On the Ridge

I.

To all dwellers in Western New York the “ Ridge Road ” was long a household word.

This Ridge, along which runs a road much travelled before the days of railways, starts from near Rochester, and preserving through its course a distance of from five to seven miles from Lake Ontario, runs westward to Lewiston through what is now a beautiful and fertile country.

At the time of which I write, however, the Ridge ran for miles through dense woods and deep swamps.

There are many now living, who can remember when log-cabins stood where are now fine houses of brick and stone ; when ragged hemlocks occupied the ground now shaded by flourishing orchards ; and when wolves made their lair in the swamps which now, drained and reclaimed, furnish pasture for flocks and herds.

In the wettest seasons, when the great teams that carried the goods of the country traders stood hopelessly mired in the cross-roads, the Ridge furnished a high and dry pathway for commerce and travel.

This ready-made road attracted the settlers, who in the early days of Western New York poured in from New England and the eastern part of the State, and up they came in great white-covered wagons, to conquer the earth and possess it, and fight a harder battle than now falls to the lot of any Western settler, unless he goes far enough west to meet the Apaches and Camanches, and fall a victim at once to barbarism and philanthropy.

Among the early settlers along the Ridge was Alvin Litchfield, who came with his family from one of the hardest, rockiest, coldest townships in Massachusetts, and settled on a quarter section some eight or ten miles west of the little village of Gaines, in Orleans County. At that time the great mail-coaches which soon after came thundering along the Ridge Road had not begun to run, and much of the travel and commerce went by private conveyance, on horseback, or in huge wagons drawn often by four and sometimes by six horses.

For the refreshment of travellers, and especially of the teamsters, - always a thirsty race, — numerous taverns started up along the Ridge. Some of these places had no good name, and were the resort of such wild characters as always drift into a new country. Gambling and drinking went on fast and furiously, and there were rumors of darker crimes committed and hidden from sight ; and of travellers who were seen to enter, but who never came out again,¹ The taverns, however, did not tempt Alvin Litchfield to stop oftener than was absolutely necessary. He was not a temperance man, for at that time there were no more temperance men in the United States than there are snakes in Ireland ; but he was emphatically “ a steady man,” and to him who is steady, in the New England sense of that word, bar-rooms appeal in vain.

Mr. Litchfield’s family consisted of his wife and four children, two boys and two girls. Ezra, the oldest son, was already twenty, and his younger brother Adam seventeen.

Both were sturdy, hardy boys, well fitted for pioneer life, and their father gave them the highest praise he could bestow on any one when he said they were good to work.

They settled on their land, and in a short time a comfortable log-house was built and a clearing made, and month by month the family gathered about them more and more of the conveniences and comforts of home.

They were not without their trials from loss, disappointment, and sickness ; for fever and fever-and-ague in those days were the rule and not the exception on the Ridge ; but on the whole they prospered until the second year, when a fever seized on the father of the family, and, with the help of calomel, bleeding, and refusal of cold water, the practice of the time carried off in a few days the head of the house.

The widow, according to the time and place, was considered “ well off.” She had the land, the house and stock, some two hundred dollars in money, and her two sons, both steady, sensible, dutiful lads, who were quite able to carry on the farm.

She herself was an eminently capable woman, and was bringing up ber girls to follow in her footsteps. There was so much to mitigate a calamity which falls harder in many cases that some seemed indeed to think that Mrs. Litchfield was rather to be envied than pitied. “ Widders ! ” said old Mrs. Platt whose worser half was a confirmed old ciderdrunkard ; “ there’s folks that ’s worse off than widders ! ”

II.

THREE months after his father’s death Ezra Litchfield with his younger brother Adam came in from the clearing where they had been at work all day.

“ I ’ll go for the cows,” said Ezra, as his brother turned toward the woods where the cattle were allowed to run at large. “ It looks like rain, and if you get wet, you'll be having another chill.”

Adam went into the house, glad to be saved from the task of cow-driving, and Ezra to the woods, utterly unwarned and unsuspecting of the strange fate awaiting him under the sombre arches of the forest, — a fate that was to overshadow his whole life with a cloud so singular, and so impenetrable in its very vagueness, that almost any definite calamity such as befalls men would have made his part less sad and dreary.

It was a dark evening in October. The leaves were losing the gorgeousness of fall, and were lying dull and dead under foot, except where the beeches and oaks retained their summer mantle, now sombre brown instead of velvet green, or the dark hemlocks stood moaning to themselves in the wind, or a maple yet hung out a defiant banner or two of gold and red, as if hoping against hope to brave the coming winter.

