Stephen Yarrow: A Christmas Story

SOMETIME in the year 1856, a family named Yarrow moved into the neighborhood where I then lived, and rented a small house with a bit of ground attached to it, on one of the rich bottom-farms lying along the eastern shore of the Ohio. The mother, two or three children, and their dog Ready made up the quiet household : not one to attract notice from any cause. People soon knew Martha Yarrow, — all that was in her. She was Westernand farm-born; whatever Nature had given her of good or bad, therefore, thrust itself out at once with pungent directness.

The family supported themselves by selling their poultry and vegetables to the hucksters, leading an eventless life enough, until the change occurred, some five years after they came into the neighborhood, of which I am going to tell you.

I called it a Christmas Story, not so much because it happened on a Christmas, as because the meaning of it seemed suited to that day ; and I thought, too, that nobody grows tired of Christmas stories, especially if he chance to have been born in one of those families where the day is kept in the old fashion : it roots itself so deep, that memory, in whatever quaint superstition, or homely affection for mother or brother, or unreasoning trust in God, may outlive our childhood, and underlie our older years. And surely that is as just, as wise a thing, — to strip off for a child the smirched trading-dress of one day at least, and send it down through the long procession of the years with its true face bared, to waken in him a live sense of man’s love and God’s love. Some one, perhaps, had done this for this woman, Mrs. Yarrow, long ago; for, let the months before and after be bare as they chose, she kept this day of Christmas with a feverish anxiety, more eager than her children even to make every moment warm and throb with pleasure, and enjoying them herself, to their last breath, with the whole zest of a nervous, strongblooded nature. Yet she may have had another reason for it.

The evening before the Christmas of which we write, she had gone out to the well with her son before closing the house for the night.

“ There ’s no danger of thaw before morning, Jem?” — looking anxiously up into the night, as they rested the bucket on the curb.

“ Thaw ! there ’s a woman’s notion for you ! Why, the very crow is frozen out of the cocks yonder !”—stretching his arms, and clapping his hollow chest, as if he were six feet high. “ No, we ’ll not have a thaw, little woman.”

The children often called her that, in a fond, protecting way; but it sounded most oddly from Jem, he was such a weak, swaggering sparrow of a little chap. He stretched his hands as high as he could reach up to her hips, and smoothed her linsey dress down: if it had been her face, the touch could not have been more tender.

“ You don’t think of the luck we always have. Why, it could n’t rain on Christinas for you or me, mother! ”

She laughed, nodding several times.

“ Well, that is sure, Jem,” stopping to look into the lean, emphatic little face, and to pass her hand over the tow-colored hair.

Somehow, the bond between mother and son was curiously strong to-night. It was always so on Christmas. At other times they were much like two children in companionship, but Christmas never came without bringing a vague sense of cowering close together as though some danger stood near them. There was something half fierce, now, in the way she caressed his face.

“Come on with the bucket, brother,” she said, cheerfully, stamping the clogging snow from her shoes, shading her eyes with her hand, and looking over the white stretch to the black line of hills chopping the east. "More like a hail-gust than rain. But I was afraid of that, you see,” as they went up the path. “ There ’s an old saying, that trouble always comes with rain. And it did in my life — to me ” —

She was talking to herself. Jem whistled, pretending not to hear; but he peered sharply into her face, with the relish which all sickly, premature children have for a mystery or pain. Very seldom was there hint of either about Martha Yarrow. She was an Ohio woman, small-boned, muscular, with healthy, quick blood, not a scrofulous, ill-tempered drop in her veins ; in her brain only a very few and obstinate opinions, maybe, but all of them lying open to the sight of anybody who cared to know them. Not long ago, she had been a pretty, bouncing country-belle; now, she was a hard-working housewife : a Whig, because all the Clarks (her own family) were Whigs: going to the Baptist church, with no clear ideas about close communion or immersion, because she had married a country-parson. With a consciousness that she had borne a heavier pain in her life than most women, and ought to feel scourged and sad, she did cry out with such feeling sometimes,—but with a keen, natural relish for apple-butter parings, or fair-days, or a neighbor dropping in to tea, or anything that would give the children and herself a chance to joke and laugh, and be like other people again. Between the two feelings, her temper was odd and uncertain enough. But in this December air, now, her still rounded cheek grew red, her breast heaved, her eyes sparkled, glad as a child would be, simply because it was cold and Christmas was coming; while the child Jem, with his tougher, less sappy animal nature, jogged gravely beside her, head and eyes down. As for her every-day life, nobody's fires burned, nobody’s windows shone like Martha Yarrow’s; not a pound of butter went to market with the creamy, clovery taste her fingers worked into hers. She put a flavor, an elastic spring, into every bit of work she did, making it play. The very nervousness of the woman, her sudden fits of laughter and tears, impressed you as the effervescence of a zest of life which began at her birth. Nobody ever got to the end, or expected to get to the end, of her stories and scraps of old songs. Then, every day some new plan, keeping the whole house awake and alive : when Tom’s birthday came, a surprise-feast of raspberries and cake ; when Jem’s new trousers were produced, they had been made up over-night, a dead secret, ten shining dimes in the pocket, fresh from the mint ; even the penny string of blue beads for Catty, bought of Sims the peddler, was hid under her plate, and made quite a jollification of that supper. You may be sure, the five years just gone in that house had been short and merry and cozy enough for the children. Before that —Here Jem’s memory flagged : he had been a baby then ; Catty just born ; yet, somehow, he never thought of that unknown time without the furtive, keen glance into his mother’s face, and a frightened choking in the heart under his puny chest. Somewhere, back yonder, or in the years coming, some vague horror waited for him to fight. To-night, (always at Christmas, although then the glow and comfort of all days reached its heat,) this unaccountable dread was on the boy ; why, he never knew. It might be that under the hurry and preparation of Martha Yarrow on that day some deeper meaning did lie, which his instinct had discerned: more probably, however, it was but the sickly vagary of a child grown old too fast.

They hurried along the path now to reach the house and shut the night outside, for every moment the cold and dark were.growing heavier; the snow rasping under their feet, as its crust cracked ; overhead, the sky-air frozen thin and gray, holding dead a low, watery halfmoon ; now and then a more earthy, thicker gust breaking sharply round the hill, taking their breath. It was only a step, however, and Tom was holding the house-door open, letting a ruddy light stream out, and with it a savory smell of supper. Tom halloed, and that blue-eyed pudge of a Catty pounded on the window with her fat little fist. How hot the fire glowed ! Somehow all Christmas seemed waiting in there. It was time to hurry along. Even Ready came out, shaking his shaggy old sides impatiently in the snow, and began to dog them, snapping at Jem’s heels. Like most old people, he liked Lis ease, and was apt to be out of sorts, if meals were kept waiting. Ready’s whims always made Martha laugh as she did when she was a young girl: they knew each other

then, long before Jem was born.

“ Come on, old Truepenny,” she said, going in.

There was comfort. Nothing in that house, from the red woollen curtains to the bright poker, which did not have its part to play for Christmas. Nothing that did not say “ Christmas,” from Catty’s eyes to the very supper-table. Of course, I don’t mean the Christmas dinner, when I say supper. Tom could have told you. Somewhere in his paunchy little body he kept a perpetual bill of fare, cheeked off or unchecked. He based and stayed his mind now on preparations in the pantry. Something solid there! A haunch of venison, mince-meat, winter succotash, a roasted peahen,—.and that is the top and crown of Nature’s efforts in the way of fowls. For suppers, — pish ! However, Tom ate with the rest. Mother was hungry ; so they were very leisurely, and joked and laughed to that extent that even Catty was uproarious when they were through. Then Jem fell to work at the great coals, and battered them into a rousing fire.

“ I ’ll go and fasten the shutters,” said Tom.

Martha Yarrow’s back was to the window. She turned sharply. The sickly white moon lighted up the snow-waste out there; some one might be out in those frozen fields, — some one who was coming home, — who had been gone for years, — years. Jem was watching her.

“ Leave the windows alone, Tom,” he said. “ It won’t hurt the night to see my fire.”

He pulled his cricket close up to her, and took her hand to pet. It was cold, and her teeth chattered. However, they were all so snug and close together, and Christinas, that great warm-hearted day, was so near upon them, as full of love and hearty, warm enjoyment as the living God could send it, that its breath filled all their hearts ; and presently Martha Yarrow’s face was brighter than Catty’s. They Were noisy and busy enough. The programme for to-morrow was to make out; that put all heads to work to plan : the stockings to be opened, and dinner, and maybe a visit to the menagerie in the afternoon. That was Martha’s surprise, and she was not disappointed in the applause it brought. It made the tears come to her eyes, an hour after, when she was going to bed, remembering it.

” It takes such a little thing to make them happy,” she said to herself, — “ or me, either,” with a somewhat silly face.

