"Thentermine that a certain task should be fulfilled before she would again allow herself the poignant luxury of expectation. Sick at heart was she when the evening closed in, and the chances of that day diminished. Yet she staid up longer than usual, thinking that if he were comingif he were only passing along the distant roadthe sight of a light in the window might encourage him to make his appearance even at that late hour, while seeing the house all darkened and shut up might quench any such intention.

time, but not, like her joy, turned into ashes. | gracious or cordial. How could they be, when Some thought struck him. Yes! the sight of she remembered what had passed between Miher woe made him think, great as the exertion chael and herself the last time they met? For was. He ran, and stumbled, and shambled her penitence had faded away under the daily home, buzzing with his lips all the time. She disappointment of these last weary weeks. never missed him. He came back in a trice, bringing with him his cherished paper wind-mill, bought on that fatal day when Michael had taken him into Kendal, to have his doom of perpetual idiotcy pronounced. He thrust it into Susan's face, her hands, her lap, regardless of the injury his frail plaything thereby received. He leapt before her, to think how he had cured all heart-sorrow, buzzing louder than ever. Susan looked up at him, and that glance of her sad eyes sobered him. He began to whimper, he knew not why; and she now, comforter in her turn, tried to soothe him by twirling his wind-mill. But it was broken; it made no noise; it would not go round. This seemed to afflict Susan more than him. She tried to make it, right, although she saw the task was hopeless; and while she did so, the tears rained down unheeded from her bent head on the paper toy.

"It won't do," said she, at last. "It will never do again." And, somehow, she took the accident and her words as omens of the love that was broken, and that she feared could never be pieced together again. She rose up and took Willie's hand, and the two went in slowly to the house.

To her surprise, Michael Hurst sate in the house-place. House-place is a sort of better kitchen, where no cookery is done, but which is reserved for state occasions. Michael had gone in there because he was accompanied by his only sister, a woman older than himself, who was well married beyond Keswick, and who now came for the first time to make acquaintance with Susan. Michael had primed his sister with his wishes with regard to Will, and the position in which he stood with Susan; and arriving at Yew Nook in the absence of the latter, he had not scrupled to conduct his sister into the guest-room, as he held Mrs. Gale's worldly position in respect and admiration, and therefore wished her to be favorably impressed with all the signs of property, which he was beginning to consider as Susan's greatest charms. He had secretly said to himself, that if Eleanor Hebthwaite and Susan Dixon were equal as to riches, he would sooner have Eleanor by far. He had begun to consider Susan as a termagant; and when he thought of his intercourse with her, recollections of her somewhat warm and hasty temper came far more readily to his mind than any remembrance of her generous, loving nature.

And now she stood face to face with him; her eyes tear-swollen, her garments dusty, and here and there torn in consequence of her rapid progress through the bushy by-paths. She did not make a favorable impression on the wellclad Mrs. Gale, dressed in her best silk gown, and therefore unusually susceptible to the appearance of another. Nor were her manners

But she was hospitable in substance. She bade Peggy hurry on the kettle, and busied herself among the tea-cups, thankful that the presence of Mrs. Gale, as a stranger, would prevent the immediate recurrence to the one subject which she felt must be present in Michael's mind as well as in her own. But Mrs. Gale was withheld by no such feelings of delicacy. She had come ready-primed with the case, and had undertaken to bring the girl to reason. There was no time to be lost. It had been prearranged between the brother and sister that he was to stroll out into the farm-yard before his sister introduced the subject; but she was so confident in the success of her arguments, that she must needs have the triumph of a victory as soon as possible; and, accordingly, she brought a hail-storm of good reasons to bear upon Susan's. Susan did not reply for a long time; she was so indignant at this intermeddling of a stranger in the deep family sorrow and shame. Mrs. Gale thought she was gaining the day, and urged her arguments more pitilessly. Even Michael winced for Susan, and wondered at her silence. He shrunk out of sight, and into the shadow, hoping that his sister might prevail, but annoyed at the hard way in which she kept putting the case.

Suddenly Susan turned round from the occupation she had pretended to be engaged in, and said to him in a low voice, which yet not only vibrated itself, but made its hearers vibrate through all their obtuseness:

"Michael Hurst! does your sister speak truth, think you?"

Both women looked at him for his answer; Mrs. Gale without anxiety, for had she not said the very words they had spoken together before; had she not used the very arguments that he himself had suggested? Susan, on the contrary, looked to his answer as settling her doom for life; and in the gloom of her eyes you might have read more despair than hope. He shuffled his position. He shuffled in his words.

"What is it you ask? My sister has said many things."

"I ask you," said Susan, trying to give a crystal clearness both to her expressions and her pronunciation, “if, knowing as you do how Will is afflicted, you will help me to take that charge of him that I promised my mother on her death-bed that I would do; and which means, that I shall keep him always with me, and do all in my power to make his life happy. If you will do this, I will be your wife; if not, I remain unwed."

