Margret Howth: A Story of To-day

ad seen his face as he paced the street slowly home to the mill, would have remembered his mother's the day she died. How the stern old woman met deat

-existent soul. It was life he accepted to-night, he t

own,-a Titan strength of endurance, an infinite capability of love, and hate, and suffering, and over all, (the peculiar identity of the man,)

not his own, then? The windless gray, the stars, the stone under his feet, stood alone in the universe, each working out its own soul into deed. If there were any all-embracing harmony, one soul through all,

ple and tender as if they had come from the depths of a woman's heart: it touched him deeper than his

onging, he buried them under restful composure. Whether they should ever rise like

self: saw the true worth of everybody, the very lowest: hadn't one spark of self-esteem: despised all humbug and show, one could see, though he never said it: when he was a boy, he was moody, with p

enerally remained to keep in the furnace-fires. Going through one of the lower passages, he heard voices, and turned asid

he fire threw a ruddy glow over the stone floor, and shimmered into the dark recesses of the shadows, very home-like after the rain and mud without. Lois seemed to think so, at any rate, for she had made a table of a store-b

on said,-Holmes saw, stooped much, with a low, hacking cough; his coarse clothes were curiously clean: that was to please Lois, of course. She put the ham on

fire,-"ther'-yoh-are,-coaxin' to be eatin'.-Why, Mr.

d! Not many years ago he would have sat down with the two poor souls

n his hand, stooping in his submissive negr

he asked, kindly, turnin

ight 'n th' mill," the old shadow coming on her

o the other in silence, seeing

r. Holmes? He's bac

came forwa

Marster

face disgusted Holmes

while I was gone," he said, catching

not. It wa

y at Holmes,-"but fur her I thort I'd try it. I know't was a resk; but I thort

box over, lug

he covered it with a cloth. "It'd a warm place, here. Father studie

forward, seeing the smile

. But Lo's a good teacher, 'n'

n' father hed n't 'dvanta

her voice, a hot flush

kno

oght at the beginnin'? Thenk o' that, Marster. I'm

id not n

he said, kindly, as

e money on

y. "For Tiger's board, say. I never see

brightening, looking at

n followed

er Hol

, sternly. "Whoever breaks law abi

hands together fiercely

hered voice. "Fur God's sake be merciful! It'll kill

me. I must do

d'll it do you or the rest to hev me ther'? To make me afraid? It's poor learnin' frum fear. Who taught me what was right? Who cared? No man c

ce before him; but Ho

ly. "To-morrow I will see you

slowly up through the va

old scarred face of the girl looked years older, he thought,-but it might be fancy. She did not say anything for a while, moving slowly, with a new gentleness, about him; her very voice was changed, older. He

t," she said. "I be n'

g, "yoh used to say yer dea

t," she said, persistently, muttering to herself, as she l

n him, and flung back out of his bitter heart. Nor much in the future: a blank stretch of punishment to the end. He was an old man: was it easy to bear? What if he were black? what if he were born a thie

er dead baby's hair,-as something holy, far off, yet very near: something in his old crime-marked face,-a look like this dog's, putting his head on my knee,-a dumb, unhelpful lo

y little girl,"

kly. She came up, combing the thi

' what it is, rightly. But

aid, with a keen flash of jealous

r, loo

urt her to be as she was, if she had ever compared herself bitterly with fair, beloved women, she was g

h true love, like yoh. Stay, father! Bear it out,

e left her, she waited, and, creeping back, hid near the mill. God knows

-with now and then, perhaps, a pleasanter thought of things that had been warm and cheerful in his life,-of the corn-huskings long ago, when he was a boy, down in "th' Alabam',"-of the scow his young master gave him once, the first thing he really owned: he was almost as proud of it as he was of Lois when she was born. Most of all remembering the good times in his life, he went bac

e muttered, going up and do

him came out, undaunted by defeat, and unwearied, and took the form of dreams, those slighted messengers of God, to soothe and charm and win him out into fuller, kindlier life. Let us ho

old hated shadow. Whatever danger was coming to them lay in it, came from it, she knew, in her confused, blurred way of thinking. It loomed up now, with the square patch of ashen sky above, black, heavy with years of remembered agony and loss. In Lois's hopeful, warm life this was the one uncomprehended mo

It was a live monster now,-in one swift instant, alive with fire,-quick, greedy fire, leaping like serpents' tongues out of its hundred jaws, hungry sheets of flame maddening and writhing towards her, and under all a dull and hollow roar that shook the night. Did it call her to her death? She turned to