In a Mysterious Way

PLEASANT CONVERSE

"Well, what did I tell you?" said Mrs. Ray to Mrs. Catt, a day or so later, when that lady had dropped in for a little call. "Those two young people up at Nellie O'Neil's have fallen in love just as sure as beans are beans. Not that he's so young, either, but a man's always able to fall in love whenever he gets a chance. Age don't matter. There was Mr. Ray. He was always in love unless he was married. Yes, indeed."

"If he's engaged to that other one, I shouldn't think he'd find it very easy to fall in love right under her nose, so to speak," said Mrs. Catt.

"She wouldn't notice," said Mrs. Ray, adjusting her shawl, and turning the needlework in her hands; "she's the kind who don't even see the things they go headlong over. She's the mooney kind. I know. Yes, indeed. Mr. Ray had mooney days. There were days when Mr. Ray called me by his first wife's name all day. Those were his mooney days."

"My cousin Eliza thinks she's crazy too. She says she's seen her time and again setting on stumps in the woods, and she turns out in the road for sparrows. And then that house. They're at it tooth and nail from dawn to dark. I never see nothing like it."

"Yes," said Mrs. Ray; "there's others say that, too. She is queer! Nellie says she often doesn't eat breakfast—nor any meat either. And she talks about the dam as if we was all heathens laying the axe at the root of our own mothers. She says all the trees ought to belong to the United States Government. As if we wasn't singing 'Pass under the rod of the Republican party' from dawn to dark now. Such a country!"

"She goes down to see Mr. Ledge, too," pursued Mrs. Catt; "of course he don't want the dam, and he makes her more so. Josiah Bates was driving home from Castile the other day, and he saw her coming from there. Josiah said he was sure she'd been to see Mr. Ledge, 'cause she wasn't ten feet from the house, and they was waving their hands to her from the window. You can always depend on Josiah Bates knowing what he's talking about."

"Yes," said Mrs. Ray, turning her work about; "yes, Josiah Bates is a very careful observer. He'll never die of no fish-bone in his throat for want of watching the fish."

"Speaking of fish-bones," said Mrs. Catt, "have you seen Lottie Ann Wiley lately? There's a bag of bones for you!"

"Not for a week or so. Why? Is she thinner than she was?"

"Thinner! Well, I should say so. I don't know what the Wileys will do with that girl if she keeps on getting thinner and paler."

"She isn't any paler than that girl at Nellie O'Neil's."

"Which one?"

"That Lathbun girl. Do you know anything about them?"

"That's what every one's asking."

Mrs. Ray threaded her needle. "They're a queer pair," she remarked.

"Well, I should say so. They don't eat any breakfast, either; make it up on chestnuts. They're picking chestnuts all over. Lizzie says she never saw people making so free. Folks don't know what to say, but it riles a good many. They pick that little gray bag they've got full three or four times a day."

"Well, I declare," said Mrs. Ray; "do you suppose they eat 'em all?"

Mrs. Catt rose. "I only stopped for a minute," she said. "Oh, I don't know, I'm sure. Chestnuts is hearty, but seems to me they ought to ask at the houses, anyway. Mrs. Wiley says if they come to her trees again, she'll turn the bull in the lot."

"Must you go?" Mrs. Ray asked. "I thought Mrs. Wiley was afraid of the bull."

"Yes, I must. What you making?"

"I'm putting a new lining in this vest for Elmer Hoskins. His dog chewed it up, while he was asleep."

"Did he have it on?" Mrs. Catt asked in great surprise.

"No; he had it on the chair and it fell off."

"Fell off! I s'pose you've heard about Gran'ma Benton's parrot falling off?"

"Falling off what? No, I haven't heard."

"Fell off the perch. I saw poor Clay this morning, and he's half mad. The parrot and Gran'ma Benton have been discussing most all night lately, and the parrot gets so mad he hops all over and last night he got in a rage and fell off the perch. Broke the perch, too."

"Well, I declare," said Mrs. Ray; "why don't Clay show some spirit and put a stop to all that? I would."

"He can't. Gran'ma Benton's so fond of discussing, and if she didn't have the parrot she'd soon wear them all out."

"I thought she was wearing them out as it is."

"Well, yes—" Mrs. Catt looked cornered, "but, anyhow, they don't have to do the talking now—the parrot does it. I'd like to see my husband's mother have a parrot—that's all!" Mrs. Catt twitched her shawl expressively.

"Poor Clay Wright Benton," said Mrs. Ray. "Just to look at him you'd know it all. I do despise men who haven't got any spirit; but if they have spirit of course they're almost worse to get on with. Yes, indeed."

"Yes, indeed!" said Mrs. Catt with meaning; "well, good-by, Mrs. Ray."

"Oh! Good-by."

Mrs. Catt went out.

It was only a few minutes later that Mrs. Wiley arrived, with another large bundle wrapped up in newspaper.

"Don't stop your work," she said, putting it down with a sigh. "Oh, you ain't sewing on my coat," she added, in a tone of deep disappointment, evidently seeing interruption in a changed light at once.