She tried to thank God for giving them so much, but only sobbed. After the confusion about the show was over, and Catty had been wakened into a vague jungle of tigers and lions and Shetland ponies, and put to sleep again, they subsided enough to remember the winding-up of the day. Quiet that was to be; the children from Shag’s Point were coming up, some half-dozen in all, for their share of Christmas. Poorer than the Yarrows, you understand ? though but a little; in fact, there were not many steps farther down : peahens and cranberries were not for every day. Well, to-morrow evening Jem would tell them the story of the Stable and the Child, and how that the Child was with ns yet, if we could only see. Jem was always his mother’s spokesman, and put the meaning of Christmas into words: she never talked of such things. Yet they always watched her face, when they spoke of them, — watched it now, and looked, as she did, into the little room beyond the kitchen where they sat, their eyes growing still and brighter. There, might have been a tinge of the savage or the Frenchman in Martha Yarrow’s nature, she had so strong a propensity to make real, apparent to the senses, what few ideas she had, even her religion. A good skill to do it, too. The recess out of the kitchen was only a small closet, but, with the aid of a softly tinted curtain or two, and the nebulous light of a concealed lamp, she bad contrived to give it an air of distance and reserve. Within were green wreaths hung over the whitewashed walls, and an altar-sliapcd little white table, covered with heaps of crimson leaves and bright berries, such as grow in the snow; only a few flowers, but enough to fill the air with fragrance; the children’s Christmas gifts, and wax-lights burning before a picture, the child Jesus, looking down on them with a smile as glad as their own. A thoroughly real person to the boys, this Christ for childhood ; for she built the little altar before this picture on all their holidays : something in the woman herself needing the story of the Stable and the Child. If she were doing a healthier work on the souls of that morbid Jem and glutton Tom than could a thousand after-sermons, she did not know it: never guessed, either, when they absorbed day by day hardly enough the force of her tough-muscled endurance and wholesome laugh, that she prepared the way of the Lord and made His paths straight. Yet what matter who knew ?

But to go on with our story. There were times — once or twice to-night, for instance — when she ceased doing even her unconscious work. Assuredly, somewhere back in her life, something had gone amiss with this silly, helpful creature, and left a taint on her brain. The hearty, pretty smile would go suddenly from her face, something foreign looking out of it, instead, as if a pestilent thought had got into her soul; she would rise uneasily, going to the window, looking out, her forehead leaning on the glass, her body twitching weakly. One would think from her face she saw some work in the world which God had forgotten. What could it matter to her ? Whatever hurt her, it was the one word which her garrulous lips never hinted. Once to-night she spoke more plainly than Jem had ever known her to do in all his life. It was after the children had gone to bed, which they did, shouting and singing, and playing circus-riders over the pillows, their mother leaning her elbows on the foot-board, laughing, in the mean time. Jem got up, after the others were asleep, and stole after her, in his little flannel drawers, back to the kitchen. By the window again, as he had feared, the woollen sock which she was knitting for Tom in her hand, the yarn all tangled and broken. Ready was by her knees, winking sleepily. The old dog was growing surly with his years, as we said: Jem remembered when he used to romp and tussle with him, but that was long ago: he lay in the chimney-corner always now, growling at Martha herself even, if her singing or laugh disturbed his nap. But when these strange moods came on her, Jem noticed that the yellow old beast seemed conscious of it sooner than any one beside, crept up to her, stood by her: that she clung to him, not to her children. He was licking her band now, his red eye, drowsy though it was, watching her as if danger were nigh. A dog you would not slight. Inside of his hot-headedness and courage there was that reserved look in his eyes, which some men and brutes have, that says they have a life of their own to live separate from yours, and they know it. The boy crept up jealously, thrust his numb fingers into his mother’s hand. She started, looking down.

“ It grows into a clear winter’s night, Jemmy,” trying to speak carelessly.

So they stood looking out together. The fire had burned down into a great bed of flameless coals, the kitchen glowed warm and red, throwing out even a patch of ruddy light on the snow-covered yard without. A cold, but comfortable home-look out there : the bit of garden, fences, cow-house, pump, heaped with the snow ; old Dolly asleep in her stable: Jem wrapped himself in his mother’s skirt with a sudden relish of warm snugness. What made her pull at Ready’s neck with such nervous jerks ? She saw nothing beyond ? Jem stood on tiptoe, peering out. There was no hint of the hailstorm they had prophesied, in the night: the moon stood lower now in the sky, filling the air with a yellow, frosty brilliance. Yet something strangely cold, dead, unfamiliar, in the night yonder, chilled him. Neither sound nor motion there; hills, river, and fields, distinct, sharply cut in pallor, but ghost-like : it made him afraid. There seemed to be no end of them; the hills to the north ran low, and beyond them he could see more blue and cold and distance, going on — who could tell where ? to the eternal ice and snow, it might be. She felt it, he knew. The boy was frightened, tried to pull her back to the fire, when something he saw outside made him stop suddenly. Shag’s Hill, the nearest of the ledge to the house, is a low, narrow cone, with a sharp rim against the sky; the moon had sunk half behind it, lighting the surface of drifted snow which faced them. Across this there suddenly fell a long, uncertain shadow, which belonged neither to bush nor tree : it might be the flicker of a cloud ; or a man, passing across the top of the hill, would make it. It was nothing; some of the coal-diggers from the Point going home; he pulled at her petticoat again.

“ Come to the fire, dear,” he said, looking up.

Her whole face and neck were hot; she laughed and trembled as if some spasm were upon her.

“ Do you see ? ” she cried, trying to force the window open. “ Oh, Jemmy, it might be ! it might! ”

Jem was used to his mother’s unaccountable whims of mood. Ready, however, startled him. The dog pricked up his ears, sniffed the air once or twice, then, after a grave pause of a minute, with a sharp howl, such as Jem had not heard him give for years, dashed through the kitchen into the wash-shed and out across the fields. Martha Yarrow turned away from the window, and leaned her head against the dresser-shelves: standing quite still, only that she clutched Jem’s hand. The clock ticked noisily as a half-hour went by ; the fire burned lower and dark. The dog came back at last, dragging his feet heavily, came up close to her, and crouched down with a half human moan. After a long time he got up, went out into the wash-kitchen in a spiritless way, and did not return again that night. She did not move. It seemed a long time to the child before she turned, her face wet with tears, and took him up in her arms, chafing his cold feet.

“ It could not be ! I knew that. Jemmy. I was n’t a fool. But I thought —Oh, Pet, I’ve waited such a long while ! ”

He patted her cheeks, soothing her,— the more effectually, perhaps, that he did not know what troubled her.

“ Why, it ’s Christmas, mother,” he said.

“ I know that. You see, I thought,” her eyes fastened on his in an appealing sort of way, “ that, being Christmas, if there should be any lost body wandering out on the fields that God had forgotten —What then ? ” all the blood gone from her face. “ Why, what then, Jem? No home, no one to say to him, ' Here’s home, here’s wife and children a-waiting to love you,—oh, sick with waiting to love you!’ No one to say that, Jem. And him wandering out in the cold, going quick back to the mouth of hell, not knowing how God loved him.

“ If there is such a one,” Jem said, steadily, though his lip trembled, “ God will let him know.”

“ There is no such one,” sharply. “ There is no one yonder but knows his home, and is nearer to his God than you or I, James Yarrow.”

The boy made no reply, — sat on her knees looking earnestly into the fire. He had more nearly guessed her secret than she knew, — near enough to know how to comfort her. After a while, when she was quiet, he turned, and put his thin arms about her neck, smiling.

“ Take me into your bed, mother. I ’m so cold ! Let me into old Catty’s place this once.”

She nodded, pleased, and, putting him to bed, soon followed him. When she held him snugly in her arms, the replenished fire making hot, flickering shadows from the next room, he whispered, —

“ Next Christmas, mother! Only one year more! ”

Again the quick shiver of her body; but this time her breath was gentle, a soft light in her eyes.

“ Well, and then, my son ? ”

“Why, some one else then will call me son. How long he has been gone, dear! so long that I never saw him since I was a bit of a baby.”

“Five years. Yes. Well, dear?” anxiously.

Her eyes were shut, he stroked the lids softly, thinking how moist and red her lips were : never as beautiful a face as the little mother’s ; for so Jem, feeling quite grown up in his heart, called her there.

“ Well, then, no more trouble, but somebody to take care of us all the time. Whenever I see a preacher, now, I think of father ” —stopping abruptly, with that anxious, incisive look so sad to see on a child’s face.

She did not reply at first; then, —

“ He preached God’s word as he knew it,” she said, dryly-

“ And whenever I hear of a good, brave man, I think, ‘ That’s like father ! ’ ”

Her eyes opened now.

“That’s true, Jemmy! God knows that’s true ! So proud my boy will be of his father ! ”

She did not say anything more, but began playing with his hair, her mouth unsteady, and a bashful, dreamy smile in her eyes. She looked very young and girlish in the mellow light.

“ He’s not coarse like me, Jem,” she said at last. “ Even more like a woman in some ways. He always came nearer to you children, for instance ; I mind how you always used to creep away from me close to him at night. He hates noise, Stephen does, — and mean, scraping ways, such as we ’re used to, being poor. My boy ’ll mind that ? We ’ll keep anything shabby out of his sight, when he comes back.”

“I’ll mind,” said Jem, dryly. “But ----Well, no matter. We’re to try and be like him, Tom and I ? I understand.”