The fading sunset was being fast blotted out by dull gray clouds ; the wind was rising, coming up at intervals from the lake in long, sighing gusts, and the whole aspect of Nature was as if she were tired of her summer’s work, and, sickened with the result of her labors, had left matters to decay and go to seed their own way, rather than be wearied any longer with the perpetual strife of death and life in the world.

No such fanciful thoughts, however, came into Ezra’s mind as he let down the bars that parted the woodlot from the cornfield, and walked on, summoning the cows with that ancient call which doubtless sounded over the Chaldean plains in the time of Abraham. There had been nothing hitherto very remarkable about Ezra Litchfield. He was a good, steady, honest, hard-working young farmer, peculiar in nothing, unless it might be in a certain strictness and fastidious conscientiousness, which seemed sometimes to produce an indecision and doubtfulness of action, rather trying to his mother and brother, who were either stronger or weaker, as the reader may choose to think, in wanting this very thing.

“ Ezra is gone a long time after the cows,” said little Hitty, the youngest child, as she stood in the doorway watching for her brother ; “ they may have strayed.”

“ And if they get running they may run to the lake before they will stop,” said Adam. “ I wish I had gone with him. But come in and shut the door, Hitty, for it grows cold.”

“ We will wait for him a while longer,” said the mother, “ and then, if he does n’t come, we will have supper.”

They waited nearly an hour, but Ezra did not come, and they sat down to the table without him. The meal was finished, and the table cleared away ; the twilight had ended in a slow, steady pour down of rain, and a long, rustling, sighing wind : but still Ezra did not come.

Troubled and uneasy, both for his brother and the cows, Adam took down his gun and was about to set out on a search, when the low of the cattle was heard, the bars to the barnyard were let down, and presently a slow step was heard approaching the house door.

“That don’t sound like Ezra,” said Rachel, the oldest daughter. “ Can anything have happened ?” she added, with a sudden thrill of terror at she knew not what.

The step drew nearer and nearer, it sounded on the door-stone, a hand was laid on the door, and the latch was lifted once, twice, but still the door did not open.

Adam, a bold, high-spirited youth, made no movement forward. Something seemed to hold him where he had been standing in the centre of the room with the gun in his hand. The mother and daughters, washing the dishes at the table, stopped in their labors, and all bad a singular feeling that either in the body or out some new unfriendly influence waited presently to enter and take part in the family life.

Finally, the door was pushed slowly open, and Ezra crossed the threshold and stood silent, looking into the familiar room as if he saw it not, or seeing, felt in it since he had left it at noon something that changed it wholly to him.

“Where have you been, Ezra?” said his mother, who was the first to speak ; “ and goodness ! ” she cried as she caught a glimpse of his face, “ what is the matter, what has happened to you ? ”

Indeed a change had passed over Ezra Litchfield, which it is easier for me to see mentally and understand than it is to describe intelligibly. We often say of those who have suffered calamity that they have grown older. This look had fallen upon Ezra Litchfield ; he had gone out a youth of two-and-twenty, kindly, calm, rather handsome, but now on the young face was the grayness of age; the features were pinched and drawn ; and with the unnamed horror and doubt in his eyes was dread expectation, as of one who having suffered one shock of earthquake waits for the next to swallow him up in some gulf of ruin.

“There is nothing the matter,” he said in answer to the questions and exclamations which, now the ice was broken, were poured forth by the whole family; “ the cows had strayed and I have been looking for them. Give me the milk-pail, Rachel.”

“Sit down and get your supper,” said Adam, taking the pail himself; “I’ll milk.”

“ No,” said Ezra with sudden decision ; “do you stay here.” And taking the pail from his brother and gently pushing him back as he was about to follow, be left the room, closing the door behind him.

Adam stared after him in wonder and in vexation, both with his brother and with himself, that he had yielded so easily, for in most matters Adam was apt to take the lead.

“ Why, what ails him?” said Rachel, a tall, fair girl, who was generally credited or discredited with being “ nervous,” since she was liable to fancies and impressions which did not touch others.

“ Nothing, only he’s tired looking after the cows, and he thinks it ’s too rainy for Susy Miller to come over this evening,” said Hitty.

“ It’s something more,” said Rachel. “ He looks as if he had seen a ghost; and when he opened the door and came in, I felt just as if a sheet of ice were put between him and us.”

“ Nonsense ! ” said her mother, the more sharply that she herself was conscious of a sensation like that described by Rachel; “you’d better be getting your brother’s supper than talking such fancies.”