"No, but I've cut it out. What you got there?"

"I've got another suit of father's."

Mrs. Ray eyed the bundle with thoughtfully compressed lips, and gave her shawl a fresh tuck.

"What you want made out of this one?"

THE BROADER MEANING

It is surprising how quickly any situation can be assimilated. Be it ever so pleasant or ever so painful, we get accustomed to its demands surprisingly soon, and whether it is the fact that one has just gotten a fortune, or just gotten the toothache, in either case it seems as if one had had it always, before one has hardly had it at all.

Lassie learned this with great rapidity. Before three days had passed by, she discovered that the deep and earnest joy in Alva's mind had eradicated all the horror in her own. Alva's love ceased to seem shocking—it seemed, instead, more like some beautiful, mysterious wonder. Lassie came to hear her friend talk without any distress—only with a sort of wistful ignorance—a longing to fathom depths not before even apprehended.

"It doesn't strike me as it did at first at all," she said to Ingram one night, as they went for the mail together. "All that I think of now is how happy she looks. Did you ever see any one look as happy as she does?"

"She's very happy, surely," said Ingram; "but what uses me up is that she is looking forward so. Why, that man is dying—he may die any day—and she thinks that he will come here. He can't ever come here, not possibly!"

"Oh, can't he?" Lassie cried, in real distress, "are you sure of that?"

"Of course. He knows it, too."

"But she doesn't know it?"

"No."

"Don't you think that he ought to tell her, then?"

Ingram did not speak for a minute. "Perhaps some miracle may come to pass, and he may live," he said then; "you see, he has lived three weeks longer than any man in his circumstances ought to expect to live."

"Oh, then he hasn't got to die soon?"

Ingram knit his brows in the dark. "I can't explain myself clearly," he said; "but it seems to me that he and Alva sort of rise above rules, so to speak. Part of the time she's as she always was—just as we are—and then again I feel as if she herself had gone and left me sitting with just a figure of some sort.—" He paused. "I expect he's the same way," he added, after a second; "it's all beyond me."

"It's strange, isn't it?" Lassie spoke thoughtfully. "She's very sweet and lovely, and dear with it all. But I know just what you mean; I've seen it, too. She is talking, and then she stops and that white look comes over her face, and I never speak then until she does. Do you know," she said, almost timidly, "I keep thinking of things I've read in books about the Middle Ages,—about saints; about 'ecstasy,' they called it. We say 'ecstasies' about hats, or little dogs, or the flowers at Easter; but when Alva has been talking about her life in that house and stops to think, and I see her face, I feel as if I understood what the word really and truly meant."

"I suppose there's no danger of her converting you," said Ingram; "it's all very well for her, but I should hate to have you that way."

"Why?" asked the girl, in surprise.

"It isn't human, that's why," the man declared, energetically. "We're past the Middle Ages," he added, with a little laugh, "far past now."

"You think that people can be too good?"

"Yes, I do. I wouldn't marry a woman like her for anything!"

"But you thought differently once," said Lassie, shyly.

"Yes," he said, easily, "I wanted to marry her once, but she wouldn't have it at all. Droll—isn't it?"

"We're ever so far by the post-office; do you know it?" she said.

"So we are; I'd forgotten all about the mail."

They turned back.

"But I don't believe that Alva ever could make you see life in the way that she does," Ingram said, tentatively; "does she ever try?"

"I don't think so," said Lassie; "she just talks to me of her happiness."

"What would become of the world, I wonder, if every one adopted her views," suggested the man.

They turned in at Mrs. Ray's gate just here. The mail was distributed, and every one else had taken theirs and gone.

"Well, you're a little late," said Mrs. Ray, cheerfully. "Mary Cody run up for the house letters when she saw you go by. Have a nice walk?"

"Yes, very," said Ingram.

"You're great walkers down your way. Mrs. Lathbun and her daughter walk all day long, seems to me."

"They do walk a good deal," said Lassie.

Then she and Ingram went back to the hotel. They found Alva standing by the dining-room door with her lamp and her letters in her hand. Mrs. O'Neil stood close before her.

"I wouldn't worry," said Alva to Mrs. O'Neil; "I don't believe one word of it."

"When they're out to-morrow I shall sweep the room myself," said Mrs. O'Neil, decidedly; "you can learn a good deal about people by sweeping their room." Then they all separated, Ingram going to his letters, their hostess to her husband, and Alva and Lassie to their cosy nest up-stairs.

"What was the matter?" Lassie asked, directly their doors were shut.

"Nothing especial," Alva said, laughing; "it was just that Mrs. Ray came here this afternoon and rather upset Mrs. O'Neil by talking about Mrs. Lathbun and her daughter."

"What did she say?"

"She didn't say anything in particular—she just talked."

"What did she talk, then?"

"She talked all sorts of things; she doesn't like them at all. She doesn't consider them nice."

Lassie was silent. She was conscious of a painful lack of admiration for either Mrs. Lathbun or her daughter, herself.

