pense it without money so long as he lived. It is an old habit in the West to hand down secret prescriptions in this manner. The moment a price is asked and given for them, virtue leaves them; and, whatever may be the efficacy of the remedies, it is curious to observe that they are found almost invariably in the keeping of single-minded, pure-hearted men and women, in accordance, it may be, with some old tradition of those to whom was bestowed the gift of healing. In his secret soul Sim cherished an awe of the power thus intrusted to his hands. It had cost him already no little anxiety to decide whom this charge should descend to when he died.

He soon shut the cupboard and sat down, staring into the fire. He was contented with his lot. He had a good freehold in the world; there was no warmer, friendlier, better home than Tarrytown; and he had plenty of work and honor, glancing back at the shop, the books, and the phials. Nobody had such chances of making friends. When he died, there would be a funeral such as Tarrytown had not seen for many a day. He often thought of that.

And yet, the Judge's words had sowed nettles in his thoughts. Was there nothing more? "Home, wife, and children." Sim was a man, after all, with the passions and wants of a man. For the first time, the shop, the register, the thousand neighborly acts that kept him busy, palled; the days to come yawned miserably vacant.

Every one is some time tempted of the Devil; and usually the temptation begins with the consciousness that one is in the wilderness and alone. It dawned on the little barber that he had made a great sacrifice, and that he never should be thanked for it. He had given up money, name, identity even, for this boy, Len, whom he loved as his heart's blood; and now "the sorest rod in pickle for the boy's back" would be to know him as his brother. He thought of a certain busy little body, with quick, soft hands, and honest, sunshiny face. For years the girl

had been dear to him. If he had come to her, not as poor Sim Wicks the cowdoctor, but George Bedillion, with better blood and more power than all of these farmers by whose patronage she lived, it might be that she would have come into his outer life, as he had hidden her already in his heart.

He got up, stretching out his arms, a curious smile almost transforming his homely face and figure. With a flash came a thousand pictures of Hetty in his home, making it the home of all the world; of Hetty, busy in her tidy, deft little fashion over the breakfasttable; of Hetty, sewing by the cosey shop-fire in the evening, walking gravely to church with Thad between them; of Hetty as wife, mother. The baldheaded little man turned gravely to the window, looking up to the quiet sky with tears in his eyes. The young girl that he loved had not a more clean or guileless heart than beat in the fidgety little body at which she so often laughed.

Presently Thad came in, as he did every day, and, climbing up on the counter, began scribbling with the pens he found there. Sim put a sheet of paper before him, and stood motionless. He remembered how often he had played with the child, detaining him until Leonard could finish his talk with Hetty over the briers by the gate. He remembered when he first saw that there was something else which he must give up to Leonard beside name and money; remembered when he first noted the pink flush creep over the girl's cheek and neck when Len's bright eyes and curly hair were thrust in at the half-open door; the flowers he brought her, the verses which she had brought, shy and laughing, to show to Sim; "for she allays was fond of me-as an uncle, or an old, bald-headed brother." But most he remembered the summer evenings when they had gone, arm in arm, strolling down the ravine by moonlight, and he, having sung Thad to sleep, had stolen after, like a miserable, cowardly wretch, slinking behind haw

--

bushes and gum-trees, only to see the black curly hair and the bright chestnut near together, one head bent over the other drooping one; while he, mad with passion and pain, waited therealone and forgotten — into the night. Lately, they had never gone out together, had been silent and pale when forced into contact. There seemed to be a secret between them, the nature of which Sim easily guessed. When Leonard's future was assured, he would share it with the girl he had chosen in poverty. He had fancied, too, that Hetty had shown a new tenderness in her manner to him lately, as if trying to console him for something he had lost.

Before poor Sim had reached this end to his thoughts, the selfish bitterness had disappeared from them,-outgrown, as a poison bee-sting by a wholesome peach. He thought he would go to Hetty and satisfy himself that he was right in his conjectures: to that, at least, he had a right. So, taking Thad by the hand, he went out of the back door of the shop into the garden. Len, just then, ran down the stairs, and out of the front door, taking the cigar from his mouth, and swinging his cap up with a boyish grace that became him well.

"God bless the boy! It's all right as it is." Sim's face flushed, as his heart swelled with self-condemnation. He went on, with his head down. Little Het, watching him from the back door of her house, where she sat sewing, (they had but one garden between them,) saw that trouble had been brewing somewhere for poor Sim. In spite of his sandy complexion, and surprisedlooking snub nose, and lean red whiskers, Sim's face was capable of a smile curiously sweet and fine; and just now there was a pain lurking in it which the girl saw in an instant. She went out to meet him, but pretended to be adjusting the pieces of dyed cloth which had hung all day drying on the clothes-line, flapping in the wind. They were yellow and purple, clear, bright colors, and caught the sun finely as she threw the dried pieces in a heap on the grass. They were in keeping with the chrys

anthemums, and wall-flowers, and other hot autumnal flowers, thrusting their heads out of the green bushes, and holding all the heat of the summer in them.