Rachel set out the supper for Ezra, and presently he came in with the milk. He seemed as before to hesitate at crossing the threshold, and, when he entered, stood in the cheerful, familiar brightness of the room as though he were in it but not of it. The mother bustled about to get his supper, and without a word he sat down to the table ; but he hardly broke bread, and the food was taken away almost untasted. It was hardly removed when a wagon was heard to drive up to the door, and Adam and the girls exclaiming, “It’s Susy Miller and Sam after all,” rushed to meet the new-comers.

Ezra took one step forward, and then suddenly turning about he went up the ladder staircase which led to his own chamber and disappeared.

Susy Miller entered with her brother Sam. The girls hung about her; Adam, taking his brother’s place, waited upon her; and Mrs. Litchfield gave her a welcome, but somewhat less warm than usual, for she was perplexed and troubled in mind. Why should Ezra, Susy’s accepted lover, run from the girl’s sight in that strange fashion ? What had happened to him, and why did he not come down, and how was she to answer the questions which Susy’s eyes were already asking ?

“ Why, where’s Ezra ? ” said Adam.

“ He went up stairs just before the wagon drove up,” said his mother.

“ He was here then,” said Adam ; and he went to the bottom of the stairs and called Ezra impatiently, but there was no answer, and he went up the ladder himself.

He found Ezra sitting on the bed, leaning forward, with his face hidden in his hands ; but he lifted his head as his brother entered, and asked what was wanted with a sort of sad impatience.

“ Why, Susy and Sam are down stairs,” said Adam. “ Ezra, what does ail you ? Are you sick ?”

“No,” said Ezra. “There is nothing the matter. I will come down.” And he descended, but his greeting to Susy was so strange and cold and unlike himself that the girl, piqued and wounded, turned from him, and talked to Adam and the sisters, now and then stealing a glance at the corner where Ezra sat, quite heedless as it seemed of anything, even of Susy herself. His eyes were fixed on the fire, not as if he saw it, but with the same look of horror and questioning doubt which his face had worn ever since he came home from the woods. And yet it seemed as if he were expecting some event to happen or some guest to arrive whose coming should be the signal for some unknown, unimaginable trouble. Now and then he would rouse himself from his abstraction and listen, looking with strange, perplexed apprehension at the door, like one who knows not in what shape calamity may come, or, knowing, meets the stroke with helpless indecision.

Seeing that he remained really quite careless of her own assumed indifference, Susy made an excuse to draw near him, and said softly, “ What is the matter with you to-night ? Are you angry at anything or are you sick ? ”

“ Nothing is the matter, nothing,” said Ezra, without making an effort as it seemed to respond to Susy’s manner and tone ; “ why, what should be the matter here ? ”

“ There are the common troubles of humanity here,” said Susy, more gently than her careless lover deserved ; “ and you are not like yourself, Ezra.”

“Nothing is the matter, nothing,” he repeated in the same strange, absent way; and then he rose and stood looking out of the little window into the night and rain, as he had looked at the fire.

Hurt and troubled, Susy cut short her visit, feeling very angry with Ezra, until her brother Sam, during the drive home, commented sharply on his discourtesy, when she scolded Sam for saying a word against her lover ; and that night she cried herself to sleep.

The brother and sister had hardly left the house when Ezra turned to go up stairs ; his mother called him back.

Mrs. Litchfield had meant to question Ezra ; but as she stood face to face with him and looked into his eyes, a nameless feeling held her back, as though the sheet of ice of which Rachel had spoken had indeed been interposed between her and her first-born.

“What is the matter with you, my son?” she asked at last, with an effort, “ and why did you treat Susy so strangely ? ”

“ If I ’d been a girl, and any fellow had treated me so,” said Adam, indignant, “ I ’d have known the reason why or I ’d never have spoken to him again.”

“ Never have spoken to him again ? ” said Ezra, echoing his brother’s words as though they had suggested a new and startling idea to his mind, — “ never again ? ”

“You act as if you were out of your wits,” said Adam.

“ Hush, Adam,” said his mother.— “Tell me, my son, what has happened to you.”

“ Nothing, nothing in the world,” said Ezra wearily, and he turned away.

“ But, my son,” said his mother, who, in spite of herself, could insist no further, “ will you not have worship before you go to bed ? ”

The Litchfields were a religious family, and since his father’s death Ezra had led the family services ; for both he and his brother were members of the church.

“ Not to-night,” said Ezra wearily.

“ Let Adam take the book.” And he went away.

Adam made the chapter a short one, and, unused to his place and office, made more than one slip ; and it was not without a sort of dread that he went up to the loft which he used in common with his brother. Ezra was sitting on the bed in the same attitude as before ; but as Adam entered he rose and, slowly undressing, seemed soon to fall asleep.