A freight train began to roll by and ended conversation for the time being. Alva went to the window and stood there. After a while she spoke musingly.

"Everything must have a purpose. Every action has to have a thought behind it. If we could only see through the veil!"

The train, which had come to a standstill, now began to move again, cracking and straining at first, then going on with a terrific roar.

"They serve their purpose surely—the freight trains," Alva said; "even if they did nothing else, their noise accomplishes something. One might forget life so easily in this corner of the world, if it were not for them."

Lassie laughed. "But they serve a few more purposes than that."

"Yes, of course. I never deny the broader meaning in life—if the world's view is the broader one—but trains mean such a great deal besides what they carry, in a little bit of a town. I used to think that they came pretty close to being all the meaning that life had to the people there, and I still wonder sometimes if it isn't so. I've lived here well over one week now, and really it seems to me that the trains, their comings and goings, and whether they do them on time or not, are the only topics of conversation that are ever broached."

"Perhaps they talk about other things when we're not around," suggested Lassie, wisely.

"I hadn't thought of that. Or perhaps they think the trains our only mutual interest. You know, Lassie, there really is no one that is stupid, unless you do your half towards being stupid, too. It's like the crash in the wilderness, which doesn't mean sound unless there are ears to hear it."

"I never thought of that," said Lassie; "isn't there really any sound in the wilderness? What happens when the tigers roar?"

"But of course they do talk about other things here," Alva continued, paying no attention to her friend's flippancy. "They talk about the dam, and they talk about me."

"What do you suppose they say about you?" Lassie asked, curiously.

"I know exactly what they say," Alva replied, a real amusement curling her lips; "they say that Ronald and I are going to be married and live in that house while he builds the dam."

"Oh!"

"Yes, indeed."

"But I didn't know that the dam was decided on."

"It isn't, my dear, and I don't believe myself that there ever will be any dam. I can't believe that this State, even in her grossest materialism, will have the face to accept a royal gift and then turn around and give it away in direct contradiction of the terms of its acceptance."

"Is it as bad as that?"

"It's very bad. That dear old gentleman has made the preservation of this wonder of nature the realized dream of his whole life. He's carried through no end of other big philanthropic schemes, but he never for one instant allowed anything to turn him aside from this one. He told me himself how he had rewooded the banks—he has planted thousands and thousands of trees—and now to have the whole threatened. It's shameful, shameful!"

"Does every one know how you feel?"

"Yes, every one knows how I feel."

"What do they think themselves?"

"I believe the predominant sentiment in Ledge is that it will be entertaining to see Ledgeville drowned for good and all."

Lassie laughed.

The freight train was all gone by now. Alva turned from the window and came back to a seat beside her friend, sinking upon it with a little sigh.

"All this goes very near with me, dear," she said, gently; "loving Nature and fighting for the future has been his life-work, you know."

"Yes," Lassie said, softly.

Suddenly the older one leaned close and put her arms about the young girl. "It's so heaven-blessed to have you here,—it makes me so happy."

"I'm very happy, too," said Lassie. "I never had just the feeling before in my life that I have with you these days—it's as if nothing could ever come between us. Sort of as if we had been sealed to a compact."

Alva patted the brown waves of hair. "That's the understanding of true friendship, dear," she said; "nothing ever can come between us. Once two people realize mutual truth, how can anything come between them again? All the trouble in the world arises out of falseness. Search in your mind, and see if it isn't so?"

Lassie reflected. "You're putting so many new ideas into my head," she said, "I suppose I'll go home with nothing of my old self left in me."

"Not quite that," said Alva. "Your old self wasn't so bad, Lassie, dear. But the world has a way of hammering all its votaries into a certain set of molds, and I'd like to see you casting, instead of cast,—do you know the difference?"

"Alva," said Lassie, with sudden appealing earnestness, "you weren't like this when I saw you last; what changed you?"

"I had the convictions then, but not the courage. Now I have the courage, too."

"What gave you the courage?"

"Surely you can divine?"

"Love."

"Yes, dear, love. Love for him. All courage has its root in love of some kind."

"Alva, you teach me more each day."

"Yes, and I'll teach you more and more and more yet, and so on and so on until we part, and then I'll go on learning myself."

"Hasn't your lesson any end?"

"Love hasn't any end, dear, any more than it has any beginning. And so my lesson hasn't any end, either."

"But—"

"I know what you are going to say, but that isn't real love. That which can end has never been,—all the real things in existence are eternal."

"But they—the people that—well, you know, they thought that it was love—didn't they?"

"Yes, dear, and little children think that there are bears in dark closets, and ever so many people think that money buys happiness. The world is full of lies, Lassie, but if one puts the test to them they all fade away. You don't understand yet—but wait."

"I want to understand."

"But you are not ready to understand yet."

"But I am ready, I will learn to be ready."

"Yes, and I'm going to teach you. But I have to go slowly because I have to hunt for the words. You are such a little thing—such a baby—to be trusted with life; because you see most people never live—they just exist. They are only a few steps up on the staircase, and when they are dragged or pushed above the place that they are in by nature, they are apt to be dizzy. I want to teach you life, Lassie; but I don't want to make you dizzy." She paused, and a whimsical little smile danced across her face; "and besides, dear, we must get undressed. It is after ten o'clock."