She drew down her head suddenly into the pillow. Jem had been growing sleepy, but he started wide awake now, trying to see her face: the pretty pink color his questions had brought was gone from it.

“ Did you speak, mother ? ”

No answer.

“ I said we are to be men like him, Tom and I, if we can ? ”

He knew he had touched her to the, quick somehow: his heart beat thick with the old childish terror, as he waited for her answer.

“ Yes, you are to try, my son.”

Martha Yarrow’s frivolous chirruping voice was altered, with meaning in it he never had heard before, as if her answer came out of some depth where God had faced her soul, and forced it to speak truth. But when, after that, the boy, curious to know more, went on with his questions, she quieted him gravely, kissed him good-night, and turned over, — to sleep, he concluded, from her regular breathing. However, when Jem, after a while, began to snore, she got up and went to the kitchen-fire, kneeling down on the stone hearth: her head was on fire, and her body cold.

“ So they shall be like him ! ” she whispered, with a fierce, baited look, as if by her wife's trust in him she defied the whole world. “ I have kept my word. I’ve tried to make his sons what God made him in the beginning.”

That was true: she had kept her word. Five years ago, when the great scandal came on the church in —, and their minister was tried for forgery, and sentenced to six years’ imprisonment in the penitentiary, the first letter his wife wrote to him there had these words: “ For the boys, my husband, they never shall know of this thing. They shall know you as God and I do, Stephen. I ’ll make them men like you, if I can: except in your religion; for I believe, before God, the Devil taught you that.”

When the man read that in his cell, a dry, quiet smile came over his face. He had not expected such a keen opinion from his shallow, easy-going wife : he did not think there was so much insight in her.

“ It's a deep sounding you give, Martha, true or not,” folding up the letter. “And so the boys will never know?” going back to his solitary cobbling, for they were making a shoemaker of him.

If there were any remorse under his quiet, or impatience at fate, or gnawing homesickness, he did not show it. That was the last letter or message that came from his wife. The friends of other prisoners were admitted to visit them, but no one ever asked to see him; the five years went by; every day the same bar of sunlight struck across his bench, and glittered on the point of his awl, gray in winter, yellow in summer; but no day brought a Word or a sign from the outer world but that. The man grew thin, mere skin and bone; but then he was scrofulous. He asked no questions, ceased at last to look up, when the jailer brought his meals, to see if he carried a letter. Sometimes, when he used to stand chafing his stubbly chin in the evening at the slit cut in the stones for his window, looking at the red brick chimney-pot he could see over the penitentiary-wall, it seemed like something of outer life, and he would mutter, “ She said the boys would never know.” Once, too, a year or two after that, when the jailer came into “quiet Stevy’s ” cell, (for so he nicknamed him,) Yarrow came up, and took him by the coat-buttons, looking up and gabbling something about Martha and the little chaps in a maudlin sort of way, — then, with a silly laugh, lay down on his pallet.

“ I never felt sorry for the little whiffet before,” said the fat jailer, when he came out. “He’s so close; but it’s a cursed shame in his people to give him the go-by that way, — there ! ”

But when he went back an hour or two after, he found he had gained no ground with Stevy; he was dry, silent as ever: he had come to himself, meanwhile, and shivered with disgust at the fear that any madness had made him commit himself to this mass of flesh.

“‘Mortised with the sacred garlic,”' he muttered, with the usual dry twinkle in his eves.

Ben caught the last word.

“ It’s a good yarb, garlic,” he said, confusedly. “ Uses it on hot coals mostly, under broilin’ steaks. Well, good night. — He ’s a queer chap, though,” after he had gone out, — “ beyond me.”

Five years being gone, Martha Yarrow, sitting by her fire to-night, could only repeat the words of her letter. She had taken out a daguerreotype of her husband, and was looking at it. He was a small man ; young ; dressed in a suit of rusty black, with a certain subdued, credulous, incomplete air about him, like a man forced at birth into some iron mould of circumstance, and whose own proper muscles and soul had never had a chance of air to grow. A homely, saddened, uncouthly shaped face, — one that would be sure to go snubbed and unread through the world, to find at last some woman who would know its latent meaning, and worship it with the heat of passion which this country-girl had given. Withal, a cheerful, quizzical smile on the lips. Poor Martha’s eyes filled, the moment she looked at that; and so she went back to her first years of married life, full of keen, relishing enjoyment, all coming from him, quiet, silent as he was, — remembering how her maddest freaks wore indulged with that same odd, dry laugh. She stood alone now.

“ And in these years I have grown used to being alone,” — standing up, stretching her arms suddenly above her head, and letting them fall again.

It was a lie : she knew that the tired sinking within her of body and soul was harder to bear now than the day he went away, and she weaker to bear it. If she could but lean her head on his breast for one moment, and feel him pat her hair with the old “Tut! tut! why, what ails my girl?” it would give her more strength than all her prayers. She could n't think of herself as anything but a girl, when she remembered her husband : these years were nothing.

Her month grew drier and hotter, as she sat there looking into the face, polishing the glass with her hand, kissing it. “ I 'm so tired, Stephen ! ” she would whisper now and then. Only those who know the unuttered mysterious bond in the soul of a true wife and husband can comprehend what Martha Yarrow bore, when it was torn apart, and by no fault of hers. “ God meant him for me,” she sometimes said, savagely ; “ no man had a right to part us.” She looked at the picture, feeling that he was purer than any baby she had nursed at her breast, nearer God, “ It was his religion was to blame. That was the ruin of us all. I believe he never knew who the good God was; how could he?” thinking of his father, who used to sit in the chimney-corner,—one of those acrid doctrine-professors who sour the water of life into gall and vinegar before they dole it out to their children. She was glad she had told him her mind before they parted, — to what his teaching had brought his son. “ I cut deep that day, and I thank God for it,” she said, her face white.

She had brought the children here to be near the penitentiary, but she had never been allowed to see him. No letters came from him. His brother, John Yarrow, sent hers to him. There was some formula of admission, he said, which she did not understand. The time was nearly up ; in one year more he would be free. Well, and then? He had been in one of the ways that butted down on hell ; how would he come back to her ? In all these years, silence. Who would bring him back ? Who ? They were keen enough to put him in, — but who would stay with him, to say, “You’ve slipped, boy, but stand up again ” ? Who would hold out a kind hand at the gate, when he came out, with “ Here's a place, Yarrow. Here’s home, and love, and God waiting; try another chance ” ? Who would do that ? No wonder she looked out that night, thinking there was some work forgotten.

Martha sat there until dawn came, moving only to replenish the fire lest the children should take cold. In all her life she never forgot that night. Some furious instinct seemed at work within her, goading her to be up and doing. What should she do? Why should she disquiet hersell ? Her husband was safe asleep in his cell. Yet all night long she could not keep her soul back from crying to God to save, him in his deadly peril, to bring him there at once to her, to the children. When morning broke, cold and sweet-breathed, russet clouds, dyed with the latent crimson day, thronging up from behind the hills, she tried to thrust down all the pains of the night as moody fancies. They did not go. She bathed herself, woke the children, laughed and romped with them (for their year’s holiday should not be damped) ; but the cold, unsuiferable weight within dragged her physically down. Trifles without, too, beset her with vague fears. Ready was gone; for years he had not left the house at night. The children began to look with uneasy eyes at her face : she would betray all. She kept her fingers thrust in the breast of her wrapper to touch the ease of the picture: she could hold herself quiet so. How cold and unmeaning the light was that day to her! and every tick of the clock seemed to beat straight on her brain. So the morning crept by. She grew so sure — without reason — that it was the last day of waiting, that, when the children went out to build their snow-man, she sat down on Jem’s chest, shivering and dizzy; when the snow cracked under a step outside, afraid to turn her head, — thinking he would be standing in the door, with the old patient smile on his mouth, and his hand out. But he did not come.

About half a mile on the other side of Shag’s Hill there is a hotel, off from the road, looking like an overgrown Swiss châlet. Not a country-tavern by any means. Starr, a New-York caterer, keeps it, as a sort, of boarding-house for a few wealthy Pittsburg families in summer: however, if you should stop there at any time of the year, you would be sure of a delicate croquette and a fair glass of wine. Usually, Starr and his family are the only occupants in winter, but on this Christmas eve there were lights in two of the upper rooms. M. Soulé, the Mobile financier, so well known through the West, with his family, had occupied them for about a week ; this evening, too, a Mr. Frazier from St. Louis was at the house : there was a collision of trains near Beaver, and he had left the other passengers and come over to Starr’s, intending to go on horseback up to Pittsburg in the morning. An old acquaintance of the Soulés, apparently : be bad dined with them that evening, and when Starr went up about ten o’clock to know if Mr. Soulé wished to go out gunning in the morning, he found the old man still standing with his back to the fire, talking sharply of the Little Miami Railroad shares, then beginning to go up. “ A thorough old Shylock,” thought Starr, waiting, scanning the acrid, wizened face with its protruding black eyes, the dried-up figure in a baggy suit of blue, a white collar turned down nearly to the shoulders, and the gray hair knotted in a queue, He looked at the landlord, scowling at the interruption : M. Soulé, on the contrary, spoke heartily, as if suddenly relieved of a bore.

