But if the "Petrel" did not come, another ship did. The rich and childless deacon, who out of his large means had lent young Whittaker enough to finish his education for the ministry, died, and remembering that notes and bonds could not add to his comfort in heaven, he willed to his beneficiary the amount of his debt. On the very morning of Twonnet's fortune-telling Whittaker had gone feverishly to the village post-office in the back part of a dry goods store, to look for the letter that should bring him news of the "Petrel." He readily paid the thirty-seven and a half cents postage on a letter from his brother, and opened it eagerly to read, not the return of the "Petrel," but the death of Deacon Borden and his own release from bondage. I am afraid that his joy at his deliverance from debt exceeded his sorrow at the death of his benefactor. He would now carry out a plan which he had lately conceived of starting a school, for there was no good one in the village. The two hundred dollars a year which this would bring, added to his two hundred from the Home Missionary Society and the one hundred of salary from the church, would be ample for his support and that of a wife.

He was so elated that he could not quite keep his secret. He had gotten into a habit of talking rather freely to Twonnet. Her abundant animal spirits were a relief to his sobriety, and he had observed that her regard for him was kindly and disinterested. So with his letter full of news, he began to walk the upper piazza, waiting for the blithe Twonnet to come out for she had returned home and was now, as she "made up" the beds, singing and chatting to her younger sisters half in French and half in English. In circumstances such as his, one must talk to somebody. Once he paused in his pacing to and fro and looked off at the deep green of the Kentucky hills, overlaid by a thin blue atmospheric enamel; he looked VOL. XV.-34.

Twonnet was long in appearing and Mr. Whittaker resumed his pacing to and fro, glancing every now and then at the hills and the river, and listening in a dreamy way to the delicious melody of the red-bird and the occasional soft cooing of a turtledove whose nest was in an apple-tree just beyond the garden fence. At last Twonnet came out on the piazza or porch, as they call it in Indiana-and Whittaker told her, with what solemnity he could, of the death of the old deacon, and then of his own good fortune.

"I'm glad," said Twonnet, beginning to guess what had kept Whittaker from visiting Roxy.

"Glad the deacon's dead?" queried Whittaker, smiling.

"I do not know your friend and I can't be very sorry for him. But I do know you and I am glad, since he must die, that he was good enough to give you your debt. It shows he was prepared to go, you see, so my pleasure is quite religious and right," and she laughed roguishly. "Besides, you don't seem heart-broken about it, andbut here she checked herself, seeing that she had given pain.

"I am afraid I have been selfish," said Whittaker, all the gladness had gone now,

"but you don't know what a nightmare this debt has been. I don't wonder that debt makes men criminals-it hardens the heart."

"Well, Mr. Whittaker, if he had wanted you to feel sorry when he had gone, he ought to have given you the money while he was alive," said Twonnet, lightly. Then she started away but looked back over her shoulder to say teasingly, "Now, Mr. Whittaker, you'll go to see somebody, I'll bet." Twonnet," he called after her, and when she had stopped he asked: "Is there any reason why I shouldn't go to see somebody?"

"Of course not. Every reason why you should go right off. You are not too late, but you will be if you wait." This last was said with the old bantering tone, and Whittaker looked after her as she disappeared, saying to himself:

"A splendid girl. Pity she is so giddy." After mature reflection lasting fifteen minutes, he decided to call on Roxy Adam's that very afternoon. He had not understood Twonnet's warning, but some apprehension of grave disaster to his new-born hope, and the nervousness of an austere man who has not often found duty and inclination coincident, made him in haste to forestall any misadventure. He ate but little dinner, not even enjoying his favorite dish of dandelion greens cooked in good Swiss fashion. Mr. Lefaure watched anxiously and at last inquired with earnestness :

"Est-ce que vous ne vous portez pas bien, Monsieur ?"

But Whittaker smiled and assured the

host that he was well, but had no appetite. Twonnet, at last, solemnly told her father that Mr. Whittaker had received a letter that very morning informing him of the death of an old friend, and this information tallied so little with the expression on the

minister's face that Twonnet's father was

quite suspicious that the girl was playing one of her little pranks on him. But when he looked again at Whittaker's face it was serious enough.

After dinner he tried to get ready with great deliberation. By severe constraint he compelled himself to move slowly, and to leave the little front gate of palings, painted black atop, in a direction opposite to that which his fect longed to take. "The other way," cried the mischievous voice of Twonnet, from behind a honeysuckle which she affected to be tying up to

its trellis.