"But he may get dangerous; he can be but a trouble; his being here is a pain to you, Susan, not a pleasure."

"I ask you for either yes or no," said she,

a little contempt at his mingling with her tone. it nettled him.

evading her question | Peggy's eyes, while her own filled with the He perceived it, and strange relief of tears.

"And I have told you. I answered your question the last time I was here. I said I would ne'er keep house with an idiot; no more I will. So now you've gotten your answer." "I have," said Susan. And she sighed deeply. "Come now," said Mrs. Gale, encouraged by the sigh; "one would think you don't love Michael, Susan, to be so stubborn in yielding to what I'm sure would be best for the lad." "Oh! she does not care for me," said Michael. "I don't believe she ever did!"

"Lass!" said Peggy, solemnly, "thou hast done well. It is not long to bide, and then the end will come."

"But you are very old, Peggy," said Susan, quivering.

"It is but a day sin' I were young," replied Peggy; but she stopped the conversation by again pushing the cup with gentle force to Susan's dry and thirsty lips. When she had drunken she fell again to her labor, Peggy heating the hearth, and doing all that she knew would be required, but never speaking another word. Willie basked close to the fire, enjoying the ani

were beginning to be chilly. It was one o'clock before they thought of going to bed on that memorable night.

"Don't I? Have not I?" asked Susan, her eyes blazing out fire. She left the room di-mal luxury of warmth, for the autumn evenings rectly, and sent Peggy in to make the tea; and catching at Will, who was lounging about in the kitchen, she went up stairs with him and bolted herself in, straining the boy to her heart, and keeping almost breathless, lest any noise she made should cause him to break out into the howls and sounds which she could not bear that those below should hear.

A knock at the door. It was Peggy. "He wants for to see you, to wish you by."

"I can not come. away!"

IV.

The vehemence with which Susan Dixon threw herself into occupation could not last forever. Times of languor and remembrance would come-times when she recurred with a passionate yearning to past days, the recollecgood-tion of which was so vivid and delicious, that it seemed as though it were the reality, and the Oh, Peggy, send them present bleak bareness the dream. She smiled anew at the magical sweetness of some touch or tone which in memory she felt and heard, and drank the delicious cup of poison, although at the very time she knew what the consequence of racking pain would be.

It was her only cry for sympathy; and the old servant understood it. She sent them away, somehow; not politely, as I have been given to understand.

"Good go with them!" said Peggy, as she "This time, last year," thought she, "we grimly watched their retreating figures. "We're went nutting together-this very day last year; rid of bad rubbish, any how." And she turned just such a day as to-day. Purple and gold into the house with the intention of making were the lights on the hills; the leaves were ready some refreshment for Susan, after her just turning brown; here and there on the sunhard day at the market, and her harder even-ny slopes the stubble-fields looked tawny; down ing. But in the kitchen, to which she passed through the empty house-place, making a face of contemptuous dislike at the used tea-cups and fragments of a meal yet standing there, she found Susan with her sleeves tucked up and her working apron on, busied in preparing to make clap-bread, one of the hardest and hottest do- | mestic tasks of a Daleswoman. She looked up, and first met and then avoided Peggy's eye; it was too full of sympathy. Her own checks were flushed, and her own eyes were dry and burning.

"Where's the board, Peggy? We need clapbread, and I reckon I've time to get through with it to-night." Her voice had a sharp dry tone in it, and her motions had a jerking angularity in them.

Peggy said nothing, but fetched her all that she needed. Susan beat her cakes thin with vehement force. As she stooped over them, regardless even of the task in which she seemed so much occupied, she was surprised by a touch on her mouth of something-what she did not see at first. It was a cup of tea, delicately sweetened and cooled, and held to her lips when exactly ready by the faithful old woman. Susan held it off a hand's-breadth, and looked into

in a cleft of yon purple slate-rock the beck fell like a silver glancing thread; all just as it is today. And he climbed the slender swaying nuttrees, and bent the branches for me to gather; or made a passage through the hazel copses, from time to time claiming a toll. Who could have thought he loved me so little?—who ?— who?"

Or, as the evening closed in, she would allow herself to imagine that she heard his coming step, just that she might recall the feeling of exquisite delight which had passed by without the due and passionate relish at the time. Then she would wonder how she could have had strength, the cruel, self-piercing strength, to say what she had done; to stab herself with that stern resolution, of which the scar would remain till her dying day. It might have been right; but, as she sickened, she wished she had not instinctively chosen the right. How luxurious a life haunted by no stern sense of duty must be! And many led this kind of life; why could not she? Oh, for one hour again of his sweet company! If he came now, she would agree to whatever he proposed.

It was a fever of the mind. She passed through it, and came out healthy, if weak.

