without a word, and by and by he returned her a little pressure, and then, steadying himself up, he said: "It ain't no use to think on't, Rose, - it's all over now, and they've met beyond the seas o' time, my poor father and mother, for they both crossed long ago, met, and knowed each other, I hope, but the one never come to himself here, nor recognized the other. My mother took straight to her bed; and when she wore the white shawl agin, and had it drawed across her bosom, it was for that journey from which none on us come back."

"Dear John," says Rose, very ly, all the coquette gone, only the woman left. And presently he was strong enough to go on.

as he handed her ashore, "would you believe I was so stupid as not to see that the name o' your wessel was the same as my own? I read it the Rose Rolling, to be sure!"

But John maintained that she was not stupid a single bit nor mite, but, on the contrary, smart altogether beyond the common. "To come so nigh the truth," says he, "and yet not get hold on 't, arter all, is a leetle the slickest thing yet!"

"It was a good many year,” he said, "not till I was a'most man, before I came to understand rightly what it was that sot my father crazy. The captain had been agin him all along on account of his too much sperit, and that capterin' o' the whale finished up the business, and pinted his fate. It wa' n't long arter this till Captain Griscom found occasion to treat him very hardly, which bein' resented only by a look, he ordered him down below to be flogged! This, Rose, was what broke the spirit on him; he was never himself arterwards, never knowed nothin' at all clear, exceptin' about the takin' o' that whale; and that he told over and over a hundred times, arter that fust time, just as I've told it to you, but all before it and all behind it was shadders, till the great shadder of all came over him.

"When I come to hear on 't, I said I hoped my father would meet that 'ere captain som'er's on the seas of eternity, and flog him within an inch of his life; and I ha'n't repented the sayin' on't yet."

The tide had come up while John Chidlaw was telling his story, and his little boat slid off the bar directly, when, taking up the oars, he soon brought her to land.

"Bless your dear heart, John!" says Rose, pointing back to the boat's name,

ness,

-

"That was luck," says he, "that no words can shadder forth!" And then he said, "I ought n't to call it luck, my dear; it was just an intervention of Divine Providence!" Then he corrected himself. "An interwention o' Diwine Providence," says he," that 's what it was!" And he hugged the very bandboxes till he fairly stove them in.

About a month after this blessed luck, the milliner's shop was closed one day at an unusually early hour, and the white-muslin curtains at the parlor windows above might have been noticed to flutter and sway, as with some gay excitement indoors. And so indeed there was. John had taken his Rose for good and all, and the little parlor was full of glad hearts and merry feet. All the milliner's apprentices and sewing-girls of the neighborhood were there, bright as so many butterflies, laughing, and nodding, and whispering one another, and dropping their eyes before the young sailors, and teamsters,

I

Where is the poker, Johnny? Can't you push back that for'ard log a little ? Dear, dear! Well, it does n't make much difference, does it? Something always seems to ail your Massachusetts fires; your hickory is green, and your maple is gnarly, and the worms eat out your oak like a sponge. have n't seen anything like what I call a fire, - not since Mary Ann was married, and I came here to stay. "As long as you live, father," she said; and in that very letter she told me I should always have an open fire, and how she would n't let Jacob put in the air-tight in the sitting-room, but had the fireplace kept on purpose. Mary Ann was a good girl always, if I remember straight, and I'm sure I don't complain. Isn't that a pine-knot at the bottom of the basket? There! that 's better.

Let me see; I began to tell you something, did n't I? O yes; about that winter of '41. I remember now. I declare, I can't get over it, to think you never heard about it, and you twenty-four year old come Christmas. You don't know much more, either, about Maine folks and Maine fashions than you do about China, though it's small wonder, for the matter of that, you were such a little shaver when Uncle Jed took you. There were a great many of us, it seems to me, that year, I'most forget how many; we buried the twins next summer, did n't we? then there was Mary Ann, and little Nancy, and well, coffee was dearer than ever I'd seen it, I know, about that time, and butter selling for nothing; we just threw our milk away, and there was n't any market for eggs; besides doctor's bills and Isaac to be sent to school; so it seemed to be the best thing, though your mother took on pretty badly about it at first. Jede

GOTH.

diah has been good to you, I'm sure, and brought you up religious, — though you've cost him a sight, spending three hundred and fifty dollars a year at Amherst College.