Adam woke in the long, dreary, lifeless hours between midnight and the dawn. Ezra was sitting up in bed, rocking himself gently to and fro, and moaning low from time to time ; and as Adam turned and spoke to him, a strong shudder ran over him.

“ Ezra, what is the matter?” said Adam ; “ifyou are sick, do say so.”

“ No, there is nothing the matter,” said Ezra in the same mechanical way.

“ Look here, now, Ezra, you can’t make me believe that. What made you act so to Susy ? She did n’t like it, I know; neither did Sam, and I don’t blame them.”

“ No, no one could blame them,” said Ezra sadly.

“Now just see here, brother,” and Adam put his arm over Ezra’s shoulder, “ you and I have always been good friends ; if you are in any trouble, I should think you might trust me ; I ’m sure I’d help you if I could.”

“Will you do one thing for me?” said Ezra after a long silence, during which he had neither accepted nor rejected Adam’s offered hand.

“ What is it ?” said Adam, awed and startled by something in his brother’s manner.

“ Will you ask the blessing for me to morrow morning ? ”

“Ezra, what is it?” said Adam, turning pale in the darkness and half drawing back ; “ what do you mean ? ”

“ Will you do it ? ”

“ Yes ; but why ? ”

“ Nothing, only I wish it. As for me, Adam, I shall never break bread with blessing more.”

“ What have you done ?” cried the younger in terror.

“ Nothing, nothing. Go to sleep and leave me alone,” said the other with sudden roughness ; and he would not speak another word, but lay silent as a stone.

The next morning he did not come to breakfast till the rest of the family were seated, and the blessing had been asked by Adam. He went about his work as usual, but with the same strange look on his face, — a look which seemed to deepen as the days went on and the week drew near its end.

He no longer led the family worship, nor was even present when it was offered. The Sundaycame ; but though the Communion was held in the little log school-house which served the neighborhood for a meeting-house, Ezra did not go with his family to the sacrament, nor was he ever again seen in any worshipping congregation.

His mother tried in vain by every means in her power to win Ezra’s confidence. To all expostulation, to every argument that anxious affection could suggest as a means to win him back to himself, he only opposed the same dull, passive resistance, and answered that there was nothing the matter; and Adam’s impatient questions and reproaches he endured with such sad, silent patience that the boy, provoked, perplexed, and troubled as he was, came, nevertheless to pity his brother, and committed assault and battery upon a neighbor’s son who hinted that the cause of Ezra’s depression was remorse for some shocking and undiscovered crime. To his sisters Ezra was equally reserved, and indeed, as much as possible, avoided the society of his own family.

His mother watched him anxiously, and more than once she saw Ezra engaged, as it seemed, in earnest and agonized prayer, or with bowed head and hidden face moaning to himself; but if at such times she drew near him with words of counsel or comfort, he would only make his escape as soon as possible, or answer in the same sad way, “ There is nothing the matter, nothing.”

III.

SUSY MILLER was walking along the road from the house where she had been to see a sick neighbor, a mile from her own home.

The girl’s heart was full of trouble, wounded pride, and affection ; for though every one knew that she and Ezra were engaged to be married in the spring, he had not been near her for a month. Lost in sad, perplexed thought, she hardly noticed that a man was coming toward her, until, looking up with a sudden start, she found herself face to face with what might almost have seemed the ghost of him with whom she had walked the same path but a few weeks before.

She had meant to pass him without a word or a look, but her heart failed her, and she turned and went back to where he stood, gazing after her it is true, but with the same preoccupied look, as though she were only a sort of second thought in his mind, second to some unnamed, unknown question to which he could find no answer.

“ Ezra,” said the girl, trying to speak calmly.

“Is it you, Susy ?” he said, with a start, but in a dull, absent way.

“ I don’t wonder you don’t know me,” said Susy bitterly; “you need not take so much pains to keep out of my way ; you may be certain that I shall never try to hold you to your promise, since you wish to break it.”

A sort of shiver ran over him. It seemed as if he were trying to tear himself free from the thing that preyed on his inner life, but he only said in the same abstracted manner, “ I don't want to break it.” His eyes did not look into her face, but were fixed on a horseman who, at some distance, was riding fast toward them along the Ridge.

“ But what am I to think, Ezra ? ” said Susy; “for nearly a month you have not been near me.”

He did not answer, but, as the horseman turned into a cross-road, drew a long breath as of relief, and fixed his eyes on the ground.

“What is it that you watch for? Whom do you expect ? ” asked the girl, half frightened.

“ Nothing, Susy; no one.”

“ But, Ezra,” she continued, trying to speak steadily, “ things cannot go on so. They tell me I should have sent you back your ring long ago, and have had more spirit than to endure such treatment. But I loved you, Ezra, and I thought you loved me.”