“ Of course, of course, Starr; I ’ll, be off by four. I ’ll saddle my own horse, — no need to disturb any of your people ; let them sleep on Christmas at least, poor devils. The partridges about here are really worth tasting,” turning to Frazier, “ and Starr tells me of a mythical deer back in the hills. You see,” with a bow, “ it will not be possible tor me to breakfast with you. I ’ll see you at Pittsburg about those shares, — say, on Monday.”

“ Yes,” buttoning his coat, with a furtive glance of contempt at Soulé’s burly figure and eager face. Was this the far-famed Nimrod of the money-hunt ? “ I ’ll say to Pryor you bad other game on hand to-day.”

“Other game,—yes,” with a sudden gravity,—pushing his hair back, and looking in the fire, while the old man made his formal adieus to his wife. They lasted some time, for Madame Soulé was a courtly little body, with all her quiet.

“ I must make an early start, too,” said Frazier, turning again. “ Glad of the chance to take a bracing ride. Banks closed to-morrow, so no time’s lost, eh ? Well, good night, Soule,” perceiving that the other did not see his outstretched hand; “don’t come down; good night”; and so shuffled down the stairs.

“ Pah ! ” said Soulé, with a breath of relief. “ His blood ’s like water. He never owed a dollar, and never gave one away.”

The usual genial laugh came back to his face, as he turned to Madame Soule and began to romp with the baby lying in her lap. He was a tall man, about six feet high, with a handsome face, red hair, a frank blue eye, and a natural, genuine laugh. Whatever else history may record of him, a man of generous blood and sensitive instincts. His subdued dress, quiet voice, suited him, were indigenous to his nature, not assumed : even Starr could see that. Starr used afterwards, when they became the country’s gossip, to talk of little traits in these people, showing the purity of their refinement. To this day he believes in them. How unostentatious their kindness was: the delicate, scentless air that hung about them: the fresh flowers always near. “ Eating with iron forks, an’ not a word, — my silver being packed ; their under-clothes like gossamer, outside plainer than mine. Bah! I know the real stulf, when I see it, I hope. No sham there! ”

When the baby was tired of its romp, Madame Soulé hushed it to sleep. She was the quietest nurse ever lived, — the quietest woman,—— one whom you scarce noted when with her, and forgot as soon as you left the room. Nature had made her up with its most faint, few lines, and palest coloring. Soulé, however, had found out the delicate beauty, and all else that lay beneath. There was a passionate fierceness sometimes in his look at her, and a something else stranger, — such an expression as a dog gives his master. She never talked but to him.

“ I thought you would have breakfasted with him, perhaps,” she said, now.

“ No. I’m too much of an Arab, Judith. I can’t eat a man’s salt and empty his pocket at the same time.

“I’m glad you did not,” smiling as the baby cauglit at his father’s seals, then glancing at the watch when Soulé held it out for him. “ Nearly eleven. It is time your brother was here, bee, John, how pink its feet are, and dimpled,” — putting one to her mouth with a burst of childish laughter.

Soulé played with a solitary white calla that stood near in a crystal vase, gulped down a glass of wine hastily, held the delicate glass up to see how like a golden bubble it was, then threw it down.

n Are you sure we are right in this, child?”

She stopped playing with the baby, but did not look up.

“ About your brother ? ”

“I thought” —with the doubtful look of one who is about to essay his strength against flint. " It has been a hard life,—Stephen’s,—and through us. What if we let him go ? ” anxiously. “ What would be better? He has children,” — taking the baby’s hand in his. “ Yes, children,—clods, like his wife,” — the pink lip curling. “ You should know your brother, John Yarrow. You do know the stuff that is in him. Will his brain ever muddle down to find comfort in that inn-keeper’s daughter? Is it likely ? Besides, they are dead to him now. You have succeeded in keeping them apart.”

If she saw the dark flush in his face at this, she did not notice it, but went on hastily.

“ Stephen never had a chance, and you know it, John. He was too weak to break the trammels at home, as you did, — let himself be forced to preach what his soul knew was a lie. When you tried to open the door for him to a broader life ” —

“I shut him in a penitentiary-cell,” with a bitter laugh. “ They taught him to make shoes.”

“Was it your fault? Now that he is free, then,” going on steadily, still patting the child’s cheek, “ you mean to shake him off, — having used him. Push him back into the old slough. He can make a decent living there, cobbling, I know. Be generous, John,” with a keen glance of the pale brown eyes. “ If you succeed in this thing to-morrow, take him with us out of the United States. There is trouble coming here. Give him a chance for education, — to know something of the world he lives in, — to catch one or two free breaths before he dies. He has been the man in the iron cage, since his birth, it seems to me.’

She got up as she spoke, rang the bell, and gave the baby to its nurse, wrapping it up in a blanket or two. When she turned, her husband was standing on the hearth-rug, a half-laugh in his eyes.

“ Judith! ’

“ What is it ? ”

“The plain meaning of all this is, that there is no one who can do this foul job to-morrow hut Stephen Yarrow, and for my sake it must be done; ergo —Well, well ! You do love me, child ! ”

Her eyes filled with sudden tears; she caught hold of his arm, and clung to it.

“I do love you, God knows! What is Stephen Yarrow to me, soul or body? Don’t be harsh with me, John ! ”

“ Harsh ? No, Judith,” stroking the colorless curls gently; looking back ; thinking that she had done much for him; he would humor her whim, not behave like a beast to her. But his brother —It would be better for Stephen in the end. Certainly. Yet he sighed : a womanish, unable sigh.

A year or two afterwards, (for I am not writing of a fictitious character,) this man’s frauds were discovered. They were larger and more uniformly successful than any that had ever been perpetrated in the States, but there was about them a subtle, dogged daring that did not belong to Yarrow’s character, and shrewd people who had known them began to talk of this shadow of a woman who went about with him,— a quadroon, they said,—and hinted strongly that it was she who had been the vital power of the partnership, and Yarrow but the well-chosen tool. There are no means of knowing the truth of the conjecture, for Yarrow escaped : she followed him, but is dead, so their secret is safe. Fraud, however, was but cue half of his story. Soulé gave like a prince, — secretly, with a woman-like, anxious helpfulness, a passionate eagerness, as if the pain or want of a human being were insufferable to him. In this he was alone : the woman had no share in it. She was as cold, impervious to the suffering of others as nothing but a snake or a selfish woman can be : whatever muddy human feeling did ooze from her brain was for this man only. And yet, when we think of it, she was, as they guessed, a quadroon: maybe, under the low, waxyskinned forehead that Yarrow’s fingers were patting that night there might have been a revengeful consciousness of the wrongs of her race that justified to her' the harm she did. It is likely: the coarsest negroes argue in that way. God help them ! At any rate, we shall come closest to Christ’s rule of justice in trying to find a sore heart behind the vicious fingers of the woman.

While the two stood in the pleasant light of the warm room waiting for him, Stephen Yarrow came towards the house across the fields. It was his shadow that his wife and Jem saw crossing Shag’s Hill. He was a free man now,—by virtue of his nickname, “quiet Stevy,” in part. It startled him as much as the jailer, when his release was sent in a year before the time, “ in consideration of his uniform good conduct.” The truth was, that M. Soulé took an interest in the poor wretch, and had said a few words in his favor to the Governor at a dinner-party the other evening, so the release was signed the next day. Soule had called to see the man when he came to Pittsburg, and spent an hour or two in his cell. The next morning he was free to go, but he had stayed a week longer, making a pair of red morocco shoes for flic jailer’s little girl, — idling over them : when they were done, tying them on, himself, with a wonderful bow-knot, and looking anxiously in her clean Dutch face to see if she were pleased.

“ Kiss the gentleman, Meg,” growled Ben. “ Where ’s yer manners ? ”

Stephen drew back sharply. The innocent baby! who lived out-of-doors! Ben must have forgotten who he was : a thief, belonging to this cell. They were going to let him out; but what difference did that make ? His thin face grew wet with perspiration, as he walked away. Why, his very fingers had felt too impure to him, as he tied on her shoes. He went away an hour after, only nodding goodbye to Ben, looking down with an odd grin at the clothes he had asked the jailer to buy for him. Ben bad chosen a greenish coat and trousers and yellow waistcoat. He did not shake hands with him. Ben had been mixing hog-food, and the marks were on his fingers. This was yesterday : he was going now to meet his brother, as he requested. Well, what else was there for him to do ?

He did not look up often, as he plodded over the fields : when he did, it hurt him somehow, this terrible wastefulness, this boundless unused air, and stretch of room. It even pained his weakened eyes: so long the oblong slip of clay running from the cell to the wall had been his share, and the yellow patch of sky and brick chimney-top beyond. For so many thousands, too, no more. But they were thieves, foul, like him. Pure men this was for. Stephen looked like an old man now, in spite of Ben's party-colored rigging : stooped and lean, his step slouched: his head almost bald under the old fur cap. Something in the sharpened face, too, looked as if more than eyesight had been palsied in these years of utter solitude : the brain was dulled with sluggishly gnawing over and over the few animal ideas they leave for prisoners’ souls,—or, as probably, thoroughly imbruted by them. Soule thought the latter.