"Presently," replied he, finding it so much easier not to keep his secret, and pleased with Twonnet's friendly sympathy. But that word, spoken to her half in tenderness, pierced her like an arrow. A sharp pang of jealousy and I know not what, shot through her heart in that moment; the sunshine vanished from her face. She had accomplished her purpose in sending Mr. Whittaker to Roxy, and now her achievement suddenly became bitter to her. She ran upstairs and closed her door and let down the blind of green slats, then she buried her head in the great feather pillows and cried her eyes red. She felt lonely and

| forsaken of her friends. She was mad with the minister and with Roxy.

But Whittaker walked away in the sunlight full of hope and happiness.

CHAPTER XIII.

A WEATHER-BREEDER

PEEPS into the future are depressing. Twonnet's gypsy-gift did not raise Roxy's spirits. By means of divination she had suddenly found, not exactly that she was in love with Mark, but that she was in a fair way to love him. It was painful, too, to know that all the joy she had had in talking with Bonamy was not as she had thought it, purely religious and disinterested. Her sensitive conscience shuddered at the thought of self-deception, and she had been in this case both deceiver and dupe. She had little belief in Twonnet's gift of prophecy but much in her shrewd insight. Was it true, then, that the great, brilliant and selfwould have been enough to plunge her sacrificing Mark loved her? This thought into doubt and questionings. But Twonnet's evident distrust of her hero vexed and perturbed her. And then to have her other hero suddenly thrown into the opposite scale drove her into a tangle of complex feelings. How did Twonnet know anything about Mr. Whittaker's feeling toward her? Was it likely that he would want to marry a Methodist ?

Alas! just when her life was flowing so smoothly and she seemed to be able to be useful, the whole stream was suddenly pershe was thrown into doubts innumerable. turbed by cross-currents and eddies, and Prayer did not seem to do any good; her thoughts were so distracted that devotion was impossible. This distraction and depression seemed to her the hiding of the Lord's face. She wrote in her diary on that day:

“I am walking in great darkness. I have committed some sin and the Lord has withdrawn from me the light of his countenance. I try to pray, but my thoughts wander. I fear I have set my heart on earthly things. What a sinner I am. Oh Lord! have mercy! Leave me not in my distress. Show me the right way, and lead me in paths of righteousness for thy name's sake."

The coming of Whittaker that afternoon added to her bewilderment. She did her best to receive him with composure and cordiality, but Twonnet's prophecy had so impressed her beforehand with the purpose of his visit that she looked on him from the

first in doubt, indecision and despair. And yet her woman's heart went out toward him as he sat there before her, gentle, manly, unselfish and refined. It was clear to her then that she could love him. But thoughts of Mark Bonamy and his mission intruded. Had Whittaker come a week or two earlier! While the minister talked, Roxy could not control her fingers at her knitting. Her hands trembled and refused to make those motions which long since had become so habitual as to be almost involuntary. There was one relief; Bobo sat alongside of her and the poor fellow grew uneasy as he discovered her agitation. She let fall her knitting and pushed the hair from the boy's inquiring face, lavishing on him the pity she felt for her suitor, speaking caressing words to him, which he caught up and repeated like an echo in the tones of tenderness which she used. Whittaker envied the perpetual child these caresses and the pitying love which Roxy gave him. Roxy was much moved by Whittaker's emotion. Her pitiful heart longed not so much to love him for her own sake as to comfort him for his sake. Some element of compassion must needs have been mingled with the highest love of which she was capable.

The minister came to the love-making rather abruptly. He praised her and his praises were grateful to her, he avowed his love, and love was very sweet to her, but it was when, having exhausted his praises and his declarations, he leaned forward his head on his hand, and said, "Only love me, Roxy, if you can," that she was deeply moved. She ceased her caresses of the boy and looked out of the window in silence, as though she would fain have found something there that might show her a way out of the perplexities into which her life had come. Bobo, in whose mind there was always an echo, caught at the last words, and imitating the very tone of the minister, pleaded:

"Only love me, Roxy, if you can." This was too much for the girl's pent-up emotions, she caught the lad and pressed him in her arms eagerly, saying or sobbing: "Yes, I will love you, Bo, God bless you!" She had no sooner relaxed her hold than the minister, in whose eyes were tears, put his arm about the simple lad and embraced him also, much to the boy's delight. This act, almost involuntary as it was, touched Roxy's very heart. She was ready in that moment to have given herself to the good man.

