with a fussy hitch, as if he wore invisible petticoats. Mrs. Field heard his voice in the yard.

When he returned there was an old lady following in his wake. Mrs. Field saw her before he did. She came with a whispering of silk, but his deaf ears did not perceive that. He did not notice her at all until he had entered the office, then he saw Mrs. Field looking past him at the door, and turned himself.

He went toward her with a little flour ish of words, but the old lady ignored him entirely. She held up her chin with a kind of ancient pertness, and eyed Mrs. Field. She was a small, straight backed woman, full of nervous vibrations. She stood apparently still, but her black silk whispered all the time, and loose ends of black ribbon trembled. The black silk had an air of old gentility about it, but it was very shiny; there were many bows, but the ribbons were limp, having been pressed and dyed. Her face, yellow and deeply wrinkled, but sharply vivacious, was overtopped by a bunch of purple flowers in a nest of rusty black lace and velvet.

So far Mrs. Field had maintained a certain strained composure, but now her long, stern face began flushing beneath this old lady's gaze.

"I conclude you know this lady," said the lawyer, with a blandly facetious air to the new-comer.

At that she stepped forward promptly, with a jerk as if to throw off her irresolution, and a certain consternation. "Yes, I s'pose I do," said she, in a voice like a shrill high chirp. "It's Mis' Maxwell, ain't it-Edward's wife? How do you do, Esther? I hadn't seen you for so long, I wasn't quite sure, but I see who you are now. How do you do?"

"I'm pretty well, thank you," said Mrs. Field, with a struggle putting her twisted hand into the other woman's, extended quiveringly in a rusty black glove.

"Well,

The old lady's front hair hung in dark brown spirals, a little bunch of them against either cheek, outside her bonnet. She set them dancing with a little dip of her head when she spoke again. "I thought you did," said she. you're comin' over to my house, ain't you, Esther? You'll find a good many changes there. My daughter Flora and I are all that's left now, you know, I s'pose."

Mrs. Field moved her head uncertainly. This old woman, with her straight demands for truth or falsehood, was torture to her.

"I suppose you'll come right over with me pretty soon," the old lady went on. "I don't want to hurry you in your business with Mr. Tuxbury, but I suppose my nephew will be home, and-"

"I'm jest as much obliged to you, but I guess I'd better not. I've made some other plans," said Mrs. Field.

"Oh, we are going to keep Mrs. Maxwell with us to-night," interposed the lawyer. He had stood by smilingly while the two women talked.

"I'm jest as much obliged, but I guess I'd better not," repeated Mrs. Field, looking at both of them.

The old lady straightened herself in her flimsy silk draperies. "Well, of course, if you've got other plans made, I ain't goin' to urge you, Esther," said she; "but any time you feel disposed to come, you'll be welcome. Good-evenin', Esther. Goodevenin', Mr. Tuxbury." She turned with a rustling bob, and was out the door.

The lawyer pressed forward hurriedly. "Why, Mrs. Maxwell, weren't you com ing in? Isn't there something I can do for you?" said he.

"No, thank you," replied the old lady, shortly. "I've got to go home; it's my

tea-time. I was goin' by, and I thought I'd jest look in a minute; that was all. It wa'n't anything. Good-evenin'." She was half down the walk before she finished speaking. She never looked around. The lawyer turned to Mrs. Field. "Mrs. Henry Maxwell was not any too much pleased to see you sitting here," he whispered, with a confidential smile. "She wouldn't say anything; she's as proud as Lucifer; but she was considerably taken aback."

Mrs. Field nodded. She felt numb. She had not understood who this other woman was. She knew how-the mother of the young woman who was the rightful heir to Thomas Maxwell's property.

"The old lady has been pretty anxious," Mr. Tuxbury went on. "She's been in here a good many times-made excuses to come in and see if I had any news. She has been twice as much concerned as her daughter about it. Well, she has had a pretty hard time. That branch of the family lost a good deal of property." Mrs. Field rose abruptly. "I guess I'd better be goin',” said she. "It must be your tea-time. I'll come in again tomorrow."

The lawyer put up his hand deprecatingly. "Mrs. Maxwell, you will of course stay and take tea with us, and remain with us to-night."

"I'm jest as much obliged to you for invitin' me, but I guess I'd better be goin'." "My sister is expecting you. You remember my sister, Mrs. Lowe. I've just sent word to her. You had better come right over to the house with me now, and to-morrow morning we can attend to business. You must be fatigued with your journey."

"I'm real sorry if your sister's put her self out, but I guess I'd better not stay."

