Margret Howth: A Story of To-day

and hands; then silence and sleep again. Sometime-when, he never knew-a gray light stinging his eyes like pain,

emory: he had drifted out of coarse, measured life into some out-coast of eternity, and slept in its calm. When, by long degrees, the shock of outer life jarred and woke him,

iddily, of owing life to some one, and being angry that he owed it, in the pain. Was it he that had borne it? He did not know,-nor care: it made him tired to think. Even when he heard the name, Stephen Holmes, it had but a far-off meaning: he never woke enough to know if it were his or not. He learned, long a

oured carpet on the floor, up the brown foot-board of the bed, and, when the wind shook the window-curtains, made little crimson pools of mottled light over the ce

alled the little Welsh-woman, "Sister," too, who used to come in a stuff dress, and white bands about her face, to give his medicine, and gossip with Lois in the evening: she had a comical voice, like a cricket chirping. There was another with a real Scotch brogue, who came and listened sometimes, bringing a basket of undarned stockings: the doctor told him one day how fearless and skilful she was, every summer going to New Orleans

to listen to the whispered stories of the sisters in the long evenings, and, half-heard, try and make an end to them; to look drowsily down into the garden, where the afternoon sunshine was still so summer-like that a few holly-hocks persisted in showing their honest red faces along the walls, and the very leaves that filled the paths would not wither, but kept up a wh

chicken never stood on a wall before

en, awful change that had come on him, and then forgetting his old life, and the change, and the pity he felt for himself, in the vague content of the fire-lit room, and his nurse with her interminable knitting through the long afternoons, while the sky without would thicken and gray, and a few still flakes of snow would come drifting down to whiten the brown fields,-with no chilly thought of winter, but only to make the quiet autumn more quiet.

gue, and shake the bottles on the mantel-shelf with a grunt that terrified Lois into the belief that the other doctor was a quack, and her patient was total

here bodies are taken to pieces, and souls set right. He had no faith in your slow, impalpable cures: a

s under his surly, rugged habit, it would have been hard to touch him with the sudden doom fallen on this man, thrown crippled and

en it became a wearisome clog. The world was done with it now,-utterly. Its breath was only poisoned, with coming death. So the homely live charity of these women, their work, which no other hands were ready to take, jarred against his abstract the

arrow, solitary soul, who thought the world waited for him to fight down his one evil before it went on its slow way. An intolerant fanatic, of course. But the truth he did know was so ter

ingles, so as clearly to understand how utterly dead his life-long scheme was. He stalked gravely around it, his hands in his pockets; the hodmen who were raking out their winter's firewood from the ashes remarking, that "old Knowles didn't seem a bit cut up about it." Then he went out to the farm he had meant

to their work, that, when it tumbled down, their lives went with it. His fell that dull day in October; but if it hurt him, no man knew it. He sat there, looking at the broad plateau, whistling softly to himself, a long time. He had meant that a great many hearts should be made better and happier there; he had dreamed--God knows what he had dreamed, of which this reality was the foundation,-

looked back at it, as if to say good-bye,-not to the dingy fields and river, but to the Something he had nursed so long in his rugged heart, and given up now forever. As he looked, the warm, red sun came out, lighting up with a heartsome warmth the whole gray day. Some blessing power seemed to look at him from this grave yard of his hopes, fr

gging old Huff with his advice; trotted about the streets with a cowed look, that, if one could have seen into the jaded old heart under his snuffy waistcoat, would have seemed pitiful enough. He went sometimes to read the papers to old Tim Poole, who was bed-ridden, and did not pish or pshaw once at his maundering about secession, or the misery in his back. Went to church sometimes: the sermons were bigotry, always, to his notion, sitting on a back seat, squirting tobacco-juice about him; but the simple, old-fashioned hymns brought the tears to his eyes:-"They sounded to him like his mother's voice, singing in Paradise:" he hoped she could not see how things had gone on here,-how all that was honest and strong in his life had fallen in that infernal mill. Once or twice he went down Crane Alley, and lumbered up t

, whether there might not, after all, be a Something,-some deep of calm, of eternal order, where he and Holmes, these coarse chances, these wrestling souls, these creeds, Catholic or Humanitarian, even that namby-pamby Kitts and his picture, might be unconsciously working out their part. Looking out of the hospital-window, he saw the deep of the stainless blue, impenetrable, with the stars unconscious in their silence of the maddest raging of the petty world. There was such calm! such infinite love and justice! it was around, above him; it held him, it held the world,-all Wrong, all Right! For an instant the turbid heart of the man cowered, awestruck, as yours or mine has do

crushed the soul of this man: would he struggle out? Would he take Miss Herne as the first step in his stair-way, or be content to be flung down in vigorous manhood to the depth of impotent poverty? He could not tell if the quiet on Holmes's fa

an humble way,-th

oth la

'under-superintendent, a philanthropist in decayed circumst

ggars and thieves with your theory, i

wles, gravely, his eye k

e other, watching him curiously. "For YOU will

's flabby f

w," he

ut at the blue, and the cl

fully, "I must content myself with Lois's

stirring, her face growing quite red, n

e road to success for your new system of Sociology. Only untainted natures co

fidgeted

le in blood. I find difficulty, much difficulty, Sir, in giving to the

e by reason alone?"

only yoke that should be laid upon a free-born soul; bu

Tiger, hiding a furtive smile.

set in their ways, you know. Honestly, we do not find unlimited freedom answer in the House. I hope much from a woman's assistance: I have destine

stian?" s

le more vitally than more abstract faiths: I suppose because of the humanity of Jesus. In Uto

an?" asked Holm

watched

for five years.

with the same ha

, she must do something. They have been a

e it. When he looked up, Knowles though

going away, Hol

t Howth go into t

e silent. "It is the best time to begin a new life. Yourself, no

the mantel-shelf; hi

I shall,"-in hi

flashed before his gray eyes, lightin

l,-let me congratulate

did not hi

es b

k you,

o light the Doctor out

y out 't Mr. Howth's, D

one waiting on this-man, L

ck instinc

s to such as me. When I come to die, I'd like

ctor. "Never mind. 'When you come to die

ed the flaring ca

o' dyin'," she

eaked look to the face, he never saw before

urt you here?" t

ht o' th' fire. Th' breath o' th'

e it's better! Oh, that's n

hand, the first time he ever had done it to

g out into the night. "You're a good girl. I think it'll al

he turned to nod good-night again to th