on the stairs, and of low rapping on the chamber door. Miss Lucrece started to her feet. "Come in, Martha, come in," she called. "Why, Martha, is anything the matter? What has happened?"

The old maidservant stood awkwardly on the threshold, rolling her apron string about her finger. Her eyes were red and filled again with tears as she spoke.

"It's Judge Hunting, marm. Hannah's just been over telling me. She's known he was sick for some time now, though he wouldn't own up to it. He's been up and dressed every day, but the last two mornings he hasn't gone out as he generally does and last night he was took bad. Hannah and Thomas were up all night with him. The doctor couldn't get to him till nearly morning and he was out of his head most of the time. He kept calling and calling, one name over and over, Hannah said, till it nearly broke her heart to hear him. I don't know as she ought to have asked me what she did or as I ought to have said I would, but she seemed to think it would comfort him so, and he's all alone except for Thomas and Hannah, so, so I‚— Oh, Miss Lucrece, it was your name he was saying."

Martha raised her eyes to her mistress's face for the first time since she had begun to speak and wondered at the strange light that shone there. It was as though some one had brought her good news instead of ill. Her voice had almost. a note of gladness in it.

"Tell Hannah I will go to him,"

she said.

* *

Old Judge Hunting sat alone, in his great winged arm chair by the west window of his room. In spite

of the doctor's cautions, and the protestations of Thomas and Hannah he had insisted upon being up and dressed as usual, though even they did not know what effort it had cost him and how weary he felt as he sat with fine white head thrown back among the cushions and heavy hands idly resting on the broad chair arms. There were books on the stand beside him, but they had grown strangely tiresome to hold of late, and they lay untouched and unheeded. He laughed softly as he remembered the look on the doctor's face when it had first dawned out of the troubled visions of the night. It was really not worth while to read any more, and the afternoon sunlight was so rich in dreams-in one dream that changed and changed but was ever the same. He sent the restless shuttle of his thoughts back and forth across the golden warp of light and wove the bright threads of his fancy into its gold.

He was too happy at his weaving to hear the sound of footsteps, of gentle tapping at his door. Miss Lucrece waited for a moment on the threshold and then came softly across the room to his side. Still he did not heed her and she hesitated in the shadow of his chair. The faint color deepened in her cheeks and one hand tremulously sought her heart, but when she spoke her voice was clear though very low.

"Basil," she said, "I have come to bring you your rose."

She held out the great velvety. white flower and stood smiling gently at him as he turned quickly and gazed at her from wondering eyes. Slowly he stretched out one hand to meet hers, very slowly as if he feared she would fade away be

I

"It is white, Basil. You know you thought it would be red. wanted to keep it in spite of my promise; you see I did not know that you still cared. It is so many years."

He laughed, a queer low laugh, repeating her words as if to himself.

"So many years, and I have cared all of those many years, Lucrece. You do not know, you cannot know how I have cared."

Miss Lucrece's eyes grew bright with the same glad radiance that Martha had seen in them that morning. She drew something from the bosom of her dress and held it on her outstretched hand before him. "Look, Basil," she said.

He bent his head to look as she directed but he turned quickly away, pushing her hand back al most roughly.

"But look, Basil," she pleaded. The sunlight played on the gold frame and on the handsome young face that gazed up into the Judge's own. He caught his breath and his voice trembled when he spoke. "It is my picture, Lucrece."

She stooped to kiss it lest he see her tears.

"Yes, it was always yours, there was never any other, Basil. I could not tell you. I was ashamed to have said so much, and I thought when Holt came back you would know. But he did not come, and the rose I thought to send you did not bloom. We have both waited long for the rose, Basil, but it is very lovely now."

She smiled up into his low bent face, and, as she smiled, the lines of regret and pain imprinted there faded wondrously.

"Yes, it makes up for all, Lucrece," he answered.

