CHAPTER XVII.IN RIDGEFIELD.

Fanny and Roy had been married amid flowers and music and crowds of people and the grand event chronicled in the Boston and New York papers. That the bride’s own father was living was not mentioned. The reporters had not gotten upon that item of gossip and Helen did not enlighten them. Fanny was the only daughter of Judge and Mrs. Prescott, and when she read one of the lengthy articles describing the wedding and her dress and her mother’s dress and dwelling at length upon the position and wealth of the Tracys and Prescotts and Masons she rebelled against it almost as hotly as years before Uncle Zach had rebelled against the advertisement her father had written of the Prospect House.

“I wish I had kept my own name, or taken it when I knew who I was. I am not Fanny Prescott,” she said, hotly, while Roy rejoined, “Of course not. You are Fanny Mason, my wife.”

They went to Florida where they spent the winter and Roy grew brown as a berry with being so much on the lakes and rivers and Fanny grew bilious eating too many oranges, and both were perfectly happy. Early in the spring they returned to Boston, where they staid with Roy’s father until June, when Fanny suggested that, instead of going to some fashionable watering place, they spend the summer in Ridgefield. Her father had sent her a deed of his Dalton property, and now that she owned it she began to have an affection for the old ruin and wanted to see it, she said to Roy, who answered, “Allright. I’d rather go where I can have you to myself than to a hundred watering places where everybody will be admiring the beautiful and accomplished Mrs. Roy Mason; that’s what the reporters would call you.”

“Horrid!” Fanny said. “I’m not beautiful, and I haven’t a single accomplishment. I am just Fanny,—your wife,” and she nestled close to him, with a look in her blue eyes which told Roy how much he was to her.

They stopped at the Prospect House more for the sake of its association with their parents than for the real comfort there was there now. The ruling spirit, Dotty, had been stricken with paralysis, and was more helpless than Uncle Zach, who, a martyr to rheumatism, sat in his wheel chair all day, unable to walk more than a few steps at a time, with the help of two canes. He had received cards to their wedding, and had sent his regrets in a long letter in which he deplored the fact that he could not get some good out of his “swaller tail, which he wore to Craig’s weddin’ when he didn’t or’to wear it, and which was as good as new.” Mention, too, was made of Dot’s plum-colored satin, which was now too small for her, especially the sleeves. He was glad they remembered him. Aninvitewas good to stay home on, and he was their respectful and venerable friend to command. Zacheus Taylor, Esquire, and poor Dotty’s X mark, “for she can’t use her hands to write more than that.”

Uncle Zach had grown childishly weak with his trouble and his years, and received Roy and Fanny with floods of tears, lamenting Dotty’s inability to serve them.

“I never expected to see you both agin, and when you was here together I told Dot so,” he said; “but here you be, and I’m mighty glad. I’m havin’ hard sleddin’. Old age ain’t a pleasant thing, with rheumatiz’ and paralysis,and maybe soffnin’ of the brain, and the tarvern all run down,—and Dotty played out.”

The best the house afforded was theirs, he said, and he insisted upon their taking the saloon, as he still called the parlor Mrs. Tracy had occupied.

“You’ll be better off there by yourselves,” he said. “The boarders ain’t what they used to be. The Tremont has got the big bugs.”

Poor Dotty couldn’t talk much or move, and Fanny spent hours with her, anticipating her wishes by her looks and greatly smoothing her path to the grave. Roy staid a good deal with Uncle Zach, who asked numberless questions about Mark and Jeff.

“I wish they was here. I want to see ’em, and so does Dot, though she can’t say so. Strange how I miss her talk and blowin’ me when I deserved it. I’m like a ship without a captain, but my laigs trouble me the most. Feel like sticks when I try to walk, and Sam Baily don’t push me even, at all,—jolts awfully over the stones. Yes, I wish they was here. Mabby they’d come, if they knew how used up Dotty and I be. Jeff could lift her and wheel me. Write and tell ’em I want ’em.”

Roy was not very enthusiastic on the subject, but he made no objection when Fanny wrote what Uncle Zach had said and added her own entreaties for her father to come.

