ry's home, in the midst of Henry's family, and before Mrs. Eldridge's boiled turnips, boiled potatoes, boiled beef, and boiled coffee. We had scarcely finished when Henry beckoned me to follow, and with the entire family looking the other way, we descended those sacred cellar stairs. There was the cupboard, there was the row of small demijohns within, and as this was a special occasion, I sipped my portion while sitting on a soap-box, and watched Henry indulge in an extra bumper. And then suddenly I was gone to make up for lost time and to sleep for hours, while Henry went out and unlocked his shop door to see if any of the wheels had gone round during his absence.

IV.

At six we were all at supper, even to the baby, who insisted on preferring my food to hers. One of the mystic ten graced the table, but he did not taste as

that boiled beef and boiled coffee had at noon. Henry considered the whole history a famous one, and before he had finished telling it the fifth time, it was quite evident that a week hence the story would take its place among those which began with the usual statement that the water in the pond was invisible, owing to the number of ducks on its surface. Mrs. Eldridge seemed to appreciate this fact, for she frequently suggested to Henry that it would be wiser for him to eat more and brag less, and requested me to refrain from crediting all his "fearful lies."

It was a good supper, however, and as Henry and I resolved ourselves into two spokes of a wheel, with the stove for the hub, the seven children again proceeded to produce their possessions and hold them up for my admiration, laboring under the impression that I had failed to notice them the night before. Henry talked on again in his keen, half-gener

ous way of ducks and guns and men, and told new stories of all, and made new and equally original criticisms on the last of these three intimates of his. When I attacked his live-decoy shooting from the sportsman's point of view, he had enough of the true sport in him to agree that it was, or at least had been, frowned upon deservedly. But, as he said, "It's killin' of 'em by deceivin' 'em, and that's what th'other, the wooden kyind, is too, some'at." As we sat there he advanced his idea of sport and of slaughter, and then we drifted off, as anybody will under such circumstances, into discussions on religion, business, and politics. Through it all ran that same Yankee, practical view which seems to go so well with a sharp nose and big kindly eyes, which is satire in its best sense rather than sarcasm, which seems to grasp the pith of a matter, and to have a rugged integrity that demands for itself considerate and honest attention, whether the question be of politics or religion or ducks.

So the tenth and twelfth pipes were

But

smoked out, and the lamps began to splutter, when I told Henry that I must have a full three-hours sleep that night, or he might not be able to get me up at two in the morning a second time. as I stood up to take a candle from the mantel, he quietly forced me back into my seat, deliberately replaced my feet on the rim of the stove, and with his serious mien descended his ladderlike cellar stairway, reappearing again with two tumblers of that same elderberry.

One lamp went completely out, as if disgusted; but we stood by the stove in the light of the other, and I sipped and he gulped again. Then both of us sat down, and gazed at the rafters and the cobwebs of the roof for full twenty minutes, and I felt that such a day was one that gave a suggestion of the value of living; and that, after all, it is a good thing to be out in the woods of New England shooting ducks, drinking homemade elderberry wine, and having the infinite satisfaction of being a New-Englander yourself.

LIJAH TOMKINS stood looking It was early morning, and he thought himself alone in the cemetery.

E down upon his wife's grave.

The low rays of a rising sun, piercing the intervening foliage, lay in white spots of light upon the new mound, revealing an incipient crop of rival grasses there. A heavy dew, visible every where in allpervading moisture, hung in glistening gems upon the blades of bright green cocoa spears that had shot up between the drier clods, and lay in little pools within the compact hearts of the fat purslane clumps that were settling in the lower places. But Elijah saw none of these things.

He had been standing here some minutes, his head low upon his bosom, when a slight sound startled him. It was a faint crackle, as of a light footstep upon the gravel walk.

He turned suddenly and looked behind him. He saw nothing, but the start had roused him from his reverie, and he has tily proceeded to raise his walking-cane, which he had held behind him, and to thrust it with care several inches deep into the top of the grave. Then with drawing it, he dropped into the hole it had made a rose-bud, which he took from his pocket, drew a bit of earth over it, and hastened away.

Elijah had done precisely this thing every morning since his wife's death, three weeks ago.

There were exactly twenty-one rosebuds buried in this identical fashion, one for each day since the filling of the new grave, and most of them had been deposited there before the rising of the morning sun.

Elijah was a man to whom any display of sentiment was as childishness; or, what to one of his temper was perhaps even worse, it was "womanish." To "fool with flowers" in a sentimental way was, according to his thinking, as unbecoming a man as to "spout poetry or to "play the piany."

He had passed safely through all the vicissitudes of courtship, marriage, and

even a late paternity-that crucial test of mental poise--without succumbing to any of the traditional follies incident to these particular epochs. He had borne his honors simply, as became a man, without parade or apparent emotion. But with his widowerhood had come an obligation involving tremendous embarrassment.

Elijah had loved his wife, and when she had, on her death-bed, asked him to come every day and lay a rose-bud upon her grave, he had not been able to say her nay. No one had heard the request. None knew of the promise.

On the day following the funeral he had risen early, saddled his horse, and ridden to the graveyard, carrying the rose-bud openly in his hand. He had slept heavily that night-the sleep of exhaustion that comes as a boon at such times and when he had waked next morning, confronted suddenly by a sense of his loss and of his promise, he had proceeded to perform his promise without a touch of self-consciousness. It was only when he unexpectedly came upon a neighbor in the road that he instantly knew that he was doing a sentimental thing. At the surprise the flower turned downward, falling out of sight behind the pommel of his saddle as if by its own volition. And when Elijah had passed his neighbor with a silent greeting, his horse's head turned, as if he too were denying his sentimental journey, into a foot-path leading entirely away from the cemetery.

When he had gotten quite beyond the curve of the road, it was a simple thing to turn across a bit of wood and enter the graveyard by another gate, but as he did so Elijah knew himself for a hopeless coward. The crackling pine needles under his horse's feet sounded as thunder to his sensitive ears. Every bur seemed to turn upon him its hundred eyes, in which he saw all Simpkinsville gazing at him, a mourning widower carrying flowers. The twitterings of the wood were the whisperings of the village gossips, and some of the younger trees even giggled as he passed.