But, as I was going to say, when I started to talk about '41,- to tell the truth, Johnny, I'm always a long while coming to it, I believe. I'm getting to be an old man, a little of a coward, maybe, and sometimes, when I sit alone here nights, and think it over, it's just like the toothache, Johnny. As I was saying, if she had cut that wick straight, I do believe it would n't have happened, though it is n't that I mean to lay the blame on her

now.

I'd been out at work all day about the place, slicking things up for tomorrow; there was a gap in the barn-yard fence to mend, I left that till the last thing, I remember, — I remember everything, some way or other, that happened that day, — and there was a new roof to put on the pig-pen, and the grape-vine needed an extra layer of straw, and the latch was loose on the south barn door; then I had to go round and take a last look at the sheep, and toss down an extra forkful for the cows, and go into the stall to have a talk with Ben, and unbutton the coop door to see if the hens looked warm, - just to tuck 'em up, as you might say. I always felt sort of homesick- though I would n't have owned up to it, not even to Nancy-saying good by to the creeturs the night before I went in. There, now! it beats all, to think you don't know what I'm talking about, and you a lumberman's son. "Going in" is going up into the woods, you know, to cut and haul for the winter, — up, sometimes, a hundred miles deep,—in in the fall and out in the spring; whole gangs of us shut up there sometimes for six months, then down with the freshets

So when I'd said. good by to the creeturs, I remember just as plain how Ben put his great neck on my shoulder and whinnied like a baby, that horse knew when the season came round and I was going in, just as well as I did, I tinkered up the barn-yard fence, and locked the doors, and went in to supper.

-

I gave my finger a knock with the hammer, which may have had something to do with it, for a man does n't feel very good-natured when he's been green enough to do a thing like that, and he doesn't like to say it aches either. But if there is anything I can't bear it is lamp-smoke; it always did put me out, and I expect it always will. Nancy knew what a fuss I made about it, and she was always very careful not to hector me with it. I ought to have remembered that, but I did n't. She had lighted the company lamp on purpose, too, because it was my last night. I liked it better than the tallow candle.

So I came in, stamping off the snow, and they were all in there about the fire, the twins, and Mary Ann, and the rest; baby was sick, and Nancy was walking back and forth with him, with little Nancy pulling at her gown. You were the baby then, I believe, Johnny; but there always was a baby, and I don't rightly remember. The room was so black with smoke, that they all looked as if they were swimming round and round in it. I guess coming in from the cold, and the pain in my finger and all, it made me a bit sick. At any rate, I threw open the window and blew out the light, as mad as a hornet.

"Nancy," said I, "this room would strangle a dog, and you might have known it, if you'd had two eyes to see what you were about. There, now!

I've tipped the lamp over, and you just get a cloth and wipe up the oil."

"Dear me !" said she, lighting a candle, and she spoke up very soft, too. "Please, Aaron, don't let the cold in on baby. I'm sorry it was smoking, but I never knew a thing about it; he's been fretting and taking on so the last hour, I did n't notice anyway."

"That's just what you ought to have done," says I, madder than ever. "You know how I hate the stuff, and you ought to have cared more about me than to choke me up with it this way the last night before going in." .

Nancy was a patient, gentle-spoken sort of woman, and would bear a good Ideal from a fellow; but she used to fire up sometimes, and that was more than she could stand. "You don't deserve to be cared about, for speaking like that!" says she, with her cheeks as red as peat-coals.

That was right before the children. Mary Ann's eyes were as big as saucers, and little Nancy was crying at the top of her lungs, with the baby tuning in, so we knew it was time to stop. But stopping was n't ending; and folks can look things that they don't say.

We sat down to supper as glum as pump-handles; there were some fritters- I never knew anybody beat your mother at fritters-smoking hot off the stove, and some maple molasses in one of the best chiny teacups; I knew well enough it was just on purpose for my last night, but I never had a word to say, and Nancy crumbed up the children's bread with a jerk. Her cheeks did n't grow any whiter; it seemed as if they would blaze right up, I could n't help looking at them, for all I pretended not to, for she looked just like a pictur. Some women always are pretty when they are put out, and then again, some ain't; it appears to me there's a great difference in women, very much as there is in hens; now, there was your aunt Deborah, but there, I won't get on that track now, only so far as to say that when she was flus