"Just a minute more, Alva; it seems as if I cannot break off right here. And I won't be dizzy. I know that whatever you think and do must be right and best. I want to learn to think just as you do. I want to be told how you learned. I always knew you were so very good, and truly, dear, I wouldn't have been surprised if you'd chosen to marry a missionary or to go to that island where the lepers are—not after the first minute, you know; it would have been just like you."

"Oh, no, Lassie, it wouldn't have been like me at all. For ever so many reasons. My first duty in life—the duty that comes before every other—is to my father and mother. No claim could be strong enough to justify my leaving them; and then, besides, I'm not a Christian, except in the sense that I believe with Christ, and that isn't enough for any mission or any leper nowadays."

There was a little pause; then Lassie said: "But you are going to leave your father and mother now, aren't you?"

Alva smiled. "But for such a little while, dear," she said, gently; "you forget how short the time is to be!" There was an instant's pause and then she turned suddenly and her face had the bright color of deep emotion flaming in it. "Lassie, Lassie," she exclaimed, with a strength of feeling that startled the other into a sudden cry, "I'm trying to be calm, I'm trying to talk to you quietly,—I don't want you to think me a mad woman,—but I am so much closer to some other keener, sharper world of soul and sensation than you or any one can realize, that I can hardly curb myself to the dull, unknowing, unfeeling, throb, throb, of this one. Don't you know, Lassie, that people are getting married every day,"—she stopped and pressed her hands tightly together, her eyes starring the pallor of her face with that curious radiance of which the young girl had spoken to Ronald. "Oh," she went on, "to think that people are getting married every day because they need cooks or because they need care, or because the man has money or because the girl is pretty, and they go forth un-understanding, and they live along somehow; and the word that means their sort of companionship is all that I can use to speak of the evening that I shall return here, his wife, and fall on my knees beside him and realize that all my loneliness and waiting and hoping has ended, and that at last—at last—we are to be together, even if only for a few weeks, a few days, a few hours. A foretaste of eternity! A memory of what was in the beginning of all things!"

Ceasing to speak, she clasped her hands more tightly yet, and her eyes closed slowly. Lassie sat still and trembling. Her breath came unevenly, but she saw that Alva's swept in and out of her bosom with a wide evenness that belies unconquered emotion. After a minute the other opened her eyes and laid her hand lightly upon the girl's head. "I frighten you, I know that I frighten you," she said; "you think that I am crazy after all."

"No, I don't, Alva; but I can't think what kind of a man the man can be to make you feel that marrying him will be so different from marrying any other man."

"You can't think, because you don't know what love can mean to people—what it has meant to him or what it has meant to me."

Then she sprang up and began to undress herself rapidly.

"I don't see how you can bring yourself back to earth, Alva, after you have felt like that."

Alva smiled. "But we must live on the earth, Lassie, and be of the earth. We are made for the earth. God gave us our souls, and he gave us our bodies, too. And he meant both to work together."

Lassie sat still and meditative. She had herself been carried out beyond her depth and could not get back easily. She was, in truth, a little dizzy.

THE WAR-PATH

Mrs. Ray in the post-office managed to keep track of Mrs. O'Neil's personal sweeping of the Lathbun bedroom until it was terminated. Then she left the United States Government's appointment in charge of Mr. Ray's first wife's youngest daughter, and hied herself down the hill.

Mary Cody and Mrs. O'Neil were in the kitchen discussing the results of the investigation when she entered.

"Well, you'll never guess what I found," said the landlord's wife; "you'd never guess if you guessed till Doomsday."

"What did you find?" Mrs. Ray tucked in the ends of her shawl with fierce joy,—"a pistol?"

"No;" Nellie O'Neil's brown eyes glowed and her face shone; "guess again."

"Oh, I can't guess," said Mrs. Ray, impatiently. "A monkey? A love-letter from the king of England? A lot of stamps? I don't know,—I can't guess."

Mrs. O'Neil nodded her head very slowly, and with deeply seated meaning.

"Go on," said Mrs. Ray, "tell me. I'm in a hurry. Yes, I am."

"I found six case-knives!"

"Six case-knives!"

"Yes, that's what I found."

"Six case-knives! Well, of all the—What did they want them for?"

"One was broke off short."

"Any blood on it?"

"Oh, Mrs. Ray!"

"Well, I just asked."

"They were all clean."

"And one broke off?—hum!"

"What do you think about it, Mrs. Ray?"

"I hope it'll be a lesson to Sammy Adams never to take two strange women in on a rainy night again. The Bible, even, is severe on strange women."

"Did he take them in?" Mrs. O'Neil opened her brown eyes widely.

"Take them in! He kept them all night. Haven't you heard about it? And never told me, either. That's just like a man. Flattering himself that I'd give a second thought to any woman living. Six, you say, Nellie, and one broke off?"

