HE Dover stage, in passing through Fairlee village, picked up a passenger, an elderly woman with an oldfashioned Stella shawl pinned carefully about her ample shoulders and a tiny bonnet, gorgeous with purple pansies, perched far back upon her smoothly brushed hair. The stage was empty of passengers until she clambered into the seat behind the driver and spread out her bundles and extra wraps over such part of the cushion as she did not herself fill. She gave a sigh of perfect contentment, snuggled herself against the high back, and with a broad smile of satisfaction said goodby to the family assembled to see her departure.

"I shall stay till my visit is made out, if it takes a fortnight," she announced. "I've got to make up for lots of lost time, and it'll be a good chance for Emma to see what sort of a housekeeper she can be, with Sarah Lombard and her advice right in the house to fall back on any time. Sarah's sure to be here by dinner time, and you mustn't forget to ask her, Hiram, for something to try on your lame back. Sarah's always picking up new ideas, and sometimes they're real good ones. Be sure to keep an eye on that web of cloth that's bleaching, Emma; and if Mrs. Edmund's children come over, don't let them go up garret."

She twisted herself about on the seat to call over her shoulder the last injunction, while the heavy wagon jolted down into the sandy highway. Mr. Brisbane was a patient man, but he felt that he ought to give no more

of the government's time to reiterated instructions and leave-takings.

The first half mile out from Fairlee is down a steep hill, a succession of sharp terraces; and Mr. Brisbane barely exchanged greetings with the large woman before his whole attention was absorbed by the brakes and the lumbering horses. When the last pitch in the road was passed, he loosened the reins and released the brakes, and they rattled down a long gentle slope in a cloud of dust dense enough almost to hide from view at flock of hens and chickens, revealed by squawks of fright as they scrambled across under the horses' noses.

"I run over them chickens of Joe Green's every day," remarked Mr. Brisbane, turning back to address his passenger. "I believe if I was to go by at midnight they'd be waiting to be scared out of their wits. Regular landmark to me, they be. But it seems to me, Mrs. Morse, that 1 haven't seen much of you, late years. You and me used to be great travelling companions. You used to go down to your sister Betsy's in Dover three or four times a year; but I don't believe I've taken you down there for three or four years."

"It's more than four years; it's six years this summer since I've been away from home to go by stage," said the woman, chuckling as over some huge joke. She was in the highest spirits and bubbling over with pleasurable excitement. "But I guess you will see me pretty regular again from now on."

"Was it sickness kept you to home?" he asked with evident in

terest.

She shook her head. "No, it was

the children. Six years ago they was pretty small and had to go when I did, you remember. I couldn't leave them behind, and I made up my mind that two youngsters were more bother than profit in visiting, so I gave up going about much."

"Sho, now!" ejaculated the man, "I don't believe your friends approved of that. You was dreadful good company, and I often said to my wife, Susan, if you'd only smart up some and go about sociable-like, as Mrs. Morse up in Fairlee does, you'd get considerable more comfort. out of living.' No reason why she shouldn't; she has to make up work to keep herself busy; she's made rugs till there isn't a spot in the whole house that isn't cluttered up with them; and I've known her to take clean sheets out of the bureau drawers to put into the wash tub, so's to have a washing big enough to seem respectable to her.'

Mr. Brisbane laughed silently over his wife's weaknesses, and Mrs. Morse joined in heartily from behind. Then he continued: "At any rate I'm mighty glad to see you again. Only yesterday I was thinking about you and the other folks I'd got to depending on for company, who'd sort of dropped off. There was old Uncle Silas Bent, who went back and forth between his son's house at the Corners and his daughter's down to East Fairlee. He couldn't stay more than a month in either place before something would happen that he couldn't put up with nohow, so he'd start without so much as saying good-by and go to his other home. He was a dreadful cantankerous old fellow to live with, I suppose, but amusing enough to ride with for a few miles. He had a shock a couple of years ago, when he was at Joseph Bent's, and had to stay there till he died, nearly a year after. It must have been a great affliction to him to be tied down to one spot."