“ I do love you,” he answered, with a sort of ghostly earnestness, as though, could he but have found force to protest, he would have spoken with all a lover’s fervor.

“ Do you know what is said of you ? ” asked the girl. “ That you never come to family prayers or ask a blessing at the table. Why do you stay away from meeting ? They whisper things, — I do not like to tell you, — but they say that this strange change in you can only come from some terrible wrong-doing on your part. I do not believe it ; but say it is not so.”

“ It is not so,” he answered, in the same mechanical fashion.

“ Then tell us what has come over you, and let your friends speak for you and clear up this mystery.”

“ There is nothing to tell,” he said ; “ nothing.”

“ Then why are you so altered ? ”

He made no reply, but raised his eyes to her face with a look of dumb, dull misery.

“ Ezra, you owe it to your mother and the rest, if not to me, to clear away this cloud that has fallen on your name.”

“ I cannot. There is nothing.”

“ Ezra, will you not trust me, will you not tell me ? ” said Susy, laying her hand on his arm. “ If you are in trouble, I would bear it with you.”

And now it seemed as if the soul of the man was moved within him and beat its wings and struggled to find voice and cry for help, and that all that was wanting was for the mind to make one resolute effort of decision, but that still some inner, perplexed argument was carried on, and that the force within could not resolve to throw itself on either scale.

“ Tell me, Ezra,” besought Susy.

And he answered once more, “ There is nothing to tell.”

“Then it is all over,” said Susy, passionately. “ I would hav,e borne any burden for you, but I will not cast my lot with a man who shuts me out of his confidence.”

“ Susy,” he said, finding voice a little, “as God is my judge, my hands are as clean as ever they were ! ”

“ Then why do you absent yourself from every prayer, and sit among your own people as though you had no part with them ? Adam says you never work with him now, and hardly ever speak to him. Your mother is breaking her heart about you ; and you are bringing the shadow of disgrace on your dead father’s good name. If you have sinned, repent, and confess, and bear yourself like a man.”

But the voice of reason, duty, or affection could not penetrate into that labyrinth wherein poor Ezra had involved himself; and he only looked at her in the same dull, helpless, preoccupied way, as though he knew that their parting was inevitable, and were too much bound and constrained by some greater misery to feel the loss of his love, except as a minor trouble.

“ I have gone far enough and too far,” said Susy, her eyes kindling through her tears ; “ I will never speak to you again. There is your ring.” And she dropped the thin, golden circle in his hand and turned away. She looked back once or twice, almost hoping that he would follow ; but he stood, where she had left him, not even glancing after her till she had reached her father’s home.

IV.

OF course the mysterious change in Ezra Litchfield could not but be the subject of much talk in the little community.

The more charitable thought him crazy ; but, as in all matters of work and business, buying and selling, he showed his usual industry and good sense, this theory was dropped for the far more interesting idea that some secret crime was preying on his mind. But what was this crime ? No one had been murdered, no one had been robbed, no special loss or calamity had befallen any one on that wan October evening since which Ezra Litchfield had become the strange, impenetrable creature that he was.

More than one person, devoured by curiosity, ransacked the Litchfield woods in vain to find some clew to the mystery ; and, natural causes failing to account for the thing that perplexed them, the good people had recourse to the supernatural. He had seen a ghost, which had told him that he was to die on a certain day, and that was why he had broken off with Susy Miller. He had met the Devil, — some, however, said an angel, — who had told him that he had committed the unpardonable sin and was eternally lost, and here lay the secret of his reluctance to be present at prayers and meetings.

This notion was so eminently satisfactory that it was generally adopted by the superstitious ; but others, thinking, like the man in the play, that where you knew nothing it was natural to suppose the worst, leaned to the idea of a murder committed in the recesses of the woods.

So poor Ezra walked the world under a cloud that grew deeper and darker all the. time, and shut him out from the common friendship of men and the light of love, and dimmed and obscured even the sunshine of his mother’s smile.

Yet, after all, sad and strange as was his destiny, there was a sort of distinction in it; and I am not sure but the Litchfields, troubled and perplexed as they had been at first, and even Ezra himself, felt a sort of melancholy pride in the unlikeness of their misfortune to that of any one else.

“ Use lessens marvel.” And in a little while the family ceased to wonder and grieve among themselves over Ezra’s singular ways and unsocial habits, though he went and came and sat among them as though he were apart from the home where he had once been the centre and head.

