UC-NRLF 
 
 B 3 327 557 
 
 
THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 
 Professor Aram Torossian 
 I88ii-19ia 
 
-L. 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE 
 
 BY 
 
 BLISS PERRY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS 
 1890 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1890, 
 BY CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS. 
 
 GIFT 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 i. 
 
 " Do you suppose Mr. Sonclerby will come, my 
 dear ? It would be just like him not to appear, 
 after all. You never can tell anything about that 
 man." 
 
 Mrs. Ellerton hardly looked at her husband as 
 she spoke, for she was taking a last rapid survey 
 of the tiny tea-table, and as she uttered the words 
 "anything about that man," she bent over and 
 made a more accurate right angle of the tea knife 
 and spoon at the visitor s plate. She was a trifle 
 heated, the result of overseeing a half-trained 
 girl in the kitchen, and she wore, albeit some 
 what lightly, that anxiety of the young house 
 keeper which finds in over-accuracy a compensation 
 for the lack of experience. Arthur Ellerton was 
 standing by the door of the dining-room, arrayed 
 in a gray flannel study-gown and slippers. Behind 
 him could be seen the desk he had just left, and 
 the stained pine shelves that contained his scanty 
 library. It was late Saturday afternoon, and the 
 
 l 
 
 162 
 
2 THE EEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 ink was still wet upon what he considered a rather 
 satisfactory ending to his sermon for the morrow. 
 
 He looked across the room at his wife, amused at 
 her preoccupied air, and with an admiration which 
 extended itself even to the huge white apron that 
 almost hid her dotted muslin gown. He watched 
 her fine, tall figure bending over the table, the 
 swift movement of her fingers among the glass and 
 silver, and the gravity of her serious face as she 
 laid a napkin for the expected guest. Then he 
 broke into a low, contented laugh. 
 
 "Well?" she demanded, suspiciously, turning 
 toward him. 
 
 " Nothing, Ruth ; only it is such fun to see you 
 go at things." 
 
 She straightened herself, with a whimsical affec 
 tation of displeasure, and her gray eyes danced. 
 " You are always making fun of me, when you 
 don t realize at all the important things I have to 
 decide," she said. 
 
 He leaned against the door and smiled at her, 
 without answering. 
 
 ".But do you suppose he is coming ? " she asked. 
 
 "I m sure I don t know," said Ellerton. "I 
 don t pretend to know anything about Sonderby. 
 It isn t I who see in him some what did you call 
 it? some germ 
 
 " You re too bad, sir," cried Mrs. Ellerton, the 
 color rising to her cheeks, but her eyes dancing 
 still. "You know you re just as much interested 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 6 
 
 in him as I am ; and he must be lonely this vaca 
 tion, and we have never had him here, and 
 
 " And therefore if it doesn t rain and give him 
 the excuse he had when he stayed away from Dea 
 con Starling s, we may hope to see him, you mean. 
 But he has five minutes more, anyway, and I m not 
 exactly ready myself," he added, looking down on 
 his study-gown and slippers, and pointing ruefully 
 to an ink-spot on his white but sinewy hand. " Let s 
 go and see if he isn t in sight. "Will you take my 
 arm, Mrs. Ellerton?" and with mock formality, 
 which changed an instant afterward into as decided 
 a freedom, these high-spirited young people crossed 
 the hall and the parlor, to the window that com 
 manded a view of the long street of Broughton. 
 
 The parsonage was at the east end of the village. 
 Broughton s main street had been the pride of the 
 men who laid it out, early in the century, and it 
 was beautiful enough still to be the admiration of 
 the summer visitors, whose verdict upon this mat 
 ter of taste, at least, was considered by the natives 
 to be decisive. Terminating at the east in a gentle 
 rise, upon which stood the great white Orthodox 
 church, on either side of which roads diverged, 
 one to South Broughton, the other to East Part, 
 the street ended on the west at the academy build 
 ing, a low brown structure with Corinthian col 
 umns and a portico. Between the academy and 
 the church stretched a level half-mile of elm- 
 arched street, broad and quiet. The narrow side- 
 
4 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 walks, hardly more than foot-paths, followed the 
 elm-tree trunks closely, curving a little every few 
 yards for the sake of avoiding an unusually large 
 or irregularly planted tree. The country road, 
 with an abundant margin of grass on either side, 
 widened into broad gravelled spaces before the 
 hotel, the post-office, and Parkinson s store. How 
 ever ample the width of the street might appear, 
 it did not discourage the huge elms from throwing 
 their lean branches across it towards one another, 
 even the tiniest twigs seeming to stretch out 
 eagerly, so that when the evening breezes began 
 to move the dusty leaves, the rustle went equally 
 all through the dark green canopy, and one could 
 not tell where the northern elm branches ceased 
 and the southern ones began, such was the inextri 
 cable soft tangle. 
 
 The parsonage, separated from the church only 
 by the road to South Broughton, was so near the 
 street that from the parlor window one could see 
 almost the whole length of it. The Ellertons 
 stood a few moments gazing down the long vista 
 at the end of which stood the low academy, dark 
 now against the deep gold of the sunset. The 
 street was empty save for the afternoon stage from 
 the Center, whose driver was throwing off the 
 mail-bag in front of the post-office. 
 
 He was three hours late that day. Soon one 
 white gate after another opened, here and there 
 along the street, and a child, or a woman, or an 
 
THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 5 
 
 old man, would move leisurely toward the office, 
 knowing that the postmistress would require a 
 quarter of an hour more to distribute the mail, 
 but unable to deprive themselves of the pleasure 
 of waiting and watching. But while the minister 
 and his wife were scanning the street for John 
 Sonderby, the academy teacher, they suddenly 
 recognized his short figure and heavy walk as he 
 came out from the space in front of the hotel, 
 beyond the post-office, half-way down the street, 
 and turned eastward towards the parsonage. 
 
 " Well, I declare, there he is ! " cried Ellerton. 
 
 "Didn t I tell you I knew he would be here?" 
 asserted the minister s wife, triumphantly, forget 
 ting the doubt which had possessed her but a few 
 moments previously. " Hurry, Arthur ! I want 
 you to be here when he comes in." 
 
 Ellerton disappeared up the front stairs to make 
 a hasty toilet, while his wife took off her big white 
 apron, and carrying it into the sitting-room, threw 
 it somewhat unceremoniously into a closet. Then 
 with a glance at her hair in the gilt-framed mirror 
 hanging over the sewing-machine, and a deft 
 stroke or two at its gold-brown .masses with her 
 quick fingers, she came through the dining-room 
 again, took a final look at the table, hurried to the 
 kitchen to tell Mary Jane to put the tea steeping, 
 and then, closing the folding-doors that shut the 
 dining-room from the parlor, sat down in her best 
 plush chair to await the sound of the door-bell. 
 
6 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 There was a click at the front gate, and John 
 Sonderby came up the straight gravelled path to 
 the piazza. He glanced at the flower-beds, with 
 their plentiful sprinkling of new shingles stuck 
 firmly into the soil, and pencilled with Latin names ; 
 but the flowers to be seen were few. The grass was 
 cut as neatly as scythe could cut it, lawn-mowers 
 being a rare luxury in Broughton. The Virginia 
 creeper was thick upon the white posts of the 
 piazza, and even climbed along the roof, hanging 
 down here and there in waving pendants, scarcely 
 stirring in the quiet evening air. The parsonage 
 was an attractive place, nestling there under the 
 side of the knoll, and Sonderby found himself 
 struck with its homelikeness and charm. He had 
 never been there before except once in the even 
 ing since the Ellertons came to Broughton the 
 previous autumn. The school-teacher made few 
 calls, at best, being fertile in excuses to himself, 
 while to those who invited him he was exasperat- 
 ingly non-committal in his formulation of accept 
 ances and regrets. 
 
 " I don t know why I m here," he thought, as he 
 passed under the fringe of Virginia creeper, and 
 hesitating a moment between the old-fashioned 
 brass knocker upon the centre panel of the door 
 and the brand-new bell-handle at the side, pulled 
 the latter, slowly at first, and then with a powerful 
 jerk. The tinkling had not ceased when the door 
 opened. Sonderby had expected to see Mary 
 
THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 1 
 
 Jane, a pupil of his during the winter months, 
 who acted as "help " for the minister s wife out of 
 school hours and in vacations. But instead of the 
 awkward figure and bashful smile of Mary Jane, 
 Ruth Ellerton s tall form, graceful head, and 
 shining gray eyes confronted him. He was a 
 trifle embarrassed, and half missed the frankly 
 outstretched hand, but collected himself as their 
 fingers righted and she gave his hand a cordial 
 pressure, smiling her welcome as she did so. 
 
 They stood a moment in the narrow hall, while 
 she hung up his straw hat, remembering as she 
 glanced at it that her brother had worn a hat of 
 that model two seasons before. Then she ushered 
 her guest into the parlor. 
 
 " We are very glad to see you at last, Mr. Son- 
 derby," she began. Then it occurred to her that 
 that was not a particularly happy opening ; it im 
 plied too much as to his previous discourtesy. 
 
 " You are very kind," he replied, somewhat help 
 lessly. She sat in her plush chair, her hands play 
 ing with the handkerchief in her lap. Sonderby 
 had taken a cane rocking-chair, much too low for 
 him, and sat with his knees high, looking uncom 
 fortable. 
 
 " AVhat do you find to do all these long summer 
 days ? " she asked, busying her brain meanwhile to 
 discover an excuse for getting him to change his 
 seat. 
 
 " Well," he answered, " not much of anything 
 
8 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 in particular. I have never loafed a summer vaca 
 tion before that is, since I left college." 
 
 "No?" 
 
 " No. I can t tell yet whether I shall like it. 
 Last year I was down at Calvin Johnson s." 
 
 " Were you ? I suppose that is a pleasant place 
 to board, isn t it?" The minister s wife spoke 
 rapidly, as if the conversation were now success 
 fully started. " Some friends of mine were there 
 once, years ago. It is such a beautiful farm." 
 
 " It is probably the best farm in town," said the 
 school-teacher. " But you see, I wasn t a boarder ; 
 that is, not exactly of the summer kind." 
 
 Mrs. Ellerton looked puzzled. 
 
 Sonderby seemed to study her. " I was haying 
 it," he explained, looking her directly in the eyes ; 
 " haying and harvesting with the Johnson boys." 
 
 " Oh," she said. 
 
 He had apparently exhausted the topic, and sat 
 gazing at her. 
 
 "Did you like it? " she asked. 
 
 " The haying ? Well, there is some satisfaction 
 in it." 
 
 " Oh, there must be," she broke in, with an eager 
 vagueness. " It is such clean work, and the odor 
 of new-mown hay is so delicious ; and then these 
 beautiful June and July days, and 
 
 She hesitated, seeing him smile grimly. " I used 
 to ride on the hay-cart at my grandfather s, in the 
 country," she went on, plunging in deeper. " My 
 
THE BROVGHTOX HOUSE. 9 
 
 brother used to follow the cart, and what do you 
 call it rake after ? " 
 
 " Yes," replied Sonderby, lifting himself a trifle 
 in his low chair, and continuing to observe her. 
 Her reminiscences failed. She was conscious of 
 being vexed, and of the color in her cheeks. She 
 began to see how it was that people came to think 
 John Sonderby a difficult person to entertain. She 
 must try some other topic, clearly. 
 
 "Are there many people at the hotel?* she 
 inquired. 
 
 " There are not so very many." 
 
 She was exceedingly glad to see her husband, 
 who ran down the front stairs and appeared at the 
 parlor door at this juncture. 
 
 "Oh, how do you do, Mr. Sonderby?" Eller- 
 ton cried. " We are very glad to see you here at 
 last." It occurred to Ruth Ellerton that her hus 
 band began much as she had done, but she had 
 confidence in his easy way with people. Ellerton 
 crossed the room swiftly to meet the guest : Son 
 derby rose a trifle awkwardly from his low chair, 
 and the two shook hands. The minister was the 
 taller, and his frock coat added to his apparent 
 height; straight, athletic, with a boyish, smoothly 
 shaven face, blue eyes, and light brown hair. Son- 
 derby stooped slightly, but his shoulders were 
 powerful, and his whole frame was solidly put 
 together ; his full beard made him seem older than 
 Ellerton, though he was really three years younger. 
 
10 THE BBOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 " Glad to see you," Ellerton repeated, dropping 
 the school-teacher s hand. 
 
 "You are very kind," said Sonderby. As the 
 latter turned to his cane chair, he saw that his 
 hostess had laid a possessing hand upon it. 
 
 " Won t you try that other one ? " she suggested. 
 
 Before the teacher could seat himself, Ellerton 
 began, in his high, clear, fluent voice, a rapid stream 
 of talk, cheery nothings : the weather, the roads, 
 the crops, the influx of summer visitors, in all 
 of which Sonderby took his share briefly, but cor 
 dially and easily enough, while Mrs. Ellerton 
 listened to her husband, half in amusement and 
 half in admiration. Arthur had such a frank, con 
 fident manner of approaching people, as if he could 
 discern beforehand that they would like him. 
 
 In a few minutes Mary Jane, inserting her red 
 fingers between the white folding-doors that led to 
 the dining-room, pushed them apart, and revealed 
 her bashful, smiling countenance. She did not 
 know whether it was proper to bow to her school 
 teacher first, or to announce that tea was served, 
 so she made an ineffective compromise by doing 
 both at once. Mrs. Ellerton bit her lips ; then rose 
 and led the way to the table. It was a square 
 little table, covered with her best Irish linen cloth, 
 and her treasured Vienna plates. On the unoc 
 cupied side, opposite Sonderby s chair, stood a wide- 
 mouthed pitcher filled with sweet-peas. There was 
 a pause as the three took their places ; then they 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 11 
 
 bowed their heads, and the minister said grace. 
 The moment it was finished Mary Jane emerged 
 from the kitchen door, behind which she had been 
 listening, and proceeded to pour the water. 
 
 Ellerton passed Sonderby the cold tongue, while 
 the hostess arranged the fragile cups and saucers. 
 
 4 One lump, if you please," said Sonderby, in 
 answer to her question ; " yes, with cream." 
 
 So opened the conversation. It was really very 
 agreeable in the parsonage, and Sonderby wondered 
 why he had so long excused himself from coming. 
 He faced the parlor as he sat, and across the sweet- 
 peas he could see the open parlor window, with the 
 Virginia creeper swaying in the breeze upon the 
 piazza post outside, while the cool dusk gathered 
 everywhere. There were a couple of candles upon 
 the table in tall bronze candlesticks, but they were 
 not lighted. 
 
 Sonderby sipped his tea, and began to feel, for 
 him, exceedingly at home in a strange house. 
 
 "You haven t asked me anything about the 
 school," he found himself saying, with a smile ; 
 "I have learned to expect questions about that 
 the first thing now, everywhere I go." 
 
 u Perhaps you would like a little relief," replied 
 Mrs. Ellerton. " I think you might be excused in 
 vacation, anyway. I know my husband gets tired 
 of being asked about church work, sometimes, 
 though he doesn t like to own it." 
 
 " Take care, mv dear," cried Ellerton. 
 
12 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 " It was too bad," she persisted, looking half at 
 her husband and half at Sonderby, " to see how 
 you turned the subject when that old gentleman 
 at the last conference wanted to talk about the 
 decline of Unitarianism in the hill towns, and you 
 insisted on talking politics." 
 
 Ellerton laughed at the reminiscence. " I 
 couldn t help it," he said; "he was getting ma 
 terial for a quarrelsome article, I knew, and so I 
 tried to steer him towards civil-service reform, 
 instead." 
 
 It occurred to Sonderby that there were some 
 things very unmiriisterial about Arthur Ellerton, 
 and he recalled mentally some of the widely vary 
 ing comments he had heard upon him, during the 
 ten months of Ellerton s Broughton pastorate. 
 
 "Is there much discussion about civil-service 
 reform at church conferences ? " he asked. 
 
 "No, I can t say there is," answered Eller 
 ton; "perhaps it wouldn t do any harm if there 
 were a little more. But then, you see, I haven t 
 been attending them so very long," he added, 
 gaily. "Perhaps one learns to be less critical in 
 time." 
 
 "You d better not confess what you did last 
 April at one of them," said the minister s wife. 
 " Did you ever hear of such a thing, Mr. Sonderby, 
 as two young ministers sitting out on the church 
 steps talking boating, while the conference was 
 going on inside?" 
 
THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 13 
 
 She did not know why the school-teacher s small 
 blue eyes brightened so suddenly. 
 
 "I plead extenuating circumstances," broke in 
 Ellerton. " You see," turning to Sonderby, " there 
 is a classmate of mine over in Brockville, who was 
 a delegate at that meeting in the Center last 
 spring. I didn t know he was there till half-way 
 through the meeting, when I looked around and 
 there he was. There was a paper on Divorce 
 being read at the time, good paper too, only the 
 man who wrote it can t write nor think of anything 
 else/ 
 
 " Perhaps that is why he writes so well about 
 it," interrupted Mrs. Ellerton, seriously. 
 
 " My wife reads all his articles," explained El 
 lerton, parenthetically. " Well, I don t know which 
 of us winked first, but we started for the door at 
 about the same time. Why, that fellow and I had 
 pulled in the same boat for two years, and it was 
 nearly four since I had seen him. We stood there 
 on the church steps, talking about the boys, and the 
 sun came down warm and spring-like gracious! 
 after that long, dragging winter up here, and we 
 could see the ice breaking up down on the river, 
 and the first thing I knew something was said 
 about our crew this year, and then off we went 
 into old times." The minister drew a long breath 
 of satisfaction. " But the conference was almost 
 over when we went in again," he added, con 
 tritely. 
 
14 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 "And you are not shocked?" said Mrs. Eller- 
 ton to Sonderby. 
 
 " No," he said, simply ; " I was on the crew my 
 self." 
 
 " Were you ? Well, well ! " exclaimed Ellerton. 
 " Let s see, your college was ? " 
 
 Sonderby named a small Maine college. " We 
 never rowed you but once," he said. " That was 
 my Sophomore year." 
 
 Ellerton looked hard at him. " Where were you 
 in the boat ? " he asked. 
 
 " Bow," replied Sonderby. " Do you remember 
 the finish?" 
 
 " I should say I did," cried Ellerton. 
 