The horses pulled up and stopped of their own accord at an iron kettle

brimming over with clear spring water. Their driver climbed over the wheel to loosen the check-rein, and as he stood waiting for the thirsty animals to drink he looked up at Mrs. Morse. On her plump face the mirth had been replaced by a more serious expression, and she turned herself. ponderously on the seat to look back. along the road they had come.

"I thought maybe there might be a team coming behind us," she said apologetically, settling again into a comfortable position. "This is as lonesome a place as I know of. There isn't a roof of any sort in sight anywhere. I don't myself care for scenery that hasn't a house in it somewhere. The painter that boarded with Mrs. Marks last June made a picture of the old kettle and the weeds around it and that clump of bushes,"

bobbing her head to indicate the thicket she referred to;-"but I didn't admire it much; it wasn't near as good as some houses in the village he painted; they were almost as good as photographs." Then she suddenly took up the topic that had been interrupted by the halt at the watering place. "Mrs. Hannah Grant was one of your regulars, wasn't she? Seemed sometimes as if she was always on the stage when I was going anywhere. You couldn't exactly call her good company, she was so dreadful still,— never had a word to say for herself. But you probably missed her considerable at first when she went off out to Wisconsin." Her eyes caught sight of a blackberry bush on the opposite side of the road and she changed the subject again. “My! just look at those berries over the wall there. If I wasn't so clumsy I'd be out of this wagon in a minute. I can't never see a berry growing that my mouth don't water for it."

"If you'll hold the lines, so the horses won't start up and leave me when they get through drinking, I'll see if I can't get them for you. Have you a cup or something I can pick them into?"

Mrs. Morse produced a tin cup from some one of her bundles and then watched with approval as the stage driver climbed stiffly over the loose stones of the half ruined wall. While he picked the big berries and dropped them into the tin cup he answered the question Mrs. Morse had asked a minute before.

"Mrs. Grant rode with me oftener than anybody else. She certainly wasn't much livelier than a cedar post, but she wasn't any one's fool, and she was a mighty good cook. The sight of that old brown wicker basket of hers affected my mouth about the same as you say berries do yours. She would pass her victuals around to everybody in the stage, strangers and all, before she began eating her own lunch. My wife used to say when I brought home my own lunch pretty much as it was when I left home, 'Guess Aunt Hannah's been riding out to-day!' Yes, I surely was sorry to have her go away to live with Mary Alice. Do your remember the fried turnovers she made? My wife's tried over and over again to make them so they'd taste like hers, but she hasn't succeeded yet."

There was small danger that the fat gray horses would voluntarily resume their journey. They made of the watering place an excuse for resting, alternately dabbling their noses. in the cool water and splashing it over the edges of the kettle after their thirst had been satisfied, until they realized that this customary stop was being prolonged far beyond its ordinary limits. Then as they showed an inclination to seek for more solid refreshments in the tempting bushes along the way, Mrs. Morse reined. them back into the road, guided them. into the shade of an apple tree that leaned crookedly over the bounding fence of an orchard, and there stopped them to wait. She was too far from the blackberry bush for further talk, and, thrown upon her own resources for a few minutes, she became aware of an unmistakable de

pression of spirits. The play of shadows on the white dust of the road brought her a vision of the dance of shadowy grapevine leaves on her well scrubbed kitchen floor. It was very odd that she should have an almost irresistible desire to see the room in which she spent most of her waking hours; she had been so delighted at leaving it for a week,—and now in less than an hour from her departure she was seized with a silly longing to get back to its stifling atmosphere.

"I'm surely growing into a big baby!" she muttered angrily; "but I've got the pleasantest kitchen in Fairlee," she added in self-justification, "and Betsy's is certainly a dreary, tucked up little place; it can't hold a candle to mine! To be sure she has a sitting room that's nice enough, and that's where we shall do most of our visiting; but give me a good, big, sunny living room like mine, and all the sitting rooms in the world may go begging for all of me!"