He gradually lost the sort of expectancy and apprehension which had at first marked his manner, and ceased, as it were, to watch for the coming of some unknown cause of terror. His mother noticed, however, that not a wagon drove up to the house, not a knock was heard at the door, when Ezra was within, without a change passing over his face as though the sound might possibly be to him the forerunner of long-dreaded calamity ; he worked as diligently as ever, but he so contrived matters that he no longer, if it was possible to avoid it, shared his labors with his brother ; and on those occasions when they were obliged to be together, he never spoke, unless forced by the necessity of the case.

Adam, who had at first been greatly provoked and annoyed by his brother’s behavior, grew to take it as a matter of course, and came to regard Ezra as one disordered in mind and stricken of God ; and this feeling pervaded the whole family, and perhaps gave them the only comfort possible under the circumstances.

V.

MATTERS had gone on in this strange way for two years, when Adam sought out Ezra, where he was hoeing corn, and, after an attempt at a preface, which failed entirely, said abruptly, “ Ezra, there’s a girl that I ’ve liked a long time. I’ve spoken toiler, and she likes me, and I mean to be married.”

“ When ? ” said Ezra, resting on his hoe. “ Where do you mean to live ? ”

Adam had not heard so many words from his brother in many months, and his heart smote him for what he was going to say.

“ Her father will give her a farm,” he went on, without naming his bride. “ I don’t want to be mean and take anything from mother and the girls.

If you and mother will give me enough of what would be my share to start with, so she need n’t do everything, I ’ll wait for the rest. I ain’t a bit afraid but what I can get a living.”

Ezra raised his eyes and looked at his brother, and a sad sense of the contrast between the happy, hopeful, sturdy young man and his own poor, mazed, burdened self, seemed to come upon him, but dimly, as though through some interposing veil.

“ Have you anything to say against it, Ezra ? ” asked Adam.

“ No, no ! ” said Ezra, with that futile effort to rouse himself which always seemed so painful. “ But who is the girl, Adam ? ”

Adam flushed red.

“ Ezra, I always liked her. When I was a boy, when she liked you, I never said a word, but afterwards — well — it’s Susy Miller.”

Ezra grew very pale, dropped his hoe, and turned to go away.

Adam held him back.

“ Look here, brother,” he said, kindly enough, “ you know she could n’t have married you as things are. You’ve had your chance, I ’ve taken mine.”

“ Yes, yes, it’s all right,” said Ezra in a dreary, passionless way, “ I hope you may be happy.” But there were tears in his eyes.

Adam’s heart melted within him.

“ Ezra, I wish you would trust me and tell me the truth. I ’ve never believed any harm of you. Won’t you speak? ”

But Ezra, though he raised his eyes for a moment to Adam’s face with a look half wistful, half reproachful, made no answer but to say as usual, “ There is nothing to tell.” And he resumed his work.

Adam stood beside him for a minute or two, but he never raised his head, and his brother left him alone.

Adam and Susy were married ; but Ezra was not at the wedding, and his absence was the less remarked as he went to no gatherings in the neighborhood, either social or religious.

Soon after, Rachel married and went to the Genesee country, taking with her her younger sister, Hitty, who at sixteen married a young clergyman at Genesee, and Ezra was left alone with his mother. He failed in no duty ; he had never, since the blow first fell, changed in the scrupulous exactness with which he had been wont to do all that his hand found to do; but he grew more and more silent and reserved.

He was generous and open-handed by nature, and he did not change his usual charitable practice. He gave liberally to all who needed help ; but though the sick and the poor had their wants supplied from Ezra’s stores, he never, if he could possibly help it, crossed a neighbor’s threshold. To all outer interests, whether religious or political, he seemed to be dead ; and in the fiercest strife between Federalist and Democrat, he cared to take neither side.

He led a blameless life, which still further increased the mystery, but did not change the sort of doubtful dread which people were apt to feel in his presence. The curse which had fallen upon him had not carried with it the blight of poverty, for all things prospered with him, and he was able to buy from Adam and his sisters their share of the home farm.

Mrs. Litchfield went often to see Susy and Adam, who were prosperous and happy in each other ; but Ezra never entered his brother’s house, nor did Susy come to her mother-in-law’s until Mrs. Litchfield was taken ill, and lay, as was thought, on her death-bed.

Ezra was sitting in the kitchen, his face hidden in his hands. The door was open into the room where his mother lay, and two or three kindly neighbors moved to and fro, speaking to each other in hushed voices.

Presently Susy came out of the sickroom, her eyes streaming with tears. She went timidly to Ezra and laid her hand on his shoulder. He started at the touch,

“Ezra,” said she, “ mother wants to see you. It can’t last much longer.”

Ezra rose and went into the next room. Mrs. Litchfield was lying back on her pillows, with death in her face. Adam stood at the head of the bed.