 The July day, five summers before, came back 
 to him in an instant. The countrymen from Maine 
 had come down to New London to win, and nearly 
 did it. They had pulled a dogged race, were not 
 to be shaken off, and quickened into a desperate 
 spurt at the finish that made them lap the cham 
 pions as the boats shot over the line. Ellerton 
 remembered as if it were yesterday that supreme 
 moment when every pound of his weight was al 
 ready on the oar and the helpless terror was at his 
 heart as their stroke increased the pace and yet the 
 Maine boat lapped them. He had never forgotten 
 his glimpse of the Maine bow oarsman, who was 
 glancing over a bare wet shoulder, the jaw set, the 
 face white, and the eyes aflame. Ellerton had 
 heard afterward that the fellow had pulled the 
 
THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 15 
 
 race with a felon on his hand. He searched the 
 school-teacher s reticent face for a sign of recogni 
 tion. The figure was the same, though clad in a 
 black cutaway growing shiny, it must be said 
 instead of its brown bareness of five years before ; 
 the jaw was heavy, to be sure, though bearded 
 now ; the eyes were like. 
 
 " Didn t you have a bad hand? " Ellerton asked. 
 
 " Yes," said Sonderby, with a smile. The men 
 understood each other. 
 
 My dear," said the minister, " Mr. Sonderby 
 and I are old antagonists. It is a great pity we 
 never found it out before." 
 
 " Isn t it!" she exclaimed. * But you expect to 
 be here for another winter, do you not, Mr. Son 
 derby ? " 
 
 " I don t know," the school-teacher answered. 
 
 " Oh, I hope you will," said Mrs. Ellerton, so 
 sincerely that she even surprised herself by the 
 unexpected emphasis. " It would be such a pity 
 to lose you, from the academy, and we should 
 be so sorry." 
 
 " Yes," interrupted Ellerton. in his hearty voice, 
 " I wish you might stay. But, my dear, you must 
 remember that Broughton isn t exactly a metropolis, 
 and that Mr. Sonderby wouldn t think of staying 
 here forever, probably." 
 
 Mrs. Ellerton smiled to herself: perhaps her 
 husband was not planning to spend his days in a 
 country town either. 
 
16 THE BEOUGHTON UOUSE. 
 
 " Let s see, you have been here isn t it three 
 years, Sonderby?" the minister went on. 
 
 " Three years," replied Sonderby. 
 
 "I had forgotten," said Ellerton. "I wish I 
 knew every one in town as well as you ought to 
 know them." He had hesitated a moment before 
 the "ought," because he understood that people 
 complained that John Sonderby did not seem to 
 care much about getting acquainted with Brough- 
 ton folks. 
 
 Sonderby raised his eyebrows a little, having 
 understood the covert reference to his social short 
 comings. " No, I don t know many people here ; 
 that is, I don t know them well, though of course 
 a school-teacher gets so that he can tell everybody s 
 name. But do you think," he asked, hesitatingly, 
 " that it does any good to try to be on intimate 
 terms with so many in that way ? It seems to 
 me that the people are simply curious : they want 
 to find out all they can about you, and in return 
 for the information they are willing to tell you 
 about themselves. I can t say that I care for it," 
 he added, apologetically. He was not used to talk 
 ing about himself in this way. 
 
 " I know what you mean," said Ruth Ellerton, 
 slowly. " I remember how it was when we first 
 came here." She looked across at her husband, 
 and they both laughed. She was thinking how, 
 at the first church sociable in their house, the 
 women of the parish had fingered the curtains, the 
 
THE BPOUGHTOX HOUSE. 17 
 
 bureau-covers, even the pillow-cases, in her own 
 room, to determine their quality and probable price ; 
 how they had interrogated her as to her father and 
 family, her old home, her marriage, her husband, 
 and herself, all with a hard, undisguised curiosity, 
 that had made her sick at heart. 
 
 u Mi s. Ellertoii thinks that people are too kind, 
 that they really take too much personal interest in 
 you; don t you, my dear ?" laughed the minister. 
 He was not sensitive himself to such trifles, and 
 rather enjoyed his wife s occasional desperation. 
 
 Oh. I suppose the ministers family belong 
 fairly to the public," she sighed ; but perhaps, Mr. 
 Sonderby, it is the same way with the school-teach 
 ers. But one must surely know people well, if one 
 hopes to influence them." 
 
 " Yes," remarked Sonderby, ** if it is necessary 
 to influence them or, what I mean is, if one can 
 influence them. It seems to me that people are 
 going to do about what they have grown up to 
 do. Perhaps that isn t a very high way of looking 
 at it, not ideal enough for a school-teacher." 
 
 " Oh," she cried, " how hard it is to know just 
 what is right to do here ! " 
 
 " Any harder than it is down at the Center, or 
 over in Brockville, or anywhere else ? " questioned 
 Ellerton, buoyantly. 
 
 She did not answer: then, somewhat inconse 
 quentially, she said. k * I hope you will stay another 
 winter, Mr. Sonderbv." 
 
18 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 Mary Jane came in at this point with a fresh 
 plate of hot biscuit. It was growing quite dim 
 now in the dining-room, and at a motion from her 
 mistress the girl lighted the tall candles. The 
 three talked awhile on indifferent subjects, and 
 then Mary Jane changed the plates and refilled 
 the gentlemen s glasses with ice-water. The host 
 ess served her strawberries and cream, the girl 
 passed the sponge cake, to which much of her 
 attention that day had been devoted, and regret 
 fully left the room. She would have so much 
 liked to hear what Mr. Sonderby was saying about 
 the academy. 
 
 It was so quiet and cool here in the parson 
 age, Sonderby kept thinking. Mrs. Ellerton was 
 a charming woman, after all ; her husband was a 
 good fellow ; it was too bad that he had kept him 
 self so aloof from them. There was a different 
 atmosphere here from that which he was used to 
 at the hotel : it was more restful, yet more strenu 
 ous. Was it preferable ? 
 
 "How do you like staying at the Broughton 
 House ? " Mrs. Ellerton asked. " I believe you are 
 there this vacation." 
 
 " Yes ; I have been there since the middle of 
 June." He did not really answer her question. 
 
 " Do they set a good table ? " inquired Ellerton. 
 " They used to be famous for it, I believe." 
 
 " That was more on account of the suppers they 
 used to get up for fishing-parties from the Center," 
 
THE BEOUGHTOX IIOUSE. 19 
 
 Sonderby explained. " There isn t so much of that 
 nowadays. Why, I don t know ; I suppose it is a 
 very fair country hotel. Collins seems to like it ; 
 this is the fifth year he has been here. But," he 
 added, with a deprecatory look, "I haven t any 
 thing to compare it with. I never stayed at a hotel 
 before, except two or three times for a night or so. 
 You see I m a good deal of a countryman. The 
 town I came from, up in Maine, is smaller than 
 this." 
 
 " So is the one I came from, down in Pennsyl 
 vania/ laughed Ellerton. There is nothing like 
 being born in the country, is there ? " 
 
 " Who is Mr. Collins ? " asked the hostess, com 
 ing back to the Broughton House. 
 
 " Mr. Collins ? " replied Sonderby. " I thought 
 you knew him. He is a woollen manufacturer, 
 Bruce D. Collins. His mills are down near Spring 
 field, I believe." 
 
 " Is he dark ? " said the minister s wife. 
 
 " Why, yes," Sonderby answered, judicially. It 
 was clear he had never before classified his acquaint 
 ances according to their complexions. 
 
 "I often see him," said Ellerton, "but had for 
 gotten his name. It must have been he whom I met 
 down on the Johnson brook a while ago. He was 
 fishing up, and I down, and I imagine each of us 
 was rather sorry to see the other." 
 
 "It was very likely he," Sonderby remarked. 
 " He came up here for the fishing, in the first 
 
20 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 place, he told me. He doesn t seem to have much 
 to do nowadays." 
 
 u Well, Broughton isn t the place for a very busy 
 man," was the minister s reply : " he wouldn t get 
 into the spirit of things here. Still, I have won 
 dered a good deal what the people at the hotel 
 manage to find to fill up the time with. One must 
 have some variety, you know, even in summer hol 
 idays." 
 
 " Variety ! I wish they would do more to help 
 the people here, and get variety in that way. If 
 they had the variety of some of your pastoral work, 
 for instance," exclaimed his wife, who knew the 
 constant and often unappreciated work that filled 
 her husband s days. 
 
 " Well, I don t know much about pastoral work," 
 said the school-teacher. " Perhaps we need some 
 down at the Broughton House. But speaking of 
 filling up the time, why, the days go fast enough. 
 We don t do anything, either ; that is, not most of 
 us down there. Mr. Floyd he s the artist, you 
 know goes out to sketch almost every morning ; 
 but he doesn t go far, and we sort of hang round 
 and watch him." 
 
 44 Oh, do you ? " broke in Mrs. Ellerton, enthusi 
 astically. " How very interesting ! It must be 
 perfectly fascinating." 
 
 She was as eager as a schoolgirl to know more. 
 Her husband smiled at her zeal ; he left pictures 
 and poetry to Mrs. Ellerton, for the most part. 
 
THE BROUGHTON UOUSE. 21 
 
 Sonderby smiled too : he was thinking how vain 
 Floyd would be if he knew this superb-looking 
 woman took an interest in him. 
 
 " Mrs. Floyd was a Broughton girl, wasnt she ? " 
 asked the hostess. 
 
 " Yes." Sonderby paused somewhat awkwardly, 
 as if he had meant to say more, but he hesitated, 
 playing with the spoon in his empty strawberry- 
 dish. "Do you know her?" he said at last, with 
 his small blue eyes fixed keenly upon Mrs. Ellerton. 
 
 44 No." was the answer. " I am very sorry. We 
 saw her in church one day." 
 
 " Yes, we all went one morning," said Sonderby, 
 turning to the minister. " Collins and the Floyds 
 and I. Did you see us ? " 
 
 "I am pretty sure to see everybody," replied 
 Ellerton, who remembered well the quartette that 
 had been in one of the back pews two weeks pre 
 viously. " In fact, I wouldn t mind seeing some of 
 you there oftener." 
 
 A day before, John Sonderby would have re 
 sented an allusion to his non-church-going habits, 
 especially if it had come from the parson himself. 
 But it was impossible to be angry with this cheery, 
 frank young fellow an old oarsman at that. 
 
 " I don t know but I m getting into bad habits," 
 he confessed : u and the rest are not exactly what 
 you would call regular that is, not regular at 
 tendants in the school record sense," he added, 
 somewhat feebly. 
 
22 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 Ruth Ellerton looked grave. She liked Sonderby, 
 and she had seen more of him this evening than 
 ever before; but there was a something non-com 
 mittal about him that distressed her. He did not 
 take sides vigorously enough. The summer visit 
 ors harmed Broughton more than they helped it, 
 she was sure ; and she did not like to see the 
 school-teacher walking in their easy-going Sabbath 
 less ways. 
 
 They had already been sitting long over their 
 fruit, and Mary Jane appeared once or twice un- 
 summoned, at the kitchen door, to reconnoitre. It 
 was quite dark outside. Ellerton had given the 
 conversation a new turn by describing the universal 
 church-going of a hundred years ago in New Eng 
 land, with much humor, and from a perfectly non- 
 professional point of view; Sonderby was listening 
 with some curiosity. 
 
 " My dear," suggested Mrs. Ellerton, folding her 
 napkin and touching the bell. As they rose and 
 walked into the parlor again, Mrs. Ellerton was at 
 Sonderby s side. 
 
 " I must call on Mrs. Floyd," she said. 
 
 "Yes?" he answered. He presumed it would 
 have been proper to say, " She will be very glad to 
 have you," but as he doubted the truth of this 
 sentiment, he had no recourse but his blunt 
 "Yes?" 
 
 Ruth Ellerton was a trifle hurt by it. " I have 
 so little time for any except parish calls," she said, 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 23 
 
 rapidly, ashamed that she should notice his 
 brusqueness. 
 
 "Yes, I suppose you are very busy," he an 
 swered, looking straight at her **busy doing 
 good." 
 
 She was embarrassed now; her husband was 
 watching her, interested at Sonderby s outspoken 
 ness, Sonderby, usually so reticent. 
 
 " But if you can come down," Sonderby went on, 
 "I ll see that Floyd gets out all he has to show. 
 He likes to talk about it." 
 
 "Won t you come into the library?" interrupted 
 Ellerton. " Perhaps }-ou may like to look over my 
 books." They crossed the hall to the diminutive 
 library. The minister gave his guest an easy-chair 
 by the table, while Mrs. Ellerton excused herself 
 in order to give some encouragement and assist 
 ance to Mary Jane. When she came back, fifteen 
 minutes later, the two men were talking boating. 
 Sonderby had not been greatly interested, appar 
 ently, in the minister s books of quotation and 
 illustration, divinity lectures, and volumes of the 
 latest systematic theology. 
 
 Their boating talk ran out after a little, how 
 ever, and they did not quite return to the freedom 
 of the tea-table conversation. Mrs. Ellerton made 
 an effort to start her guest upon several topics. 
 The newest books he seemed either not to have 
 read or not to think worth reading. She tried 
 etching, and here he surprised her by his accurate 
 
24 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 knowledge of the mechanical processes involved ; 
 but his appreciation of " states " was very meagre, 
 and he showed so little enthusiasm over her half- 
 dozen treasures, a Palmer, an Appian, and a 
 Jacque or two, that she felt disappointed in him 
 again. He grew restless after a while, looked at 
 his watch, then, after some delay in which the talk 
 on all sides grew more aimless, and the pauses 
 longer, rose to go, explaining that he was expected 
 to make the fourth hand at whist that night, and 
 that the others were waiting. 
 
 Both Ellerton and his wife went to the door with 
 him. When he had fairly got his hat in his hand 
 he won their hearts again by the few words of 
 laconic cordiality with which he thanked his host 
 ess, looking at her a moment almost with reverence 
 as she stood in the half-light, with the library lamp 
 making gleams through her hair and bringing out 
 the strong, grave lines upon her face ; then turn 
 ing to Ellerton and giving him that silent grip of 
 which only strong men understand the meaning. 
 He reached the front gate before the friendly door 
 was closed, and he was alone. 
 
 He turned down the silent street, with his straw 
 hat pushed back upon his head, his old cut-away 
 coat unbuttoned, his hands behind him. He walked 
 slowly. Overhead, the elms met in huge black 
 arches ; the foliage seemed solid, impenetrable. 
 There was scarcely any moon, but now and then, 
 through some gap in that dusky roof, a star ap- 
 
THE BEOUGHTOS HOUSE. 25 
 
 peared, large and brilliant. The night would have 
 been sultry anywhere else than up among these 
 hills ; but here it was fresh, restful. 
 
 Sonderby stopped more than once to listen to the 
 soft noises of the night, to lean against the rough 
 bark of one of the elms and gaze upward through 
 the black boughs and the blacker foliage to the 
 dark blue spaces of sky. 
 
 He had had a happy three hours, a social experi 
 ence quite unknown to him before, shut up as he 
 had been these three years to Broughton ways. 
 He was hardly ready yet for the whist at the hotel, 
 though, after all, as he remembered, he had made 
 that an excuse for leaving the parsonage. 
 
 Down the quiet, deeply shadowed street was a 
 yellow glare made by the lamps of the hotel. His 
 pace grew slower as he neared it ; he hated to leave 
 the silence, the coolness. Almost unconsciously he 
 crossed to the other side of the street ; he meant to 
 steal by, unobserved, and take a leisurely walk 
 down to the academy and back. There was a mur 
 mur of voices on the hotel piazza. How well lie 
 knew them all ! Was it not better to be out under 
 the elms alone, saying nothing, thinking nothing. 
 scarcely, only with the consciousness awake ? 
 
 As he stole from the shadow of one tree to an 
 other, just opposite the hotel, but the width of the 
 broad street away from it, a rich bass voice called 
 out from the piazza. 
 
 - Hullo ! " 
 
26 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 Sonderby stood motionless a moment, hesitating, 
 then walked carelessly out into the lamp-light, and 
 crossing the dusty grass, wet with dew, turned in 
 at the Broughton House. 
 
II. 
 
 THE hotel stood a few feet back from the main 
 street, leaving in front an open space, grassy once, 
 but now gravelled. This plot was neither beauti 
 ful nor large, but it was sufficient for the evolu 
 tions of the stage, which swung up to the hotel in 
 impressive style and with much rattling of springs 
 every morning, to take passengers for the Cen 
 ter. Late in the afternoon it turned in at the 
 hotel again, on its return, but more quietly this 
 time, for the horses were usually tired with their 
 ten miles of up-hill travelling. In the afternoon, 
 too, the post-office seemed to be the end of the 
 trip, and the hotel was only an incident ; whereas, 
 in the morning, the driver pulled up his horses at 
 the post-office only long enough to let the sallow 
 postmistress hand to him the mail-bag, it was 
 rarely too heavy, and then cracked his whip and 
 gathered his reins for the main performance, the 
 circling up to the Broughton House piazza. 
 
 For thirty years, ever since the railroad was 
 first built through the Center, the Broughton stage 
 had made this daily trip. Once or twice, back in 
 the war-times, the severity of the winter storms 
 had forced the driver to leave his horses at a half- 
 
 27 
 
28 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 way point, and push through on foot, shouldering 
 the mail. But he ahyays got through somehow. 
 During most of the thirty years there had been the 
 same driver, a burly, jovial fellow, with a quick 
 wit, a kind heart, and a fondness for hard cider 
 which degenerated in time into a liking for the 
 whiskey at the Center. He was dead now, though 
 his jokes and witticisms were still repeated all 
 along the road; and people never tired of giving 
 instances of his marvellous memory he did shop 
 ping in the Center for all the farmers wives along 
 his circuit, and prided himself on never forgetting 
 an errand nor making a mistake in change and 
 of the rare yarns with which this accomplished 
 liar was said to favor strangers. His successor 
 was a lanky, taciturn young farmer, a hard driver 
 beginning in his turn, too, to drink down at the 
 Center, but never missing a train nor a trip. 
 
 In July and August he brought a good many 
 visitors up to Broughton in the afternoon stage, 
 and most of them went to the hotel. The 
 Broughton House had once been famous through 
 all that section of country as " Trumbull s," and 
 its trout for fishing-parties, its oyster-suppers and 
 country dances in the winter for sleighing-parties, 
 were unrivalled. What fish stories had been told, 
 first and last, around the huge fireplace in the office ! 
 How many couples had thumbed the photograph 
 albums in the musty little parlor, while waiting 
 for the dining-room to be thrown open for the hot 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 29 
 
 supper that followed the sleigh-ride, or while the 
 tables were being cleared away for dancing ! 
 
