Do you clip over and tell Annie,” John had said to Seth, when the first excitement of the scene had passed off, and they stood at the kitchen window, watching the Sheriff’s buggy fade off in the dusk down the hill toward Thessaly jail. “It’s the thing for you to do—the quicker the better!”

Annie had been home from her day’s task some minutes, and sat by her grandmother’s bedside. The patient was in a semi-comatose state, breathing with unnatural heaviness, and Samantha had been dispatched with all haste to bring a doctor from Thessaly. It seemed terribly probable that Mrs. Warren’s last day had come.

Yet as she sat by the curtained recess, holding in her’s the withered hand which lay inanimate on the high edge of the bed, Annie still thought very little of the great change impending over her home; she had faced this death in life so long that its climax did not startle her, or wear the garb of strangeness. Instead, she was pondering the unaccountable, unwelcome fact with which Samantha had greeted her on her return—that Isabel was in the adjoining room, and had asked to see her.

What could it mean? What could Isabel’s purpose be in coming? And ought she to sacrifice her own feelings to the dictates of politeness, and go in to see this wicked, cruel woman? Perhaps she had come to retract and apologize for the fearful words of Tuesday. Perhaps her intention was to reiterate them, or worse, to recount that now the whole world would know of them—and gloat over her pain. No, that could scarcely be, for since her interview with Milton Annie felt satisfied at least of Seth’s innocence. But still something new might have been disclosed—Isabel might have evil tidings of some sort with which to overwhelm her afresh. What should she do?

The parlor door was ajar, and though she could not see her visitor, she could plainly hear the snapping of the wood fire within, which Samantha had kindled. Isabel must be perfectly aware of her return, and of her presence in this sick chamber. Every minute that she hesitated would only augment the widow’s anger at being thus inhospitably neglected. Even if she had relented, and had come with kindly intent, this reception might alter her impulses.

She rose to enter the parlor, but still stood irresolute, holding her grandmother’s hand, when there came the sound of footsteps in the front hall—then of a hasty knock on the door opening from the hall into this room in which she was. She opened the door, and before her, excited and jubilant, stood her cousin Seth.

“I’ve come to tell you!” he burst out, “It’s all cleared up. There was a murder. Milton did it! He’s just been arrested! I tried to ring your bell, but it didn’t seem to work. So I had to come in! And now——”

He opened his arms with an unmistakable gesture, and they closed fondly upon an overjoyed maiden, who sobbed upon his breast for very relief.

When she found breath and words, it was to say:

“Oh, you can’t guess what I have suffered these last two days; I thought I should never live through them! And now it seems as if I should go wild with joy—as if I couldn’t keep my feet down on the floor!”

“Yes, yes, I know, my darling. But we shall be all the happier for this spell of wretchedness. Dry your eyes, pet. There shall be no more thought or talk of tears—much less of dying.”

“O Seth!—I forgot!—my grandmother!”

She lowered her voice, and told him her fears.

Hand in hand, and with his arm about her shoulder, they moved softly to the bedside of the dying woman. The noise of the talking, or some less apparent influence, had aroused her from her lethargy. Her pale eyes were brilliant still, with an unearthly light, it seemed to the awed young man, and she rested their gaze fixedly upon the couple.

“Who is that?” she asked in a querulous whisper.

“It is Seth, Granny,” the girl answered, relapsing unconsciously into the familiar form she had not used since childhood.

The aged woman restlessly moved her head, and her eyes snapped with impatience at her inability to raise herself from the pillow.

“I won’t have him here! Tell him to take his arm away. What’s he doin’ here, anyway? He desarted yeh! His own father told me so! Tell him to go away! I hate the sight of the hull breed!”

“But he’s come back to me, Granny,” the girl pleaded, while Seth shrank backward in the shadow of the curtain. “Truly he has, and he’s not to blame. And I love him very dearly”—a pressure from the young man’s hand answered the sweetness of this avowal—“and he will be all I shall have left when—when—” she stopped, unwilling to conclude her thought in words.

“An’ will he take yeh away, an’ do by yeh ez a husban’ ought to do, or will he take yeh onto that Fairchild farm, an’ break yer heart out ez his father did his mother’s, an’ ez his uncle did yer mother’s, an’ ez his brother, so they tell me, is doin’ with his wife?”

“Oh, mercy!” the girl exclaimed, involuntarily; then she whispered to Seth, back of the curtains: “What shall I do! I forgot all about it—Isabel is there in the parlor and she has heard every word we’ve said.”

The quick ears of the invalid caught the whispered explanation. .

“Isabel!” she said, sharply. “That’s Albert Fairchild’s wife ain’t it?”

“Yes!” the girl answered. She tried in dumb show to convey to Seth that her grandmother was ignorant of his brother’s death.

“Go an’ fetch her in here,” said Mrs. Warren, with mor............