“I don’t suppose you will care to see mother often,” she said, “but you can seeme. I shall have a home of my own in Boston and we are going to build a cottage near the old ruin,—Roy and I,—and shall spend a part of each summer here.”

It was two weeks before an answer came, not in Mark’s handwriting, but in Tom’s.

“Oh, Roy. Father is dead. Read what Tom haswritten. I can’t,” Fanny said, as she glanced at the letter and then passed it to Roy, who read: “Stockton, June — 18— Mrs. Mason, Dear Madam:

“It is my painful duty to inform you that your father is dead. He has been failing ever since Inez died, but did not wish you to know it, as it might mar the pleasure of your wedding trip. He was always thinking of you and Inez. He was very ill when your last letter came, but it pleased him to know that you wanted him, and Mr. Taylor, too. If he had lived and been able, I think he would have gone to Ridgefield and taken care of the poor old couple. His death occurred three days after the receipt of your letter, which he kept under his pillow with Inez’s watch, which you are to have.

“I know he died a good man. I wish I were half as good. He talked a great deal of you, and once or twice spoke of your mother. He said, ‘Tell Helen I am sorry for any pain I caused her, and that I always think of her as she was that summer at the Prospect House.’

“We buried him by the side of Inez and Anita, and crowds attended his funeral. Now, I am alone, with only Nero left of all which once made my life so happy.”

Uncle Zach shed floods of tears when Fanny read this letter to him.

“Mark dead and lyin’ away off there among the mountains and the robbers,” he said. “They or’to have brought him here and buried him with his kin. I’d of given him a big monument. Yes, marm, I would. I liked Mark, if he did alter his name, and I feel as if I had lost a son, don’t you?”

He was looking at Roy, who did not feel as if bereft of a son, and not much as if he had lost a father, but he was very sorry for Fanny. Her grief was genuine. Shehad built many castles in the future when her father would come to her and these were all swept away.

“Do you think I should wear black?” she asked, “and that father ought to be brought east and buried here? Inez and Anita must come if he does.”

Roy shivered, as he thought of the three coffins landed at the station and himself superintending their interment in the angle of the wall near ’Tina.

“No, darling,” he said, kissing Fanny’s tear stained face. “I do not want you to wear black, nor is it necessary, and it is much better for your father and Inez to be among the hills of the Yosemite where they lived than to be brought here. Sometime we will go and see the graves and I will have a suitable monument erected to their memory.

“By their loving daughter and sister,” Fanny rejoined, drying the tears which were like April showers, she was so sunny and sweet.

Tom’s letter was sent to Helen, who was about starting for Narragansett Pier with a party of friends. Just how it affected her it was hard to tell. She gave up the trip to Narragansett, saying she was not feeling well and preferred to remain at home. If she cried, no one saw her. If she were sorry, no one knew it. She was too proud to show her real feelings, or talk of a past which was buried, but her eyes were very heavy and her face very pale as she sat behind the closed blinds of her house, at home to no one, and supposed by most of her friends to be out of town, as she usually was at that season. Fanny urged her coming to Ridgefield, and she replied, “Not yet. It would bring back a past I wish to forget. Your father is dead, and I have no hard feeling towards him. We were both in fault. I was self willed, and thought because I had money I must not be crossed.He was a man who could not yield quietly to be governed in every particular by a woman. But let that pass. I am glad you knew him and glad you revere his memory.”

This was quite a concession for Helen, and showed that much of her proud spirit was broken. When she heard how fast Mrs. Taylor was failing as the summer wore on she sent her little notes of remembrance, with boxes of flowers and delicacies of various kinds. These pleased Uncle Zach, but it was difficult to know whether his wife realized the attention. She always seemed glad when Fanny was with her, but nothing brought so happy a look to her face as the appearance of Uncle Zach in his wheel chair, and her eyes rested constantly upon him when he was with her, but she couldn’t speak to him or return the pressure of his hand when he laid it on hers.

“She can’t do nothin’ she wants to,” Uncle Zach said pathetically. “I’d like to kiss her, but I can’t stand alone and should tumble on to her, if I tried.”

“I’ll help you,” Fanny said, and passing her arms around him she held him, while he bent down and kissed the old wife whose quivering lips returned the kiss and tried so hard to speak.