 Bill Tmmbull was the most obliging of hosts, 
 though he performed his active duties mainly by 
 proxy, and sat in the office in his big wooden chair, 
 neatly cushioned with a bit of rag carpet, or else 
 out on the piazza, while his wife managed things. 
 Poor Mrs. Bill Trumbull ! Even the reputation 
 of being a " capable woman," which was cheerfully 
 accorded her by even the most hard-working and 
 critical farmers wives in Broughton, was hardly a 
 fit compensation for her life of toil, though it was 
 all the visible compensation she had. 
 
 " Wai, I guess Mis TrumbuU ll see to you," was 
 her husband s invariable answer to those who came 
 with produce to sell, or to those who wanted rooms 
 or dinners ; then he would shift his legs a little, 
 and fixing his blue eyes upon the questioner, he 
 would say, " Nice morning," or, " Quite a spell of 
 rainy weather," in the softest, most winning voice, 
 with such good-fellowship in it that most persons 
 dropped at once into a chair and began to talk, 
 responding thus to an unmistakable appeal. In 
 short, Bill Trumbull was lazy, incorrigibly, hope 
 lessly, shamelessly lazy, as only that man can be 
 who grows up among thriving, pushing New Eng- 
 landers, and instead of catching some of their am 
 bitious spirit, is driven to the opposite extreme. 
 Yet everybody liked him: he would leave his 
 chair and walk to the farthest end of the village 
 
30 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 to prescribe for a sick cow he was prouder of 
 his skill as a cow-doctor than of anything else 
 except " Mis Trumbull " ; his blonde, handsome 
 face with its long yellow beard was the first one 
 that the village babies used to learn; he was an 
 almost infallible prophet in politics and had twice 
 been sent to the Legislature. No one ever came to 
 " Trumbull s " without feeling at home as soon as 
 he arrived, and being sorry when the time came 
 to go. 
 
 It was a great shock to the community as the 
 county paper expressed it when Mrs. Bill Trum 
 bull sickened and died. The cause of her illness 
 remained something of a mystery. Some thought 
 it was nothing but " malary," others that it was " a 
 kind o run of low fever " ; there were a few who 
 were sure she must have had a cancer ; all agreed 
 that she had " looked sickly " for some weeks, that 
 she had grown thin ; a few of the more observing ones 
 had noticed that her voice had become querulous 
 and sharp, and that she had complained as never 
 once before of being " driven." But gradually the 
 interest in her malady became absorbed in the more 
 engrossing question, whether the sad occurrence 
 would make Bill Trumbull " step round." Upon 
 this point opinion was divided even among those 
 who knew him best, if indeed it could be said of 
 such a public character that there were any who 
 knew him best. The problem, however, did not 
 long remain unsolved ; human nature vindicated 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 31 
 
 its impugned consistency ; Bill Trumbull did not 
 " step round." He seemed dazed for a while. 
 When matters were referred to him for decision, he 
 began more than once his old reply, " guess Mis 
 Trumbull ll see to that " ; then recollected himself, 
 while a vague, hurt look came into his blue eyes, 
 and answered by some indefinite conjecture. The 
 hotel had long been mortgaged, and all Mrs. 
 Trumbull s efforts had not been successful in clear 
 ing it of the encumbrance. The crisis came rap 
 idly now. In the autumn " Trumbull s " was sold 
 at auction, and was bought in by a man from the 
 Center. 
 
 The new owner s experience in keeping a hotel 
 was not large, but he had been the proprietor of 
 the railroad restaurant at the Center, and brought 
 with him an air of enterprise and a familiarity 
 with the ways of the great world that made an im 
 pression upon Broughton. He was a small, black- 
 eyed, restless Welshman, who professed great faith 
 in the future of Broughton as a summer resort, and 
 began at once to talk " improvements " to the regu 
 lar hangers-on at the office. All that winter he was 
 busy with his schemes, and before the roads were 
 fairly settled in April, teams from the Center began 
 to haul lumber for "repairing" the hotel. The 
 building, though fifty years old, was in perfect 
 preservation; a solid two-story structure, with a 
 basement in the rear, which was made necessary 
 by the rapid falling off of the land from the street 
 
32 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 level, and which was used as a kitchen in summer. 
 On the right, as one entered, was the big square 
 office ; the parlor and hall filled the remainder of 
 the front, while behind was the long dining-room 
 and a diminutive winter kitchen. 
 
 The Welshman s first wish was to secure a more 
 imposing exterior. He thereupon erected a two- 
 story extension upon the front, tearing down the 
 west wall of the parlor and dining-room to connect 
 them with the addition. On the ground floor, 
 beyond the parlor, he put in a reading-room or 
 smoking-room, with a hardwood floor and stained 
 pine mouldings. Behind the reading-room, in the 
 rear of the new part, he built a couple of bath 
 rooms. The remainder of the extension, above and 
 below, was devoted to bedrooms, separated by the 
 thinnest of partitions, and reached by a long hall 
 down the middle of each story, lighted only by a 
 window at the end. A broad piazza was erected 
 along the whole front, including the old part, and 
 around the flat roof of the piazza there was some 
 talk of having a railing, so that the rooms on the 
 second floor might have a piazza of their own, but 
 this was finally deferred until another season. The 
 whole hotel was now painted a bright yellow, with 
 muddy brown trimming. " Trumbull s," like most 
 of the other houses in the village, had been white, 
 with green blinds. But the Welshman preferred 
 yellow, as being more modern; at the hardware 
 store where he had bought his prepared paint they 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 33 
 
 told him that they sold three pounds of yellow to 
 one of white, nowadays. 
 
 Then came the question of naming the hotel. 
 The proprietor s first instinct was to name it after 
 himself, " The Evans House.* He hesitated, how 
 ever, and got some one to sound Bill Trumbull as 
 to the advisability of the name. 
 
 Trumbull had taken up his abode with a married 
 daughter, across the street, but spent most of his 
 waking hours at the hotel, where his chair still 
 stood in the office as of old. " The Evans House?" 
 he repeated, when his opinion was privately asked. 
 " Wai, I dunno : it might be good. Trumbull s, 
 now ; why, everybody round here knows who I am. 
 But s pose a man was to come along here and ask 
 who Evans was. You d have to say, he s a feller 
 from the Center who used to keep a restaurant 
 down there ; and I s pose," he added reflectively, 
 " that most folks d say he kep a darn poor one." 
 This sentiment having been duly reported to Evans, 
 he changed his mind about the name. Then he 
 thought of calling it " The Mansion House," but 
 that was on the whole too common. " The Brough- 
 ton Arms " suggested itself to him as being eupho 
 nious and as having a sort of flavor of the old 
 country about it which might attract summer board 
 ers. But here again he was not positive enough 
 in his conviction to decide without consultation, 
 and the ignorance that prevailed in the village 
 about the appropriateness of the " Arms " part of 
 
34 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 his idea was discouraging. Finally he hit upon 
 "The Broughton House." If it was not partic 
 ularly original, it was at least unobjectionable. 
 
 The farmers looked curiously at the staring sign 
 in gilt letters upon a black ground, the name of 
 the printer, a Center man, in quite readable letters 
 in the corner. It was in the form of an arch, one 
 end springing from the office extremity of the 
 piazza, and the other supported by a black post 
 sunk in the newly gravelled space in front of the 
 hotel. 
 
 "Trumbull s" had never had any sign, nor 
 needed one, except the rusty square of copper dan 
 gling on the office corner, which had creaked there 
 in the wind ever since Andrew Jackson s time, 
 when the house was known simply as " The Tav 
 ern." But the farmers were cautious about ex 
 pressing any opinion, and had a certain respect for 
 any man who had money to spend. 
 
 It was June before the repairs were completed. 
 Evans had planned to renovate the office, but his 
 ready money was nearly exhausted. He was de 
 terred from it, too, by Mr. Collins, who came up 
 in May, as usual, for a week s fishing, and who 
 threatened never to come again if the old office 
 were touched. Evans disliked to lose an influential 
 patron at the outset ; and when Collins explained 
 to him that the huge beams that supported the 
 ceiling, dark with fifty years exposure to the air, 
 but sound to the core, were actually fashionable, 
 
THE BEOUGHTOy HOUSE. 35 
 
 and were being put into many modern hotels, he 
 gave up his proposed improvements. The office 
 remained intact. On one side was the yellow- 
 painted counter from behind which, in the old days, 
 glasses of flip had been served to guests and to 
 the village worthies. On the walls, which were 
 covered with a closely figured paper, variegated by 
 vertical stripes of blue, hung a map of the county 
 roads, a map of the United States in 1840, and a por 
 trait of Daniel Webster, lithographic par Julien, rep 
 resenting the statesman clad in his blue coat with 
 
 O 
 
 velvet collar and black stock. Every one in the 
 village knew that face, with the drooping mouth, 
 sunken cheeks, domelike forehead, and steady, wist 
 ful eyes under the shadow of the gloomy brows. 
 Tacked near it was a fly-specked woodcut of James 
 G. Elaine. The fireplace was a noble one, with 
 a wide hearthstone of marble, tipped more or less 
 into uneven levels, but uncracked by the huge fires 
 of half a century. The sides were adorned with 
 marble facings, and it was surmounted by an oak 
 mantel-piece. On one side of the latter, at dis 
 tances ranging from eleven to sixteen inches from 
 the end, were numerous notches, recording the 
 length of captured trout, the longest being the 
 memorial of a famous four-pounder caught in the 
 Johnson brook away back in the sixties. 
 
 Along the brown, rough-hewn beams that trav 
 ersed the ceiling were hooks, which before the days 
 of jointed rods had been used for hanging fish-poles. 
 
36 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 There, too, hung a musket which Bill Trumbull s 
 grandfather had brought back from the campaign 
 along the Hudson in 1777, and a rusty cavalry 
 sabre which Trumbull s younger brother swung in 
 his right hand when he rode to his death .in a 
 nameless village of Virginia. No one had had the 
 heart to take them down. High in one corner was 
 nailed a crotch of a tree, on which were a stuffed 
 wild cat and a Cooper s hawk, both of them rather 
 the worse for time and moths. Everything in the 
 office, it will be seen, had an air of the past a con 
 servative, tranquillizing quality. The very chairs 
 around the fireplace were hospitable ; solid, iron- 
 clamped ones as they were, strong enough to tip 
 back in, the comfort of two generations of tired 
 fishermen, chilled travellers, and genial country 
 loafers. What stories they had heard ! 
 
 Notwithstanding its new management and fresh 
 paint, the first season of the Broughton House was 
 not particularly successful. June and July were un 
 usually cold and wet, and few people left the cities. 
 August was a better month, but none of Evans s 
 guests stayed so long as he had hoped for, and 
 some of them openly deserted him on finding that 
 some of the farmers were willing to take boarders. 
 He could not understand this. There was Calvin 
 Johnson s, for instance, a big old-fashioned farm 
 house, where the folks were respectable enough 
 even the village school-teacher "hayed it" there 
 through the summer for his board ; but there were 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 37 
 
 no modern conveniences there, not even a chance 
 to hire teams. Why should any one prefer John 
 son s to the Broughton House ? 
 
 In vain did Evans arrange, upon his long piazza, 
 lines of cane-bottomed rocking-chairs, painted an 
 attractive red. In vain did he furnish the reading- 
 room with files of the county papers, together with 
 the Springfield Republican* Harpers Weekly, and 
 the Semi-Weekly Tribune. In vain did he induce 
 the stage-driver to attach to his dashboard a big 
 placard, " To the Broughton House," as he drove 
 through the Center. The harvest of boarders did 
 not ripen. A few people who had formerly spent 
 a while in August at " Trumbull s," came as usual ; 
 but even these spoke disrespectfully of his cher 
 ished improvements, and one told him that his 
 plumbing was a crime. The men preferred the 
 office to the reading-room ; the ladies kept asking- 
 after the old waitresses in the dininsr-room, neat 
 
 O 
 
 farmers daughters from the neighborhood, whom 
 Evans had replaced, for the most part, with Irish 
 help from the Center ; and both men and women 
 seemed to pay more attention to Bill Trumbull 
 than they did to Evans himself. 
 
 When the season closed, the Welshman was dis 
 mayed. He had not made two per cent upon his 
 investment. All the autumn he fumed. He began 
 to suspect that Broughton people distrusted him 
 as a newcomer. Perhaps the temperance folk ob 
 jected to the reputation which his restaurant at the 
 
88 THE BKOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 Center had enjoyed. He resolved therefore to iden 
 tify himself more thoroughly than ever with the 
 town, as his fortune depended upon the popularity 
 of the hotel. He became a regular church-goer, 
 much to the private delectation of his cook and 
 stable-boy. There was a new minister in Broughton 
 that winter, a clear-voiced, straightforward, likable 
 young man, Arthur Ellerton. The sermons were 
 not long, and Evans found himself concurring with 
 the prevailing opinion that the minister was a 
 "smart one." He felt, too, that he was weekly 
 growing more respectable, in his own eyes and in 
 the eyes of Broughton. He was unmarried ; other 
 wise he would have undoubtedly taken a pew. 
 When the time came for the town-meeting in 
 March, Evans was active in distributing "no 
 license " votes, and was fluent in his announce 
 ment of his purpose to keep a strictly temperance 
 house. So far, so good ; but he was frightened at 
 the idea of having another summer like the previ 
 ous one. 
 
 In May, Collins arrived ; but the spring came late, 
 just as it had done the year before, and there was 
 too much snow-water in the brooks for successful 
 sport. Collins waited day after day, smoking tran 
 quilly in the office with Bill Trumbull; but the 
 brooks were still high. The woollen business was 
 dull, he said ; the mills were doing almost nothing, 
 and he might as well be in one place as another. 
 Then came some business letters, a couple of 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 39 
 
 telegrams sent up from the Center by telephone, 
 and the manufacturer went off hastily, to return 
 three days later with a case of new rods and a 
 trunk. He explained to Evans and Trumbull, 
 laconically, that there had been a cut-down at the 
 mills, then an ensuing strike ; that, as some repairs 
 of machinery were necessary and the market was 
 flat, the mills would not be started again until 
 fall. 
 
 "So I may stay here all summer," he added; 
 * and if I do, Bill, I won t go back without that 
 big fellow down in the Hollow. I saw him twice 
 last year, and he s a three-pounder if he s an 
 ounce." 
 
 Evans slid out of the office, stroking his black, 
 pointed beard in nervous delight, his keen eyes 
 snapping at the prospect of having the manufac 
 turer as a guest for two or three months. If he 
 could only get a few others for permanent boarders, 
 he could trust to a hot summer and his improve 
 ments of the year before even if some of the old 
 patrons did not seem to like them to attract 
 " transients " enough to carry him through. His 
 mind reverted, as it had done often before, to the 
 school-teacher. As a permanent boarder, John 
 Sonderby would add character to the house. 
 
 The Welshman learned, by some inquiry, that 
 Sonderby did not expect to work at Johnson s, as 
 he had done the previous summer, Johnson having 
 now hired his men by the year ; further, that Son- 
 
40 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 derby was undecided about spending the vacation 
 in Broughton, but that as he had no home of his 
 own, it was very possible that he might do so, 
 especially as there was a chance of his remaining 
 in the village through another winter. Evans lost 
 no time in offering him room and board at such 
 a low figure that the school-teacher packed up his 
 few effects, left his uncomfortable room near the 
 academy, and found himself by the middle of June 
 quartered at the Broughton House. The proprietor 
 had offered him any room he liked, and was evi 
 dently disappointed at Sonderby s taste when the 
 latter chose one of the old rooms over the office, 
 adjoining the one occupied by Mr. Collins, instead 
 of going into the extension, and taking a room 
 newly fitted and papered. But Evans did not feel 
 sufficiently familiar with the academy teacher to 
 remonstrate, and after all, it only left one more 
 of the new rooms for somebody else. 
 
 Collins and Sonderby had sat beside each other 
 at table for a week or two, and in the feeling of 
 permanency which arises from seeing more transient 
 guests come and go, were beginning to get well 
 acquainted. Neither was much of a talker, but 
 they made some progress. Collins was ten years 
 the elder, and liked the younger man s ways. One 
 morning at breakfast as Evans was passing through 
 the dining-room and stopped for a moment at the 
 head of the table where they sat, to chat with 
 them, Evans being strongly impressed with a 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 41 
 
 hotel-keeper s duty to cultivate acquaintance with 
 his patrons, Collins gave him a brilliant idea. 
 
 "If you like to have two b regulars, the manu 
 facturer was saying in his deep voice, now slightly 
 quizzical in its inflections, " why don t you get some 
 more of them ? There is Bill Trumbull ; he would 
 make a good one. Why do you let him go across 
 the street to eat and sleep ? Or what s the matter 
 with the Floyds ? Why can t you get them to 
 board here?" 
 
 Evans looked sharply at him. " Perhaps so, Mr. 
 Collins," he laughed. He was somewhat afraid of 
 Collins, and never knew just how to take him. 
 
 " Of course you can," Collins went on, his hand 
 some dark face breaking into an ironical smile. 
 " They have been here three days, and Floyd is 
 tired of housekeeping already " and he turned his 
 attention to his steak again. Evans passed on, 
 meditatively. 
 
 At dinner-time the Floyds were there. Sonderby 
 came a few minutes late, having spent the morning 
 over the physical apparatus in the deserted, dusty 
 rooms of the academy. 
 
 He found Collins listening to a stoop-shouldered 
 fellow of twenty-six or seven, who sat opposite him ; 
 a carelessly dressed man, with his flannel shirt un 
 buttoned at the throat, though held in place by a 
 soiled pink tie. Sonderby scarcely glanced at 
 him, but the impression was somehow unpleasing. 
 Opposite the school-teacher was the artist s wife, 
 
42 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 a slender woman, in a close-fitting black jersey, her 
 face singularly destitute of color, her dark hair 
 drawn back from her forehead and knotted behind. 
 She looked up as Sonderby seated himself and 
 bowed timidly. She had big, shy eyes. Sonderby 
 remembered that he had been introduced to her the 
 year before. As he murmured something about 
 having met her, her husband checked himself in 
 his remarks to Collins and eyed the newcomer. 
 
 "I beg your pardon," exclaimed Collins; "I 
 thought you knew each other. Mr. Floyd, Mr. 
 Sonderby." 
 
 The men bowed. 
 
 " You are the school-teacher, I believe ? " said 
 Floyd. The tone was just a trifle patronizing. 
 