"The broken one is one of the six."

"They could have broken it off in his heart, just as easy! My, to think of the chances that man took! Didn't they have anything else? Did you look under the mattress?"

"Yes,—I looked everywhere. There's a hair-brush that I'd have thrown into the gorge a year ago if it had been mine, and a bent pin and a broken mirror, and that's all."

"I declare. Well, it's a very good thing that I set you to looking them up. Yes, indeed. I shall look them up in all directions now, myself. I shan't leave a stone unturned that I can even tip up on one side. To think of those case-knives! And one broke off! And Sammy Adams taking them in like that! But then, it isn't for you to criticize him, Nellie, for you've taken them in yourself. You can thank your stars you haven't had a case-knife stuck in you before now. How do they carry them, anyway?"

"They were wrapped in a piece of red flannel."

"Red flannel! Why, you said all they had beside the knives was the hair-brush and the mirror. Red flannel,—hum! So blood wouldn't show on it, I expect. Was the edge of the blade of the broken one rusted at all?"

"Not that I noticed."

"Noticed!"

"Don't you want to come up and see for yourself, Mrs. Ray?"

"I don't know. They might come in. It wouldn't look well for any one in the employ of the United States Government to be found spying about, you know. I'm always having to consider my country. Yes, indeed. But what do you suppose they have those knives for? I never heard of such a thing in all my life. Even if they used them for tooth-brushes, they'd only want one apiece."

"I think you'd better come up-stairs."

"And Sammy Adams taking them in like that! That poor innocent! Not but what he was a fool; think of me opening my doors to two tramps!"

"Come on up-stairs. They won't be back till noon. They've gone chestnutting in the Wiley wood. They can't be back till noon."

The door opened just here, and Alva came in with Lassie behind her.

"Have you told them?" Mrs. Ray asked.

"What is it?" Alva asked.

"We don't know what to think about Mrs. Lathbun and her daughter," said Mrs. O'Neil.

Alva glanced quickly into both their faces and then at Lassie.

Mrs. Ray tucked the ends of her shawl in, folded her arms, and closed her lips tightly for a second before opening them to speak. "I never did like their looks," she declared. "I'm not surprised over what's come out!"

"I never liked their looks, either," said Lassie, "but what is it? Has anything happened?"

"No," said Mrs. Ray, "nothing in particular, only we're beginning to find them out. You can't pretend to be somebody forever without any trunks. Case-knives are good in their way, but they don't take the place of trunks."

"Case-knives!" Alva exclaimed. "Oh, what do you mean?"

"There, Nellie, you see how they strike any one," said Mrs. Ray, with deep meaning.

"But have they case-knives with them?" Alva asked,—"not really?"

Then Mrs. O'Neil told her story.

"You'd better all lock your doors nights after this," said Mrs. Ray; "you don't want to take Sammy Adams' chances if you can help it."

"But what should they have the knives for?" Lassie asked.

"They have their reasons," said Mrs. Ray, darkly; "you know you told me the other day, Nellie, that the reason why they sat in the kitchen with their feet in the oven so much was because their shoes was all wore out; they've got their reasons for everything they do, depend on it. If they're honest, why don't they have their shoes patched when they're wore out? If they were respectable, why didn't that girl buy some black laces instead of wearing brown ones. I always keep black shoe-laces in my grocery business."

"Maybe she doesn't know that," suggested Lassie.

"Yes, she does know," said Mrs. Ray, "for I told her so one day when she played come for mail."

"I didn't know you kept shoe-laces," said Mrs. O'Neil. "I've always bought them in Buffalo."

"Well, I do. Yes, indeed. I keep pretty nearly everything—except case-knives. There's nothing out of place in keeping shoe-laces in a grocery business, not until after you begin to wear them, and for my own part they seem to me just as decent as shoe buttons which all the town would be up in surprise if I didn't have them in my grocery business."

"Yes, I knew you kept shoe buttons," said Mrs. O'Neil.

"I keep everything, except strange women travelling after dark. My store is a general one. I thank heaven there's nothing of the specialist in me. I'd of starved if there was, or been obliged to charge very high for very little work, which would mean starving in a while anyhow, so being no doctor I couldn't stay a specialist long even if I tried."

"I think you ought to come up-stairs and see their room, Mrs. Ray," Mrs. O'Neil said, going back to the main question.

"What is it about their room?" Lassie asked.

"There isn't anything about it—that's what it is," said Mrs. Ray; "respectable people always have things about their room. Yes, indeed. But of course women walking across country nights can't carry much fancy fixings even if they don't mind stopping all night wherever the rain catches them."

"Did they stop over night anywhere?" Lassie asked.

Mrs. Ray adjusted her shawl. "Such doings!" she muttered; "I never heard the like. That's one way to work the game. I never had any game. I just had the work. Whenever there came up something as had to be done that nobody in town could do, I was glad to learn how for the money. Yes, indeed. And now they come along and live on the fat of the land, case-knives and all."

"Do let's go up and see the room," pleaded Mrs. O'Neil.

