V.

SETTING THE "EARTHLY HOUSE" IN ORDER.

NCE more, Mrs. Warren's mild voice recalled me to the present's realities. Looking at her, I seemed to recognize a visible incarnation of Duty, treading her narrow path steadily, serenely, unassumingly; neither turning to the right nor left, neither looking behind nor before; but keeping her eyes always bent on the ground, to make her footing sure. At least,

this was Mrs. Warren's outer seeming;-if the hidden soul walked in white robes of consecration upon the serene heights of faith, or was bound by chains of suffering to some chill rock of despair, I could not tell. From these deeper things of her life, my eyes were necessarily holden.

"I have sent," said she, "for some one to lay Maggie out. She will be here soon. I know you are tired, and would like to go home."

I was tired; yet I felt a strong reluctance to leave that beautiful piece of clay, which had so lately given up its vital part in my arms, while any tender or helpful service remained to be performed for it. Those artless words of the dying girl, "Nobody holds me like she did," had touched some very deep-down chord in my heart. It was so long since I had felt myself really of more use than another to any human being!

"Is there, then, nothing more for me to do?" I asked. "Nothing, until Aunt Vin comes,-perhaps I should

say, Miss Lavinia Rust, to you, though the first title is the only one in use among us."

"She is not a relative, then?"

"No; she is an elderly, and somewhat eccentric, maiden lady; who has somehow slidden into the office of laying out the dead for this whole neighborhood. Perhaps some secret heart-sore first led her to give herself to the work of nursing, watching, and similar acts of self-devotion; and so, by degrees, she learned how to do the other sad duty, and does it constantly,-chiefly, it appears, because there is no one who can do it any better. She is not even a poor woman; she has a small farm of her own, which she manages with much method and shrewdness."

"But she will want some help," I said, after a moment. "Not much. And if she does, I doubt if you are able to give it. I will help her myself."

And no doubt she would have done it, as she did everything else, submissively and serenely. Neverthless, it pained me to think of it, and I said, earnestly,—

"No, no, let me stay and do it, please. I am stronger than you think. It was not so much the fatigue of holding Maggie that overcame me just now, as sorrowful recollections of another deathbed, which left me alone in the world, -my father's. But it would give me real pleasure to render this last service to Maggie, if you will permit me, and if you do not still think me too much of a stranger."

Just for one moment the mother's voice shook. "You will never be a stranger to me, after this," she faltered. Then, turning instantly from the masterful grief to the waiting, composing duty, she went on. "It is very kind of you to stay, for Sam wants me, I know; and the breakfast is to be got ready; and there are so many things to be done, that I cannot see my way clear to refuse your assistance, if you really wish to give it."

"I really do," I answered, heartily. She gave my hand a single, strong pressure, which, from her, was more touch

ing and significant than any words, and quickly went her

way.

I looked at the corpse. Some one-was it the mother? had laid two large copper coins on the eyes, a custom that always seems to me to be a horrible burlesque upon humanity, so many eyes are holden, all their lives, from the sight of the things which most concern them, by earth's paltry coin. I took them off with a shudder, and seating myself by the bedside, held down the eyelids with a light pressure of my fingers. So sitting, the peacefulness of the corpse seemed to be communicated to me also; and for the time, earthly anxieties and vicissitudes shrank to microscopic proportions, mere motes in the sunbeams that shine down from God's countenance into the hearts of those who seek to find out His meaning in life, and to let it work all His loving will upon them. Alas! that those motes should ever be magnified, through our unbelief and insubmission, into dense clouds between us and His face; darkening our hearts, and bewildering our minds, with shadows of doubt and fear!

Ere long Miss Rust arrived, and after a brief pause in the kitchen, entered the chamber of death. She merits a detailed description; no queerer character, I think, will appear in this chronicle. She was nearly, or quite, six feet tall; large-framed, bony, and angular. Her dress was of dark, printed calico; made after some quaint fashion of her own, with reference mainly to economy of material and freedom of motion. On her head was a calico sun-bonnet, of like pattern with her dress, beneath which appeared the plaited border of a muslin cap. Her large, coarse features were strongly expressive of well-founded self-reliance and sturdy sense; but there was also a grim sternness about them, for which I was unprepared, after the bit of history that Mrs. Warren had given me, and of which I learned the secret only after a more extended observation. Miss Rust was the victim of some curious nervous or paralytic affee

tion, that manifested itself in a slow, spasmodic jerk or shake of the head, repeated at regular intervals. Evidently she strove against this infirmity, which was yet of a nature not to be overcome; and the look of decision and selfcontrol consequent upon that endeavor, gave to the motion the actual force and character of a voluntary movement, though it was really so irresponsible and meaningless; and impressed the beholder with the idea that she was entering a stern and solemn protest against the depravity of the times, or his individual vices and follies.

But Miss Rust's external singularities shrank into nothingness, when once she opened her mouth. Her tongue was of the Mrs. Partington order; apparently well hung in the middle, with free play at both ends, and aiming continually at high-sounding, unfamiliar words; but seldom making a wholly triumphant hit, or a totally incomprehensible failure. Apparently, she never either accurately remembered, nor altogether forgot, any word once seen or heard; to her, similarity of sound was identical with similarity of meaning, and prefixes and suffixes were supposed to be obligingly interchangeable. The first remark which she addressed to me well-nigh demolished, at one blow, the superstructure of composure which I had reared on the last half-hour's meditations.

"How d'ye do, Miss Frost? It's a good while since we've had any extinguished strangers in Shiloh, though there isn't any place where they're better depreciated. Do you mean to stay here long?"

I bit my lip. The inclination to laugh was all the more irresistible that it was perplexingly entangled with recollections of recent solemnities, and a keen perception of the unfitness of the time and scene for any mirthful demonstration.

"Mrs. Divine has promised to give me shelter for the summer," I answered, as soon as I could trust my voice. "Yes, so I've heerd. And you couldn't find any better

place to take up your adobe in,—Aunt Hannah is a woman of imminent virtoos, she's made out of the salt and fat of the land. I understand you come from the great necropolis of York?"-shaking her head in a manner to convey volumes of disapprobation of that sombre locality.

"Yes-that is to say, I am from New York.”

"I wonder if you ever came acrost my cousin Hiram there-Hiram Rust, his name is. He keeps an expensatory on Derision street."

"No, I never had that honor."

"I'm sorry for it; I should like firstrate to hear how Hiram gits along. He's a young man of uncommon debilities, and very examplary, too,—least ways he used to be when he lived to home. I hope he keeps right end uppermost-speaking figuringly, you know-down in that 'sink of moral dilution,'--which is Deacon Haineses elias for York."

"It is to be hoped he does."

"Your name's Frost, is it? I wonder if your family came aboriginally from Rixbury?"

"Indeed, ma'am, I do not know."

"Well, I used to know a Frost there, and I really believe I see a likeness to him in your liniments. Poor man! how he used to suffer with the brown-creeters!

diseased now; he diseased six years ago."

But he's

"I beg your pardon, but what did you say he suffered with ?"

"The brown-creeters-in his throat. I remember holding his head once, for Dr. Smith to burn them out with acrostics."

Here abused gravity gave way, and rushing to the window, I leaned far out, and tried to mask my laughter with a cough.

"Goodness gracious!" pursued Miss Rust, "I hope you haven't any infection of the lungs,- pneumony, or what not. But if you have, I've got a proscription that