“ Come here, Ezra ” said the dying woman ; “ and you, Adam, go out and shut the door.”

Adam kissed his mother, and obeyed without a word.

A hush fell upon those without. Susy hid her face on Adam’s breast, and they waited in strained and breathless silence for they hardly knew what, unless it were the possible solution of the long mystery.

A low murmur was heard for a few minutes, and then the dying woman’s voice cried loudly, wildly, “ Open the door ! For God’s sake, open the door!”

Adam flung it wide, and hurried in, followed by all.

Ezra sat by the bed, his face hidden by one hand, the other clasped tight in his mother’s fingers. With a will that seemed conquering death itself, the dying woman rose from her pillow.

“ My son,” she cried in a high, clear voice, — “ my son Ezra is —”

The tongue refused its office, the death gasp was in her throat, and she fell back dead, the word, whether of condemnation or acquittal, unspoken.

VI.

THE incidents of his mother’s death only deepened the strangeness that hung round Ezra Litchfield’s life. Many were the conjectures as to what his mother had meant to say Had he told her of some crime so horrible that the shock had hurried her into the next world before she could tell the dreadful secret; had he spoken to her of the diabolical or angelic messenger; or had she been about to clear him from all suspicion of wrong ?

No one could know even whether he had told his secret in that last supreme moment ; but all inclined to the idea that his burden, whatever it was, was something of a more dark and terrible nature than had yet been surmised.

Adam and his wife, however, persistently refused to believe any ill of their brother. The minister, the Rev. Mr. B―, said that as the whole tenor of Ezra Litchfield’s life, both before and after this mysterious blight had fallen upon him, had been, not only blameless, but meritorious, it was impossible to believe in any crime perpetrated during those two hours in the woods, especially as no one could be pointed out as the sufferer of the imputed evil. The clergyman rather inclined to the belief that, on some subject of which he could not or dared not speak, poor Ezra was a monomaniac, and that he had all his lifetime been subject to bondage to some mere phantom of his own imagination which, if once named, would dissolve into air. With this idea Mr. B― visited Ezra and tried in vain to win his confidence.

Ezra would only return his usual stereotyped answer, “There is nothing to tell.”

“ Then, my brother,” said the minister, “why should you, a member of the Christian Church, stay away from all her services ? Come to us next sabbath, and see whether in the worship of the congregation, the voice of prayer and praise will not cause this burden of yours to roll away, like Christian’s at the sepulchre.”

Ezra looked at the good man as if a sort of dumb gratitude were trying to find expression through the thick and cloudy darkness in which his soul had so long wandered ; but he only said, “It is impossible.”

And seeming almost as if he feared that further entreaty might prevail, he went abruptly from the room, leaving the minister to find his way to his horse alone.

VII.

THE years went on, and, as they went, isolated Ezra Litchfield more and more from his kind. Some of the old neighbors died, others moved away ; a new generation sprang up, stage-coaches, miracles of progress, flew along the Ridge; woods disappeared and orchards flourished ; and Ezra Litchfield had prospered and his farm was one of the finest in the country.

With Adam matters had not gone so well. He and Susy had seen sickness, trouble, and loss. They had been generously assisted by their brother, but of late years he not only would not go to them, but showed such a dislike to receiving Adam’s visits that the brothers seldom met unless by chance ; in such chance meetings Ezra, silent and abstracted as he was, would show a sort of dumb pleasure, as though conscious of the sunshine of kindliness even while hiding himself from its rays.

The years went on and made Ezra at fifty an older man than was the Rev. Mr. B— at seventy-five. To the latter, still doing his work in the church, came one night a summons from Ezra Litchfield, who, said the messenger, was dying.

In a little while Mr. B― was at Ezra’s door, and was admitted by Adam, who, on hearing of his brother’s illness, had entered the house for the first time in many years. An old lady, a friend of old Mrs. Litchfield’s, sat by the fire in the kitchen, and she rose and opened the door into the next room, where Ezra lay on the same bed on which his mother had died. Adam went in, and the rfiinister followed.

“ Ezra,” said Adam, bending over his brother, “here is Mr. B―. You wanted to see him.”

“ Yes,” said Ezra, speaking with a strong, clear voice and manner unlike any which he had used for years, “ I did send for him. He has never thought hardly of me, nor have you, Adam. I have seen it and been grateful. I will tell you both my story now, and trust that you will see justice done to my memory, for I am innocent of anything worse than folly and weakness ; but one’s mind clears toward death, and I see it all now.”

The clergyman took his seat by the bed. Adam bent forward with breathless attention to catch the next words.