When the convict had finished his dull walk, he sat down on the wooden staircase that led to his brother’s rooms for half an hour, slowly rubbing his legs, conscious of nothing but some flesh-pain, apparently,—and when he did enter the chamber, bowed as indifferently to Soule and his wife as though they had parted carelessly yesterday. His brother glanced at the woman : one look would certainly be enough for her. Poor Stephen's power ? If it ever had been, its essence was long since exhaled : there was nothing in his whole nature now but the stalest dregs, surely ? Perhaps she thought differently : she looked at the man keenly, and then gave a quick, warning glance to her husband, as she sat down to her sewing. Soule did not heed it as he usually did : he was choked and sick to see what a wreck his brother really was. God help us ! to think of the time when Stephen and he were boys together, and this was the end of it!

“ Come to the fire, old fellow !" he said, huskily. “ You ’re blue with cold. We used to have snows like this at home, eh ? ”

The man passed the lady with the quaint, shy bow that used to be habitual with him towards women, (he still used it to the jailer’s wife.) and held his hands over the blaze. His brother followed him: his wife had never seen him so nervous or excited: lie stood close to the convict, smoothing his coat, on the shoulder, taking off his cap.

“ Why, why ! this cloth's too thin, even for summer; I—Oh, Stephen, these are hard times, — hard! But I mean to do something for you, God knows. Sit down, sit down, you ’re tired, boy,” turning off, going to the window, his hands behind him,—coming back again. “ We ’re going to help you, Judith and I.”

Soulé did not see the look which the convict shot at the woman, when he spoke these words ; hut she did, — and knew, that, however her husband might contrive to deceive himself, he never would his brother. If Stephen Yarrow’s soul went down to any deeper depth to-night, it would be conscious in its going. What manner of man was he? What was his wife, or long-ago home, or his old God, now, to him ? It mattered to them : for, if he were not a tool, they were ruined. She stitched quietly at her soft floss and flannel. Soulé was sincere ; let him explain what his wish was, himself; it would be wiser for her to be silent; this man, she remembered, had eyes that never understood a lie.

Yarrow did not sit down ; his brother stood close, leaning his unsteady hand upon his arm.

“ I knew you would not fail me, Stephen. To-morrow will be a turning-point in both our lives. Circumstances have conspired to help me in my plan.”

He began to stammer. The other looked at him quietly, inquiringly.

“ You remember what I told you on Tuesday ? ” more hastily. “ I have dealt heavily in stocks lately ; it needs one blow more, and our future is secure for life. Yours and mine, I mean, — yours and mine, Stephen. This paper old Frazier carries,—he is going to New York with it. If I can keep it out of the market for a week, my speculation is assured, — I can realize half a million, at least. Frazier Is an old man, weak: he crosses the Narrows tomorrow morning on horseback.”

He stopped abruptly, playing with a shell on the mantel-shelf.

“ I understand,” in a dry voice ; “ you want him robbed ; and my bands came at the right nick of time.”

“ Pish ! you use coarse words. A man’s brain must be distempered to call that robbery; the paper, as I said, is neither money nor its equivalent.”

There was a silence of some moments.

“I must have it,” his eye growing fierce. “ You could take it and leave the man unhurt; I could have done it myself, but he ’s an old man, I want him left unhurt. If I Lad done it—

Well,” chewing his lips, “it would not have been convenient for him to have gone on with that story. He knows me. Is the affair quite plain now ? ”

Yarrow nodded slowly, looking in the fire.

“ If I were not strong enough to-morrow, what then ? ”

“ I will be with you, — near. I must have the paper. He is an old Shy lock, after all,” with a desperate carelessness. “ His soul would not weigh heavily against me, if it were let out.”

Yarrow passed his hand over his face; it was colorless. Yet he looked bewildered. The bare thought of murder was not clear to him yet.

“ Drink some wine, Stephen,” said his. brother, pouring out a goblet for himself. “I carry my own drinking-apparatus. This Sherry” —

Yarrow tasted it, and put down the glass.

“ I was cheated in it, eh ? ”

“ Yes, you were.”

“ Your palate was always keener than mine. I” —

His mouth looked blue and cold under his whiskers: then they both stood vacantly silent, while the woman sewed.

Tut! we will look at the matter praetically, as business-men,” said Soule at last, affecting a gruff, hearty tone, and walking about, — but was silent there.

The convict did not answer. No sound but the rough wind without blowing the drifted snow and pebbles from the asphalt roof against the frosted panes, and the angry fire of bitumen within breaking into clefts of blue and scarlet flame, thrusting its jets of fierce light out from its cage: impatient, it may be, of this convict, this sickly, shrivelled bit of humanity standing there ; wondering the nauseated life in his nostrils or soul claimed yet its share of God’s breath. Society had taken the man like a root torn out of native unctuous soil, kept it in a damp cellar, hid out the breath and light. If after a while it withered away, whose fault was it? If there were no hand now to plant it again, do you look for it to grow rotten, or not ? One would have said Soulé was a root that had been planted in fat, loamy ground, to look at him. There was a healthy, liberal, lazy life for you ! Yet the winter sky looked gray and dumb when he passed the window, and the fire-light broke fiercest against his bluff figure going to and fro. No matter; something there that would have warmed your heart to him : something genial, careless, big-natured, from the loose red hair to the indolent, portly stride. Who knows ? A comfortable, true-hearted, merry clergyman, — a jolly farmer, with open house, and a bit of good racing-stock in the stable, — if bigotry in his boyhood, and this woman, had not crossed him. They had crossed him: there was not an atom of unpolluted nature left: you saw the taint in every syllabic he spoke. Fresh and malignant tonight, when this tempted soul hung in the balance.

“ We 're letting the matter slip too long. Something must be decided upon. Stephen!” nervously, “wake up! You have forgotten our subject, I think.”

“ No,” the bald head raised out of the coat-collar in which it had sunk. “ Go on.”

Soulé looked at him perplexed a rnoment. Was he dulled, or had he learned inthose years to shut in looks and thoughts closer prisoners than himself ?

“ It is a mere question of time, he said, a little composed. “ Frazier is an agent: shall this money accrue to me otto his employers ? I have risked all on it. I must have it at any cost. ’ " At any cost ? ”

“ At any,” boldly. “ Is it any easier for me to talk of that chance than you, Stephen ? ”

“ No, John. Tour hands are clean,” with an exhausted look. “ I know that. You had a kind Irish heart. What money you made with one hand you flung away with the other.”

Soule blushed like a woman.

“ No matter,” beating some dust off his boot. “ But for Frazier,—I ’ve talked that over with Judith, and —I don’t value human life as you do: it may have been my residence in the South. It matters little how a man dies, so he lives right. This Frazier, if he dies to defend his package, would do a nobler deed than in any of his dime-scraping days. For me, my part is not robbery. The paper is neither specie nor a draft.’

His tongue swung fluently now, for it had convinced himself.

“ There is but a night left to decide. What will you do, Stephen ? ”

He put his hand on the green coat with its gaudy buttons, and leaned against his brother as they used to go arms over shoulders to school. Soulé's big throat was full of tears ; he had never felt so full of sorrowful pity as in this the foulest purpose of his life. Unselfish it seemed to him. O God! what a hard life Stephen’s had been ! This would cure him : two or three sea-voyages, a winter in Florence, would freshen him a little, maybe, — but not much.

“ Eh ? What will you do, old fellow ? ” striking his shoulder. " This is the last night.”

“ I know that. I have been waiting for it all my life.”

He put his red handkerchief up to his mouth to conceal the face, as if its meaning were growing too plain. Soulé looked at him fixedly a moment, then, taking him by the button, began tapping off his sentences on his breast.

“ I ’ll state the case. T ’ll be plain. Stephen, you want food ; you want clothes; you ” —

“ Is that all I want ? ” facing him.

The woman started, as she saw his face fully, and his look, for the first time. A quiet blue eye, unutterably kind and sad : a slow, compelling face, that would look on his life barely, day after day, year after year, never drowsing over its sore or pain until he had wrung its full meaning out to the last dregs.

“All you want? Clothing? food?” stammered Soulé, — something in the face having stopped his garrulous breath. “ I did not say that, Stephen.”

The wind struck sharper on the rattling panes; the yellow and brown heats grew deeper. One saw how it was then. No beegar turned from God so emptyhanded as this man to-day. His place in the world slipped : his chance gone : sick, sinking : his brain mad for knowledge : his hands stretched out for work : no man to give it to him : whatever God he had lost to him: the thief’s smell, he thought, on every breath he drew, every rag of clothes he wore. Hundreds of convicts leave our prison-doors with souls as hungry and near death as this.

“ I have lost something—since I went in there,” he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. " I do not think it will ever come back.”

“ No ? ”

Soulé put his big hand to his face mechanically.