Mrs. Ray wavered. "Well, if Mary Cody will stand in the hall and watch?" she stipulated.

"And you must come, too," said Mrs. O'Neil to her two guests; "there isn't anything to see—it isn't prying—it's just the wonder how they can get along without anything at all that way."

Alva was rather pale.

"Do let's go," Lassie whispered.

Alva smiled sadly. "Yes, we'll go," she said.

Mrs. O'Neil called Mary Cody and stationed her below. Then they all four mounted the stairs and went along the plain hall to the plain door at the end.

"You keep everything very neat, Nellie," said Mrs. Ray; "it's a pity you don't stick to nice people who can appreciate nice things. If you go taking in people like the Lathbuns too often, you might just as well give up and get the name for it. I wouldn't dare stay under the same roof with them, myself."

Mrs. O'Neil made no answer, simply pressing the door at the end of the hall and—as the door yielded—entering first.

Mrs. Ray and Lassie were next. Alva did not go in, but stood still in the doorway.

It is hard to conceive the special effect of that interior on each of the four.

"Did you have any little things around before you swept?" Mrs. Ray asked, standing in the middle like the head of some royal commission in the days of the Dissolution.

Mrs. O'Neil—in the capacity of the layman left to represent the monks flown—replied that she had found all as bare as now.

"Well, you told the truth, Nellie," her friend remarked; "there's the hair-brush and here's the mirror. But where are the knives?"

Mrs. O'Neil pulled open the upper drawer, and in one corner lay the roll of red flannel.

Mrs. Ray unrolled the knives and examined them with care. A case-knife is rather limited as to its power of revelation, however, and she soon laid them down.

"Well, I never!" she said, with heaviest emphasis.

"What do they sleep in, or wash with?" Mrs. O'Neil suggested.

"The towels are yours, of course, Nellie?"

"Of course."

Lassie looked around the simple bedroom with its absolute bareness. She felt pitiful.

"They're comin' over the post-office hill!" Mary Cody suddenly yelled below. The effect was magical.

Lassie and Alva fled into their room.

"I feel like a burglar myself," exclaimed the young girl, as she shut their door.

Mrs. Ray was going down the stairs in the hall outside. "There," she exclaimed, "did you hear that? That's the way it goes when you harbor criminals. They're very catching."

"Oh, do you really think they're criminals?" Mrs. O'Neil asked, in great distress.

"Well, Nellie, put the case-knives and Sammy Adams together, and then the way they pick up other folks' chestnuts and having no comb and only half a brush for the two of 'em—it looks bad in my eyes."

"But what shall I do?" Mrs. O'Neil asked.

"Ask Jack if they pay their board regularly; that'll help you to know some," propounded the postmistress solemnly, and then she returned to her government duties forthwith.

ANOTHER PATH

As Lassie closed the door, Alva moved to her favorite post by the window and stood there looking out; the young girl looked anxiously towards her friend. "What happens to those people doesn't really matter to us, does it?" she asked after a minute, some atmosphere of trouble permeating her.

"Everything matters, dear."

"But, Alva, you hardly know them, and they are common."

"Perhaps so, dear, but that room,—two weeks in that room with nothing, no comforts such as we think absolutely essential—oh, it makes me feel terribly. Life is such a puzzle. Ledge seemed such a simple-hearted, secluded little nook,—and first I ran into the big, soul-wringing problem of the dam, and now here are these two lives. Lassie, whatever else they may or may not be, they are human. It can't be joy to live like that. There must be some reason for their doing as they do, and I can see no reason except the one the girl told me."

Lassie began to wash and brush for dinner; Alva continued to stand at the window.

"That was the first time that I ever went into a room where I was possibly not wanted," she continued, presently. "It seemed so strange. And such a room, too. Oh, it all has made me fairly heart-sick. I wonder what the end is to be. As I say so often, there are no accidents, no chance happenings in life; if anything enters within my circle, there is a reason for it. Either they are to do for me, or I am to do for them, and I wish I knew which it were to be. I am so sorry for them!"

"Then you don't think that they can be doing wrong—are perhaps bad?"

"No," said Alva, firmly; "I'll never think that of any one. Nobody is ever bad. The word is too complete. It says more than it means to express."

"They couldn't be going to do anything for you."

"How can you tell, Lassie? Sometimes in doing for others we do a thousand times more for ourselves. Haven't you learned that yet?"

"No, not yet—not with people of that sort."

"They don't look to be so wrong," Alva spoke half-musingly. "They just look like plain, quiet people. I'm sure there's no evil in them!"

"Perhaps she made up the love affair?"

"She never made that man up, Lassie; that man is a real man. You can't 'make up' men like that."

"But if he is rich and loves her, would he let her be living this way and chasing her around that way. That does seem so awfully funny, to me,—for a rich man to spend the nights outside the window of a girl who hasn't even a change of pocket-handkerchiefs,—and she isn't pretty either, you have to admit that, Alva?"

