The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 53, March, 1862. Various

his trembling hand, and went and hid on her mother’s neck, and left Stephen to say everything for her. And I think you and I had better come away. Are not these things written on the fairest page of Stephen Holmes’s remembrance?

      It was quite dark before they had done talking,—quite dark; the wood-fire had charred down into a great bed of crimson; the tea stood till it grew cold, and no one drank it. The old man got up at last, and Holmes led him to the library, where he smoked every evening. He held Maggie, as he called her, in his arms a long time, and wrung Holmes’s hand. “God bless you, Stephen!” he said,—“this is a very happy Christmas-day to me.” And yet, sitting alone, the tears ran over his wrinkled face as he smoked; and when his pipe went out, he did not know it, but sat motionless. Mrs. Howth, fairly confounded by the shock, went upstairs, and stayed there a long time. When she came down, the old lady’s blue eyes were tenderer, if that were possible, and her face very pale. She went into the library and asked her husband if she didn’t prophesy this two years ago, and he said she did, and after a while asked her if she remembered the barbecue-night at Judge Clapp’s thirty years ago. She blushed at that, and then went up and kissed him. She had heard Joel’s horse clattering up to the kitchen-door, so concluded she would go out and scold him. Under the circumstances it would be a relief.

      If Mrs. Howth’s nerves had been weak, she might have supposed that free-born serving-man seized with sudden insanity, from the sight that met her, going into the kitchen. His dinner, set on the dresser, was flung contemptuously on the ashes; a horrible cloud of burning grease rushed from a dirty pint-pot on the table, and before this Joel was capering and snorting like some red-headed Hottentot before his fetich, occasionally sticking his fingers into the nauseous stuff, and snuffing it up as if it were roses. He was a church-member: he could not be drunk? At the sight of her, he tried to regain the austere dignity usual to him when women were concerned, but lapsed into an occasional giggle, which spoiled the effect.

      “Where have you been,” she inquired, severely, “scouring the country like a heathen on this blessed day? And what is that you have burning? You’re disgracing the house, and strangers in it.”

      Joel’s good-humor was proof against even this.

      “I’ve scoured to some purpose, then. Dun’t tell the mester: it’ll muddle his brains t’-night. Wait till mornin’. Squire More’ll be down hisself t’ ‘xplain.”

      He rubbed the greasy fingers into his hair, while Mrs. Howth’s eyes were fixed in dumb perplexity.

      “Ye see,”—slowly, determined to make it clear to her now and forever,—“it’s water: no, t’ a’n’t water: it’s troubled me an’ Mester Howth some time in Poke Run, atop o”t. I hed my suspicions,—so’d he; lay low, though, frum all women-folks. So’s I tuk a bottle down, unbeknown, to Squire More, an’ it’s oil!”—jumping like a wild Indian,—“thank the Lord fur His marcies, it’s oil!”

      “Well, Joel,” she said, calmly, “very disagreeably smelling oil it is, I must say.”

      “Good save the woman!” he broke out, sotto voce, “she’s a born natural! Did ye never hear of a shaft? or millions o’ gallons a day? It’s better nor a California ranch, I tell ye. Mebbe,” charitably, “ye didn’t know Poke Run’s the mester’s?”

      “I certainly do. But I do not see what this green ditch-water is to me. And I think, Joel,”—

      “It’s more to ye nor all yer States’-rights as I’m sick o’ hearin’ of. It’s carpets, an’ bunnets, an’ slithers of railroad-stock, an’ some color on Margot’s cheeks,—ye’d best think o’ that! That’s what it is to ye! I’m goin’ to take stock myself. I’m glad that gell’ll git rest frum her mills an’ her Houses o’ Deviltry,—she’s got gumption fur a dozen women.”

      He went on muttering, as he gathered up his pint-pot and bottle,—

      “I’m goin’ to send my Tim to college soon’s the thing’s in runnin’ order. Lord! what a lawyer that boy’ll make!”

      Mrs. Howth’s brain was still muddled.

      “You are better pleased than you were at the election,” she observed, placidly.

      “Politics be darned!” he broke out, forgetting the teachings of Mr. Clinche. “Now, Mem, dun’t ye muddle the mester’s brain t’-night wi’ ‘t, I say. I’m goin’ t’ ‘xperiment myself a bit.”

      Which he did, accordingly,—shutting himself up in the smoke-house, and burning the compound in divers sconces and Wide-Awake torches, giving up the entire night to his diabolical orgies.

      Mrs. Howth did not tell the master, for one reason: it took a long time for so stupendous an idea to penetrate the good lady’s brain; and for another: her motherly heart was touched by another story than this Aladdin’s lamp of Joel’s wherein burned petroleum. She watched from her window until she saw Holmes crossing the icy road: there was a little bitterness, I confess, in the thought that he had taken her child from her; but the prayer that rose for them both took her whole woman’s heart with it, and surely will be answered.

      The road was rough over the hills; the wind that struck Holmes’s face bitingly keen: perhaps the life coming for him would be as cold a struggle, having not only poverty to conquer, but himself. But he is a strong man,—no stronger puts his foot down with cool, resolute tread; and to-night there is a thrill on his lips that never rested there before,—a kiss, dewy and warm. Something, too, stirs in his heart, like a subtile atom of pure fire, that he hugs closely,—his for all time. No poverty or death shall ever drive it away. Perhaps he entertains an angel unaware.

      After that night Lois never left her little shanty. The days that followed were like one long Christmas; for her poor neighbors, black and white, had some plot among themselves, and worked zealously to make them seem so to her. It was easy to make these last days happy for the simple little soul who had always gathered up every fragment of pleasure in her featureless life, and made much of it, and rejoiced over it. She grew bewildered, sometimes, lying on her wooden settle by the fire; people had always been friendly, taken care of her, but now they were eager in their kindness, as though the time were short. She did not understand the reason, at first; she did not want to die: yet if it hurt her, when it grew clear at last, no one knew it; it was not her way to speak of pain. Only, as she grew weaker, day by day, she began to set her house in order, as one might say, in a quaint, almost comical fashion, giving away everything she owned, down to her treasures of colored bottles and needlework’s, mending her father’s clothes, and laying them out in her drawers; lastly, she had Barney brought in from the country, and every day would creep to the window to see him fed and chirrup to him, whereat the poor old beast would look up with his dim eye, and try to neigh a feeble answer. Kitts used to come every day to see her, though he never said much when he was there: he lugged his great copy of the Venus del Pardo along with him one day, and left it, thinking she would like to look at it; Knowles called it trash, when he came. The Doctor came always in the morning; he told her he would read to her one day, and did it always afterwards, putting on his horn spectacles, and holding her old Bible close up to his rugged, anxious face. He used to read most from the Gospel of St. John. She liked better to hear him than any of the others, even than Margaret, whose voice was so low and tender: something in the man’s half-savage nature was akin to the child’s.

      As the day drew near when she was to go, every pleasant trifle seemed to gather a deeper, solemn meaning. Jenny Balls came in one night, and old Mrs. Polston.

      “We thought you’d like to see her weddin’-dress, Lois,” said the old woman, taking off Jenny’s cloak, “seein’ as the weddin’ was to hev been to-morrow, and was put off on ‘count of you.”

      Lois did like to see it; sat up, her face quite flushed to see how nicely it fitted, and stroked back Jenny’s soft hair under the veil. And Jenny, being a warm-hearted little thing, broke into a sobbing fit, saying that it spoiled it all to have Lois gone.

      “Don’t muss your veil, child,” said Mrs. Polston.

      But Jenny cried on, hiding her face in Lois’s skinny hand, until Sam Polston came in, when she grew