She was distinctly thankful to see Mr. Brisbane hurrying towards the wagon. "I stopped longer than I calculated," he gasped, out of breath, handing over the wheel the cup heaped with berries; "but I guess we can make up the time going up the hill; the horses have rested so long they won't need another breathing spell before we get to the top."

Mrs. Morse hastened to find relief from her troubled thoughts in a renewal of gossip. As soon as the horses had been urged into motion she began, “Ann Watson is dead too. She depended on you considerable, didn't she?"

"Yes, she went everywhere there. was any sickness. I always knew when I turned the corner just before I got to her house and saw that big bag of hers setting up on the gate post, as a sign to me to stop, that some one was took sick and she'd been sent for."

"Ann was a good hand to have about at such times," Mrs. Morse re

marked, "a little dispiriting for ordinary occasions, but dreadful capable in emergencies. The country suffered a great loss when she died, for there don't seem to be no one to replace her. Sarah Lombard might do as well if she was as reliable. We always knew when we sent for Ann that she'd come if she could crawl and wasn't helping some other afflicted family. But Sarah is peculiar. She has spells when she won't stir out for nobody; 'wants to realize she's got a home of her own and isn't beholden to nobody,' she says. I hope to goodness she hasn't got one of them attacks to-day; for if she has, the promise she made a week ago to help Emma out while I'm in Dover won't count for nothing!"

"Oh, well, I guess there's no cause for you to worry over that," said Mr. Brisbane soothingly. He had noticed the tone of alarm in the woman's voice. "I saw Sarah yesterday at the Corner post office, and she seemed real smart and chipper. She never has them cranky notions except when she's a little under the weather."

ance.

Mrs. Morse was too much crushed by the fear of such a catastrophe added suddenly to the burden of homesickness that was weighing more heavily each moment to make any reply to this attempt at reassurShe acknowledged to herself that it was absurd to let the thought of Sarah's occasional whims alarm. her now that she was actually started on her pleasure trip, while in the week since the agreement had been made she had felt no uneasiness. When she was in the midst of her preparations for this visit, if it had been suggested that Sarah might fail her, the knowledge that her daughter was quite capable of managing the household affairs unaided would have prevented any change in her plans. She had said more than once, “It isn't really necessary to have any one come to help Emma. I shall leave things so the work won't be much, and if

anybody should be took sick Emma has lots of common sense,—as much as Sarah has, I honestly believe, and the neighbors are all so kind they'd help her out till I could get home."

The

The hill that rose above the watering-place was long and steep; the road zigzagged up its wooded sides, increasing the distance, but lightening the labor of the ascent. stage horses, accustomed to occasional halts during the long pull, today needed particular attention to keep them steadily at their work. The time lost in blackberrying must be made up here, or the postmistress at East Fairlee would be wondering and exclaiming over the tardy appearance of the mail carrier; and there was danger even of a late arrival at the end of the route in Dover.

The progress was so slow that Mr. Brisbane's fund of patience ran very low; but to the woman sitting behind him the trees and bushes beside the road were rushing past with unexampled swiftness. Every step placed between her and Fairlee village to her excited fancy seemed at the very least. a mile. She had ceased to think and to reason with herself,-she simply endured; her misery was too intense for conscious thought. As they neared the crest of the hill she began to gather her bundles into a compact pile at the end of her seat; the big black valise that held the more bulky of her belongings she wedged securely among the mail bags upon the floor of the wagon. She hardly knew what she was planning to do, but she felt the absolute necessity for some action that would bring relief.

The horses pulled their load over the last water-bar, and on the summit were at last allowed to stop for a brief rest. Mr. Brisbane turned himself about and pointed with his whip in the direction from which they had

come.

"There is the last we shall see of Fairlee to-day. When we go down this hill it shuts out everything behind it. It's the hardest hill on mv