“ Don’t say that, boy ! I know —The world has gone on, it has left jou behind —You ” —

He choked,—could not go on : he would have put half the strength and life in himself into A arrow’s lank little both that moment, if he could. I here was a something else lost, different from all these, of which they both thought, but they did not speak of it. I he convict looked out into the night. Beyond the square patch of window and that near dark, how full the world was of happy homes getting ready for Christmas! children and happy wives ! Soulé understood.

“ I don’t say I can bring you back what you have lost, Stephen. I offer you the best I can. You 're not an old man,— barely thirty : you must have years to acquire fresh bone and muscle. Set your brain to work, meanwhile. Give it a chance.”

“ It never had one,” said the convict, with a queer, faint smile.

“Hillo! that looks like old times!” brightening up. “ No, it never had. Do you think I forget our alley-house with its three rooms ? the carpentering by day, and the arithmetic by night ? the sweltering, sultry Sunday mornings in church, and the afternoons sniffling over the catechism among the rain-butts in the back-yard ? Do you remember the preachers, the travelling agents, that put up with us ? how they snarled at other churches, and helped themselves out of the shop, as if to be a man of God implied a mean beggar? I don’t say my father was a hypocrite when he made you a colporteur, and so one of them ; but” —

He paused. Even in this frothy-brained fellow, his religion or his doubt lay deeper than all. His face grew dark.

“ I tell you, if there is one thing I loathe, it is the God and His day that were taught to me when I was a child : joyless, hard, cruel. Fire — humph! — and brimstone for all but a few hundred.

I remember. Well, I don’t know yet if there is any better,” with a vague look. “ A man shifts for himself in the next chance as well as now, I suppose. Did you believe what you preached, Stephen ? ” with an abrupt change. “ God ! how you used to writhe under it at first! ”

“ They forced me into it,” said Yarrow. “ I was only a boy. You remember that I was only a boy,—just out of the shop. The more uneducated a man was in our church-pulpit then, the better. I knew nothing, John,” appealingly. “ When I preached about foreordination and hellfire, it was in coarse slang: I knew that. I used to think there might be a different God and books and another life farther out in the world, if I could only get at it. I never was strong, and they bad forced me into it ; and when you came to me to help you with your plan, I wanted to get out, and ” —

“ You did help me,”—chafing the limp fingers. “ That was my first start, that Pesson note. I owe that to you, Stephen.”

“ I have paid for it,” looking him steadily in the eye, some unexpected manliness rising up, making his tone hitter and marrowy. “ I paid tor it. But no matter for that. But now you come again. I have had time to think over these things in yonder, John.”

Soulé dropped his hand, drew back, and was silent a moment.

“ Let it be so. But did you think what you would do, if you refused your aid to me ? Have you found work ? or a God to preach ? ”

Something in these last words took Yarrow’s sudden strength away. He did not answer for a moment.

“Work?” feebly. “No,—I have n’t heard of any work. As for a God ” —

“ Well, then, what are your purposes ? ” coldly.

Another silence.

“ I don’t know. I never was worth much,” he gasped out at last, stooping, and pulling at his Shoestrings.

“ And now” —said Soulé.

“ There’s no need for you to say that! ” with a sharp cry. “ I don’t forget that I have slipped,—that it’s too late,—I don’t forget.”

His hands jerked at his coat-fronts in a wild, dazed way.

“ Stephen ! ”

The woman rose, and let in the air.

“ I thank you. I’m not sick.”

Soulé turned away. lie could not meet the look on the pinched con a-jetface, — the soul of the man crying out for God or his brother, something to help. There was a silence for a few moments.

“ You will come with me, Stephen,” quietly: then, after a pause, "It is for life. There is but little time left to decide.”

Was there no help ? Had the true God no messenger? The winter wind blowing through the window filled with fine frost wet his face, lifted the smothering off his lungs. His eyes grew clear, as his full sense returned after a while: seeing only at first, it so happened, the fire in its square frame; and thinking only of that, as the mind always drowsily absorbs the nearest trifle after a spasm of pain. A bed of pale red coals now, furred over with -white and pearl-colored ashes. It was a long time since he had seen any open fire, — years, he believed. Where was it that there had been a fire just like that, with the ashes like moss over the heat, — and on a night in winter, too, the wind rattling the panes ? Where was it ? While Soulé stood waiting for his answer, his mind was drifting back, like that of a man in his dotage, through its dull, muddy thoughts, after that one silly memory. He struck on it at last. A year or two after he was married. In the bedroom. Martha was sitting by the fire, with the old yellow dog beside her: she was trying to ride the baby on his neck, — he was the clumsiest brute ! He came in and stopped to see the fun ; he noticed the fire then, how cozy and warm it all was : outside it was hailing, a gust shaking the house. He had been doing a bit of carpentering,—he did like to go back to the old trade! This was a wicker chair for the baby,—he had made it in the stable for a surprise : the girl always liked surprises and such nonsense. He put it down with a flourish, and he remembered bow she laughed, and Ready growled, and how he and she both got on their knees to seat the youngster in, and tie him with his bandanna handkerchief. So silly that all was! When they were on the floor there, and had Master Jem fastened in, he remembered how she suddenly turned, and put her arms about his neck, as shyly as when they were first married, and kissed him. “ Only God knows how good you are to me, Stephen,” she said. There were tears in her eyes.— Yarrow passed his hand over his forehead. Did ever a thought come into your mind like a fresh, clean air into a stove-heated, foul room? or like the first hearty, living call of Greatheart through the dungeons of Giant Despair?

“You do not answer me, Stephen?” said his brother. “ You will go with me ? ”

Yarrow’s head was more erect, his eyes less glazed.

“ It may be. The chance for me ’s over in the world, I think. I may as

well serve you. And yet ” —

“ What ? ”

“ Give me time to think. I want outof-doors. It’s close here. I ’ll meet you in the morning.”

Soulé caught his wife’s uneasy glance.

“ What is this, Stephen ? ”

“Nothing,” looking dully out into the night.

“ Then ” —

“ There’s some you said were dead,” — as if no one were speaking, with the same dull look. “ Or lost: I think they ’re not dead. If there might be a chance yet! If I could but see Martha and the little chaps, it Would save me, John Yarrow, no matter what they’d learned to think of me. They ’re mine,—my little chaps. She said the boys should never know. She said that of her own free will.”

“ Is it likely she could keep her word ? ” said Soulé, snceringly.

“ Why, why, she loved me, John,"—a moist color and smile coming out on his face. “ There’s a little thing I minded just now that —Yes, Martha kept her word.”

He tapped with his fingers thoughtfully on the mantel-shelf, the smile lingering yet on his face. The woman’s woollen sewing fell from her hand, and she spoke for the first time. Her tone had a harsh, metallic twang in it: Yarrow turned curiously, as he heard it.

“ What could they be to you, if you found them ? They have forgotten you. In five years they have not sent you a message.”

“ No, — I know, Madam.”

Even that did not hurt him. His face kindled slowly,—still turned to the fire, as if it were telling him some old story : looking to her at last, steadfast and manly, like a man who has healthy commonsense dominant in his head, anil an unselfish love at work in his heart. Such a one is not far from the kingdom of heaven.

“It seems to me as if there might be a chance yet. It’s a long time. But Martha loved me, Madam. You don’t know—I think I ’ll go, John. It’s close here, ’s I said. I ’ll meet you at the far bridge by dawn, and let you know.”

“ It is your only chance,” said Soulé, roughly, as he followed him to the door.

He was a ruined man, if he were balked in this.

“ You do not know how the world meets a returned felon, Stephen; you ”—

“ Let me go,” feebly, putting his hand up to his chin in the old fashion.

“ I think I know that. I — I ’ve thought of that a good deal. But it seemed to me as if there might be a chance ”; and so, without a word of farewell, went stumbling down the stairs.

He had given a wistful look at the fire, as he turned away. Perhaps that would comfort him. God surely has “ many voices in the world, and none of them is without its signification.”

An hour before dawn, Yarrow found the place in which he had appointed to meet his brother. The night had been dark, hailing at intervals ; he had gone tramping up and down the hills and stubble-fields, through snow and half-frozen mud-gullies, hardly conscious of what he did. The night seemed long to him now, looking back. He found a burnt sycamore - stump and got up on it, shivered awhile, felt his shirt, which was wet to the skin, then took off his shoes and cleared the lumps of slush out of them. There was something horrible to him in this unbroken silence and dark and wet cold : he had been in his hot cell so long, the frost stung him differently from other men, the icy thaw was wetter. It was a narrow cut in the hills where he was, a bridle-road leading back and running zigzag for some miles until it returned to the railroad-track. A lonely, unfrequented place : Frazier would take this by-path; Soulé had chosen it well to meet him. There was a rickety bridge crossing a hill-stream a few rods beyond. Yarrow pushed the dripping cap off his forehead, and looked around. No light nor life on any side: even in the heavens yawned that breathless, uncolored silence that precedes a winter’s dawn. He could see the Ohio through the gully : why, it used to be a broad, fullbreasted river, glancing all over with light, loaded with steamers and rafts going down to the Mississippi. He had gone down once, rafting, with lumber, and a jolly three weeks’ float they had of it. Now it was a solid, shapeless mass of blocks of ice and mud. Winter ? yes, but the world was altered somehow, the very river seemed struck with death. His teeth chattered; he began to try to rub some warmth into his rheumatic logs and arms; tried to bring back the fancy of last night about Martha and the fire. But that was a long way off: there were all these years’ mastering memories to fade it out, you know, and besides, a diseased habit of desponding. The world was wide to him, cowering out from a cell : where were Martha and the little chaps lost in it ? John said they were dead. "Where should he turn now ? There was an aguish pain in his spine that blinded him: since yesterday he had eaten nothing, — he had no money to buy a meal; he was a felon, — who would give him work? “There ’s some things certain in the world,” he muttered.