But again she looked out of the window, straining her eyes in that blind, instinctive, searching stare, to which we are all prone in time of perplexity. There was nothing without but some pea-vines, climbing and blossoming on the brush which supported them, a square bed of lettuce and a hopvine clambering in bewildering luxuriance over the rail fence. The peaceful henmother, troubled by no doubts or scruples, scratched diligently in the soft earth, clucking out her content with a world in which there were plenty of angle-worms and seeming in her placidity to mock at Roxy's perturbation. Why should all these dumb creatures be so full of peace? Roxy had not learned that internal conflicts are the heritage of superiority. It is so easy for small-headed stupidity to take no thought for the morrow.

But all that Roxy, with her staring out of the window, could see was that she could not see anything at all.

"Will you tell me, Miss Adams," asked the minister, presently, "whether I am treading where I ought not-whether you are engaged?"

66

No, I am not." Roxy was a little startled at his addressing her as "Miss Adams." For in a western village the Christian name is quite the common form of speech to a young person.

There was another long silence, during which Roxy again inquired of the idlelooking pea-vines, and the placid hen, and the great, green hop-vine clambering over the fence. Then she summoned courage to speak:

Please, Mr. Whittaker, give me time to think-to think and pray for light. Will you wait-wait a week-or so? I cannot see my way."

"I cannot see my way," put in Bobo, pathetically.

Certainly, Roxy. Good-bye!"

She held out her hand, he pressed it but without looking at her face, put on his hat, and shook hands with little Bobo, whose sweet infantile face looked after him wistfully.

He was gone and Roxy sighed with relief. But she had only postponed the decision.

The minister, who had carried away much hope, met Mr. Adams in the street, and, partly because he felt friendly toward everybody and toward all connected with Roxy in particular, he stopped to talk with him; and he in turn was in one of his most con

trary moods, and took pains to disagree with the preacher about everything.

"It is a beautiful day," said Whittaker at last, as he was saying good-bye, resolved perhaps to say one thing which his friend could not controvert.

"Yes, nice day," growled Adams, "but a weather-breeder."

This contradictoriness in the shoe-maker took all the hopefulness out of Whittaker. The last words seemed ominous. He returned home dejected, and when Twonnet essayed to cheer him and to give him an opportunity for conversation by saying that it was a beautiful day, he startled himself by replying, with a sigh:

"Yes, but a weather-breeder."

It was Mrs. Henrietta Hanks speaking to her faithful Jemima on the day after the events recorded in the previous chapter of this story. Jemima and her mistress were cutting up all manner of old garments and sewing them into carpetrags, while Bonaparte Hanks, whose name is better known to our readers in its foreshortened form as Bobo, was rolling the yellow balls of carpet-rags across the floor after the black ones, and clapping his hands in a silly delight, which was in strange contrast to his growing bulk.

"It seems to me," said Mrs. Hanks, "that Mark and Roxy will make a match of it."

"Umph," said Jemima. She did not say "umph,"-nobody says that; but she gave forth one of those guttural utterances which are not put down in the dictionary. The art of alphabetic writing finds itself quite unequal to the task of grappling with such words, and so we write others which nobody ever uses, such as umph and eh and ugh, as algebraic signs to represent the unknown quantity of an expressive and perhaps unique objurgation. Wherefore, let "umph," which Jemima did not say, equal the intractable, undefinable, not-to-bespelled word which she did use. And that undefinable word was in its turn an algebraic symbol for a whole sentence, a formula for general, contemptuous, and indescribable dissent.

"He goes there a good deal," replied Mrs. Hanks, a little subdued by Jemima's mysterious grunt.

"I thought he'd made a burnt sackerfice of hisself and laid all on the altar, and was agoin' off to missionate among the Texicans," said Jemima, prudently reserving her heavier shot to the last, and bent on teasing her opponent.

"Well, I don't imagine that'll come to anything," said Mrs. Hanks. "Young Christians in their first love, you know, always want to be better than they ought, and I don't think Mark ought to throw away his great opportunities. Think how much good he might do in Congress; and then, you know, a Christian congressman is such an ornament-to-to the church."

"An' to all his wife's relations besides," chuckled the wicked Jemima. "But for my part, I don't 'low he's more'n a twenty'leventh part as good as Roxy. She's jam up all the time, and he's good by spells and in streaks-one of the fitty and jerky kind."

"Jemima, you oughtn't to talk that way." Mrs. Hanks always pitted her anger and her slender authority against Jemima's rude wit. "You don't know but Mark 'll come to be my nephew, and you ought to have more respect for my feelings."

"They haint no immegiate danger of that," answered Jemima, with emphasis. 'He may come to be your nephew to be sure, and the worl' may stop off short all to wunst and come to a eend by Christmas. But neither on 'em's likely enough to make it wuth while layin' awake to think about it."

"How do you know ?"

Well, I went over arter Bobo yesterday evenin',* an' what d'ye think I see?"