Through the long still afternoon they sat together side by side, hand in hand, the old lovers. There were many things to say that had long sought for utterance, lost confidences of fifty years to be shut away in two waiting hearts. When the sunlight began to fail them and she rose to leave him, he caught at her dress and drew her back, but he did not speak. It was his eyes that spoke for him and her eyes read their message. The color started to her old cheeks but she bent low above him.

"Lucrece, Lucrece," peated as he kissed her.

he re

Miss Lucrece was in the garden among her roses when Martha came to find her the next morning, came stumbling through the wet grass with one crumpled corner of her

apron held to her streaming eyes.

A bird high up in a tree by the roadside was pouring out its little heart in the glad joy of living, and to Miss Lucrece the song seemed in some strange way to blend with Martha's sobbing speech as she told her story.

Told how on the evening before when old Thomas and Hannah went to their master's room to see that he was comfortable for the night, they had found him sitting among the moonlight shadows in his great armchair by the window. There was a white rose clasped be

tween his hands and on his face was a smile, a smile so happy that they thought he dreamed.

Miss Lucrece stood silent In the path till the sound of Martha's footsteps died away. There was a mist in her eyes, but the mist did not utterly veil the glad calm that dwelt behind it. She went slowly to the rosebush at the end of the walk near the step and pressed her face against its cool green leaves.

"It is such a little while, such a little while to wait," she said softly. "We had waited so long before, and now we know."

"I

GUESS I'll have to give up, Rachel. Every day tacks on a little more worry, a little more debt, and I'm just about crazy with it. I've been floundering along for months, getting in deeper and deeper. There is no way out that I can see except to quit while we still have a roof over our heads. If we had to leave the old house, it would half kill us, wouldn't it?”

Cyrus Hayden's deep voice, strong at the beginning of his speech, rose to an almost childish treble at the end, faltered and broke piteously.

His wife, thin, and possessing rather belligerent eyes, scanned the woeful countenance sharply, before replying. Her sewing slid from her slender knees to the worn, old

fashioned sitting-room carpet. She picked it up with a firm hand.

"No," said she. "It wouldn't. Steady, Cyrus. What's the matter with you?"

I

"Matter," groaned the man. "You should know it all, I suppose. can't keep on trying to do business the way things are running. I'm behind on what I owe and I cannot begin to collect enough to meet my bills, and that means a shut-down on the part of the packing company. That is, I get no more meat. I've had one notice; next week I'll get another, then good-bye Hayden's Market."

"But why can't you make it pay? Your father did. I know you've been worrying lately but I supposed things were going right. You have

the best people in town couldn't exist without him. He knew exactly what they liked. Why, I've known him to fret himself sick over little complaints. And every one loved him. I'll never forget the day old Judge Parlow came raging into

"That's it," muttered Cyrus. "It's on my books still. I can't get it. If I could I'd be safe enough."

"Pshaw!" exclaimed Mrs. Hayden, “you are too easy with people, just as your father was. They owe you the money, don't they? Go to work and make them pay up."

Her husband gave an impatient sigh, shrugging his broad shoulders. "You don't understand," he said, irritably. "It's useless to talk business with you, Rachel. You never did understand. That's why I never say anything until the last minute, but I tell you now that I'm in a bad way, and I'm going to finish up before matters grow any worse. I'll get enough from these old accounts to square myself, and then what?"

"Oh, you will easily find something else, I guess, and I'll be glad to have you, Cyrus. You know I've always hated to have you in the market—a man of your appearance and education. Of course, it will be a great deal better. Some nice office position with a steady salary is what you are fitted for. I always said so. I've been a butcher's wife for five years, dear-now I'm willing to go up a peg. Can't you get a place in one of the Banks? Banking is such a genteel occupation."

Again the man sighed and his face grew red. "It was father's business," he said. "Father built it up from nothing and was mighty proud of it. He just doted on his customI honestly think he imagined

'Out,' said I. 'He'll be right in.

