He might just as well have started it under a sage bush out on the alkali plains. He gave it some queer Greek name, and I heard that the publication was first semi-weekly, then weekly, and then very weakly indeed, until it came to a full stop at the end of six months. It would have been ridiculous anywhere else; but being an attempt at literature, I suppose it was looked upon here as respectable."

"And did you use to write poetry?" queried Mrs. Pember.

"Not to any dangerous extent," replied Tompkins. "I do not deny that I tried while in college, but I reformed when I went West. I think uncle Jason always had an idea that it might be better for me to be Daniel Webster. He stood by me after I left college, and for three years I continued to get those letters, with five or six dollars at a time in them. They kept me from actual suffering sometimes, before I got down off my stilts, and went to work, like an honest man, in the pork business." "I thought you were going to tell us something about that girl," suggested Mrs. Pember.

"Yes, I was," rejoined Tompkins. "When I saw Lucy here, four years ago, in the gallery with the singers, I felt as if it would be impossible for me to face her and talk with her. She would not have known me, for one thing. When I was a brown-haired boy, making poetry and being a martyr, and doing serenading, and living on codfish and crackers and soup, I could meet Lucy with a grand air that made her shudder; but, as I sat there in church, gray and worn, I dreaded to catch her eye, or have her see me. Although there was not three years' difference in our ages, yet it seemed to me that I was very old, while she was still blooming. Then there was the feeling that I had not become a great poet, or orator, or anything really worth while. On the contrary, I was just nobody. It seemed like attending my own funeral. I felt disgraced. Of course it was not all true. I had been a good, square, honest, hard-working man.”

"Yes, you had indeed, Timothy," assented Mrs. Pember, with an emphatic nod.

"Yes indeed, I had," repeated Tompkins, his chin quivering. "It was not the thing for a fair-minded man to think so poorly of himself; but I was alone, and the old associations and the solemn services were very impressive. There was Lucy in the choir; she always could sing like a nightingale. When I heard her voice again, it overcame me. I did not hear much of the sermon. I think it was something about temptation and the suggestions of the evil one; but I am not sure, for I had my head down on the back of the pew in front of me most of the time. I had to fight desperately to control my feelings. One minute I would think that as soon as the services closed I would rush around and shake hands with my old acquaintances, and the next minute would be

doing my best to swallow the lump in my throat. It was as tough a sixty minutes as I ever passed. But finally the services were ended. I felt that it was plainly my duty to stop in the porch and claim the recognition of my friends. I did pause, and try for a few seconds to collect myself; but the lump grew bigger and choked me, while the tears would flow. Besides that, as the adversary just then, in the meanest possible manner, suggested to my soul, there was that pork. I knew I would have to tell of it if I stopped. But I did not stop; I retreated. When I reached my room in the hotel I felt a longing to get out of town. Fortunately, I could not leave on Sunday. So in the afternoon I sat with the landlord on his broad front platform, or piazza. It was not the person who keeps the place now, but one of the oldest inhabitants, who knew all about the Burlington people. He guessed that I was a college boy; he thought he remembered something about my appearance. I did not mind talking freely with a landlord, for hotels and boarding-houses had been my home in Chicago. I had always been a single man, just as I am to this day. This landlord was a good-hearted old chap, and it was pleasant to talk with him. While we were sitting there, who should come along the street but Lucy, with a book in her hand. She was on the opposite sidewalk, and did not look up. She would not look at a hotel on Sunday. I asked the landlord about her, and he told me all there was to tell. She was living in one end of a little wooden cottage over toward Winooski, another factory-woman occupying the other part of the house. They made a home together. The landlord said Lucy was an excellent woman, and might have married one of the overseers in the factory any time she chose for years back, but that she preferred a single life.

"When I got back to Chicago I kept thinking about Lucy Cary. The old times when we used to live in Wilmington came back to my mind. The truth of it was, I was getting along a little, at last, in Chicago in the way of property, and I found myself all the while planning how I could have Lucy Cary near me."

"Did you want to marry her, Timothy?" inquired Mrs. Pember. "It was not that," he replied; "but I wanted to become acquainted with her again. I knew she was the best girl I had ever seen. She always was just as good and pious as anybody could be. We were like brother and sister, almost, when young; and when I thought of home and my folks and old Wilmington and the college days, somehow Lucy was the centre of it all. In fact, almost everything else was gone. My folks were scattered, and Lucy and uncle Jason were nearly the only persons up this way that I could lay claim to. There is a kind of lonesome streak comes over a man when he has been grinding away in a great city for a good many years, and comes back to the old places, and

sees them so fresh and green and quiet, and he can't get over it. He will cling to anything that belongs to old times. I was strongly influ enced to write to Lucy, but finally I did not. I determined that I would get all I could for two or three years, and then I would come here and face things. I would get something comfortable, and would have a place I could call my own in Chicago. Then, when I had it fixed, I would come and see uncle Jason and Lucy, and stand the racket. Of course it was nonsense to feel shy, but it seemed to me that I could not say a word until I had something to brag of. They knew, in a general kind of way, that I was in Chicago, dealing in pork, or doing auctioneering or something, and that was as much humiliation as I could endure. To be sure, it was nothing to be ashamed of, for I had been an honest, faithful man; but to come back to my friends empty-handed, without money or fame, and gray-headed at that, was more than I could stand. If I had had anything or been anything, just to take the edge off, I could have managed it. As it was, I looked ahead and worked. If any man in Chicago has tried and planned and toiled during the last three years, I am that man. There has been a picture before my mind of a pleasant home there."