That night she died, and no young husband ever made a bitterer moan for his bride of a few months than did Zacheus over his Dotty. “The greatest woman in the world for runnin’ a tarvern and keepin’ a feller straight,” he said amidst his tears, which fell continually, sleeping or waking. He did not think of her as old and wrinkled and grey haired, but as she had been in their early married life, when she was slight and fair, with long curls in her neck and around her face. “The prettiest girl in town as she is now the most remarkable woman. I shall get along somehow, I s’pose,” he said to Fanny, “but it isvery dark with Dotty gone, and Mark, too, and Jeff, and Johnny in the cemetry goin’ on sixty year. If he had lived he might have had boys to stay with me. As ’tis, I am all alone. It isn’t pleasant to be old and helpless and all alone and cold as I am most of the time with this pesky rheumatis’.”

To this Fanny could offer no consolation. She couldn’t stay with him always, nor could she take him with her when she left Ridgefield. He was indeed alone in his old age, dependent upon hired help, who might not always be kind to him. And this he seemed to feel nearly as much as Dotty’s death.

“Alone and cold, with no one to care for me,” was Uncle Zach’s constant lament, as he sat shivering by Dotty’s coffin during the days which preceded her funeral.

Craig and Alice were both with him and this was some comfort, while the flowers sent in great profusion made him feel, he said, as if he was somebody, and he wished Dotty knew. Greatly to Fanny’s surprise and delight her mother came in the morning train, and the honor of having her there with Craig and Alice partly compensated Mr. Taylor for his loss. It was the first time Helen had been in Ridgefield since she left it twenty-four years ago, and naturally her presence aroused much interest and curiosity in those who remembered her. When she heard of Mrs. Taylor’s death a sudden impulse seized her to go to the funeral. Almost anything was better thanstaying at home alone as she was doing. If Roy built that cottage she must of course go there some time, and she might as well make this her opportunity. So she went and in her crape, still worn for Judge Prescott, she looked grand and handsome and dignified, and cried a little over Dotty and more over Uncle Zach in his wheel chair. He persisted in calling her Miss Hilton and talking to her of Mark, until Alice suggested to him that it might be better to give her her real name and to say nothing of Mark, as it could only bring up unpleasant memories.

“Jess so,—jess so. Yes, marm. You are right, and it shows how I am missin’ Dotty to tell me what is what,” Uncle Zach replied.

After that he laid great stress on Miss Prescott when he spoke to her, as she was brushing his hair and arranging his necktie for the funeral. She had asked to do this for him and as he felt her fingers on his forehead and about his neck, he burst out suddenly, “It brings it all back, when you was a young gal makin’ the house so bright. You ain’t a widder, nor Miss Prescott to me, and I won’t call you so.”

“Call me Helen, please. I feel more like her here than I have in years,” she replied.

She was very kind to him and arranged that he should go to the grave in the carriage with Roy and Fanny and herself. “The very best and easiest there is in town,” she said to the undertaker.

“But, but,” Uncle Zach interposed, “I could no more git into a kerridge than I could fly. I must be wheeled. Dot won’t mind. She knows how stiff I am.”

It was in vain that they urged upon him that he could be lifted into a carriage. He insisted that he couldn’t.

“If I go at all, it must be in my chair, with Sam topush me,” he said, and that settled it, and his chair was wheeled into its place in the long procession which followed Dotty to the grave.

It took some time to get all the carriages into line and ready, and while they were waiting a stranger came rapidly across the street and joined the crowd in front of the Prospect House. He was dusty and travel stained and no one recognized him but Roy and Fanny, who, with Helen, were in the carriage next to Uncle Zach’s chair.

“Oh, Roy,—there’s Tom!” Fanny cried, as he passed them without looking up, so intent was he upon the forlorn old man sitting alone with his attendant behind him.

“If you please, this is my place,” he said in a low tone to Sam, waving him aside so peremptorily that Sam had nothing to do but submit, which he did willingly, wondering who the stranger was and why he was so anxious for a job he did not fancy.

Uncle Zach was rather hard of hearing, and in the confusion of starting did not hear Sam’s instructions, “Go easy over the stones; he’s awful lame.”

Tom nodded that he understood, and the funeral cortege started.