What's the trouble, Judge?'

'Trouble,' said he, 'that roast was the toughest-well-I'll talk to him!' and just then father came back. It seems that confounded boy (you remember Pete) had delivered Mrs. Dickey's order at Parlow's. She ran a cheap place and used to pick out pieces that would last, and the Judge got a beauty. Father had that minute learned of the mistake from Mrs. Dickey, who had complained she ordered twelve pounds and only got eight, although it was nice tender beef, and he was in a state-pretty near crying. Well, he marched right up to the Judge and looked at him. Swallowed three or four times but he couldn't say a word, he felt so bad. I can see him now, his nose twitching and his big round eyes appealing like a great dog's, who knows he is going to be licked for a thing he didn't mean to do.

"Rachel, the Judge sensed it in a second. The thunder cloud in his face cleared into the funniest grin I ever saw, and he put his hand on father's fat shoulder. 'Zack,' said he, 'I merely stopped in to say that my teeth ain't what they were when we divided that chunk of hardtack the night after Chancellorsville,' and with that he turned and went out.

"Father stood still for about a minute, breathing hard. Then he said to me, 'Cy, don't you ever forget yourself and send the Judge's bill. When I'm gone and you're

running the shop, remember, whatever happens.' Then he slipped out of the back door and got a drink, I guess. He allowed himself one a month on special occasions and that must have been one of 'em.

"Dear me! To think of those two good old men, both dying the same week and the Judge didn't leave very much."

The butcher's face sobered from the jollity brought by his remem

brance.

"I'm glad father's dead," he flung out savagely. "This state of things would have broken his heart. He loved his shop and the folks he sold, and he would have gone up just as I'm doing. We're the old kind. I can't hammer money out of the trade he left me and I can't refuse to sell them. They are honestthey're good for it, but everything's cash nowadays and it is hand to mouth with lots of the best people. Some pay every six months, some quarterly when they get their income. I have to pay every Monday or be frozen out. A fellow can't borrow at the banks without security and I've reached my limit. No, it's impossible to carry my trade any longer. I've got to quit-I've got to."

He was talking to himself, now, and pacing the floor. His head sank on his breast, his hands clinched; a good-looking, well-built man of twenty-seven, with nothing in his neat appearance to indicate a calling more or less associated with gory fancies. Many had wondered. why Cyrus, after passing through the public schools with credit, and studying for a year at a business college, had chosen to take up the humble occupation of his father. He certainly was fitted for more ambitious endeavor.

Zachary had put it squarely before him from a practical standpoint. "The shop is established, Cy," he had said. "There's money in it for you the very first day you step in and you're independent with a chance ahead. It means that in a few years you can marry some nice gal, have a comfortable home of your own, and hold your nose up with anybody; it means an honest living, friends, comforts, hard work and wearin' an apron. You won't have to do any slaughterin', and it's a healthy way to live. Think it over, son. If you'd rather do something else, I'll back you to my last dollar, but some day I'll go quick, the doctor says, and it won't hurt my feelngs any to feel the old shop is going to stay in the family."

Cyrus thought it over and decided on the apron and independence. Later he decided on the "nice gal" and took her to the house of Zachary who, long a widower, was greatly pleased with the arrangement and prayed to be a grandfather.

This prayer being happily granted after two years, the kindly old fellow passed a twelve month of bliss (for he minded not wails and household disturbance) and died with the baby in his arms and the croon of an old war lyric on his lips. He left a wide circle of sincerely sorrowing friends, and the business to Cyrus.

Two years more and this chapter opens. Little Zach had thrived. The business hadn't. Rachel was a cheerful and contented although a somewhat ambitious wife. Cyrus was a badly worried young man.

As he turned in his uneasy walk, the woman spoke gently. "I'm sorry I didn't know before. Maybe I could have helped in some way. With no rent to pay, no meat bills and you trading accounts with the