 " Yes," replied Sonderb}^. His manner was not 
 communicative. 
 
 " You are staying here in Broughton this sum 
 mer?" the artist continued. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 Floyd looked at him curiously an instant, then 
 took up the dropped thread of his talk to Collins. 
 
 " You see," he went on, gesticulating with a long 
 forefinger slightly dirtied with Roman ochre, " my 
 theory of landscape is just this : 
 
 Sonderby did not feel particularly interested, 
 and gave his attention to the soup. He exchanged 
 some commonplaces after a little with Mrs. Floyd, 
 and when she happened to say that she was a na 
 tive of Broughton, he had already noticed that 
 
THE BEOUGHTOX HOUSE. 43 
 
 she used Broughton locutions in her conversation, 
 and had attended the academy in her girlhood, he 
 remembered what he had heard about her. It was 
 she whose aunts had lived in the low, unpainted 
 cottage next to the hotel, and the removal of one of 
 them and the death of the other in the preceding 
 autumn had brought her into possession of the prop 
 erty. She and her husband had been in Brough 
 ton the summer before, and had stayed with one 
 of the aunts, but this season, as Collins had said at 
 the breakfast table, the Floyds had expected to 
 keep house in the cottage themselves. 
 
 kt I don t much care," she said to Sonderby, speak 
 ing of the sudden change in their plans. " I m 
 not very fond of housekeeping. But my husband 
 thought we should like it better here." 
 
 Evans had, in fact, proposed to board them at 
 such a ridiculously low rate, that they had not hes 
 itated a moment in coming. 
 
 " I hope you will not be disappointed, Sonderby 
 said politely. " How do you fancy the changes in 
 the hotel? It must seem strange to you if you 
 were brought up next door and have always 
 known it as it used to be. 
 
 She was about to reply, when she noticed the 
 Welshman standing in the kitchen door near by, 
 watching his four " regulars with intense satisfac 
 tion. 
 
 " Hush," she exclaimed, with a warning smile, 
 so bright and confidential that Sonderby found 
 
44 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 himself instantly attracted to her. They changed 
 the subject. 
 
 After that Sonderby got on very well with her. 
 She had a soft voice, lower in pitch than the voices 
 of most New England women, and at times almost 
 indistinct. She spoke with a shy swiftness, when 
 she spoke at all, and the teacher had difficulty in 
 catching all she said. 
 
 During the whole dinner hour Mr. Floyd talked 
 incessantly, in a self-conscious, preternaturally 
 weighty fashion, which Collins, who seemed to know 
 him pretty well, did not take with entire serious 
 ness. Indeed, it seemed to Sonderby that Collins was 
 slyly bantering the artist and drawing him out, 
 without the latter s suspecting it. Floyd had an 
 easily remembered face, and Sonderby recollected 
 that he had taken a dislike to it a year before. It 
 was not that Floyd was ugly, though, indeed, with 
 his high cheek-bones, flat cheeks, a nose broken 
 out of line by some accident in boyhood, thin light 
 hair, growing far back on his square forehead, 
 weak-looking eyes, and a bad mouth, he could 
 scarcely be called handsome. Sonderby never no 
 ticed such things in detail, at least in a man. Yet 
 he felt there was a kind of pretence in the artist s 
 expression, a lack of real dignity or worth in the 
 man s bearing. But this, after all, was only the 
 impression of the moment. 
 
 When the four came out of the dining-room to 
 gether, they stood for a moment in the parlor, aim- 
 
THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 45 
 
 lessly. The Floyds seemed to have no idea of 
 returning to the cottage. 
 
 " We might sit on the piazza for a while," sug 
 gested Collins, resigning mentally his customary 
 after-dinner smoke with Trumbull in the office. 
 "It would rejoice the heart of Evans, anyway," 
 he added ; " his chairs haven t been very popular." 
 
 " All right," said Floyd ; they strolled out upon 
 the broad piazza, and Collins drew some of the 
 big red chairs together into a group in front of the 
 reading-room. Floyd pulled out his cigarette-case, 
 and offered it to Sonderby. 
 
 "Thank }xm ; I don t smoke," said Sonderby, re 
 gretting, after all, that he had to refuse the first 
 friendly overture the artist made him. 
 
 "Do you object to my pipe?" asked Collins, 
 turning to Mrs. Floyd. 
 
 " Oh, Phenie don t care," interrupted Floyd. 
 "She s used to it. Aren t you, Phenie?" 
 
 " I should think I ought to be," was the answer. 
 
 Sonderby wondered why her husband called her 
 " Phenie," and tried to guess from it what must be 
 her name. 
 
 A light June breeze was blowing down the pi 
 azza, and Collins moved his chair so that the smoke 
 from his briarwood might not be carried into Mrs. 
 Floyd s face. She thanked him as if somewhat 
 surprised at his thoughtfulness. Sonderby s chair 
 was nearest hers, after this change of position on 
 Collins s part. Floyd rocked vigorously a few 
 
46 THE BEOUGIITON HOUSE. 
 
 moments, then got up and balanced himself along 
 the flat railing of the piazza, resting his head 
 against the post and crossing his feet upon the rail, 
 while he blew idle rings of smoke and watched them 
 drift and break. 
 
 The four were still in their relative position a 
 half-hour later. Evans regarded them silently 
 from the office door, in triumph. He had waited 
 so long to see those chairs filled, and the new 
 piazza appreciated. He only hoped that in the 
 growing familiarity of his guests, the fact would 
 not leak out that he was charging them three 
 different prices for board. But in the glow of 
 that exultant moment he could have explained 
 anything satisfactorily. As he turned away and 
 passed through the office on the way to the kitchen, 
 he allowed himself, for the first time since he had 
 taken the hotel, to address a disrespectful remark 
 to Bill Trumbull. 
 
 It never rains but it pours. That afternoon the 
 stage deposited a whole family at the hotel. As 
 Evans received them, and gave sharp directions to 
 the driver and the stable-boy about the disposition 
 of the trunks, he was a happy man. If there was 
 any cloud in his sky, it was that his regular board 
 ers were no longer sitting upon the piazza, when 
 the stage rattled up to it. That would have given 
 such an air of life to the hotel. But it mattered 
 little : and the mail brought four or five inquiries 
 about rooms for July and August. At last ! How 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 47 
 
 often Evans had imagined himself receiving those 
 letters ! 
 
 By the end of June the Broughton House was 
 half full. Evans firmly believed that the luck 
 had been brought him by the quartette of " regu 
 lars." Their mutual acquaintance seemed to pro 
 gress steadily: every day, after dinner, they sat 
 together either on the piazza or under the trees in 
 front of the cottage next door ; in the morning they 
 often spent hours watching Floyd sketch, though 
 the artist sometimes left his work altogether for a 
 fishing-jaunt with Collins. The second Sunday 
 after the Floyds came, Collins, in some freak, per 
 suaded them to go to the Congregational church, 
 making Sonderby join the party ; and the four had 
 listened, decorously enough, to Arthur Ellerton s 
 sermon, and had been scrutinized gravely by Arthur 
 Ellerton s wife. But they were to be seen to 
 gether most regularly in the evening, after supper, 
 when they took the curious old mahogany card- 
 table from the parlor, and placing it upon the 
 piazza outside, sat down to play whist. When it 
 became dark, they had the big reflector lighted 
 over their heads ; and if it grew cool, as it was 
 likely to do, even in these July evenings up among 
 the hills, they retreated to the stuffy little parlor, 
 and played on, till long after the other guests had 
 retired. 
 
 The Saturday evening when Sonderby was in 
 vited to take tea at the parsonage was the first 
 
48 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 time in three weeks that the whist had been broken 
 in upon. Collins and the Floyds had sat a long 
 time upon the piazza that night, waiting for him, 
 when Mrs. Floyd thought she caught a glimpse of 
 the school-teacher among the elm-tree shadows on 
 the other side of the street, and it was Collins s 
 mellow "Hullo" that called him from the dark 
 ness and silence of the deserted street, across to 
 the light and the murmur of voices on the Brough- 
 ton House piazza. 
 
III. 
 
 Two or three clays after that Saturday evening, 
 Floyd was pacing up and down in the sitting-room 
 of the cottage. One hand was thrust deep into 
 his trousers pocket ; the other held a crumpled let 
 ter. In a low rocking-chair by one of the windows 
 sat his wife, leaning back so that her head rested 
 upon the calico cushion, and her throat showed 
 white. From moment to moment she pushed her 
 foot against the iron framework of a dust-covered 
 sewing-machine in front of her, to rock her chair. 
 Her hands were lying in her lap, the fingers clasped, 
 and palms turned from her in a way that brought 
 into relief every line of her slender arms. 
 
 Her dark eyes were fixed now on the ceiling, 
 and now on the restless form of her husband. 
 Altogether it was a graceful, piquant figure, with 
 manifest nervous power ; but just now she was cool, 
 provokingly cool. 
 
 " Well ? " she said, in her light voice, with, the 
 slightest upward inflection. 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders, making with the 
 hand that held the letter a curiously vague, impo 
 tent gesture. 
 
 44 Well, Billy?" she repeated. 
 
 49 
 
50 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 He took another turn before replying. " What s 
 the use ? " he muttered. " You don t understand 
 me ; you don t even try." 
 
 " Don t be too sure, Billy." 
 
 "No you, nor none of you," he cried, stopping 
 in his walk. " You don t know what an artist is ; 
 you can t appreciate the artistic temperament." 
 
 " I have had nearly three years of it," was her 
 answer. " I should think I ought to know some 
 thing about it by this time." She smiled faintly, 
 showing a glimpse of her fine teeth, but the smile 
 was hard. 
 
 " Why can t you make allowances, then ? " He 
 hesitated, seeing that she had spoken ironically. 
 
 "Allowances?" she repeated, in an indifferent 
 tone. 
 
 " Yes," he cried. " You seem to think that it 
 makes no difference where I am or what I see. 
 Can t you understand that a man has got to have 
 inspiration from something ? What is there in this 
 dusty little country town ? How can a man paint 
 here ? Who appreciates him ? Who cares any 
 thing about art ? How do you expect me to do 
 my best work up in this God-forsaken place ? I 
 ought to be over on the other side again. I ought 
 not to have come back to America before I was half 
 ready. Just think of being over there to-day, 
 over in Munich again, and then think of being 
 here." 
 
 As Floyd uttered the last word he swept his eye 
 
THE BEOUGHTOy HOUSE. 51 
 
 over the low room. Its uneven floor was covered 
 with a rag carpet; the hair-cloth furniture was 
 rickety and old-fashioned ; on the walls, which were 
 papered with an ugly flowered design, there hung 
 in black oval frames, suspended by green picture- 
 cord, daguerreotypes of Mrs. Floyd s maiden aunts, 
 Tryphena and Tryphosa. A carefully framed pho 
 tograph of Mrs. Floyd herself, at the age of ten, 
 hung under the picture of Aunt Tryphena. There 
 was not much else in the room. Both windows 
 were wide open, but the hot sun of the July morn 
 ing failed to penetrate the thick-leaved lilac bushes 
 planted close under the eaves of the cottage. In 
 one of the lilacs a chipping sparrow, frightened 
 by the sound of Floyd s voice from off her second 
 set of eggs, was fluttering anxiously. Otherwise 
 there was perfect stillness, save possibly the inter 
 mittent creak of Mrs. Floyd s rocking-chair. 
 
 The contrast between Munich and Broughton 
 was evident enough. 
 
 The artist began to pace the floor again, moodily. 
 
 "I m sorry you don t like it here, Billy," said 
 his wife. " You seemed quite fond of staying last 
 summer. Aunt Tryphena would feel real bad 
 about it; she set a good deal of store by you, and 
 if she had only known you wouldn t have liked 
 the house, she might have sold it and left us the 
 money instead. But it was all she had. And it s 
 too late now, anyway. I was brought up here. 
 It s different for me." She spoke slowly, and the 
 
52 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 irony had all gone out of her voice, leaving there 
 nothing but helplessness. 
 
 But Floyd was stung by the reference to their 
 circumstances. He had scarcely enough money to 
 pay their board through the summer, and the cot 
 tage had been left to his wife, by her aunt s will. 
 The little that they had was hers. 
 
 " You are always throwing my poverty in my 
 face," he exclaimed. " Is it my fault ? Is it my 
 fault that Mr. Watson He hesitated, glancing 
 at the letter in his hand. 
 
 Mrs. Floyd s colorless face flushed a little. 
 What he had said was grossly untrue. 
 
 " You re not very fair, Billy," she said. 
 
 " Perhaps not ; it s hard to be fair when every 
 thing s against a man." 
 
 She tapped her foot against the sewing-machine, 
 but made no reply. What was the use ? 
 
 " I ve stood it long enough," he went on, in a 
 petulant, high voice. "I have no chance here. 
 There is no sympathy for me ; nothing but curiosity. 
 It kills enthusiasm, that does. Over there it is all 
 different. An artist is given his place, the place 
 that belongs to him, the first place. Yes, I say ! 
 Phenie, why can t you stop looking at me that 
 way? You sit there with those thick black eyes 
 of yours, as if you were blaming me for something. 
 Haven t I done everything that man can do ? The 
 fact is, I m out of my place here. I have genius 
 they said so over there, though not in so many 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 53 
 
 words they never do that, I know I ve got 
 something great in me. You can t appreciate me 
 none of yon can. It takes an artist to sympa 
 thize with an artist. I m tired of it all, and I m 
 throwing away my chances too. It can t last for 
 ever it is too hard." 
 
 He closed melodramatically, with the same im 
 potent gesture as before. His wife watched him 
 with inscrutable eyes. She had heard this tirade 
 so often that she knew it by heart, and could 
 have prompted him when he stopped for rhetorical 
 pauses. But to the captious, vain babble to which 
 she was accustomed, there was added this morn 
 ing an excitement of manner and a personal resent 
 ment against herself which were unusual, and 
 which she conjectured at once were caused by the 
 letter. 
 
 "What does Mr. Watson say?" she asked, her 
 voice trembling in spite of herself. " Better have 
 it out, Billy: I know he isn t fond of me." 
 
 Mr. Watson was a Chicago broker, an elderly 
 relative of Floyd, and his patron, so far as that 
 personage can exist nowadays. He was the only 
 one who believed in Floyd s talent; he had sent 
 him to Munich, he had discouraged his return to 
 America and his marriage. 
 
 " Come, Billy," she persisted. 
 
 Brutal in his selfishness as Floyd had shown 
 himself, he was ashamed to tell her what she asked. 
 But he had gone so far that it would be useless to 
 
54 THE BllOUGliTON HOUSE. 
 
 try to hide from her how matters stood, or at least, 
 it would be useless soon. 
 
 He smoothed out the wrinkled sheet of paper 
 and ran his eye over it again until he reached the 
 last paragraph. Then he folded the letter once 
 more so that the closing sentences would be all 
 she could read, and handed it to her. She could 
 scarcely make out the scrawled business hand, but 
 the meaning of the words was clear. 
 
 " Of course you understand that if this scheme 
 works, it must be as before. The money you had 
 was enough for you. It will be enough for YOU this 
 time. You know my ideas about that subject, al 
 ready. Shall be able to let you know definitely by 
 another month." 
 
 Mrs. Floyd read it twice, a faint color coming 
 into her cheeks, then fading out again. She looked 
 at her husband suddenly, but his eyes did not meet 
 hers. Then she tore the letter in two and tossed 
 the pieces upon the middle of the floor, at his feet. 
 
 " That s a very nice letter, Billy, and the man 
 who wrote it seems to be a very nice sort of man." 
 She lay back in her rocking-chair as before, her 
 fingers clasped again, her slipper touching the 
 sewing-machine . 
 
 He stooped sheepishly to pick up the pieces ; 
 then put them carefully into the pocket of his 
 sack coat. Habitually moody, he yet failed to 
 understand the moods of his wife, and he mistook 
 the bitter irony of her tone for that cool, light 
 
THE BROUGHTOX HOUSE. 55 
 
 sarcasm which in New England passes for humor, 
 and with which Mrs. Floyd often savored her talk. 
 
 44 You don t seem to object to his scheme, Phenie," 
 he laughed, with a nervous and pitiable attempt at 
 jocoseness himself. 
 
 "Why should I?" 
 
 The terrible directness of her reply brought him 
 to his senses. He stood looking hard at her, but 
 no words reached his lips. Why should she, in 
 deed, object to his leaving the country and going 
 away from her ? Was he so essential to her ? This 
 question smote upon his selfishness, rebukingly, but 
 from that selfishness there came the swift and 
 dangerous response : was his wife, after all, essential 
 to him? 
 
 He had played with the idea before ; it had 
 tempted him, teased him ; and now in a moment it 
 rose before him, and beat down his guard. Still 
 no words came to him. 
 
 Man and wife were gazing in each other s eyes. 
 It was the supreme moment in their married life. 
 All around them was absolute stillness, save the 
 flutter and chirp of the sparrow outside the win 
 dow. 
 
 " Billy," Mrs. Floyd said slowly, " perhaps it was 
 all a mistake. Perhaps we never ought to have 
 been married. I ve tried hard to do what was 
 right." The words were growing slower still. 
 " I ve never wanted to stand in your way, and I 
 don t want to now. But that s our business, Billy ; 
 
56 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 it isn t any of Watson s." She hesitated so long 
 that Floyd thought she had quite stopped, and 
 then in a dry, strange voice added, " and I don t 
 know what Aunt Tryphena would say." 
 
 There was a painful silence. 
 
 " There is another month," he ejaculated, weakly. 
 He could not have told why he said this, except 
 that the thought of the month s interval before 
 another letter would come was floating at the top 
 of his chaotic ideas. 
 
 "Yes," she replied, mechanically, but with a 
 trace of the former irony, as if she perceived his 
 indecision and his cowardice. 
 
 He turned irresolutely away, and going to the 
 sofa picked up his brushes and colors, his sketch 
 ing-stool, and a broad-brimmed straw hat. He was 
 a good while doing it, hoping that she would 
 speak, though he had no more idea what she 
 would say than what he could himself have said. 
 At last he walked toward the door, eyeing side 
 ways her motionless figure. He put on his hat 
 and glanced toward her ; she was not even looking 
 at him. Muttering something, what, he hardly 
 knew himself, he opened the creaking door and 
 went out. 
 
 Outside, a brilliant July sunlight was over 
 everything. The yellow-painted Broughton House 
 fairly glared under it. 
 