The lawyer turned his ear interrogatively. "I beg your pardon, but I didn't quite understand. You think you can't stay?" "I'm-much obliged to your sister an' you for invitin' me, but-I guess I'd bet ter-not."

"But, Mrs. Maxwell, what can you do?" said the lawyer, his manner full of perplexity, and impatience thinly veiled by courtesy. "The hotel here is not very desirable, and

"Can't I go right up to-the house?" "The Maxwell house?"

"Yes, sir; if there ain't anything to hinder.

Mr. Tuxbury stared at her. "Why, I don't know that there is really anything to hinder," he said, slowly. "Although it is rather- No, I don't know as there is any actual objection to your going. I suppose the house belongs to you. But it is shut up. I think you would find it much pleasanter here, Mrs. Maxwell." His eyebrows were raised, his mouth pursed up.

"I guess I'd better gc, if I can jest as well as not; if I can get into the house." Mrs. Field spoke with deprecating persistency.

Mr. Tuxbury turned abruptly toward his desk, and began fumbling in a drawer.

She stood hesitatingly watchful. "If you would jest tell me where I'd find the key," she ventured to remark. She had a vague idea that she would be told to look under a parlor blind for the key, that being the innocent country hiding-place when the house was left alone.

"I have the key, and I will go to the house with you myself directly."

"I hate to make you so much trouble. I guess I could find it myself, if-"

"I will be ready immediately, Mrs. Maxwell," said the lawyer, in a smoothly conclusive voice which abashed her.

She stood silently by the door until he was ready. He took her black bag peremptorily, and they went side by side down the street. He held his head well back, his lips were still tightly pursed, and he swung his cane with asperity. His important and irascible nature was oddly disturbed by this awkwardly obstinate old woman stalking at his side in her black clothes. Feminine opposition, even in slight matters, was wont to aggravate him, but in no such degree as this. He found it hard to recover his usual courtesy of manner, and indeed scarcely spoke a word during the walk. He could not himself understand his discomposure. But Mrs. Field did not seem to notice. She walked on, with her stern, impassive old face set straight ahead. Once they met a young girl who

made her think of Lois; her floating draperies brushed against her black gown, for a second there was a pale, innocent little face looking up into her own. It was not a very long walk to the Maxwell house.

Here we are," said the lawyer, coldly, and unlatched a gate, and held it open with stiff courtesy for his companion to pass.

They proceeded in silence up the long curve of walk which led to the front door. The walk was brown and slippery with pine needles. Tall old pine-trees stood in groups about the yard. There were also elm and horse-chestnut trees. The horse-chestnuts were in blossom, holding up their white bouquets, which showed dimly. It was now quite dusky.

Back of the trees the house loomed up. It was white and bulky, with fluted cornices and corner posts, and a pillared porch to the front door. Mrs. Field passed between the two outstanding pillars, which reared themselves whitely over her, like ghostly sentries, and stood waiting while Mr. Tuxbury fitted the key to the lock.

It took quite a little time; he could not see very well, he had forgotten his spectacles in his impatient departure. But at last he jerked open the door, and a strange conglomerate odor, the very breath of the life of the old Maxwell house, steamed out in their faces.

All bridal and funeral feasts, all daily food, all garments which had hung in the closets and rustled through the rooms, every piece of furniture, every carpet and hanging, had a part in it.

The rank and bitter emanations of life, as well as spices and sweet herbs and delicate perfumes, went to make up the breath which smote one in the face upon the opening of the door. Still it was not a disagreeable, but rather a suggestive and poetical odor, which should affect one like a reminiscent dream. However, the village people sniffed at it, and said, "How musty that old house is!"

That was what Daniel Tuxbury said now. "The house is musty," he remarked, with stately nose in the air.

She "I'm much

Mrs. Field made no response. stepped inside at once.

obliged to you," said she.

The lawyer looked at her, then past her into the dark depths of the house. "You can't see," said he. "You must let me

Mr. Tuxbury stepped forward with decision, and began fumbling in his pocket for a match. "Of course you cannot find one in the dark, Mrs. Maxwell," said he, with open exasperation.

She said nothing more, but stood meekly in the hall until a light flared out from a room on the left. The lawyer had found a lamp, he was himself somewhat familiar with the surroundings, but on the way to it he stumbled over a chair with an exclamation. It sounded like an oath to Mrs. Field, but she thought she must be mistaken. had never in her life heard many oaths, and when she did had never been able to believe her ears.

She

"I hope you didn't hurt you," said she, deprecatingly, stepping forward.