Mrs. Hanks did not inquire, so Jemima was obliged to proceed on her own account.

"I see Mr. Whittaker a-comin' out of the house, with his face all in a flash, like as ef he'd been a-talkin' sumpin pertikular, an' he spoke to me kinder shaky and trimblin like. An' when I come in, I see Roxy's face sort a red and white in spots, and her eyes lookin' down and to one sides, and anywheres but straight,-kinder wander'n' roun' onsartain, like's ef she wus afeared you'd look into 'em and see sumpin you hadn't orter."

"Well, I do declare!" Whenever Mrs. Hanks found herself entirely at a loss for

South, is used in its primary sense of the later afternoon, not as in the eastern states, to signify the time just after dark.

Evening," in the Ohio valley and in the

words and ideas she proceeded after this formula to declare. She always declared that she did declare, but never declared what she declared.

"Well, I do declare!" she proceeded after a pause. "Jemimy Dumbleton, if that don't beat the Dutch! for you to go prying into people's houses, and peeping into their eyes and guessing their secrets, and then to run around tattling them all over town to everybody, and-"

But the rest of this homily will never be known, for at this critical moment the lad with the ambitious name, who was engaged in developing his military genius by firing carpet-rag cannon-balls in various directions and watching their rebound, made a shot which closed the squabble between Mrs. Hanks and her help. He bowled a bright red ball-relic of an old flannel shirt-through the middle of a screen which covered the fire-place in the summer. When he heard the crashing of the ball through the paper he set up a shout of triumph, clapping his hands together, but when he saw that his missile did not come back from its hiding-place, he stood looking in stupefied curiosity at the screen, the paper of which had almost closed over the rent. He was quite unable to account for the sudden and total eclipse of his red ball.

Mrs. Hanks saw with terror the screen, which had cost the unskilled hands of herself and Jemima two or three hours of cutting and planning and pasting, destroyed at a blow. Mischief done by responsible hands has this compensation, that one has the great relief of scolding, but one would as well scold the wind as to rebuke so irresponsible an agent as Bobo. Mrs. Hanks seized him by the collar and shook him, then ran to the screen and put her hands behind it, holding the pieces in place as one is prone to do in such a case. It is the vague, instinctive expression of the wish that by some magic the injury might be recalled. Then she looked at her late antagonist, Jemima, for sympathy, and then she looked at the rent and uttered that unspellable interjection made by resting the tongue against the roof of the mouth and suddenly withdrawing it explosively. One writes it "tut-tut-tut," but that is not it

at all.

Bobo fretted a little, as he generally did after being shaken up in this way, but having recovered his red ball, he was on the point of dashing it through the screen again,

when his mother prudently took it away from him, put on his cap, led him to the door and said:

"Go to Roxy."

"Go to Roxy!" cried the little fellow, starting down the path, repeating the words over and over to himself as he went, as though he found it needful to revive instantly his feeble memory of his destination. Having thus comfortably shed her maternal responsibilities, Mrs. Hanks proceeded to shed the carpet-rags also, by arraying herself to go out. This was a very simple matter, even for the wife of one of the principal men in the town, for in those good old days of simplicity nothing more elaborate than a calico dress and sunbonnet was needed to outfit a lady for minor shopping. Mrs. Hanks's sun-bonnet was soon adjusted, and she gave Jemima a farewell look, expressive of her horror of gossiping propensities, and then proceeded to where the tin sign beside the door read, "Miss Moore, Millinery and Mantuamaker," for the purpose of verifying Jemima's report.

Miss Moore was all attention. She showed Mrs. Hanks the latest novelty in, scoop-shovel bonnets which she had just brought from Cincinnati, got out her_box of ribbons and set it on the table, and assented to everything Mrs. Hanks said with her set formula of "very likely, Mrs. Hanks, very likely."

Miss Moore was not at all the conventional old maid. She was one of the mild kind, whose failure to marry came neither from flirting nor from a repellent temper, nor from mere chance, but, if it is needful to account for it at all, from her extreme docility. A woman who says "indeed " and very likely" to everything, is very flavorless. Adams had concluded to marry her now, perhaps, because he liked paradoxes and because Miss Moore with her ready assent would be the sharpest possible contrast to his contradictoriness. Then, too, she was the only person he could think of with whom he could live without quarreling. She never disputed anything he said, no matter how outrageous. He experimented on her one day by proving to her, conclusively, that polygamy was best and according to Scripture, and when he had done and looked to see her angry, she smiled and said, "Very likely-very likely, indeed."

Now that the long-becalmed bark of Miss Moore was about to sail into the