“ That was silly last night, — silly. And yet, — if there could have been a chance!”

He looked up steadily into the sickly, discolored sky : nothing there but the fog from these swamps. He had not wished so much that he could hear of Martha and the children, when he looked up, as of something else that he needed more. Even the foulest and most careless soul that God ever made has some moments when it grows homesick, conscious of the awful vacuum below its life, the Eternal Arm not being there. Yarrow was neither foul nor careless. All his life, most in those years in the prison, he had been hungry for Something to rest on, to own him. Sometimes, .when his evil behavior had seemed vilest to him, he had felt himself trembling on the verge of a great forgiveness. But be could see so little of the sky in the cell there, — only that three-cornered patch: he had a fancy, that, if once he were out in the world that He made, — in the free air,—that, if there were a God, he would find Him out. He had not found Him.

He sat on the stump awhile, his hands over his eyes, then got down slowly, buttoning his soggy waistcoat and coat.

“ I don’t see as there ’s a chance,” he said, dully. “ I was a fool to think there was any better God than the one that” —digging his toe into the frozen pools. " It’s all ruled. I’m not one of the elect.”

That was all. After that, he stood waiting for his brother.

“ I ’ll help him. He’s the best I know.”

Even the faint sigh choked before it rose to his lip's,—both manhood and hope were so dead with inanition ; yet a life’s failure went in it.

While he stood waiting, Martha Yarrow sat by her kitchen-fire crying to God to help him ; but He knew what things were needed before she asked Him.

Soulé, with his gun and game-hag, had been coursing over the hills three miles hack, since four o’clock. He had bagged a squirrel or two, enough to suffice for his morning’s work, and now, his piece unloaded, came stealthily towards the place of rendezvous. lie had little hope that Stephen would help him : he had made up his mind to go through the affair alone. If he did it, that involved —Pah ! what was in a word ?

Men died every day. He had quite resolved : Judith and he had talked the matter over all night. But if Frazier were a younger man, aud could fight for it! Perhaps he was armed: Soulé’s face flashed: he stooped aud broke the trigger of his gun, and then went on with a much less heavy step. They would be more even now. He wanted to reach the bridge by dawn, and meet his brother. If he refused to help him, he would send him away, and wait for Frazier alone. About nine o’clock he might expect him.

Frazier, however, had changed his plan. He told Starr the night before, that, as M. Soulé would not breakfast with him, he had concluded to rise early, and be off by dawn. “ If there’s nothing to be done about the Miami shares, there is no use wasting time here,” he thought. So, while Stephen Yarrow waited near the bridge, the smoke was curling out of the kitchen-chimney where the cook was making ready the cashier’s beefsteak, and the old man was crawling out of bed. He could hear Starr’s children in the room overhead making an uproar over their stockings, “ Christmas morning, by the way ! I must take some knick-knack hack to Totty.” (As if his trunk were not always filled with things for Totty, and his shirts crammed into the lid, when he came home!) “ Something for mother, too,” as he pulled on his socks. “ Gloves, now, hey ? A dozen pair. I wish I had asked Madame Soulé what size she wore, last night. Their hands are about the same size. Mother always had a tidy little paw. So will Totty, eh?” And so finished dressing, thinking Soule had a neat little wife, but insipid.

So Christmas morning came to all of them, the day when, a long time ago, One who had made a good happy world came back to find and save that which was lost in it. In these few hundred years had He forgotten the way of finding ?

Stephen Yarrow had fallen into an uneasy doze by tlie road-side. He had done with thinking, when he said, “I ’ll go with John.” The way through life seemed to open clear, exactly the same as it had been before. There was an end of it. There might have been a chance, but there was none. He drowsed off into a brutish slumber. Something like a kiss woke him. It was only the morning air. A clear, sweet-breathed dawn, as we said, that seemed somehow to have caught a scent of far-off harvestfarms, in lands where it was not winter. Warm brown clouds yonder with a glow like wine in them, the splendor of the coming day hinting of itself through.

“ I must have slept,” said Yarrow, taking off his cap to shake it dry.

There were a thousand shining points on the dingy fur. He rubbed his heavy eyes and looked about him. The misty rime of the night had frozen on hills and woods and river, — frosted the whole earth in one glittering, delicate sheath. The first, level bar of sunlight put into the nostrils of the dead world of the night before the breath of life. Once in a lifetime, maybe, the sight meets a man’s eyes which Yarrow saw that morning. The very clear blue of the air thrilled with electric vigor; from the rounded rose-colored summits of the western hills to the tiniest ice-eased grass-spear at his feet, the land flashed back unnumbered soft and splendid dyes to heaven; the hemlock - forests near had grouped themselves into glittering temples, mosques, churches, whatever form in which men have tried to please God by worshipping Him ; the smoke from the distant village floated up in a constant silver and violet vapor like an incense-breath. Neither was it a dead morning. The far-off tinkle of cowbells reached him now and then, the cheery crow from one farm-yard to another, even children’s voices calling, and at last a slow, sweet chime of church-bells.

“ They told me it was Christmas morning,” he said, pulling off the old cap again.

Yarrow's chin had sunk on his breast, as his eager eyes drank all this morning in. He breathed short and quick, like a child before whom some incredible pleasure flashes open.

“Well,” with a long breath, putting on his cap, “I did n’t think of aught like this, yonder. God help us !”

He did n’t know why he smiled or rubbed his hands cheerfully. His sleep had refreshed him, maybe. But it seemed as if the great beauty and tenderness of the world were for him, this morning, — as if some great Power stretched out its arms to him, and spoke through it.

“I ’ll not be silly again,” straightening himself, and buttoning his coat; but before the words were spoken, his head had sunk again, and he stood quiet.

Something in all this brought Martha and the little chaps before him, he did not know why, but his heart ached with a sharper pain than ever, that made his eyes wet with tears.

“ If there should be a chance !"—lifting his hands to the deep of blue in the cast.

This was the free air in which he used to think he could find God.

“ What if it were true that He was there,—loving, not hating, taking care of Martha, and” —

He stopped, catching the word.

“No. I’ve slipped. I don’t forget.”

He did forget. He did not remember that he was a thief, standing there. Whatever substance had been in him; at his birth trustworthy rose up now to meet the voice of God that called to him aloud. His lank jaws grew red, his eyes a deeper blue, a look in them which his mother may have seen the like of years and years ago ; he beat with his knuckles on his breast nervously.

“If there could be a chance ! ” he said, unceasingly ; “ if I might try again !”

There was a Crackling in the snowladen bushes upon the hill : he looked back, and saw his brother coming from the other side, his game-bag over his shoulder, stooping to avoid notice, his eyes fixed intently on some object on the road beyond. It was an old man on horseback, jogging slowly up the path, whistling as he came. Yarrow shuddered with a sudden horror.

“ He means murder ! That is Frazier. You could not do it to-day, John ! Today !” as it Soulé could hear him.

He was between his brother and his victim. The old man came slower, the hill being steep, looking at the frosted trees, and seeing neither Yarrow nor the burly figure crouching, tiger-like, among the bushes. One moment, and he would have passed the bend of the hill, — Soulé could reach him.

“God help me!” whispered Yarrow, and threw himself forward, pushing the horse back on his haunches. “ Go back ! Ten steps farther, and it ’s too late ! Back, I say ! ”

The old man gasped.

“ Why ! what! a slip ? an’ watergully ? ”

“ No matter,” leading the horse, trembling from head to foot.

Up on the hill there was a sharp break, a heavy footstep on a dead root. Would John go back or come on ? he was strong enough to master both. Yarrow’s throat choked, but be led the horse steadily down the path, deaf to Frazier’s questions.

“ Do not draw rein until you reach the station,” giving him the bridle at last.

The old man looked back: he had seen the figure dimly.

“If there’s danger, I ’ll not leave you to meet it alone, my friend,” fumbling in his breast for a weapon.

Yarrow stamped impatiently.

“ Put spurs to your horse !” — wiping his mouth; “it will be yet too late!”

Frazier gave a glance at his face, and obeyed him. A moment more, and he was out of sight Yarrow watched him, and then slowly turned, and raised his head. Soulé had come down, and was standing close beside him, loaning on his gun. It was the last time the brothers over faced each other, and their natures, as God made them, came out bare in that look: Yarrow’s, under all. was the tougher - fibred of the two. John’s eyes fell.