"Lassie, you do look at everything from such a petty, worldly standpoint. Of course it isn't your fault, but you judge too easily. How do you know what rule governs that man; there are some men that no one can understand,—they seem to be a race apart. All their springs of action differ from the usual sources. I've been in love with such a man—I'm in love with him now—I am going to marry him. The ordinary woman wouldn't care much for a love that had to be set aside for bigger things, as his for me was at first. But I understood. I accepted the situation. All situations have their key—their clue—if one can get a little way outside of body and senses, and then study them thoughtfully."

"Well, but if the man is an exceptional man as yours is, what can interest him in such a girl?"

Alva shook her head. "You don't find her interesting, and you will never go near enough to her spirit to change your view; but she interests me, and some day you'll come to see that every human being is full of interest, if we will but take the trouble to hunt the interest out. I have learned that lesson, and all that I can think of is the apparent trouble and need of these two."

"Would you have a man as great as the man you love, marry such a girl with such a mother, Alva?"

"I would have people who love sincerely always marry, whoever they love."

"But if he is so wild that a woman who hasn't even an extra hairpin wants to hide her daughter from him, do you think he'll make her happy?"

There was a pause.

"Lassie," her friend said, presently, "do you know I used to be just like you. I saw only the finite, too."

"Yes?"

"Yes, and I often wonder what would have become of me if I had not learned through love to finally escape out of the bonds and shackles of ordinary conditions, and to contemplate them only as either behind or below me. How can we judge in the case of another? All that I know absolutely in this case is that I have strayed into the midst of a pitiful story. All I can do is to try to help that pain. That poor girl is nothing but a passing ghost to you; to me she is a link in the chain-armor of life that covers my spirit during its earthly war. As I said before, there are no chance meetings, there are no accidents; there's nothing trivial in life after one once grasps the greatness of the whole. You can make things trivial by belittling them, or you can make them great. I make Miss Lathbun great because a man who is great is interested in her."

"But how do you know that he's great? Or that he is interested in her? She may have made it all up; I think that she did, myself."

Alva turned from the window.

"My dear child," she said, approaching the girl and laying her hand on her shoulder, "I feel as if there were a thick veil between us; how can I tell you what I think, when you don't want to understand what I try to say? Suppose she did make it up? Suppose she and her mother are anything you please? Still, I'd be glad that I believed in them. One little grain of real belief may possibly be the seed of a new life for them; and even if it isn't, think what it means to me to be able to believe in people. It means that I am looking for good, instead of looking for evil. Can't you see how much better that must be for me personally?"

Lassie lifted her eyes to see what she called "the white look," on Alva's face. She felt ashamed of her own standpoint.

At that instant the dinner-bell rang loudly below.

"Oh, we'll see them now!" Lassie exclaimed, all other thoughts fading.

Alva gave her a quiet glance. "Yes, we'll see them now," she said, turning towards the door.

AND STILL ANOTHER PATH

It is difficult for one who has never taken an ocean voyage or lived in a small village to realize the tremendous strides which interest, friendship, love, or confidence can make in a very few days, or even hours. I met three girls once whose kind parents had provided them with a chaperon and sent them abroad to improve their minds. They met men on the Lusitania (a record trip, too) going over, and all three were engaged when they landed. Instead of improving their minds in Europe, they bought their trousseaux, and then came home (another record trip) and were married. A small village is just the same; one is introduced and after that it goes like the wind. Women tell each other everything that they shouldn't, and virtues which would never be noticed in a city beget the deepest and sincerest admiration and affection. The dearth of conventionality and variety draw spirits easily together. Perhaps the purer air is a universal solvent for pride and prejudice. At any rate, to make a long story short, Lassie and Ingram were in love with each other before Alva had finished having the porch of her house painted, or before Mrs. Ray had succeeded in tracking the case-knives to their suspicious lair of crime.

It's delightful to fall in love on the sea or in the country, quite as delightful as to fall in love anywhere else. It is too bad that fickleness is rated so low, for really the emotion of slowly discovering that one is entering Elysium should be too great an experience to be foregone forever after. However, we must not forget that fickleness is rated low because humanity long since discovered that being in Elysium is still better than making an entrance there, and furthermore that of all sharp edges known, Love is the one most easily dulled by usage. Therefore it is best to adhere to the dear old rules for the dear old game, and only thank Fate with special reverence when sea-breezes or country zephyrs float around one's own personal setting-out.

Lassie didn't know that she was in love; she only knew that she was very happy. Ingram didn't know that he was in love; he only knew that he was very happy. Alva, whose soul sank daily deeper into the near approaching abyss of her profound longings, noticed nothing. But every one else knew, of course. Joey Beall, the invisibly omnipresent, saw them alone together somewhere nearly every day. Mrs. Ray watched them come and go together for mail. Mrs. O'Neil, who never had believed that Ingram was in love with Alva, wished them well with all her heart. For she felt sure that Alva wasn't in love with Ingram, either.