“Careful, now, Sam. There’s a rut full of stones!” Uncle Zach said once, surprised at the deftness and ease with which the supposed Sam avoided the stones, almost lifting the chair over the worst of them, and showing a thoughtfulness he had never shown before. “It’s because it’s Dotty’s funeral, he’s so keerful,” Uncle Zach thought, resolving to give him something extra when he paid him his next month’s wages. “Get me as close to the grave as you can. I want to see her up to the last minute,” he said, when they were in the cemetery.

Without a word Jeff wheeled the chair as near the grave as possible, every one making way for him and all wondering who he could be, except Roy and Fanny. Once during the committal he looked at them and in response to their greeting touched his hand to his uncovered head with a motion so natural that Alice, who was watching him, started with a conviction that she had seen him before, and when the next moment their eyes met and he smiled upon her she was sure that it was the boy Jeff. She could not speak to him then and when the ceremony was over and the people began to disperse there was a new diversion in the scene in the shape of a huge dog who came bounding over the grass and leaping upon Jeff nearly knocked him down. It was Nero escaped from the freight house at the station where his master had left him for a time in charge of a boy. Jeff’s longing to see Ridgefield had grown in intensity until at last without any warning of his coming, he started east with his dog and travelled night and day until Ridgefield was reached. Hearing in the car of the funeral and fearing Nero might be in the way he had him shut up and went rapidly up the street he remembered so well to the Prospect House, reaching it in time to take Sam’s place and wheel Uncle Zacheus to the cemetery. After many fruitless efforts to escape by the door Nero squeezed through a half open window and following his master’s trail came upon him in the graveyard and in his joy at finding him caused a lurch to the chair which elicited a groan from Uncle Zach.

“Oh, Sam, are you in a hole, or what? You’ve nearly broke my back,” he said; “and whose great dog is that cantering ’round as if he was goin’ to jump on me. Go ’way, doggie, doggie; go ’way. Shoo! Shoo! Take him off!” he continued, as Nero showed signs of makinghis acquaintance, or at least finding out what manner of being it was wrapped in a shawl and looking so small and helpless.

Jeff did not reply till he got the chair away from the grave to a side path where they were comparatively alone.

“Where be you takin’ me? I or’to go back with the procession. Folks’ll think it queer,” Uncle Zach said, as he found himself at some distance from the main road of the cemetery.

Stepping in front of him Jeff took off his hat and said, “Don’t you know me?”

Uncle Zach’s sight was dim and his eyes weak with the tears he had shed, but something in Jeff’s voice and manner seemed natural. He, however, had no suspicion of the truth, and replied, “I or’to know you, of course, but I’m kind of blind, and my spe’tacles is at home. Who be you, and where is Sam?”

“If I were to turn a somerset or two, and stand on my head, do you think you would know me then?” Jeff asked, with his old merry laugh.

The effect was wonderful. Uncle Zach had not risen alone from his chair in months, but he sprang up now and stood firm upon his feet, with his arms outstretched.

“Jeff! Jeff! my boy!” he cried, “It’s you, yourself, come back to me! Thank God!”

He could say no more, and sank back in his chair, shaking like a leaf, while Jeff said to him, “Yes, it’s Jeff, come back, and sorry to find Mrs. Taylor dead, and you so helpless. Shall I take you home?”

“Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I’m all of a tremble, and so glad you’ve come, and so would Dotty be, if she knew,” Uncle Zach replied; “and this is your critter?” motioningtowards Nero, who, with sundry sharp woofs, was signifying his approval of affairs.

“Yes, this is Nero. He belonged to Mark, and I could not leave him in the mountains alone. He is a friendly, faithful fellow, and will guard you, or your property, with his life,” Jeff said, caressing the dog, in whose eyes there was a human look as if he understood what was being said.

As a rule Mr. Taylor did not care much for dogs. Dotty had disliked them, and would never have one on the premises. They tracked her clean piazza and floor and trampled down her flower beds, she said. But Dotty was gone. Nero had belonged to Mark, and when he put his nose on Zacheus’s knee and looked up in his face, the old man’s heart was won and Nero adopted with Jeff.