The pleasant evening light fell over the fragrant garden, -over Het's little porch where she had been sitting, with hop-vines trailed up its sides, and her pile of white sewing on the step,-over the apple and peach orchards, with their juicy fruit bending over the garden fence, over Thad's flaxen hair, under the bushes, where he had crawled to find the ripest berries. But the centre and life of it all, to his eyes, was little freckle-faced Hetty as she worked with her cloths, her trim little figure, in its close-fitting blue dress, with a dainty white apron setting it off, - her brown eyes dark and moist as she nodded, smiling, to him, poising herself in a dozen pretty ways in a minute.

Sim took up a corner of the cloth. "The color hes struck in well. There never was sech an expert little dyer, Hetty, I do believe."

She nodded briskly. “That's Mrs. Carr's blue merino. Eight parts logwood, three copperas, one alum.”

Sim listened admiringly. "The question is, how did ye pick it up? I mind the day ye chose yer perfession, as one might say, the day after we put her away."

Sim stopped. The girl said nothing; but she pulled and straightened her cloth, with her head sinking on her heaving breast, and her hands unsteady. Once, when Sim stooped, the big brown eyes, full of tears, were turned suddenly to the church-yard where her mother had been put away," and then rested on the bald head and bent back of the man who had nursed the dying woman tenderly as another woman might, and had carried Hetty in his arms from the grave. Sim did not see her look.

66

"They was holdin' a committee of ways and means, like, to see what was to be done with you and Thaddy here. You was handy enough in any house. It was Thad that was the rub. When Squire Barker was hemming and haw

ing, you raised up your little head from the bed. 'I'll keep the boy,' you spoke out, loud and clear. 'We want nobody's bread. I'll keep Thaddy from want,'-an' then you broke down. An' here's the end of it," with a backward wave of his hand to the house, his face glowing. "Thad comes to the shop botherin' me with stories of kings' sons pickin' their way over stones, in fairy-land; but I says to him, 'Go home and see yer sister pickin' bread from day to day. That's a tale worth tellin'.'"

Little Het's tears dried, and she glanced askance at him, shyly smiling. "Sometimes, I think," he said, seating himself on the end of the well-curb, "the place is like a toy place, what with your wee house and your little Kerry cow and bantam chicks. And you're but a mite yourself. When you 're gone, I'll keep the place just the same, for old time's sake. But I ken't keep you."

But her

"When I'm gone? freckled cheeks flamed, and she bent over the cloth-heap again.

Sim shut his lips tight for a moment. Then he went on. "Yes. Married an' gone. When him you 've waited for comes, as he allays does, in Thad's stories, and kerries you off to be a lady."

Little Het looked him straight in the face, with a clear spark of light in her eye. She had a clean-cut, firm mouth too, and it had an obstinate pucker in it now.

"I hope he will come," she said, quite clear and distinctly. "I'd be "I'd be sorry if he never came. But he's a workingman. As for my being a lady, I never was meant for that. I was born to work, and I like it. Feel my wrists, the muscles in them, they're like steel springs. I'm ashamed of you, Simeon Wicks."

Sim liked usually to tease her. It was as if a cricket chirped defiance. But now, as he touched the tiny wrist, his face grew unsmiling and white; the man's whole body shivered, and his eye fell before hers. She saw it, and

drew from him with a quick, startled breath.

"What sort of a fine lady would you make of me?" said the little body, bal ancing herself before him. "Can I sing? Can I dance? Books always put me to sleep. I'm only fit for work, and I like it. It suits me to manage the toy place, as you call it,

Thad's and mine, and to come out clear with my accounts at the end of the year. Nobody shall buy me with money, to make a doll of me and tyrannize over Thad. Nobody shall tyrannize over Thad!" growing hotter with every word. "He 's my child, mine and yours," with a sudden, shy gentleness. "You've been very good to us, Simeon." She hastily took the child's hand and held it out towards him. A hot thrill passed over the poor little silversmith. What if he had been wrong from the beginning, -if she were still unwon?

"Do you mean that you never will give up the place? that you never will marry?"

"I-I did not say that."

Her head sank again, and her face turned from him. Her dress fluttered in the wind near him. He put his hand out, with a mad gesture of passion and pain, and touched it. Then a guilty sense rushed over him, like a flood: he was tampering with the love of his brother's wife. He left her, going up and down the alleys between the peachtrees. Little Het followed him, with wide, impatient eyes. He had cooled and mastered himself enough at last. He would cut down this hope himself,— root it out now, in his own eyes and in hers, that it never should grow again.

"Don't be independent in that fashion, Hetty. It's not wholesome nor good for a woman. There's one, I know, that 'u'd be glad to take you into his house, an' his life too. He'd be mighty kind to little Thad here. You 've lain near into his heart this many a year." He stopped; it was not an easy task for him to picture Len and his love. "Do you know it, Hetty?"