“ That night I left you, to go after the cows, Adam,” he said, speaking clearly and plainly, “ I hunted for them for some time, and went to the farther side of what is now the ten-acre lot, where the winter wheat is springing for my brother to harvest next summer. Then, as you know, it was thick woods ; and just under the great elmtree which stands in the corner of the fence, and which I would never suffer to be cut down, I suddenly came upon three men, having between them the dead body of a young man, bleeding from two deep wounds in the breast. The robbers were so busy in plundering the dead that for a moment they did not see me, and I might have escaped, but that horror held me to the spot, uncertain what to do.

“Before I could resolve, they had seen me. I was seized and dragged into their circle, and they consulted for a minute whether they should not kill me and bury me with their victim. One, however, represented that the double murder would more than double the risk of detection.

“ 'This fellow,’ he said, pushing the still warm body with his foot, ‘is a mere unknown traveller, for whom no one here will care to make search ; but the other must be well known in the neighborhood, and there would be a hue and cry raised which might cause us trouble.’

“ His advice prevailed, and they forced me to take an oath —so solemn and dreadful that even now I tremble in breaking it — that I would never betray them, nor show any one where the murdered man lay hid, adding threats of terrible vengeance if I should violate my pledge. Love of life was strong, and I took the oath rather than death at their hands ; and yet. would to God that I had chosen death ! They forced me to help them in burying the poor youth, and replaced over his grave the brushwood they had removed, the better to hide all traces of their labor ; then they disappeared.

“ Who were the murderers or the murdered I never knew.

“ I can say, as God is my judge, that it was not the fear of their vengeance that made me hold my tongue ; but I cannot describe to you the anguish of irresolution, the doubts, which fell upon me. The dead seemed to cry to me from his grave to bring his slayers to justice, to give his bones Christian burial, and to search out those who somewhere doubtless looked for his return. On the other hand, the laws of God and man seemed to call on me to keep my oath. Turn which way I would, it seemed equally a sin to be silent or to speak ; and I could only weigh and balance the question in my mind, until it absorbed my whole being, going over and over it in one long, never-ceasing argument which I could never decide. At first I constantly expected inquiries to be made for the missing man, but none ever came; nor, though I kept watch of the newspapers, did I hear of the loss of any one to whom the appearance of the murdered man could correspond. Again and again did I resolve to speak, but I never could bring my lips to frame the words ; and yet I felt that, while I was silent, I was persisting in a wilful sin, and this persistence seemed to shut upon me the gates of mercy and prayer.” ,

“ Ah, my brother,” said the clergyman pityingly, “ why did you not pray for direction ? ”

“ I did, time and again ; but then, you see, I never could make up my mind whether the impulse I felt urging me to tell the whole was an answer to my prayer, or only the dictate of my own will ; and I dared not follow it, lest I should be numbered among those who forswear themselves.”

“But, Ezra,” said Adam, drawing a long breath, “ if you made up your mind it was right to keep still,— I don’t say it was, but if you thought so, — could n’t you just keep still and let it go, and be like other folks ? ”

“ I could not make up my mind that I was right. I often feared that I was living in deadly sin, and every day’s silence was a link added to my chain ; but I feared to commit a greater sin by speaking.”

“ Well, then, why did n’t you commit it and done with it, and not worry your life out so ? ” said Adam, with a sort of compassionate impatience of the irresolution he could not understand. “ But, Ezra, you must have suffered awfully.”

“Suffered!” he said, with a sort of moaning cry. “ O God, I have suffered ! But, Adam, will you clear my memory when I am gone ? ”

“ By George, yes ! ” said Adam, with emphasis. “ And come, Ezra, now the thing is off your mind, can’t you make an effort and get well ? ”

“ Adam, I am too tired, too worn out, to wish to live longer. For years my life has been one agony of indecision, and I want nothing and ask nothing but a grave where I may rest.”

“ And was this what you told mother ? ”

“ Yes ; and had her life been prolonged but a minute, the terrible burden of decision would have been taken off my hands. Give my love to Susy. I felt a little hard toward you and her at first, but it is over, it is over.”

“ O Ezra, it does seem as if you might get well ! You’ve got most half your life before you yet.”

“ No, Adam ; it is better as it is. Were the body to recover, I feel that the old disease would fall upon my mind, and I should but involve myself in fresh perplexity as to whether 1 had done right even now in breaking my compelled oath. Will you see that those bones are moved to the graveyard, and a stone put over them ? I have never been near the place if I could help it, but doubtless the remains of the stranger are still there. Will you care for them ?”

“ I will, I will indeed,” said Adam with a sob.

Ezra held out his hand to his brother with a bright smile that transfigured his face, as the cloud which had so long shadowed his mind melted away in the light of eternity.

Clara F. Guernsey.