 The artist paused by habit, on the sidewalk in 
 front of the cottage, and glanced toward the hotel. 
 
THE BROUGHTOX HOUSE. 57 
 
 No one was upon the piazza, except a child or two. 
 He remembered that Collins, in spite of the strong 
 light, had gone fishing, and that Sonderby had 
 said something at breakfast about some experi 
 ments in electricity at the academy. All the 
 better, Floyd thought; he preferred this morning, 
 contrary to his custom, to be by himself. He 
 turned to the east, and walked up the street lei 
 surely. Scarcely had he left the cottage behind 
 him when he was conscious that his spirits were 
 rising. He drew a long breath. The sitting-room 
 had seemed so close, and the scene with his wife 
 had been so intensely disagreeable ! But to be out 
 of doors, that was a different matter. The vaga 
 bond instincts of the fellow came to the front, and 
 he threw back his head, stretching his throat away 
 from the collar of his flannel shirt, absorbing great 
 chestfuls of the sweet air. Overhead in the elm 
 boughs the Baltimore orioles were flashing like 
 glints of yellow flame, and whistling their wild 
 gurgling call. Floyd caught every vibration of 
 that strange ciy ; both ear and eye had never been 
 so intensely alive to the outer world ; he noticed 
 the shadows 011 the deep-fissured bark of the elm- 
 tree boles, and stopped an instant to study the 
 texture of the bark, and its exact shade of choco 
 late-brown ; he saw for the first time the perfect 
 line which an old well-sweep made, outlined against 
 a decaying woodshed ; his eye rested with keener 
 delight than ever before on the long vista of elm- 
 
58 THE BROUGIITON HOUSE. 
 
 arches through which he was passing, while to 
 right and left were gardens and orchards in sharp- 
 cut masses of light and shade in the clear morning 
 light, and hayfields showing already subtle tints 
 of brown and yellow. 
 
 Main Street was almost empty, as befitted ten 
 o clock in the morning in the haying season. Only 
 before Parkinson s store were a couple of unloaded 
 wagons, waiting to be weighed upon the public 
 scales. The farmers who drove them, bearded old 
 fellows in shirt-sleeves and cowhide boots, stopped 
 their random interchange of questions and queries, 
 to stare at the artist as he sauntered by. 
 
 " The artist fellow ; married Trypheny Morton," 
 he overheard one of them explain to the other. 
 
 Floyd was irritated by the comment. " Married 
 Trypheny Morton." It was three or four happy, 
 irresponsible minutes since he had thought of the 
 woman whom he had left back there in the sitting- 
 room. But he had some capacity for shaking off 
 disagreeable sensations, and shrugged his shoulders 
 therefore, and strolled on. As he passed the par 
 sonage, Mrs. Ellerton, arrayed in a freshly starched 
 calico dress, was kneeling by a flower-bed in the 
 front yard, surrounded by pots of geraniums, which 
 she was transplanting. Her weight was thrown 
 forward upon her left hand, almost sunk in the 
 freshly upturned earth, while her right hand held 
 a trowel, upon the point of which she steadied her 
 self as she turned to smile at her husband, who 
 
THE BBOUGHTON HOUSE. 59 
 
 stood in his study-gown, and with pen in hand, 
 above her upon the piazza, joking about something. 
 It was a charming pose, that of Mrs. Ellerton, 
 and the artist drew an involuntary quick breath of 
 pleasure as he caught sight of her. Then he re 
 membered that Sonderby had told him that the 
 minister s wife was interested in his pictures, and 
 his sudden self-consciousness gave a new erectness 
 to his figure as he walked by. He had not met 
 either of the Ellertons, and so looked straight be 
 fore him, with assumed nonchalance. 
 
 Just beyond the parsonage he turned to the 
 left, down the North Broughton road, which joined 
 the village street here, in front of the white, bare- 
 looking Orthodox church. The road to North 
 Broughton was not much travelled; indeed, it was 
 hardly more than a couple of wheel-tracks, and the 
 encroaching grass did its utmost to efface even 
 these. Down hill it went, through pastures that 
 were getting overrun along the fences with second- 
 growth birch and maple, and then through a bit 
 of real woodland. Soon appeared an opening 
 again, toward the west, and the artist left the road, 
 pushing his way through the tangle of blackberry 
 vines and milkweed that fringed the rickety stone 
 wall. Scrambling over the latter, he came out 
 into a meadow, overlooking a brook and the ruins 
 of a mill-dam. Part of the mill itself was still 
 standing. With the brook escaping from the 
 woods upon one side, and upon the other the white 
 
60 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 houses of the village, seen from the rear here, and 
 half hidden by the orchards and the elms, the spot 
 had previously suggested itself to Floyd as one 
 affording opportunity for a landscape subject. He 
 had thought of calling the contemplated picture 
 " The Old Mill," and certainly Hobbema himself 
 could never have set an old mill in a more charm 
 ing background. 
 
 Floyd had planned to make a preliminary sketch 
 for the picture upon this particular morning. He 
 set up his portable easel, and having stretched his 
 canvas, began to sketch in the outlines of the 
 tumble-down building in charcoal. The first strokes 
 pleased him ; his hand seemed steadier and freer 
 than usual. He whistled and hummed away to 
 himself ; it was such a fine morning, and here in 
 the edge of the meadow, under the shadow of the 
 last tree of the forest, there was so little to trouble 
 him. Then, growing careless, he drew an unlucky 
 line ; in trying to better it he made it worse. The 
 whistling ceased, and he began to work more slowly 
 and carefully, but he did not regain the confidence 
 of those first few strokes. Possibly, he thought, 
 he might be a trifle nervous. He stepped back 
 from the easel once or twice to study the propor 
 tion of his work; it was not so bad no but 
 after all, as he finished the outlines and scanned it 
 critically, he could not disguise from himself that 
 it was out of drawing. He gave an impatient 
 
THE BROUGHTOX HOUSE. 61 
 
 exclamation. Confound it ! he had never half 
 learned to draw! 
 
 Floyd was easily put out of temper with himself, 
 and finding that after some rubbing and measur 
 ing and redrawing the sketch did not entirely suit 
 him, he was too disgusted to begin again from the 
 first, and therefore opened his color-box and be 
 gan squeezing and mixing greens, and yellows and 
 browns upon his palette, resolved to make mem 
 oranda of the colors at least, under this favorable 
 light. 
 
 His eye was really good, and as he began to 
 paint, and was conscious of reproducing cleverly 
 the tones of the brilliant coloring before him, his 
 spirits came back, and he felt again something of 
 that peculiar exaltation which he had experienced as 
 he walked down the street three-quarters of an hour 
 before. Before another hour had passed he had 
 accomplished a good deal. He had transferred 
 to canvas the shadowy masses of woodland, the 
 bright green of the meadow, through which the 
 brook gleamed and whitened, the breadth of meadow, 
 turning now to yellowish brown and showing here 
 and there a strip of purest gold where the grain- 
 fields were ripening early, and in the far back 
 ground the low line of blue hills, stretching on 
 and on, shadowed now and then by the white 
 clouds which they seemed at last to touch. 
 
 The artist had wished to make sure of these 
 transient effects first, fearing that they might es- 
 
62 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 cape him ; and it was not till he had nearly finished 
 that he turned his attention to the village, in the 
 left background. There was nothing difficult about 
 that, and he filled in rapidly the line of foliage, and 
 began to blotch it with white where the houses 
 stood. He smiled as he put on a daub of ugly yel 
 low, to represent the Broughton House. Then, as 
 he held his broad hat in the air to shade his eyes 
 better and give him a steady view of the hotel, a 
 look of irritation came over his mobile face, for 
 against the yellow there was a low brown building. 
 He recognized the cottage, and for the first time 
 since he had begun to paint, there crept upon his 
 mind the thought of his wife. 
 
 His wife ! Mechanically he put in the yellow . 
 Then he wiped his brush, forgetting that he had 
 meant to paint the rest of the white houses that 
 peeped through the elm-trees on lower Main Street, 
 beyond the hotel. His wife ! She was not to be 
 left out of the landscape, after all. 
 
 He folded his sketching-stool, and, throwing 
 himself down at full length before the easel, lay 
 there just within the line of the shade, gazing 
 moodily toward the village. 
 
 She was there, somewhere, probably in the very 
 room where he had left her. Perhaps she was in 
 that chair by the window, where she sat so motion 
 less and unregardful of him when he had come 
 away. Confound the woman ! why should she per 
 sist in being so strange ? Who could be expected 
 
THE JHiOUGHTON HOUSE. 63 
 
 to understand her! Well, what was the use of 
 trying ? He called himself an artist ; why not give 
 himself to the life of art ? His eye fell upon the 
 completed sketch. The sunlight rested full upon 
 it now, and it seemed too crude and brilliant. It 
 needed toning down. This could easily be done ; 
 but was that all? How about the drawing? 
 Floyd s eye was too accurate, naturally, to let him 
 be ignorant of the fact that there was a radical 
 deficiency in his work. 
 
 Well, he thought fiercely, suppose there Avas ? 
 Whose fault was it ? What had tempted him to 
 stay in America when he had come home for that 
 visit, three years previously, before he had half 
 learned Avhat Munich could teach him ? 
 
 His eye wandered toward the cottage again. It 
 had been Tryphena Morton. 
 
 Floyd had a dislike, common to men of his tem 
 perament, of thinking things through. It was 
 easier and pleasanter for him, generally, to be 
 guided by the impressions and sensations of the 
 moment. But just now his ideas had a certain 
 tenacious continuity, and his mind travelled again 
 over the whole road of his past experience. There 
 was his boyhood, passed in a Long Island town, 
 where his earliest memories were of the w r harves, 
 and of escapades along the beach at low tide. His 
 first passion had been to build a boat, and his sec 
 ond to draw one. He drew them for years, on his 
 slate in school, on brown paper in his father s gro- 
 
64 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 eery store, on smooth boards at the lumber piles 
 upon the wharf. Then some attention was paid to 
 him ; he was given a box of cheap paints. At six 
 teen he took a prize at the county fair, for a water- 
 color. He had been very proud ; yet, as he recog 
 nized clearly when he looked back at it on this 
 July morning, it was the worst thing that could 
 have happened to him, artistically. It made him 
 vain, and it did not bring him a teacher. He be 
 gan to try oils after that, and by the time he was 
 twenty he could almost support himself by painting 
 portraits. Long Island folks were not very critical. 
 Finally he gave that up, went to Brooklyn, and got 
 work in a lithographer s establishment. Here he 
 began to find out his defects, to meet other young 
 fellows, ambitious like himself ; he joined an evening 
 class, and saved his money to pay for models. Then 
 he lost his job ; and when he was almost discour 
 aged, how like a dream it seemed when old Watson 
 took an interest in him and said he should have 
 " as good a chance as any of them," and sent him 
 to Munich ! 
 
 Ah, Munich ! As Floyd thought of that year 
 and a half, he turned flat over on his back, and 
 pulling his hat down upon his face, gave himself 
 up to alluring memories. 
 
 What days and nights he had spent in the Bava 
 rian capital ! What long mornings of work in the 
 atelier, elbowed by young painters from every 
 nationality in Europe, except the French ! There 
 
THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 65 
 
 was gaiety there and good-fellowship, the jostle of 
 ideas, the pulse of ambition, the breath of rivalry. 
 How just and kindly had been the criticisms of his 
 masters ! How serious had l>een their headshakino* 
 
 o 
 
 as they recognized his knack of handling color, un 
 accompanied by a mastery of the one fundamental 
 thing in his work; how roundly had they con 
 demned the American fashion of hurrying a pupil 
 along to dabble with oils before he was ready for 
 it; how rigidly had they tried to put him on the right 
 track again, by going back to the starting-point ! 
 Floyd blushed now to think that he had been so 
 irresponsive, so unreasonable ; that he had persisted 
 in working in color so much of the time, in spite of 
 the laconic dictatorial warnings he received. To 
 be sure, he had scarcely understood them at first, 
 the language and the ideas were so new to him ; 
 still he might have gotten hold of more, though he 
 felt, as he clinched his fingers into the meadow 
 grass, that he had at any rate gotten hold of some 
 thing. If he had only stayed longer ! What after 
 noons those had been, when the autumn and winter 
 light failed early, and he and his knot of friends 
 lounged through the gay streets or loitered in the 
 dusky Frauenkirche, to hear the vesper music; 
 those evenings, all too swiftly passed, when they had 
 gathered in the Hofbraiierei, the Augustiner, the 
 Franziscaner, or in some out-of-the-way restaurant 
 given up to the patronage of art-students, or even 
 in one of their own attic " studios," and talked art, 
 
66 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 and drunk the health of every conceivable person 
 or thing in foaming Miinchener, and, reviling Ger 
 man tobacco all the while, had smoked it till they 
 were sitting in a blue fog, the right atmosphere, 
 after all, for art and air-castles. Over it all was 
 the charm of comradeship, of mutual enthusiasms 
 and purposes. Floyd was not analyst enough to 
 know how much of the fascination that Munich 
 had for him lay in the selfishness of his life there, 
 the lack of any ideals except artistic ones and 
 these mainly technical the easy morality, the 
 freedom from responsibility. He was simply con 
 scious of having had an immensely good time, and 
 of having learned something. 
 
 The sun had IIOAV worked its way out from be 
 hind the trees and shone so hot upon the artist 
 that it destroyed his reverie. He pulled himself 
 into the shadow again, and opening his eyes, gazed 
 gloomily through the grass-blades, out over the 
 intervening meadows, at the trim New England 
 village before him. That was what he had come 
 back to. Why had he been such a fool ? Yonder 
 heap of brown against the yellow of the B rough- 
 ton House contained the answer it was Try- 
 phena Morton Floyd. 
 
 He had come home from Munich one spring, 
 summoned by some family affairs, and was about 
 to secure passage for his return when he met this 
 girl. She was singularly graceful. Her shyness 
 attracted him. The only women he had known in 
 
THE BBOVGHTOS HOUSE. 67 
 
 his absence were waitresses and models, and the 
 quiet, delicate ways of this New England girl 
 seemed doubly grateful to him. He fell in love. 
 She refused him. He postponed his return to 
 German} , and waited, and would not give her up. 
 She let him see something of her still, and finally 
 her mind seemed to change and she opened her 
 heart to him. He was lucky enough to sell some 
 pictures ; the outlook for the future seemed hope 
 ful ; he abandoned the idea of returning to his 
 studies, and they were married. 
 
 In vain did old Watson, who disliked the girl, 
 growl about the marriage. When he persisted in 
 objecting, Floyd quarrelled with him. Love was 
 enough. 
 
 And afterward? Ah, that " afterward." It 
 came so soon, like the gray veils of cloud that 
 drift in from nobody knows where, unaccountably 
 and quietly, to dim the sun, on a spring morning. 
 As swiftly as those, but less inexplicably, came to 
 the Floyds disappointment, disillusion, distrust. 
 He felt them sooner than she, though the wife had 
 greater cause. His selfishness did more to make 
 their union an unfit one, than did her failure to 
 understand him, which was all, after everything 
 was said, that he could bring against her. He even 
 had times of thinking that she did understand 
 him thoroughly, that she saw straight through 
 him, but that she had no sympathy for his pecu- 
 
68 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 liarities, for his artist s moods. Whenever he felt 
 this, his irritation against her was strongest. 
 
 Indeed, he was more than half right. When 
 she married him she was as utterly ignorant as a 
 New England country girl can be of all that was 
 to him most interesting. The art-jargon that lie 
 talked was meaningless to her, however diligently 
 she tried to learn. She had tried hard, hard as 
 a loving woman can who feels that her husband s 
 life ought not to be separated from her own. But 
 the more she penetrated beneath the surface of his 
 mind and life, the more she found of chaos, of ego 
 tism, of superficial aims, shifting desires. 
 
 She grew secretly afraid ; there was so little in 
 him that she could take hold of, depend upon. He 
 seemed to be slipping away from her, and her love, 
 strong as it had been, rebelled against its own im 
 potence. 
 
 For his part, though he had perhaps loved her 
 at first as much as he would have been likely to 
 love anybody, and was still very fond of her, in a 
 way, he had never been able entirely to make her 
 out. When he first met her, this had added to her 
 charm ; but once married, he wanted to know defi 
 nitely what he could expect from her. Upon this 
 point he was never quite sure. She seldom re 
 proached him for anything, but behind the slightly 
 sarcastic sentences which were frequent in her talk, 
 and which had delighted him originally, he often 
 suspected that there was hidden a deeper and more 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 69 
 
 bitter irony than appeared upon the surface. There 
 was a power of feeling in her which his weaker 
 nature surmised and dreaded. Floyd was a man 
 who wanted to domineer, to be master and to make 
 a parade of it. and the very obedience and subor 
 dination which his Avife had always exhibited 
 taunted him sometimes, as if back of that self- 
 abnegation there was something more powerful 
 than himself, which penetrated his shallowness, and 
 only seemed to }~ield, and in reality baffled him. 
 Nearly three years had crept away since their 
 marriage : years of scrimping, of cheap boarding- 
 houses, of quarrels with picture-dealers ; years, too, 
 of health and hope and experiment. But Floyd 
 had experienced an artistic disillusion, as well as a 
 personal one. His pictures were called clever, but 
 too sketchy. There were too many faults in com 
 position. His dealer had spoken plainly to him of 
 the criticisms he had heard; old Watson, whose 
 fine private collection was gradually training its 
 owner s taste, and who stubbornly insisted on writ 
 ing to Floyd occasionally, was forever harping on 
 the same subject, and Floyd had at last learned his 
 artistic lesson, though it was a hard one for him. 
 He must put himself again under a master ; that 
 was the decision. Vain as he was, too vain to 
 seek instruction in Xew York, he had made up 
 his mind at last to go back to composition-classes 
 once more, if the way were only open. Then, later, 
 he would take America bv storm. 
 
70 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 If the way were only open ! He thrust his hand 
 into his side-pocket and drew out the fragments of 
 Watson s letter. Pulling up handfuls of daisies 
 and timothy till he had cleared a few inches of 
 turf, he laid out the pieces and slowly arranged 
 them in their places. The fact that he had to piece 
 his letter together in this fashion, after Mrs. Floyd 
 had torn it in two, seemed to make it easier for 
 him to read between the lines, perhaps to read 
 something of his own into them. 
 