“Doggie, doggie, Mark’s doggie, you are welcome,” he said, patting Nero whose bushy tail was in full swing and who, with the sagacity of his race, had seen that Uncle Zach needed care and had constituted himself his body guard.

Meanwhile Craig and Alice, and Helen and Roy and Fanny had been watching the scene at a distance. They were yet to be met and it was hard meeting them all. Jeff had seen Helen at Clark’s when he took Fanny and Roy there after Inez’s funeral. She had been rather reserved towards him then and said very little, but now her manner changed, and she was the first to go forward and meet him as he came near to them. Inez was dead and he could never claim any connection with Fanny. He would stay with Uncle Zach as his proper place, and she was very cordial in her greeting. Alice and Craig came next, the former doing most of the talking and both seeming so pleased to see him that he felt his spiritsrising and had not been as happy in years as he was when at last he stood again in the house where he had spent his boyhood.

Roy was cordial, but could not forget Inez’s dying words, which had betrayed so much, and every time he looked at Jeff he recalled the scene of the hold up which he had heard described so vividly that he sometimes felt that he had been an actor in it. Fanny was unfeignedly glad to see Jeff and kept him by her a long time while she questioned him of her father’s sickness and death and burial. Helen, who sat near, made no comments, but she did not lose a word, and occasionally, when Fanny cried the hardest, her bit of linen and lace which passed for a handkerchief, went up to her eyes and came away with several wet spots upon it. With his friends around him, treating him as if he had always been an honest man, Jeff began to feel like one. He was glad Alice did not refer to the pickpocket business, for he could not tell her that he had kept his promise to the letter. He had followed no one on the street, or in a crowd, but he could recall pockets in which his hands had been while the owners were pale as death and almost as still. That was buried in the Yosemite and here in Ridgefield, where every one was pleased to see him, the dreadful past was slipping away from him, and with a rebound his old life was returning. Nero, too, came in for a share of notice and petting. Craig, who was fond of dogs, offered to buy him, but Jeff said, “No, he is the only relative I have left in the world. I have brought him from beyond the Rockies and if Mr. Taylor does not object, I shall keep him.”

“Object to the critter! Of course not. He was Mark’s, and Dotty isn’t here to care about his feet. They are pretty big.Shoo, shoo, doggie; not quite so friendly,”Uncle Zach replied, shaking his fingers at the dog, who had taken a great fancy to him and persisted in laying his head in his lap and occasionally putting his paws on the wheel of his chair.

The next day Craig and Alice and Helen went home, but Roy and Fanny staid on to see to the new cottage. The ground for it had been broken a little distance from the old ruin, “but not so far away that ’Tina can’t come across the grass to visit us if she wants to,” Roy said to Fanny, who had no fear of ’Tina so long as Roy was with her. They staid in Ridgefield the rest of the summer with an occasional trip to New York, where Helen kept herself secluded until it was time for the fashionable world to come home and open their doors. Then she gradually made her way again into the society which she enjoyed. Sometime in September Roy and Fanny returned to Boston, leaving the cottage so nearly completed that it would be ready for them in June of the next summer, if they wished to occupy it so early.

Six years later and it is summer again in Ridgefield. Uncle Zach has celebrated his ninetieth birthday, and except for his lameness is nearly as hale and hearty as he was when he first welcomed the Masons and the Tracys to his home. Jeff’s presence has worked wonders in him and in the house as well. In a quiet way he assumed the role of master while nominally acting under Mr. Taylor’s orders. The servants, who had become lax and worthless, have been dismissed, and others morecompetent hired in their place. The house has been thoroughly renovated and refurnished. Many of the former boarders, who had gone to the Tremont, have come back, and a few people from Boston spend the summers there.

“If Dot was only here, and I had my laigs it would seem like old times,” Uncle Zach often says to Jeff, who is his right hand and left hand and feet and brains.