“ Stephen, this will hurt me. I " —

“ I thought it was well done,” — his hand going uncertainly to his mouth.

“ Well, well! you have chosen,”—after a pause.

“ Good bye.”

“ Good bye, boy.”

They held each other’s hands for a minute ; then Soulé turned off, and strode down the hill. He loosened his cravat as he went, and took a long breath of relief.

“It was a vile job! But” —his face much troubled. But his wife heard the story without a word, nor ever alluded to it afterwards. She was human, like the rest of us.

A moment after he was gone, a curious change took place in the convict, a reaction,—the excitement being gone. The pain and exposure and hunger had room to tell now on body and soul. He stretched himself out on a drift of snow, drunken with sleep, yet every nerve quivering and conscious, trying to catch another echo of Soule’s step. He was his brother, he was all he had; it. was terrible to be thus alone in the world: going back to the time when they worked in the shop together. He raised his head even, and called him, — “ Jack ! ” — once or twice, as he used to then. It was too late. Such a generous, bull-headed fellow lie was then, taking his own way, and being led at last. He was gone now, and forever. He was all he bad.

The day was out broadly now, — a thorough winter’s day, cold and clear, the frosty air sending a glow through your blood. It sent none into Yarrow’s thinned veins : he was too far gone with all these many years. The place, as I said, was a lonely one, niched between hills, yet near enough main roads for him to hear sounds from them : people calling to each other, about Christmas often ; carriages rolling by ; great Conestoga wagons, with their dozens of tinkling bells, and the driver singing; dogs and children chasing each other through the snow. The big world was awake and busy and glad, but it passed him by.

“Fur this man that might have been it has as much use as for a bit of cold victuals thrown into the street. And the worst is,” with a bitter smile, “ 1 know it, to my heart’s core.”

The morning passed by, as he lay there, growing colder, his brain duller.

“ I did not think this coat was so thin,” he would mutter, as he tried to pull it over him.

If he got up, where should he go ? What use, eh ? It was warmer in the snow than walking about. Conscious at last only of a metallic taste in his mouth, a weakness creeping closer to his heart every moment,, and a dull wonder if there could yet be a chance. It seemed very far away now. And Martha and the little chaps ----Oh, well!

Some hours may have passed as he lay there, and sleep came ; for I fancy it was a dream that brought the final sharp thought into his brain. He dragged himself up on one elbow, the old queer smile on his lips.

“ I will try,” he said.

It took him some time to make his way out into the main road, but he did it at last, straightening his wet hair under the old cap.

“ It; ’s so like a dog to die that way ! I ’ll try, just once, how the world looks when I face it.”

He sat down outside of a blacksmith’s forge, the only building in sight, on the pump-trough, and looked wearily about. His head fell now and then on his breast from weakness.

“ It won’t be a very long trial. I ’ll not beg for food, and I 'in not equal to much work just now,” — with the same grim hall-smile.

No one was in sight but the blacksmith and some crony, looking over a newspaper, inside. They nodded, when they saw him, and said, —

“ Hillo ! ”

“ Hillo ! ” said Yarrow.

Then they went on with their paper. That was the only sound for a long time. Some farmers passed after a while, giving him good-morning, in country - fashion. A trifle, but it was warm, heartsome: he had put the world on trial, you know, and he was not very far from death. Men more soured than Yarrow have been surprised to find it was God’s world, with God’s own heart, warm and kindly, speaking through every human heart in it, if they touched them right. About noon, the blacksmith’s children brought him his dinner in a tin bucket, leaving it inside. When they came out, one freckled baby-girl came up to Yarrow.

“ Tie my shoe,” she said, putting up one foot, peremptorily. “ Are you hungry ? ” looking at him curiously, after he had done it, at the same time holding up a warm seed-cake she was eating to his mouth. He was ashamed that the spicy smile tempted him to take it. He put it away, and seated her on his foot.

“ Let me ride you plough-boy fashion,” he said, trotting her gently for a minute.

Her father passed them.

“ You must pardon me,” said Yarrow, with a bow. “ I used to ride my boy so, and ” —

“ Eh ? Yes. Sudy ’s a good girl. You’ve lost your little boy, now ? ” looking in Yarrow’s face.

“ Yes, I’ve lost him.”

The blacksmith stood silent a moment, then went in. Soon after a tall man rode up on a gray horse; it had cast a shoe, and while the smith went to work within, the rider sat down by Yarrow on the trough, and began to talk of the weather, politics, etc., in a quiet, pleasant way, making a joke now and then. He had a thin face, with a scraggy fringe of yellow hair and whisker about it, and a gray, penetrating eye. The shoe was on presently, and mounting, with a touch of his hat to Yarrow, he rode off. The convict hesitated a moment, then called to him.

“ I have a word to say to you,” coming up, and putting his hand on the horse’s mane.

Tlie man glanced at him, then jumped down.

“ Well, my friend ? ”

“ You ’re a clergyman ? ”

“ Yes.”

“ So was I once. If you had known, just now, that I was a felon two days ago released from the penitentiary, what would you have said to me ? Guilty, when I went in, remember. A thief.”

The man was silent, looking in Yarrow’s face. Then he put his hand on his arm.

“ Shall I tell you ? ”

“ Go on.”

“ I would have said, that, if ever you preach God’s truth again, you will have learned a deeper lesson than I.”

If he meant to startle the man’s soul into life, he had done it. He a teacher, who hardly knew if that good God lived !

“ Let me go,” he cried, breaking loose from the other’s hand.

“ No. I can help you. For God’s sake tell me who you are.”

But Yarrow left him, and went down the road, hiding, when he tried to pursue him,— sitting close behind a pile of lumber. He was there when found : so tired that the last hour and the last years began to seem like dreams. Something cold roused him, nozzling at his throat. Au old yellow dog, its eyes burning.

“ Why, Ready,” he said, faintly, “ have you come ? ”

“ Come home,” said the dog’s eyes, speaking out what the whole day had tried to say : “ they ’re waiting for you ; they ’ve been waiting always; home 's there, and love ’s there, and the good God ’s there, and it ’s Christmas day. Come home ! ”

Yarrow struggled up, and put his arms about the dog’s neck : kissed him with all the hunger for love smothered in these many years.

“ He don’t know I ’m a thief,” he thought.

Ready bit angrily at coat and trousers.

“ Be a man, and come home.”

Yarrow understood. He caught his breath, as he went along, holding by the fence now and then.

“ It’s the chance ! ” he said. “ And Martha! It ’s Martha and the little chaps! ”

But he was not sure. He was yet so near to the place where it would have been forever too late. If Ready saw that with his wary eye, turned now and then, as he trotted before,—if he had any terror in his dumb soul, (or whatever you choose to call it,) or any mad joy, or desire to go clean daft with rollicking in the snow at what he had done, he put it off to another season, and kept a stern face on his captive. But Yarrow watched it; it was the first home-face of them all.

“ Be a man,” it said. “ Let the thief go. Home ’s before you, and love, and years of hard work for the God you did not know.”

So they went on together. They came at last to the house, — home. He grew blind then, and stopped at the gate ; but the dog went slower, and waited for him to follow, pushed the door open softly, and, when he went in, laid down in his old place, and put his paws over his face.

When Martha Yarrow heard the step at last, she got up. But seeing how it was with him, she only put her arms quietly about his neck, and said,—

“ I’ve waited so long, my husband !”

That was all.

He lay in his old bed that evening; he made her open the door, feeling strong enough to look at them now, Jem and Tom and Catty, in the warm, well-lighted room, with all its little Christmas gayeties. They had known many happy holidays. but none like this: coming in on tiptoe to look at the white, sad face on the pillow, and to say, under their breath, “ It’s father.” They had waited so long for him. When he heard them, the closed eyes always opened anxiously, and looked at them: kind eyes, full of a more tender, wishful love than even mother’s. They came in only now and then, but Martha he would not let go from him, held her hand all day. Ready had made his way up on the bed and lay over his feet.

“That ’s right, old Truepenny!” he said.

They laughed at that: he had not forgotten the old name. When Martha looked at the old yellow dog, she felt her eyes fill with tears.

“ God did not want a messenger,” she thought: as if He ever did !

That evening, while he lay with her head on his breast, as she sat by the bed, he watched the boys a long time.

“ Martha,” he said, at last, “ you said that they should never know. Did you keep your word ? ”

“ I kept it, Stephen.”

He was quiet a long while after that, and then he said, —

“ Some day I will tell them. It’s all clearer to me now. If ever I find the good God, I 'll teach Him to my boys out of my own life. They 'll not love me less.”

He did not talk much that day ; even to her he could not say that which was in his heart but it seemed to him there was One who heard and understood,— looking out, after all was quiet that night, into the far depth of the silent sky, and going over his whole wretched life down to that bitterest word of all, as if he had found a hearer more patient, more tender than either wife or child.

“ Is there any use to try ? ” he cried. " I was a thief.”

Then, in the silence, came to him the memory of the old question, —

“ Hath no man condemned thee ? ” He put his hands over his face : —

“ No man, Lord ! ”

And the answer came for all time : — “ Neither do I condemn thee. Go, and sin no more.”