 The meaning, after all, was clear enough. Try- 
 phena had caught it at a glance. Watson wanted 
 him to go back to Munich, but he wanted him 
 to go alone. Still, the cynical old broker was 
 cautious and had given him a month, perhaps to 
 let him arrange matters with Tryphena. Floyd 
 had tried many a time to fancy his wife "over 
 there " with him, but his imagination could find 
 no place for her in the circle of his Munich life. 
 He did not wish her there ; he might as well own 
 it to himself. He could not support her in Amer 
 ica during his absence. After his absence was 
 over? Would he come back to her? 
 
 Again there came to him, as in that crisis of the 
 earlier morning with his wife, the sense of perfect 
 stillness, as if all things held their breath and 
 waited for his decision. No not all things. 
 Down across the meadow crawled a mowing- 
 machine on its ceaseless jarring round, monoto 
 nously, mechanically. The light and shadow had 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 71 
 
 all gone from the meadow now, leaving nothing 
 but the hot glare of a vertical sun; yet the machine 
 kept on, heedless of anything but its work. The 
 fine, steady whirr of the toothed wheels kept bit 
 ing away on the artist s ear, irritatingly. The 
 machine was a type of humdrum, horizonless toil, 
 of life without impulse, without sensation, of the 
 life Floyd saw around him in New England. It 
 was the only life Tryphena knew ; it was the life 
 they seemed destined to live together. 
 
 The artist sprang to his feet, and leaving the 
 letter there in the trampled grass, paced up and 
 down indecisively in the shadow of the woods. 
 Would he come back to her? 
 
 Something far down within him said, " Xo," and 
 he found a satisfaction in listening to it, in seem 
 ing to accept it, and imagining that he had settled 
 the question. It was an ugly question, certainly, 
 and he hated any unpleasantness ; but if it must 
 come, he shrugged his shoulders in a fashion he 
 had acquired abroad. 
 
 Well, and Tryphena ? Characteristically, Floyd 
 had considered himself first. Would she object to 
 the "scheme "? He remembered that he had used 
 this euphemistic expression to her that morning, 
 and he scowled as he recalled her answer, so 
 simple that it staggered him, " Why should I?" 
 
 In the two or three hours or more that had 
 elapsed since the scene in the sitting-room, he had 
 kept it pretty thoroughly out of his mind, thanks 
 
72 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 to his habit of getting rid of disagreeable impres 
 sions, especially when there was fine weather to 
 help him. But that power failed him now, and he 
 found himself saying over again almost every word 
 that had passed between himself and his wife. It 
 was the first time they had ever discussed their 
 marriage, in set words, and Floyd, after some ner 
 vous pacing to and fro, had a kind of conviction 
 that it would be the last. He was enraged, more 
 than at anything else in his remembrance of their 
 discussion, at the way he had closed it. He had 
 stood there like a schoolboy, and had stammered 
 out, "There is another month," as if he were afraid 
 to settle the matter ; and she had answered noth 
 ing but "yes," in that curious dry tone of hers, 
 which he was never able to fathom. There could 
 scarcely have been a more inglorious, undramatic 
 ending. 
 
 He paused in his walk, and pulled out his watch. 
 It was dinner-time, and he was hungry. Men must 
 dine, crisis or none. To go back to the Broughton 
 House and sit by Tryphena s side through three 
 courses and dessert, and perhaps to play whist 
 afterwards, with Sonderby and Mrs. Floyd against 
 Collins and himself all that, after what had hap 
 pened that forenoon, was rather commonplace and 
 unheroic, but it was very much the way of the 
 world. 
 
 " There is another month." Perhaps he had 
 ended well enough, in spite of his momentary 
 
THE BBOUGHTOy HOUSE. 73 
 
 disgust at himself; and the artist felt all of a 
 sudden that he had been analyzing as long as he 
 could stand it. He had thought everything straight 
 through, for once, and had finished very much 
 where he began, in a determination to let matters 
 take their natural course. There was no imme 
 diate crisis, after all ; everything would go along- 
 just as before. Some subtle cord had perhaps been 
 snapped, but no one would know the difference 
 for another month. He picked up the letter, folded 
 his easel and stool, packed away his brushes, and 
 holding the finished sketch carefully in one hand, 
 took a short cut across the meadows to the hotel. 
 
 Mre. Floyd, left in the low rocking-chair by 
 the window, when her artist husband closed 
 the squeaking door behind him, sat there a long 
 while. Little by little the disturbed sparrow 
 ceased its tremulous fluttering in the lilac bush, 
 and settling down upon its nest again, was quite 
 still. What was there in the fresh morning, up 
 among the Broughton hills, that could bring a 
 certain stale odor to the nostrils of that pale-faced, 
 dark-haired young woman of twenty-two? Yet 
 Mrs. Floyd became conscious of breathing an air 
 that she remembered well. Perhaps it was only 
 something from the Broughton House kitchen, 
 acting on her by the subtle associations which 
 odors convey, but Tryphena Floyd was for the 
 moment carried far away from Broughton. She 
 
74 THE EEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 was again in the basement dining-room of a Brook 
 lyn boarding-house, in the close, gas-heated, grease- 
 scented air. The room was noisy with the clatter 
 of dishes, the hurrying of slatternly servants, the 
 well-worn jokes of the boarders. At the head of 
 the table sat Aunt Tryphosa, dear, fat, Aunt 
 Tryphosa, who had married an old bachelor when 
 both their best days were long past, and who had 
 gone to live in Brooklyn, and had been absurdly 
 happy. Near her was a dark, shy girl from the 
 country, her guest, and opposite the country girl, 
 watching her with greedy eyes, was a young artist, 
 just returned from Munich, whom the girl addressed 
 timidly from time to time, as " Mr. Floyd." 
 
 Bah ! Mrs. Floyd rose wearily, and shut the 
 west sitting-room window. She thought it was 
 the cooking at the hotel. In the last ten minutes 
 she had grown old. Was it only three years since 
 Aunt Tryphosa had invited her to Brooklyn? It 
 was a lifetime an eternity. 
 
 Tying the strings of an apron around her waist, 
 she made ready for her scanty morning duties in 
 the cottage. A tall, gilt-framed mirror hung in 
 front of her, and, scarcely knowing what she did, 
 she stood staring into it, still thinking of her visit 
 to Aunt Tryphosa. Only three years ? She had 
 surveyed herself in that mirror the morning she 
 started a fresh-faced, ignorant maiden of scarcely 
 twenty, with romantic notions. And now? Less 
 color in her cheeks, more depth in her eyes, and 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 75 
 
 less innocence in her heart ; a womanlier figure 
 and a woman s insight : all this had come to her in 
 three years. How much that silent glass and gilt 
 had seen, she thought. Her mother, whom she 
 scarcely remembered, had dressed for her wedding 
 by it, forty } r ears before ; so had good, queer Aunt 
 Tryphosa ; and so had she herself, Tryphena Mor 
 ton, on that rainy autumn afternoon, when she had 
 been so happy. She turned away quickly. 
 
 She passed into the bedroom, soon after that, to 
 put it in order, moving automatically. It had been 
 Aunt Tryphena s room once ; Aunt Tryphena, the 
 only mother the girl had ever known. Her child 
 ish memories gathered about this room ; it was a 
 sort of sacred place to her. And now it was theirs : 
 hers and her husband s. Mrs. Floyd stopped help 
 lessly in the middle of her work. She Avent out 
 into the sitting-room, crossed it quite steadily to 
 the wall where Aunt Tryphena s picture hung, and 
 catching the black oval frame in both hands, burst 
 into tears, and covered the daguerreotvpe with 
 piteous kisses. Then she dropped upon the hair 
 cloth sofa, and lay there, sobbing. 
 
 An hour later Mrs. Floyd, who was a woman of 
 narrow resources, and not, like her more gifted 
 husband, a person to whom the consolations of 
 nature and of art were always potent, bathed her 
 eyes, as women do, and, finding the loneliness of 
 the cottage intolerable, went over to the parlor of 
 the Broughton House. When her husband came 
 
76 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 in to dinner he found her there, with the last 
 Harpers Weekly uncut in her lap, talking to John 
 Sonderby. 
 
IV. 
 
 TOWARDS the end of the week that followed 
 upon the Saturday evening when Sonderby had 
 been entertained at the parsonage, the minister and 
 his wife started out to call upon the Floyds. Mrs. 
 Ellerton had been debating for some davs her social 
 
 O *j 
 
 duty in this matter, even before the school-teacher 
 had told her something of his associates at the 
 hotel. As the wife of the minister, Mrs. Ellerton 
 felt that she had peculiar responsibilities, as far as 
 calling was concerned, and some oversights on her 
 part, at the commencement of their life in Brough- 
 ton, had taught her how sensitive, even punctilious, 
 the people in the village were, at least in their de 
 mands upon herself. 
 
 Mrs. Floyd was a newcomer in one sense, and, 
 thus far, the obligation of the minister s wife was 
 clear: she should make the first call. But from 
 another standpoint it was Mrs. Ellerton who was 
 the newcomer, and the artist s wife, as a native of 
 Broughton, ought certainly to have called at the 
 parsonage. She had not done so. Moreover, she 
 had hitherto absented herself from church except 
 on the Sunday when the quartette were there to 
 gether, though Mrs. Ellerton discovered by con- 
 
78 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 suiting the church manual that Tryphena Morton 
 had joined the Congregationalists in her early girl 
 hood. 
 
 Mrs. Ellerton had a sort of intuition, too, that 
 the artist s wife did not care particularly to be 
 called upon; and that was certainly the opinion 
 which Broughton people had of Tryphena s wishes 
 in the matter, as a deacon s wife gratuitously in 
 formed Mrs. Ellerton. But, on the whole, the lat 
 ter considered that it Avas her duty to make the 
 call; and the performance of her obligation was 
 considerably lightened by two facts : she was anx 
 ious to see Floyd s work; and in the second place 
 she had taken a strong liking for the school-teacher, 
 and she wanted to see for herself the kind of people 
 with whom he was at present thrown. She sus 
 pected, though she could not have told why, that 
 they were not his equals, that this long summer 
 vacation was a time of deterioration for him ; and 
 she felt hurt by it and wondered if there were any 
 way to help it. 
 
 Broughton women were not very scrupulous as 
 to the time when they received calls, provided 
 only they were not in the kitchen, and it was 
 neither washing-day nor ironing-day nor baking- 
 day, and Ruth Ellerton had acquired the habit 
 of starting soon after dinner in order to make as 
 many as possible within the limits of the afternoon. 
 
 Upon this particular Tuesday, however, it was 
 nearly four o clock before she was attired in her 
 
THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 79 
 
 soft gray Henrietta, and called her husband from 
 his study to accompany her. Arthur Ellerton 
 was not unwilling to come. His next Sun 
 day s sermon was in a satisfactory state of 
 progress indeed, it was a peculiarity of Ellerton 
 that he was generally optimistic about his ser 
 mon, in whatever period of evolution it chanced 
 to be. He was fond, too, of making parish 
 calls, partly because he had not yet done enough 
 of it to weary him, but mainly because he was 
 fitted by nature to do it well. Ellerton met peo 
 ple easily ; he could talk upon any subject or upon 
 no subject; there was something in his boyish 
 laugh and the heartiness of his manner that drew 
 men instinctively to him, and made his calls one of 
 his most favorable opportunities for influence upon 
 his parish. Slightly monotonous as might have 
 appeared to him, at times, the conversation of his 
 deacons wives, or of his young lady organist, there 
 was nothing in the prospect of a call upon the 
 Floyds to give him anything but pleasure. They 
 had interests outside of Broughton, at any rate, 
 and the artist ought to have something to talk 
 about. If Ellerton scarcely possessed the con 
 scious, strenuous desire to reach people, to in 
 fluence them for good, which was a passion with 
 his more finely organized wife, there was an un 
 conscious, healthy benevolence about him that 
 made him like to meet people, and caused him 
 to effect, almost without knowing it, that irnpres- 
 
80 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 sion upon others which his wife gained by means 
 of secret trembling, and ever-renewed aspirations, 
 and many prayers. 
 
 As they reached the post-office, on their way 
 down the street, the mail was just distributed, 
 and Euth Ellerton strolled on slowly, while her 
 husband stepped inside to get the county paper, 
 due that day. Before he rejoined his wife, Floyd 
 sauntered past her, his white helmet hat far back 
 on his head, his hands in the pockets of his loose 
 coat. The artist had been waiting for the mail : 
 why, he scarcely knew, as he had no reason to 
 expect anything, yet it was rarely that he failed, 
 nowadays, to be at the office in the afternoon. 
 
 The callers turned in at the cottage gate just as 
 Floyd reached the door. He did not notice them 
 at first; for Mrs. Floyd met him in the doorway, 
 bringing out in her slender arms an oddly carved 
 cherry table. He took it from her, though not 
 very promptly, and set it in the shade of the lilacs, 
 in front of a bench that always stood there. Mrs. 
 Floyd turned into the cottage again, as if to fetch 
 something else, and at the moment when the artist 
 had settled the table solidly upon the gravelled 
 walk, he looked up to find Mr. and Mrs. Ellerton 
 close to him. 
 
 Floyd bowed, with a low sweep of the helmet 
 hat, and gave himself the privilege of a full, long 
 look at Ruth Ellerton s face. 
 
 44 Is Mrs. Floyd in?" she began "we are glad " 
 
THE BBOUGHTON HOUSE. 81 
 
 then hesitated and glanced at her card-case. 
 The artist s stare had slightly disconcerted her. 
 
 Arthur Ellerton s frank voice followed quickly 
 npoii her pause. " I don t know that we need any 
 introduction," he said, in his cheery, incontro 
 vertible fashion of uttering a commonplace ; " but, 
 Mrs. Ellerton, this is Mr. Floyd." Then stretch 
 ing out his quick hand, before the artist could 
 murmur the conventional reply, the minister added, 
 k * I am very glad to make your acquaintance." 
 
 Floyd bowed slightly, and his eyes wandered to 
 Mrs. Ellerton again. 
 
 " Shall we stay here ? " asked Floyd, or will 
 you come inside ? " 
 
 " Oh, it is so pleasant here," smiled Mrs. Eller 
 ton, and she glanced toward the bench. 
 
 " My wife is just bringing out some chairs," ex 
 plained Floyd. " We were going to play whist," 
 he added, then bit his lip as he thought of the in 
 felicity of his remark the more so as Mrs. Eller 
 ton said instantly, " Oh, you mustn t let us inter 
 rupt a whist-party!" 
 
 At that instant Mre. Floyd appeared in the door 
 way, holding in front of her the cushioned rocking- 
 chair that usually stood by the sewing-machine. 
 It seemed heavy for her, and both gentlemen 
 started to take it, but Ellerton was the quicker. 
 
 " Mr. and Mrs. Ellerton are here," said Floyd. 
 
 Mrs. Floyd bowed, and a little color came into 
 her pale cheeks. 
 
82 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 "Won t you be pleased to sit down?" she 
 asked. 
 
 It was the beginning of a phrase that Aunt Try- 
 phena had taught her in her girlhood as the polite 
 formula of hospitality. The remainder of the ex 
 pression "and make yourself to home" Mrs. 
 Floyd had gradually dropped in recent years, as 
 she became conscious that most persons in Brook 
 lyn did not use it. 
 
 " Thank you. How pleasant it is here under 
 the lilacs ! " exclaimed Mrs. Ellerton, as she seated 
 herself at one end of the oak bench. 
 
 " It is pretty in the summer time," answered 
 Mrs. Floyd, taking timid possession of the rocking- 
 chair near by. "-Aunt Tryphena used to set a 
 great deal of store by them the lilacs, I mean. 
 They used to be the handsomest in town." 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 Mrs. Ellerton s eyes grew soft as she looked at 
 Mrs. Floyd s black dress, and remembered that the 
 first funeral Mr. Ellerton had attended after they 
 came to Broughton had been that of Aunt Try 
 phena. 
 
 " I am very sorry," she added, gently, " that we 
 could not have known your aunt." 
 
 Mrs. Floyd lifted her dark eyes an instant, for 
 reply, and they looked into Ruth Ellerton s with a 
 sort of appeal, pathetically brief. Then they fell 
 to the ground again, and left Mrs. Ellerton with a 
 helpless desire to say something intimate and ten- 
 
THE BUOVGHTON HOUSE. 83 
 
 der to her. But she knew the time had not yet 
 come for that. 
 
 " You have very pretty roses here, Mrs. Floyd," 
 broke in Ellerton. 
 
 Floyd had gone into the cottage for another 
 chair, and the minister, without noticing particu 
 larly the opening words of the conversation between 
 his wife and Mrs. Floyd, felt that the tone of the 
 talk was not as breezy as it should be. 
 
 "Yes, sir," replied Mrs. Floyd. "They were 
 Aunt Tryphena s." This time she did not raise 
 her eyes at all. 
 
 Ellerton went on persistently, in his way, 
 oblivious of her reticence. " What do you call 
 these white ones, with the pink-tipped petals ? " he 
 demanded. "I don t remember that I ever saw 
 anything like them before. Have you, my dear? 
 Just look at .them." 
 
 They turned to the straggling rosebush, whose 
 burden of late roses was shaded by the clump of 
 lilacs. The minister picked a bud, and showed to 
 his wife the exquisite line of deep pink that ran 
 across the edge of each petal. 
 
 " Lovely ! " she cried. " How very lovely ! " 
 
 " Isn t there any name for them, Mi s. Floyd?" 
 he repeated. 
 
 "Well, Aunt Tryphena used to call them the 
 Smith roses," she answered, slowly. " He was a 
 missionary to foreign parts, and planted this bush 
 before he went away." 
 
84 THE BEOUGHTON HOU&ti. 
 
 "Indeed," exclaimed Mrs. Ellerton, rather 
 vaguely. 
 
 " I wonder what Smith that could be," remarked 
 the minister, reflectively. " There was a Richard 
 J. Smith who went from somewhere in New Eng 
 land. He was the one who accomplished such a 
 great work in Ceylon, you remember." 
 
 Neither of the ladies looked as if they did 
 remember. 
 
 " Yes, it was wonderful what that man went 
 through. If it was Richard J. Smith, and he 
 planted the bush here before he sailed, it is very 
 historic." 
 
 He hesitated a trifle before the last word, and 
 seemed to have a suspicion that his ending was 
 somewhat ineffective. 
 
 Tryphena Floyd said nothing. Mrs. Ellerton 
 felt that in spite of Arthur s conversational gifts, 
 their acquaintance with Mrs. Floyd was not pro 
 gressing rapidly. By this time the artist had 
 brought out a couple more chairs, and Ellerton 
 turned toward him. 
 