If kindness to an old man can atone for the past Jeff is atoning for it. He puts his master to bed at night as if he were a child and dresses him in the morning. Every pleasant day he takes him for what he calls a drive through the town, stopping wherever the querulous old man wishes to stop and wheeling him so carefully that his rheumatic limbs seldom receive a jolt. Nero is always in attendance and is as much a part of the turnout as Jeff himself. Uncle Zach no longershooshim when he puts his head on his knees, but he sometimes has pricks of conscience as to what Dotty would say if she could see the big dog stretched on the floor of the piazza or wherever he chose to lie. Dotty’s habits are deferred to by both Uncle Zach and Jeff, except the quarterly house cleanings. At these Jeff has drawn the line. Twice a year was sufficient, he said, for any house, and Uncle Zach agreed with him. Every three months, however, a dress coat and vest and little yellow blanket are brought out to air, the blanket so tender with age that Jeff scarcely dares touch it. “Johnny’s blanket,” Uncle Zach always says, with a tone very different from that in which he speaks of his swallow tail.

“Fool and his money soon parted,” he said when telling Jeff what it had cost. “I never wore it but once and never shall again. The missionaries don’t want it, nor the heathen. If you had any use for it I’d give it to you.It seems a pity for it to lay there year in and year out smellin’ like fury with that moth stuff you put in it.”

Jeff laughed and thanked him as he folded up the garments and laid them away with Taylor’s Tavern in the hair trunk. Once he brought the sign down for Uncle Zach to see.

“I can’t git up them stairs and I’d like to look at it agin,” he said, and when Jeff brought it and stood it before him tears ran down his cheeks like rain. “It makes me think of the time when I was young, and Dotty, too. The lalocks in the garden was blowin’ and the apple trees was blossomin’ the day it was sot up. I can smell the lalocks yet, though the bush has been dead many a year just as Dotty is. Take it away, Jeff, and you needn’t bring it agin. I’m done with Taylor’s Tarvern, and with everything else but you!”

Jeff took it back and felt the moisture in his own eyes at his master’s reminiscences of a past which could never return. To the villagers Jeff was very reticent with regard to his western life. Of his change of name he made light. It was a fashion with some of the miners and he foolishly followed it, he said, but of what befel Tom Hardy he said very little. He was, however, paying so heavy a penalty for his misdeeds that he sometimes felt as if he must hide where no one had ever heard of him in connection with Long John and Little Dick. Fanny had told of the hold up of which he had been the hero, and of the other where he had been an actor, and it seemed to him people would never stop questioning him as to the most minute details. If he repeated the story once in the office he repeated it a hundred times to a breathless audience which never grew tired of listening and were always ready to hear it again.

“And they never got a clew to them, you say?”

“Never,” was the question and answer, with which the evening usually closed, the people dispersing to their rooms or homes, while Jeff rushed out into the night overwhelmed with remorse.

“I believe State’s Prison would be better than this,” he sometimes thought when Uncle Zacheus had him on the rack.

He was inexorable and made Jeff tell the story over and over again until he ought to have known it by heart. Once when he was out for his airing he asked, speaking of the robbers, “Be they gone, root and branch?”

“Yes, root and branch. Neither Long John nor Little Dick have been seen since Inez died,” Jeff replied.

It was not often that he spoke of Inez, and now at the mention of her name Uncle Zach rejoined, “Poor girl, and you was to have married her. I am sorry for you. And she was Miss Mason’s sister and Mark was her father. Mark was a likely chap. I’ve nothing agin him except that he run away and let ’em think he was dead and changed his name. I s’pose he put you up to change yours, too.”

“No, he didn’t,” Jeff answered quickly. “It was right the other way. I put him up to every bad thing he ever did.”

Jeff was a little heated in his defense of Mark and pushed the chair over a rough place with less care than usual.

“Soffly, soffly, Jeff. My bones is older than they was once,” Uncle Zach said.

This recalled Jeff to himself, and the rest of the journey was made with comparative comfort to the old man’s bones. They were on their way to the Queen Anne cottage which had been built near the site of the old ruin and between it and the road. It was a very prettyand artistic affair, with bay windows and projections and wide halls and piazza, where Roy said ’Tina could sit and rest if she wanted to, when she made her nocturnal visits. The cellar was filled up and made into a terrace, or plateau, which was ablaze with flowers from June to September. A part of the orchard had been cut down and with the lane converted into a small park of green sward, flowering shrubs and shade trees. Here Roy and Fanny spent a part of every summer and were often joined by Craig and Alice, and occasionally by Helen, whose beauty was not greatly marred by the lapse of years and who was sometimes told that she looked nearly as young as her daughter. She was a grandmother now and two children played on the grass and picked flowers from the spot where ’Tina once had lived and loved and sinned. They were a sturdy boy of five years old and a little girl of three. The only real disagreement Fanny and Roy ever had was on the subject of the boy’s name. Fanny wished to call him Mark Hilton, while Helen favored the idea. Roy could not tell Fanny that his son must not be named for one who he believed had been a highwayman, but he objected to the name and held his ground against Fanny’s entreaties and the advice of Craig and Alice.