She was capable once more of taking pleasure | with the hook of the stick which he carried; in following an unseen guide through briar he dropped the stick, and it fell with one end and brake. She returned with ten-fold affec- close to Susan—indeed, with the slightest tion to her protecting care of Willie. She ac- change of posture, she could have opened the knowledged to herself that he was to be her all-gate for him. He swore a great oath, and in-all in life. She made him her constant com- struck his horse with his closed fist, as if that panion. For his sake, as the real owner of Yew animal had been to blame; then he dismountNook, and she as his steward and guardian, she ed, opened the gate, and fumbled about for his began that course of careful saving, and that stick. When he had found it (Susan had touchlove of acquisition, which afterward gained for ed the other end), his first use of it was to flog her the reputation of being miserly. She still his horse well, and she had much ado to avoid thought that he might regain a scanty portion its kicks and plunges. Then, still swearing, he of sense-enough to require some simple pleas- staggered up the lane, for it was evident he was ures and excitement, which would cost money. not sober enough to remount. And money should not be wanting. Peggy rather assisted her in the formation of her parsimonious habits than otherwise; economy was the order of the district, and a certain degree of respectable avarice the characteristic of age. Only Willie was never stinted or hindered of any thing that the two women thought could give him pleasure for want of money.

By daylight Susan was back and at her daily labors at Yew Nook. When the spring came, Michael Hurst was married to Eleanor Hebthwaite. Others, too, were married, and christenings made their fireside merry and glad; or they traveled, and came back after long years with many wondrous tales. More rarely, perhaps, a Dalesman changed his dwelling. But There was one gratification which Susan felt to all households more change came than to was needed for the restoration of her mind to Yew Nook. There the seasons came round its more healthy state, after she had passed with monotonous sameness; or, if they brought through the whirling fever, when duty was as mutation, it was of a slow, and decaying, and nothing, and anarchy reigned; a gratification- depressing kind. Old Peggy died. Her silent that somehow was to be her last burst of un-sympathy, concealed under much roughness, reasonableness; of which she knew and recog-was a loss to Susan Dixon. Susan was not nized pain as the sure consequence. She must see him once more-herself unseen.

yet thirty when this happened, but she looked a middle-aged, not to say an elderly woman. People affirmed that she had never recovered her complexion since that fever, a dozen years ago, which killed her father, and left Will Dixon an idiot. But besides her gray sallowness, the lines in her face were strong, and deep, and hard. The movements of her eyeballs were slow and heavy; the wrinkles at the corners of her mouth and eyes were planted firm and sure; not an ounce of unnecessary flesh was there on her bones-every muscle started strong and ready for use. She needed all this bodily strength to a degree that no human creature, now Peggy was dead, knew of: for Willie had grown up large and strong in body, and, in gen

The week before the Christmas of this memorable year she went out in the dusk of the early winter evening, wrapped up close in shawl and cloak. She wore her dark shawl under her cloak, putting it over her head in lieu of a bonnet; for she knew that she might have to wait long in concealment. Then she tramped over the wet fell-path, shut in by misty rain for miles and miles, till she came to the place where he was lodging; a farm-house in Langdale, with a steep stony lane leading up to it: this lane was entered by a gate out of the main road, and by the gate were a few bushes-thorns; but of them the leaves had fallen, and they offered no concealment: an old wreck of a yew-eral, docile enough in mind; but, every now tree grew among them, however, and underneath that Susan cowered down, shrouding her face, of which the color might betray her, with a corner of her shawl. Long did she wait; cold and cramped she became, too damp and stiff to change her posture readily. And after all, he might never come! But she would wait till daylight, if need were; and she pulled out a crust, with which she had providently supplied herself. The rain had ceased-a dull still brooding weather had succeeded; it was a night to hear distant sounds. She heard horses' hoofs striking and plashing in the stones, and in the pools of the road at her back. Two horses; not well-ridden, or evenly guided, as she could tell.

and then, he became first moody, and then violent. These paroxysms lasted but a day or two; and it was Susan's anxious care to keep their very existence hidden and unknown. It is true that occasional passers-by on that lonely road heard sounds at night of knocking about of furniture, blows, and cries, as of some tearing demon within the solitary farm-house; but these fits of violence usually occurred in the night; and whatever had been their consequence, Susan had tidied and redd up all signs of aught unusual before the morning. For, above all, she dreaded lest some one might find out in what danger and peril she occasionally was, and might assume a right to take away her brother from her care. The one idea of taking Michael Hurst and a companion drew near; charge of him had deepened and deepened with not tipsy, but not sober. They stopped at the years. It was graven into her mind as the obgate to bid each other a maudlin farewell.ject for which she lived. The sacrifice she had Michael stooped forward to catch the latch made for this object only made it more pre

You now know why no wandering tourist could persuade her to receive him as a lodger; why no tired traveler could melt her heart to give him rest and refreshment; why long habits of seclusion had given her a moroseness of manner, and care for the interests of another had rendered her keen and miserly. And she strode into her own premises, never But there was a third act in the drama of her looking round to see whether he obeyed her in