"And have you calculated to marry Lucy Cary?" inquired Mrs. Pember, in an eager voice.

66

'Perhaps it was not just in that way I thought of it," replied the narrator, very seriously. "You know I told you that the landlord said she preferred a single life."

"Timothy Tompkins," exclaimed the old lady apprehensively, "don't deny it, don't! Think how dreadfully you will feel if you know you have told a lie!"

"It is nothing to be ashamed of, Timothy," said Mr. Pember, in a kind and sympathetic voice.

"If you put it in that way," answered my old classmate, in strangely mournful tones, "all I can say is, there was never anything between us, -nothing at all."

"And did you come here this time to see her?" inquired Mrs. Pember, almost starting from her seat, and with the thrill of a sudden guess in her voice.

"I suppose it was as much that as anything." replied Tompkins doggedly, looking down, and poking with a short stick in the ground at his feet.

"And that is what has made you act so queer," mused Mrs. Pember. "Have you seen her?"

"Let him tell the story, Caroline," urged the old gentleman peevishly. Tompkins looked gloomily out upon the lake and the broad landscape for a few moments; and then, resuming his narrative, said:

"As I was saying, I have worked hard, and have got a nice little pile. I am worth thirty-five thousand dollars. When I made up my mind to come East this summer, the money to pay uncle Jason for what he had done was all ready. It made me choke to think how long I had let it run. I figured it up as near as I could-the two hundred that came to me in college, and the two hundred after that; and I put in the simple interest at seven per cent., according to the York State law, which brought the sum total up to nearly nine hundred; and to fix it all right I made it an even thousand dollars. Then I bought a new buckskin bag, and went to a bank in Chicago and got the money all in gold. I knew that would please uncle Jason. He once talked of going to California to dig. I suppose he had never seen a pile of the real yellow coin in his life. I wrote to him that I was to be in Burlington, and that I would be ever so glad if he would come over and see me. I met him yesterday afternoon, as he got off the boat, down at the steamboat landing. He knew me, and I knew him, although we were both changed a good deal. After we had talked a little, and got used to each other, I took him up to my room in the hotel. I was in a hurry to get at the business part of my visit with him first; for it seemed to me that it would be better to let him see, to begin with, that I was not exactly poor, nor such an ungrateful cub as may be he had thought I was. was my resolve that before we talked of anything else I would get that money off my conscience. I knew that then I could hold up my head, and discuss our neighborhood and old times, and it would be plain sailing for me. I had pictured to my mind a dozen times how uncle Jason would look with that new yellow buckskin bag crammed with gold on his knee, steadying it with his hand and talking to me. So when I got him up to my room, and seated him in a chair, I began the performance. I got red in the face, and spluttered, and flourished round with the bag and the gold; and, to tell the truth, I fully expected to make the old man's hair rise right up. But it did not work. He got shaky and trembled, and somehow did not seem to want the money at all, and finally owned how it was. He said that he had never given me a cent; it was all Lucy Cary's doing. And she had made him promise, on his everlasting Bible oath, as he called it, that he would not tell. She had put him up to the whole thing; even that first two-dollar bill had come from her wages."

It

My old classmate ceased speaking. He was becoming flushed and excited. He gazed abstractedly at the broad blue mirror of old Champlain, upon which he and I had looked together so often in the days of our youth.

Mr. Pember sat silently. Mrs. Pember was whimpering behind her handkerchief.

I ventured the inquiry, "Have you seen Lucy yet?"

Tompkins's face quivered; he was silent.

Mrs. Pember's interest in the question restored her. "Tell us, have you seen her?" she asked.

"I heard of it yesterday," Tompkins replied huskily, with an effort. Why, Timothy, what is the matter?" cried Mrs. Pember, rising from her seat and coming to him, as he bent his head and buried his face in his hands. The motherly woman took off his soft hat, and stroking his hair said: "You had better tell; it will do you good." And then she put his hat on again, and stood wiping her eyes in sympathy, while he struggled with himself.

The storm of feeling passed away, and Tompkins, having gained control of his emotions, slowly lifted his face from his hands, and sat peering out under his hat-brim, looking apparently at a boat upon the lake. At last he said, in a calm voice: "She is dead."

It was very still after this announcement. The softest breath of June scarcely whispered in the pines overhead, and the vast landscape below seemed strangely at rest in the fervid brightness of the summer noon.

From the smoky night-encampment, bore the banner of the rampant

Unicorn;

And grummer, grummer, grummer, rolled the roll of the drummer,
Through the morn!

Then with eyes to the front all,

And with guns horizontal,

Stood our sires;