“Perhaps as you won’t call him for my father you’d like to call him for yours,” Fanny said, with as much spirit as she ever opposed to Roy.

“No,” he answered, “not for my father either, but I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll call him for your adopted father, Walter Prescott. How will that suit you?”

“Not as well as Mark Hilton,” Fanny replied, but she gave up the point and the boy was christened Walter Prescott.

When two years later a girl was born there was noquestion as to her name from the moment Roy said to Fanny, “Would you like to see our little daughterInez?”

They were bright, active children and Jeff was their slave. They were never happier than when with him, and always hailed with delight the sight of the wheel chair coming down the road, for that meant a ride after Uncle Zach was safely deposited upon the piazza with their father and mother.

On the morning when Jeff came near upsetting the chair in his defense of Mark they were on the lookout for him. They had come from Boston the night before and were watching eagerly for theirhorse, as they called him, while Nero was acolt. Craig and Alice were there and with Roy and Fanny were enjoying the freshness and fragrance of the June morning.

“There they come; there’s Jeff and Nero,” Walter cried, running to meet him, and “Dere’s Deff and Nero,” Inez repeated, toddling after her brother.

Both Fanny and Roy hurried to meet Uncle Zach, who was soon helped to a seat on the piazza, and his chair was at liberty and at once appropriated by the children.

“Where shall we go?” Jeff asked, and Walter answered, “To the woods.”

He always wanted to go there, hoping to find a bumble-bee’s nest, if not the hornet’s his grandmother had told him about. Inez was satisfied to go anywhere with Jeff, whose face always brightened at sight of her and then grew sad as he remembered another Inez in her mountain grave. They found the spot where a hornet’s nest had been, and saw a rabbit steal cautiously out from her hole and then in again as Nero started for her. They picked some wild flowers and ferns and then Inez grewtired of walking about and wanted Jeff to sit down and take her. When, as a baby of a year old, Inez had first held up her arms to him, he had shrunk from her with a feeling that he was unworthy to touch her. Roy, who was present, had something of the same feeling, for he never saw Jeff without a thought of the hold up. But the child’s persistence had conquered his prejudice and subjugated Jeff, who loved the little girl better than any living being. Indeed, there was no one else for him to love. He respected Uncle Zacheus and admired Fanny and reverenced Alice as one of the noblest of women, but his affection was given to the baby Inez.

“Taky me; I’se tired,” she kept saying in the woods until he sat down upon a log and took her in his lap.

“Now, tell us a story about Aunt Inez and the robbers,” Walter said, coming up with the dog, who stretched himself at Jeff’s feet while Walter lay down at his side.

The previous summer Jeff had told Walter of his home among the mountains and his life there with the other Inez, and his grandfather and Nero, and once Walter had heard his mother tell some one of the hold up and the robber, and boy-like this pleased him more than the cottage and the mountains. He had made Jeff tell him about it two or three times the year before and now insisted that he should tell it again, and begin where his Aunt Inez jumped over the wheel and Nero ran after the robber. Very unwillingly Jeff told the story, adapting it to Walter, who listened intently and did not allow him to omit any part of it which he knew.

“I wish I’d been there with mamma. Where was I?” he asked.

Jeff did not know, and with his respect for Jeff’sknowledge considerably lessened, he continued, “I’d have shot the robber.”

Inez, whose arms were about Jeff’s neck and who generally said what Walter did, replied, “I’d sot the yobber,” and her arms tightened their hold, giving Jeff a feeling of suffocation and helping to smother the groan he could not entirely repress.

“Now, tell about Aunt Inez and where she lived,” Walter said, and Jeff told him of the grand mountains and the waterfalls in the beautiful valley far away and the grave among the hills where his Aunt Inez was buried.