"I am not hurt, thank you." But the twinge in the lawyer's ankle was confirming his resolution to say nothing more to her on the subject of his regret and unwillingness that she should choose to refuse his hospitality, and spend such a lonely and uncomfortable night. "I won't say another word to her about it," he declared to himself. So he simply made arrangements with her for a meeting at his office the next morning to attend to the business for which there had been no time to-night, and took his leave.

"I never saw such a woman," was his conclusion of the story which he related to his sister upon his return home. His sister was a widow, and just then her married daughter and two children were visiting her.

"I wish you'd let me know she wa'n't comin'," said she. "I cut the fruit cake an' opened a jar of peach, an' I've put clean sheets on the front chamber bed. It's made considerable work for nothin'." She eyed, as she spoke, the two children, who were happily eating the peach preserve. She and her brother were both quite well-to-do, but she had a parsimonious turn.

"I'd like to know what she'll have for supper," she remarked further.

"I didn't ask her," said the lawyer, dryly, taking a sip of his sauce. He was rather glad of the peach himself.

"I shouldn't think she'd sleep a wink, all alone in that great old house. I know I shouldn't," observed the children's mother. She was a fair, fleshy, quite pretty young woman.

That woman would sleep on a tombstone if she set out to," said the lawyer. His speech, when alone with his own household, was more forcible and not so well regulated. Indeed, he did not come of a polished family; he was the only educated one among them. His sister, Mrs. Lowe, regarded him with all the deference and respect which her own decided and self-sufficient character could admit of, and often sounded his praises in her unrestrained New England dialect. She seemed like a real set kind of a woman, then?" said she now.

66

"Set is no name for it," replied her brother.

"Well, if that's so, I guess old Mr. Maxwell wa'n't so far wrong when he didn't have her down here before," she remarked, with a judicial air. Her spectacles glittered, and her harsh, florid face bent severely over the sugar-bowl and the cups and saucers.

The lamp-light was mellow in the neat, homely dining-room, and there was a soft aroma of boiling tea all about. The pink and white children ate their peach sauce in happy silence, with their pretty eyes upon the prospective cake.

"I suppose there must be some bed made up in all that big house," remarked their mother; "but it must be awful lonesome."

Of the awful lonesomeness of it truly, this smiling, comfortable young soul had no conception. At that moment, while they were drinking their tea and talking her over, Jane Field sat bolt-upright in one of the old flag-bottomed chairs in the Maxwell sitting-room. She had dropped into it when the lawyer closed the door after him, and she never stirred afterward. She sat there all night.

The oil was low in the lamp which the lawyer had lighted, and left standing on the table between the windows. She could see distinctly for a while the stately pieces of old furniture standing in their places against the walls. Just opposite where she sat was one of lustreless old mahogany, extending the width of the wall between two doors, rearing itself upon slender legs, set with multitudinous drawers, and surmounted by a clock. A

piece of furniture for which she knew no name, an evidence of long-established wealth and old-fashioned luxury, of which she and her plain folk, with their secretaries and desks and bureaus, had known nothing. The clock had stopped

at three o'clock. Mrs. Field thought to herself that it might have been the hour on which old Mr. Maxwell died, reflecting that souls were more apt to pass away in the nave of the night. She would have liked to wind the clock, and set the hands moving past that ghostly hour, but she did not dare to stir. She gazed at the large dull figures sprawling over the old carpet, at the glimmering satiny scrolls on the wall-paper. On the mantel-shelf stood a branching gilt candlestick, filled with colored candles, and strung around with prisms, which glittered feebly in the low lamp-light. There was a bulging sheet-iron wood stove-the Maxwells had always eschewed coal; beside it lay a little pile of sticks, brought in after the chill of death had come over the house. There were a few old engravings-a head of Washington, the Landing of the Pilgrims, the Webster death - bed scene, and one full-length portrait of the old statesman, standing majestically, scroll in hand, in a black frame.

As the oil burned low, the indistinct figures upon the carpet and wall-paper grew more indistinct, the brilliant colors of the prisms turned white, and the fine black and white lights in the death-bed picture ran together.

Finally the lamp went out. Mrs. Field had spied matches over on the shelf, but she did not dare to rise to cross the room to get them and find another lamp. She did not dare to stir.

After her light went out, there was still a pale glimmer upon the opposite wall, and the white face of the silent clock showed out above the cumbersome shadow of the great mahogany piece. The glimmer came from a neighbor's lamp shining through a gap in the trees. Soon that also went out, and the old woman sat there in total darkness.

She folded her hands primly, and held up her bonneted head in the darkness, like some decorous and formal caller who might expect at any moment to hear the soft, heavy step of the host upon the creaking stair and his voice in the room. She sat there so all night.

Gradually this steady-headed, unima