"I'm glad to have something pleasant before my eyes just now," she said to Mary Cody, and Mary Cody knew that she referred to the feeling over the dam, which daily grew keener, and to the Lathbuns, who, it was now openly known, had never paid any board since their arrival, but merely referred to their banker in Cromwell, who, it appeared, was out of town, and could not send on their October check until his return.

"I don't know what there is about looking at them," said Mary Cody, who was fifteen and grown up at that (and who did not refer to Mrs. Lathbun and her daughter); "but every time he looks at her while I'm waiting on them, I feel as if I'd just about die of joy if Ed Griggs would look at me once that way."

"Don't talk nonsense," said Mrs. O'Neil, severely.

The days which bore such momentous happenings upon their bosom flowed swiftly on, and the week was speeding by—was gone, in fact.

"It doesn't seem possible, does it?" Lassie said, as she came across the bridge with Ingram one afternoon. He had happened to return from the long-distance telephone in Ledgeville by way of Alva's house; and she had happened to be ready to go home, and Alva had happened not to be ready. "It doesn't seem that it can be only a week. I feel as if it were months, instead. Do you remember that first day, when Alva told me, how I cried and how horrible I thought it was. And now I feel as if it were too sad for words, but something so great and lovely and sacred, that I'm sort of hushed in joy to have seen it all. I can see her side now, and when I go back to the world and hear people say the things that I thought myself when she first told me, I know that they are going to hurt me awfully. And yet she says that they will not hurt her."

"No," said Ingram, thoughtfully, "she seems to be quite beyond being hurt. I never saw any one who impressed me just as Alva does."

"It's very wonderful to be with her all the time," Lassie went on; "nothing seems to affect her for herself, but only things about other people. She doesn't seem to think her thoughts for herself any more, but just for others. It's how she can study and learn and carry on some part of his work for him after he's gone; it's how she can teach the people around here that Ledge won't profit in the end by being turned into a big lake or a big manufacturing district; it's how she can only prove to people that those two queer women are really honest, and really nice to know."

"And do you agree with all her views now?" Ingram asked, recalling the first of their meetings and the difference in Lassie's views from her friend's then.

"I think it's very splendid how she loves. I thought it was terrible at first, but now I—" she hesitated; "I"—she stopped altogether.

"Go on," said Ingram; "what were you going to say?"

The girl looked down the cañon of gray, barren beauty, and then up towards the sunlit valley of sweet, sunshiny, farming country. "Perhaps you won't believe me," she said, her eyes for the minute almost as distant in their withdrawal as Alva's own; "but now, I—truly—I envy her. I would give anything to love as she does. I would almost give the world to see life as she sees it. You see, I have begun to understand what she means when she says things."

Ingram was deeply stirred by pathos of which Lassie herself was ignorant. The young desire to learn to drink of bitter waters! The longing towards the crown of thorns stirs them, because they can appreciate the sublimity of martyrdom, and cannot measure the agony!

She had stopped and laid her hand upon the bridge-rail. Involuntarily he laid his hand upon it, holding it within his strength and warmth.

"When she talks to me of him," Lassie went on, seeming unconscious of the hand and looking far ahead, "I forget myself, I forget Mamma, I forget my début; I live only in her and her hope. I never saw love like hers; she lives in him—in it—not in the world, and she's so sure of the next world and of their future. It goes all through me, the wonder of it. I can't tell you how I envy her. She said when I came that she would send me back home all different, and I see now that she will do it."

"But I don't want you different." The words burst from the man's lips. Mountain tops are serene and glorious and very close to the clouds, but oh, the good warmth, the dear, cosy loveliness of those soft green slopes far—so far—below.

Lassie was too deeply engrossed to notice. "I shall go back to my home a better girl," she said; "and I shan't let myself forget what I've learned here."

Ingram thought that she had heard, and felt himself silenced.

There was a minute of stillness, and then they walked on. The October evening was falling chill, and the night wind came winding up the gorge.

"Do you agree with her about the dam, too?" the man asked finally, as they approached the end of the bridge, striving against an echo of bitterness.

"Oh, yes, she has converted me about that, too. She took me down to call on Mr. Ledge, and when I saw that dear, courtly, old gentleman, and heard how quietly and earnestly and sadly he and Alva talked about it, I came to see how different all that was, too."

Ingram waited a second or two; then he said:

"And Mrs. Lathbun,—do you believe in her too, now?"

Lassie laughed. "No, I don't," she said, very positively; "I'm awfully sorry for them both, but I cannot believe in them."

"Alva does."

"Yes,—but Alva—"

"Yes, well,—go on."

"I mustn't. Indeed I mustn't. I promised, and this time I must keep my word. But Alva has a reason for believing in them."

"Is it a good reason?"

Lassie reflected. "No," she said, finally; "I don't think that it is a good reason at all."

They were at the hotel door now.

"Well, I'm sorry for Alva," said Ingram, "because I hate to see ideals shattered."

"Oh, but they may justify her faith."

"I am more inclined to think that they will justify your doubts."

Lassie looked pleased. She valued Ingram's opinion highly.

A little later Alva herself came home, pale as she always was, but more weary looking than nightfall usually found her.