 " Didn t you say something about playing whist ? " 
 
 " Inadvertently," replied Floyd. " But the others 
 are not yet here." 
 
 " Ah ? Well even a pastoral call ought not to 
 break up a whist-party, I suppose," laughed Ellerton. 
 
 Floyd was surprised to hear such tolerant lan 
 guage from the parson. 
 
 " Do you play ? " he asked at a venture. 
 
THE lillOUGHTON HOUSE. 85 
 
 " Xo, not since my college days," responded 
 Ellerton. " It takes too much time. The most 
 I have done in that direction is to play a half- 
 dozen games of cribbage with my wife. And I 
 don t know that eyen that would be regarded in 
 Broughton as being very ministerial," he added, 
 with the freedom that came with talking to people 
 Avho did not really belong in town. 
 
 / O 
 
 u My dear," interrupted Mrs. Ellerton, u you 
 must be careful of what crimes you accuse your 
 self." Arthur was so careless sometimes ! 
 
 The artist was watching stealthily the gay smile 
 into which her grave features lightened. She 
 turned toward him suddenly, before he could look 
 away. 
 
 "Mr. Sonderby told me that he played whist 
 with you a good deal," she said. 
 
 fci Yes, he plays with Phenie with Mrs. Floyd, 
 I should say against Collins and myself. Do 
 you know Collins ? " 
 
 " Xo, I do not," replied Mrs. Ellerton. 
 
 " He s coming over pretty soon," the artist went 
 on, glancing toward the Broughton House. " He 
 doesn t have much to do, either, in this lively town. 
 Don t you find it lively, Mrs. Ellerton ? 
 
 She did not like the tone of jocular familiarity 
 upon which he had just ventured, but answered, 
 smilingly : 
 
 " There is at least more to see and hear now than 
 there is in March and April. It certainly is not 
 
86 THE KROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 very lively then. But I should think the quiet of 
 the place, and the beauty of it, would be just what 
 you would most like, for your painting, Mr. 
 Floyd." 
 
 She spoke the last rather timidly ; for she had 
 rarely met a veritable artist before, and did not 
 know whether she ought to refer, before people, to 
 that which she had groAvn. up to consider a great 
 and divine gift. 
 
 " Why, of course," Floyd began and then hes 
 itated, happening to discover that his wife was 
 watching him with that impenetrable look of hers. 
 She was grateful to the minister s wife for those 
 appreciative words about Broughtori " the quiet 
 of the place, and the beauty of it " and wondered 
 if Floyd would say the same things to this deli 
 cately bred woman that he was in the habit of say 
 ing to herself. 
 
 " Of course," Floyd continued, " Broughton is a 
 very good sketching-place. I have made a great 
 many studies here. And it is the home of my 
 wife." He did not look at his wife as he uttered 
 this gallant sentiment, or he might have detected 
 upon her thin upper lip a line he well knew. 
 
 " But you see, Mrs. Ellerton, I am the only man 
 who comes here to paint, and there are no persons 
 here who care at all about art unless the pres 
 ent company are excepted," he added, awkwardly. 
 u There must be a sort of atmosphere before a man 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 87 
 
 can do his best work : a sort of " and he stopped 
 for a suitable word. 
 
 Mrs. Floyd leaned back in her rocking-chair. It 
 was the old story on which he was started, after all. 
 For once in her life she interrupted him in it. 
 
 " Perhaps, Billy, she would like to see some of 
 the things you have been doing. And Mr. Eller- 
 ton." 
 
 fc% Oh, if you would be so good, Mr. Floyd, cried 
 Mrs. Ellerton. It was more than she had dared to 
 hope for. u Would it be very much trouble ? " 
 
 Floyd was already on his feet. " It would give 
 me the greatest of pleasure, Mrs. Ellerton," he 
 answered, bowing to her so markedly that she 
 found herself disconcerted again, and almost dis 
 liking him. She did indeed dislike his bony, irregu 
 lar face, his small, watery eyes, and the way he 
 stared with them ; but he seemed, except for that, 
 gentlemanly enough, and she supposed that allow 
 ances must be made for artistic eccentricities. 
 
 He came back presently, bringing an armful of 
 canvases, and setting up his easel in front of the 
 door, he put one sketch after another upon it, while 
 Mrs. Ellerton watched them hungrily, hardly dar 
 ing to make any comments lest she should say the 
 wrong thing. She leaned forward from her seat 
 on the bench, holding across her lap in both hands 
 her best lace parasol; her husband stood behind 
 her, resting one hand on the back of the bench, 
 and making gay remarks about the pictures he 
 
88 THE BKOUGHTON HOUHE. 
 
 liked best. Mrs. Floyd had moved her rocking- 
 chair to give the visitors a better light, and did 
 not seem to follow very closely the succession of 
 the studies as her husband explained them. There 
 were many clever things, undoubtedly, in the col 
 lection, and they showed pretty well what Floyd s 
 artistic experience had been. 
 
 Most of them had been done either in Munich 
 or since his return, and Mrs. Ellerton recognized 
 or thought she did some of the qualities which 
 her reading had taught her to look for in the mod 
 ern Munich school. Mrs. Ellerton knew the names 
 of one or two of Floyd s teachers ; she even had 
 at the parsonage a photograph of Defregger s Ma 
 donna, and when she had summoned up her cour 
 age she began to ask questions, some of them child 
 ishly simple, others relating to the purposes of 
 modern art study, and the ideals of the Munich 
 school so puzzling that he could not answer, nor 
 indeed really understand her. 
 
 But not all his subjects were Munich ones, and 
 she was glad when he replaced the genre sketches, 
 with their monotonous repetitions of earthen and 
 pewter beer-mugs, bread and cheese and radishes, 
 and the charcoal studies in composition, by some 
 memorials of an Easter trip to Venice. There 
 were bits of landscape here that were really admi 
 rable for their atmospheric quality, especially some 
 water-colors done at the Lido and out at Torcello. 
 The scenes in Venice itself were not so good, 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 89 
 
 the architecture being noticeably weak, but the 
 Avater and the sky and the boats were almost always 
 capital. 
 
 When Mrs. Ellerton praised these things particu 
 larly, Floyd brought out two or three finished pic 
 tures, painted on the Long Island shore since his 
 return, and finally he produced a portfolio contain 
 ing some of his Broughton sketches. Many of 
 these were of familiar objects along Main Street, 
 and were quickly recognized, to Floyd s secret 
 pleasure. There was one of the Broughton House 
 piazza, the perspective all askew, but with a felici 
 tous representation of Bill Trumbull asleep in his 
 chair in the foreground. There were two or three 
 of the whist quartette, in the act of playing; but 
 these were barely more than caricatures. 
 
 "Why, who is that?" suddenly cried Mrs. Eller 
 ton. Floyd was trying to get the best light for 
 a tiny canvas on which a man s head had been 
 painted in oils. 
 
 "Can t you guess?" said Mrs. Floyd. "I tell 
 Billy that it is the best thing he has done this 
 summer." 
 
 It was a square, bearded face, with unmistak 
 able power in the heavy jaw and firm-set mouth. 
 
 " Why it must be it is Mr. Sonderby, isn t 
 it?" asked Mrs. Ellerton, slowly. 
 
 Floyd smiled triumphantly. 
 
 Mrs. Ellerton reached out her hand, took the 
 head and scrutinized it. There was a massiveness 
 
90 THE BROUQHTON HOUSE. 
 
 and dignity in the portrait which surprised her, so 
 out of keeping was it with most of Floyd s work. 
 
 " How long did it take you to do this ? " she 
 asked. She felt that she ought to say something, 
 and yet she did not wish to tell Floyd what was 
 in her mind. 
 
 " Oh, three or four hours, one Sunday morning," 
 he answered, carelessly; then remembered he was 
 talking to the parson s wife, and felt rather 
 abashed. 
 
 She did not seem to notice the latter part of his 
 remark, but contented herself with saying : 
 
 " I think it is remarkably good, Mr. Floyd ; I have 
 never seen just that look in Mr. Sonderby s face, 
 I know him so little but, " and her voice 
 fell a little, "I suppose an artist sees the best that 
 is in a face the strongest and noblest features 
 and tries to make these permanent. I was reading 
 the other day what Walt Whitman says about Lin 
 coln : that there was in his eyes a deep, latent sad 
 ness beneath his smile, that none of the artists 
 caught the whole expression of his face, and that 
 one of the great portrait-painters of two or three 
 centuries ago was needed." 
 
 Floyd watched her attentively, though he really 
 was noting the exquisite color in her cheeks and 
 the gray of her eyes more than what she was say 
 ing. He had never heard of Whitman, and hardly 
 knowing what answer to make, caught at her clos 
 ing words. 
 
THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 91 
 
 " The old masters," he said, somewhat flip 
 pantly. 
 
 " Yes ; Holbein, for instance." 
 
 She mentioned two pictures by Holbein, in the 
 Munich Gallery, which she knew well enough 
 through prints. To her bewilderment, Floyd 
 seemed not to be acquainted with them. 
 
 " We don t care much for those old fellows," he 
 explained. " Of course it s all very Avell if you ve 
 got time enough ; but there is so much to learn in 
 the modern schools nowadays. There s the Salon, 
 for instance ; if you want to know how to paint, 
 there s the place to see how it s done, instead of 
 bothering your head over those old cracked and 
 dirty pictures the Lord only knows who painted 
 them in the Pinacothek." 
 
 Against this she rebelled. 
 
 " But surely if Holbein were alive now and were 
 to send a portrait to the Salon, every one would 
 see the difference." 
 
 " Oh, a difference, of course," he admitted, with 
 a patronizing smile. "But that isn t saying that 
 it would be any better, is it ? " 
 
 Obviously, Holbein s name meant nothing to 
 him. But before she could answer, there was a 
 rustle in the lilac bushes behind her, and she 
 turned to see a solidly built man of thirty-five, 
 bareheaded, with a dark, oval, handsome face, 
 step into the group, having crossed by a short cut 
 from the hotel. He threw away his cigar as he 
 
92 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 recognized the strangers. Mrs. Floycl introduced 
 him to the Ellertons as Mr. Collins. 
 
 " Having another exhibition, Floyd ? " asked the 
 newcomer, seating himself upon the artist s sketch 
 ing-stool, which stood near Ellerton s chair. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Sorry to have missed it," replied Collins, with 
 a tranquillity of tone which implied that his regrets 
 were not to be taken too seriously. 
 
 "Did you go down to the Hollow?" inquired 
 Mrs. Floyd. 
 
 " Yes, I ve been there again. He rose twice to 
 day, but wouldn t touch anything." 
 
 "Mr. Collins is a great fisherman," explained 
 Mrs. Floyd. 
 
 " There s a big trout down in the Hollow," 
 Collins went on, turning politely to Mrs. Ellerton, 
 without noticing Mrs. Floyd s interpolation, "and 
 I have a try at him almost every day now. He s 
 a queer fellow, and he never rises at anything ex 
 cept in the most unlikely time of the day. I used 
 to go down there before breakfast and after supper, 
 but now I m trying him after dinner, and on the 
 shiniest, hottest days I can find. He s a contrary 
 one, I can tell you." 
 
 Mrs. Ellerton smiled appreciatively. She liked 
 his deep, resonant voice, and the deliberate, self- 
 contained way he had of talking. 
 
 " My husband will be interested in your efforts," 
 she said. " He is fond of fishing, too." 
 
THE BROUGHTOX HOUSE. 93 
 
 Collins turned his dark eyes scrutinizingly upon 
 the minister, as if to see whether he were worthy 
 of being admitted into the guild of sportsmen. 
 
 " I think we met down near Calvin Johnson s a 
 while ago," Ellerton remarked ; then added, with 
 a frank laugh, u I suppose you w^ere sorry to see 
 me ; I certainly was to see you." 
 
 Collins twinkled; the parson did not seem to 
 be such a bad fellow. 
 
 " The Johnson brook has been poor this year," 
 he replied. u There was too much high water 
 until that day we were there. I took three or four 
 pounds out of the meadow, though ; but you had 
 the start of me in the woods." 
 
 " Yes ; I got about forty there, most of them 
 little ones. By the way,"- and Ellerton lowered 
 his voice a little, as befitted the discussion of the 
 secrets of their craft, "I noticed that you were 
 using a white fly that day. Did you try that in 
 the woods at all?" 
 
 Collins hitched his stool a trifle nearer to Eller 
 ton. 
 
 "Well, I don t remember about that. I use a 
 worm in the woods a good deal. I ve just got a 
 new book of flies this afternoon," reaching for his 
 inside pocket ; " don t you want to take a look at 
 them?" 
 
 " If Mrs. Floyd will allow us," assented Ellerton. 
 It was exactly what he had wished for. 
 
 "That s all right," Mrs. Floyd answered, in- 
 
94 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 differently. " Billy, haven t you anything else to 
 show Mrs. Ellerton ? " 
 
 " Oh, you have been so good, Mr. Floyd," ex 
 claimed Mrs. Ellerton, " you mustn t give yourself 
 any more trouble. But it has been such a treat 
 to me." 
 
 "I haven t much else here except this," the 
 artist answered, as he placed upon the easel the 
 picture of the old mill, done a couple of mornings 
 before. Opening his penknife he scraped off care 
 fully a few grass-seeds that had blown against the 
 fresh paint and had dried on. 
 
 " Do you remember it? " he asked. 
 
 Mrs. Ellerton took a long look at the canvas 
 through her gloved hand, as if it were a glass. 
 
 "Why, the landscape seems perfectly familiar 
 it is the view from the North Broughton road, 
 behind the parsonage, isn t it ? " 
 
 " Correct." 
 
 "But the details the mill I don t think I 
 have ever seen that have I ? " 
 
 " Perhaps not ; it is a little off the road. I was 
 down there the other morning, and saw you setting 
 out some plants as I went by." 
 
 " Oh, yes it was Tuesday ? Or Wednesday ? " 
 
 " Thursday," said Mrs. Floyd, quietly. 
 
 Floyd did not reply, but Mrs. Ellerton detected 
 a scowl on his face, as he suddenly picked up the 
 pictures. She feared she had not shown enough 
 attention to the last one. 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 95 
 
 "Please may I see that one moment more?" 
 she asked, taking it in her hands. u Oh, here are 
 the houses along Main Street, and the parsonage, 
 too ! " she cried, delightedly. kk Isn t your cottage 
 here? You must like so much to put that in if 
 you can. It must be charming to paint your own 
 home. No, there is nothing but the Broughton 
 House," she decided, in disappointment. 
 
 " You must admit that the Broughton House is 
 much the more prominent object in the landscape, 
 Mrs. Ellerton," replied Floyd, fluently. 
 
 " Yes ; but don t you think it is ugly ? The cot 
 tage is such a beautiful old place that I should 
 think you would like to paint it for its own sake. 
 And you have left it quite out. 
 
 " Perhaps he thought that the two didn t go 
 well together," suggested Mrs. Floyd, doubtfully. 
 " One thing sort o kills another, sometimes." 
 
 Floyd was busy strapping up his sketches, with 
 his back turned to his wife, and made no reply. 
 
 "My dear," called out Arthur Ellerton, sud 
 denly, " Mr. Collins is going to show me some of 
 his tips, over at the hotel ; we shall be back in a 
 couple of minutes. Will you excuse us, Mrs. 
 Floyd?" 
 
 The latter nodded, and the gentlemen slipped 
 away. Mrs. Ellerton was just a trifle annoyed. 
 Arthur was so forgetful of conventionalities some 
 times ! There he was making a first call, and ex 
 cusing himself because he wanted to see some 
 
96 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 bamboo fishing-rods. Yet she was glad to have 
 him enjoy himself, and find a congenial spirit in 
 Mr. Collins : it was not every day that Arthur 
 could talk about out-of-door sports without being 
 misunderstood, the dear hard-working boy ! 
 
 While Floyd Avas carrying his pictures and easel 
 into the cottage, the women were left alone. Ruth 
 Ellerton started one subject of conversation after 
 another, but with slight success. The hostess 
 seemed shy ; and though she replied to Mrs. El- 
 lerton s questions straightforwardly enough, there 
 was a peculiar terseness, almost curtness, in her 
 brief answers, that made her seem non-communi 
 cative. She made it easy for one to infer, too, 
 that prevailing standards meant little to her, and 
 yet she gave this impression more through her 
 tone than through her words, for what she ac 
 tually said was commonplace enough. 
 
 Floyd did not reappear for a while ; Ellerton s 
 couple of minutes had lengthened to ten or fifteen ; 
 and Mrs. Ellerton felt as if her call had already 
 grown into what the Broughton people would call 
 a visit, and that even the latter was extending 
 itself to unfit proportions. She was heartily glad 
 when she saw John Sonderby enter at the front 
 gate. If her husband would only come, the quar 
 tette could be left to their whist ; in the meantime 
 the school-teacher s appearance would bring a new 
 feature into the conversation. 
 
 Sonderby came down the walk deliberately, 
 
THE BPOUGHTOy HOUSE. 97 
 
 planting his feet solidly at every step, as was his 
 custom. He pulled off his straw hat as he caught 
 sight of Mrs. Ellerton, and shook hands with her 
 somewhat formally, nodding to Mrs. Floyd as he 
 did so. 
 
 * 4 You re very late, Mr. Sonderby, said Try- 
 phena Floyd. 
 
 "I know it," was the reply; 4 * I ve been trying 
 to work out something at the academy." 
 
 " Did you get it ? " asked Mrs. Ellerton, eagerly, 
 not having the remotest idea what * it " was, ex 
 cept that Sonderby was interested in physics and 
 spent some of his time over the apparatus at the 
 academy. 
 
 " Yes," he replied, looking straight at her. 
 
 "I knew you would, * she cried; then blushed 
 to think that she had betrayed what was in her 
 mind. Unconsciously it had flashed over her as 
 he spoke, that a man with John Sonderby *s square- 
 set face would get whatever he set out to get. 
 
 The school-teacher made no answer, though a 
 puzzled smile crept into the corners of his eyes 
 and mouth, as he saw Mrs. Ellerton s heightened 
 color. A quicker man would have said something 
 graceful, but John Sonderby had never had much 
 practice in saying graceful things to women. He 
 sat down upon the bench, and leaning forward, 
 began to fan himself with his hat. 
 
 " Where is Collins ? " he asked of Mrs. Floyd, 
 
 " Over at the hotel." 
 