“Was she as pretty as mamma?” Walter asked, and Jeff replied, “Ithink she was prettier.”

“I don’t believe it. Do you, Nero?” Walter said, with a kick of his foot against the side of the dog, who answered by springing up and hurrying after the rabbit which had ventured from its hole a second time.

Walter followed the dog, and Jeff was left alone with Inez, who whispered drowsily, “Tell more of the bufiful valley far away.”

Then she fell asleep, and bending over her Jeff whispered, “Oh, God, in this world my sin will always follow and torture me, but grant that in the next I may be pure and innocent as this child.”

Something roused the little girl and opening her eyes, so like the eyes Jeff remembered so well, she lisped, “Ess, he will.”

Then she fell asleep again, and with a feeling that he had received a benediction, Jeff, who had never kissed her before, kissed her now for the sake of the dead Inez, whose grave was in the beautiful valley far away.

THE END.

POPULAR NOVELSBYMRS. MARY J. HOLMES.Tempest and Sunshine.English Orphans.Homestead on Hillside.’Lena Rivers.Meadow Brook.Dora Deane.Cousin Maude.Marian Grey.Edith Lyle.Daisy Thornton.Chateau d’Or.Queenie Hetherton.Bessie’s Fortune.Marguerite.Mrs. Hallam’s Companion.Darkness and Daylight.Hugh Worthington.Cameron Pride.Rose Mather.Ethelyn’s Mistake.Milbank.Edna Browning.West Lawn.Mildred.Forrest House.Madeline.Christmas Stories.Gretchen.Dr. Hathern’s Daughters.Paul Ralston.The Tracy Diamonds.(New.)“Mrs. Holmes is a peculiarly pleasant and fascinating writer. Her books are always entertaining, and she has the rare faculty of enlisting the sympathy and affections of her readers, and of holding their attention to her pages with deep and absorbing interest.”Handsomely bound in cloth. Price, $1.50 each, and sentfreeby mail on receipt of price,G. W. Dillingham Co., PublishersNEW YORK.

POPULAR NOVELSBYMRS. MARY J. HOLMES.

POPULAR NOVELS

MRS. MARY J. HOLMES.

Tempest and Sunshine.English Orphans.Homestead on Hillside.’Lena Rivers.Meadow Brook.Dora Deane.Cousin Maude.Marian Grey.Edith Lyle.Daisy Thornton.Chateau d’Or.Queenie Hetherton.Bessie’s Fortune.Marguerite.Mrs. Hallam’s Companion.Darkness and Daylight.Hugh Worthington.Cameron Pride.Rose Mather.Ethelyn’s Mistake.Milbank.Edna Browning.West Lawn.Mildred.Forrest House.Madeline.Christmas Stories.Gretchen.Dr. Hathern’s Daughters.Paul Ralston.The Tracy Diamonds.(New.)

Tempest and Sunshine.

English Orphans.

Homestead on Hillside.

’Lena Rivers.

Meadow Brook.

Dora Deane.

Cousin Maude.

Marian Grey.

Edith Lyle.

Daisy Thornton.

Chateau d’Or.

Queenie Hetherton.

Bessie’s Fortune.

Marguerite.

Mrs. Hallam’s Companion.

Darkness and Daylight.

Hugh Worthington.

Cameron Pride.

Rose Mather.

Ethelyn’s Mistake.

Milbank.

Edna Browning.

West Lawn.

Mildred.

Forrest House.

Madeline.

Christmas Stories.

Gretchen.

Dr. Hathern’s Daughters.

Paul Ralston.

The Tracy Diamonds.(New.)

“Mrs. Holmes is a peculiarly pleasant and fascinating writer. Her books are always entertaining, and she has the rare faculty of enlisting the sympathy and affections of her readers, and of holding their attention to her pages with deep and absorbing interest.”Handsomely bound in cloth. Price, $1.50 each, and sentfreeby mail on receipt of price,G. W. Dillingham Co., PublishersNEW YORK.

Handsomely bound in cloth. Price, $1.50 each, and sentfreeby mail on receipt of price,

G. W. Dillingham Co., Publishers

NEW YORK.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTESMoved ad to theend.Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling.Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

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