"Oh, well!" muttered Jane, "I've got eyes in my head. If you're goin'
to be foolish, like mother, and keep a-goin' for 'im, it's your
lookout. I kin get along with him and he with me, and I'M goin' to
stay."

Holcroft strode rapidly up the lane to the deep solitude at the edge of
his woodland. Beneath him lay the farm and the home that he had
married to keep, yet now, without a second's hesitation, he would part
with all to call his wife WIFE. How little the name now satisfied him,
without the sweet realities of which the word is significant! The term
and relation had become a mocking mirage. He almost cursed himself
that he had exulted over his increasing bank account and general
prosperity, and had complacently assured himself that she was doing
just what he had asked, without any sentimental nonsense. "How could I
expect it to turn out otherwise?" he thought. "From the first I made
her think I hadn't a soul for anything but crops and money. Now that
she's getting over her trouble and away from it, she's more able to see
just what I am, or at least what she naturally thinks I am. But she
doesn't understand me--I scarcely understand myself. I long to be a
different man in every way, and not to work and live like an ox. Here
are some of my crops almost ready to gather and they never were better,
yet I've no heart for the work. Seems to me it'll wear me out if I
have to carry this load of trouble all the time. I thought my old
burdens hard to bear; I thought I was lonely before, but it was nothing
compared with living near one you love, but from whom you are cut off
by something you can't see, yet must feel to the bottom of your heart."

His distraught eyes rested on the church spire, fading in the twilight,
and the little adjoining graveyard. "Oh, Bessie," he groaned, "why did
you die? I was good enough for YOU. Oh! That all had gone on as it
was and I had never known--"

He stopped, shook his head, and was silent. At last he signed, "I DID
love Bessie. I love and respect her memory as much as ever. But
somehow I never felt as I do now. All was quiet and matter-of-fact in
those d