98 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 " Didn t he come ? " 
 
 She nodded. " He s gone over to show his rods 
 to Mr. Ellerton." 
 
 " Oh." 
 
 There was a pause. Then Sonderby changed 
 his hat into his other hand, and turned to Mrs. 
 Ellerton, who was seated at the opposite end of 
 the bench. 
 
 " Have you seen the pictures ? " he asked. 
 
 " Indeed I have," was the enthusiastic answer. 
 " Mr. Floyd was so kind ! I can t tell you how 
 much I enjoyed it." 
 
 The last sentence was addressed as much to Mrs. 
 Floyd as to the school-teacher, and it was the 
 former who answered : 
 
 " Billy likes to show them." 
 
 " I should think he might," said Mrs. Ellerton, 
 appreciatively. Then she remembered that during 
 that evening at the parsonage, Sonderby had spoken 
 of Floyd s fondness for talking about his work, and 
 she was struck by the similarity of the tone in 
 which both these persons had commented upon the 
 fact. She did not quite like Mrs. Floyd s way of 
 speaking: there was too little reverence in it for 
 the husband s art. 
 
 " It must be a wonderful pleasure to you, Mrs. 
 Floyd," she said, "to see these beautiful things 
 growing under your eyes, and to feel that you have 
 a part in them." 
 
 " Yes ? " There was an appreciable rising inflec- 
 
THE BROVGHTON HOUSE. 99 
 
 tion in Tiyphena s voice, enough to puzzle Mrs. 
 Ellerton. 
 
 " Were you abroad with your husband? 
 
 " Xo." She did not even look up. 
 
 " That would have been so delightful, to be 
 there together, would it not? Don t you think 
 
 so, Mr. Sonderby?" 
 
 u Oh, yes," exclaimed Sonderby, hastily. 
 
 ki Perhaps he will feel like going again some 
 time. Mr. Ellerton and I want to go so much. 
 
 Mrs. Floyd made no response, except to twist 
 tighter about her slender fingers the cheap black- 
 bordered handkerchief that was in her lap. Son 
 derby fanned himself persistently. 
 
 Mrs. Ellerton discovered that she was almost 
 provoked. Of all hard people to talk to, these two 
 were certainly the hardest. If Arthur were only 
 there ! 
 
 She could not know that underneath Sonderby s 
 stolid manner there was hidden almost a nervous 
 desire that she and Mrs. Floyd might get on well 
 together. He was anxious that these two women 
 should not misunderstand each other, so different 
 as they were. Ever since his evening at the par 
 sonage he had been wishing 1 that they might meet, 
 that they might be friends. There they were at 
 his side: and though he felt that he understood 
 each one of them, somewhat, he instinctively saw 
 that they were making no progress toward mutual 
 acquaintance, and that he was not helping them. 
 
100 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 Mrs. Floyd was in one of her silent moods, which 
 seemed to Sonderby to have increased within the 
 past few days, and which appeared beyond reach of 
 any conversational artifices that the school-teacher 
 possessed. Mrs. Ellerton was glancing furtively 
 toward the hotel, hoping that her husband might 
 be coming. Sonderby racked his brain for some 
 thing to talk about, then remembered that she had 
 asked him a question about etching, the previous 
 Saturday, which he could not then answer. 
 
 " Oh," he exclaimed, " I have looked up that 
 matter about the preparation of the plates for dry- 
 points, and I think we were both right, in part." 
 And he proceeded, to Mrs. Ellerton s great relief, 
 to give a detailed and careful explanation of the 
 process in question. But part of the time she was 
 only pretending to listen ; she was really thinking 
 of Floyd s portrait of Sonderby, and whether it 
 was stronger than his face actually was, and what 
 was his place in this Broughton House quartette, 
 whose acquaintance she was making. 
 
 She had been suspecting all along that he was 
 of finer grain than the others, and that they were 
 not doing him any good. Yet she had found Col 
 lins exceedingly agreeable ; and though she hardly 
 liked Floyd, she was sure that his artist qualities 
 must be the result of some high and noble strain 
 in him, which she had not sufficiently taken into 
 account, else how could he have such appreciation 
 of the lovely things in the world ? She could even 
 
THE BROUGHTOX HOUSE. 101 
 
 almost forgive his ignorance of Holbein. As 
 for Mrs. Floyd, the minister s wife felt a tender 
 ness for her in her evident bereavement, and a pity 
 for her shyness ; but she was irritated that Mrs. 
 Floyd s talk should be so unsympathetic, and she 
 wondered why John Sonderby seemed to know the 
 artist s wife so well, and what sort of an influence 
 the latter was likely to have over him. Ruth Eller- 
 ton was a woman, as well as a minister s wife. 
 
 Just as Sonderby was finishing his explanation, 
 Floyd joined the group, and a few moments after 
 Ellerton and Collins came strolling over from the 
 hotel, the latter with a fresh cigar in his ringers. 
 They had had a glorious fishing talk, ranging from 
 the trout-brooks of Ellerton s boyhood, in Western 
 Pennsylvania, up to the great salmon of the Resti- 
 gouche and the St. John, where Collins had fished 
 repeatedly. 
 
 Mrs. Ellerton rose at once, and her husband 
 pulled out his watch, and then laughed. 
 
 u Excuse me, my dear, he cried. A whole 
 half-hour! Well, I declare! Mrs. Floyd, will 
 you pardon me for running away? " 
 
 Mrs. Floyd, who had risen too, smiled at him. 
 She could understand the voluble, cheery young 
 fellow so much better than she could his wife, who 
 seemed, in some way, off up above her. The ladies 
 shook hands. Then Ellerton stepped forward in 
 his turn, and while Mrs. Floyd put out her hand 
 to him much less timidly than she had extended 
 
102 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 it a moment before to take the daintily gloved 
 hand of his wife he seemed to remember his 
 pastoral function, and said something about the 
 church, turning to Floyd likewise as he spoke, but 
 not changing his key at all, and referring to a 
 church service as simply as he had to a fishing-rod. 
 That was a part of the charm of Arthur Ellerton. 
 
 Sonderby happened to be standing by Mrs. 
 Ellerton, and in the moment of waiting she turned 
 to him. 
 
 " Have you decided about next winter ? " she 
 asked. 
 
 " No," he answered, bluntly. " The truth is," 
 and his small blue eyes looked squarely into her 
 great gray ones, u I can t decide. I don t know 
 but I m letting the summer decide for me. And 
 do you think it makes much difference, anyway, 
 where a man is ? " 
 
 " Oh, it does make a difference ! " she exclaimed, 
 with a troubled voice. " You mustn t think that 
 it doesn t ! " 
 
 " Come, my dear," interrupted Ellerton, gaily. 
 " We have effectually broken up the whist-party, 
 I fear. Next Monday then, we will say, Mr. Col 
 lins, at five sharp. Good afternoon, all." 
 
 The others bowed. 
 
 " Pardon me, madam," cried Collins, as he took 
 a quick step forward and snapped a big rose-bug 
 deftly from Mrs. EllertorTs collar; " but you were 
 carrying away something from the premises." 
 
THE SBOUGHTOy HOUSE. 103 
 
 She thanked him, and under cover of a general 
 laugh, the Ellertons withdrew. 
 
 Floyd stood looking at Mrs. Ellerton s tall fig 
 ure as she disappeared. He had seen the crawling 
 rose-bug sooner than Collins, and might have had 
 the smiling thanks himself, if he had not hesitated. 
 Confound it, but she was a superb woman for a 
 parson s wife, and how she had praised his pic 
 tures ! Women like that could appreciate him. 
 
 "Well," said Collins, "how about that whist?" 
 
 " There s time for half a dozen hands," replied 
 Sonderby, looking at his watch. Mrs. Floyd had 
 already placed her rocking-chair at the table, on the 
 opposite side from the bench. Sonderby pulled off 
 his coat, and spreading it over the bench for a cush 
 ion sat down to play as her partner, looking very 
 comfortable in his gray flannel shirt. 
 
 "It s your deal, Floyd," Collins remarked; 
 "remember we have the lead now," and he pro 
 duced the well-used markers. 
 
 But Floyd seemed to be out of temper, for some 
 reason or other, and made a misdeal. 
 
V. 
 
 FIVE o clock of the next Monday morning, how 
 ever, did not see Collins and Ellerton starting upon 
 their fishing excursion. It witnessed, instead, a 
 downpour of rain so persistent and heavy that it 
 put even trout-fishing out of the question. The 
 rain had indeed begun upon Saturday afternoon, 
 shortly after the stage had brought an unusually 
 full quota of strangers to the Broughton House. 
 A few drops fell before the mail was distributed. 
 
 Bill Trumbull, standing at the southeast corner 
 of the hotel piazza, and slowly surveying the dif 
 ferent points of the compass, was surrounded by 
 a group of the newcomers, anxious to learn the 
 probabilities. It is curious how soon strangers in 
 a New England town will detect the most weather- 
 wise natives, and how respectfully they will accept 
 whatever decisions the experienced weather proph 
 ets condescend to give them. Bill Trumbull had 
 watched New England weather too long, and was 
 too old a hotel man, to be over-positive in his dec 
 larations as to the weather in store for Sunday ; 
 but beneath his cabalistic remarks about "a wet 
 moon," and the " wind backin round," there was 
 certainly revealed a conviction that they were " in 
 for a wet spell." 
 104 
 
THE BROUGHTOX HOUSE. 105 
 
 "You see," he remarked, benevolently, point 
 ing with his pipe toward the gray folds of cloud 
 that were steadily wrapping themselves around the 
 southern and eastern hills, "the wind is settin 
 right from the west, just as it has ben all day. 
 But those ere clouds to the east ard keep a comin 
 up all the same, n when you git the wind comin 
 up one way, and the rain comin up the opposite, 
 at least round here, yes ma am, I m a-pointin 
 toward the east why, then the rain never stops 
 till the Lord stops it." 
 
 Sure enough, by supper-time there was a spiteful 
 shower, which whipped tiny branches from the 
 elms all along the street, laid the thick July dust, 
 and freshened the grass wonderfully. But after 
 the shower had passed, there were no signs of 
 clearer weather, and a fine rain kept falling as it 
 grew dark. Evans glided around the piazza, among 
 his guests, and promised them better things for the 
 morrow, in spite of the opinion expressed by Bill 
 Trumbull, between whom and Evans no love was 
 lost as time went by. Trumbull watched Evans 
 now with some amazement, and confided to Collins 
 his sarcastic opinion of the Welshman s knowl 
 edge of Broughton weather. 
 
 Notwithstanding the dampness, the whist quar 
 tette played for a while upon the middle of the 
 piazza, in the light of the reflector. It grew 
 chilly finally, and when Mrs. Floyd had coughed 
 once or twice, Sonderby proposed that they should 
 
106 THE I3ROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 go into the office, where there was a big blaze in 
 the fireplace. Trumbull was in his accustomed 
 seat, telling fish stories to a gentleman who had 
 come up that afternoon. A lady with eyeglasses 
 was inspecting the adornments of the office, more 
 particularly the portrait of Daniel Webster, and 
 the map of the county roads. 
 
 Mrs. Floyd seated herself in one of the hospitable 
 wooden chairs by the fire, and extended her feet as 
 near as she dared to the burning maple logs. The 
 school-teacher sat next her, while Floyd and Collins 
 filled their pipes and listened the latter for the 
 twentieth time to the account Bill was giving of 
 the way he and his younger brother had once taken 
 twenty-five pounds of trout in one day out of the 
 Johnson brook. It Avas before the war that this 
 famous fishing occurred, and with each year Bill s 
 narration of it grew more thrilling and richer in 
 detail. The stranger absorbed it eagerly, and once 
 or twice when the tale reached a situation so re 
 markable as almost to appear unveracious, Bill 
 Trumbull turned gravely to Collins for confirma 
 tion, which Collins s own experiences seemed per 
 fectly adapted to supply. The " Broughton House " 
 stopped with the piazza and the new part, after all ; 
 here in the office the atmosphere was still that of 
 " Trumbull s." A sort of miraculous air it was, in 
 which every listener breathed in a predisposition to 
 faith, and where the veriest sceptic might be con 
 vinced by simply pointing out the indubitable length 
 
THE BBOUGHTOX HOUSE. 107 
 
 of certain trout cut as an imperishable sign upon 
 the oak mantel-piece. 
 
 But suppose one does not care for any of these 
 things ? Suppose the person sitting in * 4 Trum- 
 bull s " is a woman, looking back upon an isolated 
 childhood, an ignorant girlhood, an unsatisfying 
 marriage ; a woman with strong yet variable im 
 pulses, with yearning affections, and an empty 
 heart ; a woman looking forward to the great crisis 
 of her life ? Or suppose the person is a man, like 
 wise with a lonely youth behind him. a man power 
 fully moulded in mind as well as body, but never 
 brought under the dominion of an inspiring pur 
 pose ; a man whose best years had been selfish, sol 
 itary ones, who is touched at last by a profound 
 solicitude for a woman whose deepest grief he can 
 only guess at, and toward whom he can ill define 
 his own feeling, save that he wonders if the feeling, 
 whatever it may be, is stronger than his will ? 
 
 For persons like these, " Trumbull s " can do 
 nothing. They may sit there side by side, and gaze 
 steadily into the glowing mass of maple embers, 
 while the flame plays on their faces : they may well 
 see strange shapes and forms of things deep down 
 in the glowing innermost heart of the burning 
 coals, and the fire may whisper to them and answer 
 their mute questionings, perhaps ; but they will not 
 hear any of Bill Trumbuirs fishing-stories. 
 
 " Phenie," Floyd had to cry at last, k - Collins is 
 speaking to you." 
 
108 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 Mrs. Floyd started and looked around at her 
 husband. The stranger and the lady with eye 
 glasses had gone. Collins was rapping the ashes 
 out of his pipe. 
 
 " Want to sing? " he asked. 
 
 " Oh, yes, if Mr. Evans won t put us out ; it s 
 too cold over at the cottage, and I d rather stay 
 here. But I m not sure that the people who have 
 just come will appreciate our singing, Mr. Col 
 lins." 
 
 She spoke more than she commonly did, as if to 
 make up for her inattention at the beginning. 
 
 " Well, they ll have to get used to it," drawled 
 Collins, rising. " And Evans won t put us out. 
 Will he, Bill?" 
 
 Trumbull chuckled. "I guess not." 
 
 " Come on, Sonderby," said Collins, as the trio 
 crossed the hall to enter the little old parlor, where 
 stood a battered, yellow-keyed melodeon. 
 
 " No," replied Sonderby, without taking his eyes 
 off the fire, " I think I ll stay here." 
 
 Trumbull refilled his pipe, silently. He never 
 went into the parlor of the hotel nowadays. 
 
 Collins seated himself at the melodeon, Avith Mr. 
 and Mrs. Floyd standing on either side, and began 
 to turn over the leaves of a song-book. He knew 
 enough about music to play his own accompani 
 ments fairly well, and he could sing a magnificent 
 bass, of sensuous richness and remarkable compass, 
 though he was not always strictly on the key. 
 
THE BEOUGHTQy HOUSE. 109 
 
 He was passionately fond of singing, and had 
 persuaded the others to keep him company, though 
 they did not add much to the musical value of the 
 performance. Mrs. Floyd could carry the air 
 pretty well, after she had learned it, and Floyd 
 was trying to persuade himself, after having disas 
 trously failed to persuade the others, that he could 
 sing tenor. Sonderby sometimes stood up with 
 them, not caring to shut himself out of the circle, 
 and chased the air a little, an octave below, but he 
 had no illusion as to the nature of his success. 
 
 But to-night Sonderby kept staring at the fire, 
 while the trio sang one song after another. Collins 
 was in high spirits, and persisted in alternating selec 
 tions from Moody and Sankey s hymn-book with the 
 more worldly melodies, singing all with equal fer 
 vor. The mixture pleased Floyd, whose reverential 
 sentiments had never been much developed, and 
 did not seem to shock Mrs. Floyd, who sang 
 straight through whatever she happened to know, 
 and hummed the rest, without seeming to care 
 much what it was all about. 
 
 Out in the office Bill Trumbull smoked and lis 
 tened, and called once, greatly to Collins s delight, 
 for a repetition of a well-known revival hymn, 
 though he did not tell them that the reason he 
 wanted to hear it again was that it had once been 
 a favorite with Mis Trumbull." The rain kept 
 surging against the office windows at intervals, and 
 now and then the wind would find its way down 
 
110 THE J3EOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 the huge winding chimney and brighten the maple 
 logs with its sudden breath. 
 
 The " rainy spell " had set in, in earnest. 
 After a while Floyd come back and stretched 
 himself out in a chair by Trumbull, muttering 
 something about a duet and not being wanted. 
 There was some preliminary turning of leaves and 
 trying of keys, and then Collinses superb voice 
 broke in with the words of a song he had picked 
 up in a chamber concert at New York, the pre 
 ceding winter. 
 
 Kiss me to-day, 
 
 Wait not the morrow; 
 
 Waiting is sorrow, 
 
 Love me to-day ! 
 
 Then Mrs. Floyd s faint, but clear soprano made 
 
 answer, 
 
 Love me to-morrow, 
 Like me to-day ; 
 Kisses betray, 
 Kiss me to-morrow ! 
 
 and the bass began again, 
 
 Kiss me to-day, 
 only to meet the soprano s, 
 
 Kiss me to-morrow, 
 
 and the contest recommenced, until the parts, 
 through inextricable weavings of phrase, and 
 change and interchange and repetition of entreaty 
 
THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. Ill 
 
 and denial, blended at last in a soft minor chord, 
 and one could not say which had triumphed. 
 
 " To-day " and " to-morrow " " love me " 
 "like me* there is the true stuff for a song 
 there, however the phrases be written or however 
 they may be sung. 
 
 Perhaps John Sonderby thought so, as he sat 
 there moodily, and watched with his irresolute blue 
 eyes the leaping of the irresolute blue flames. " To 
 day " "to-morrow" "love me" "like me"? 
 His heart was in a tumult. It had been closed 
 too long upon the rest of human kind, and neither 
 man nor woman had ever come into his life to stir 
 it very deeply. But a change had come. A great 
 master of tender speech prayed once for those who 
 are initiated by sorrow into the brotherhood of the 
 great human family; yet sorrow is not the only 
 initiator: her sister, pity, has an equal share in 
 the divine and beneficent task. Pity had opened 
 his heart wide. 
 
 In vain did he lean forward, and with unsteady 
 hand push the pieces of the breaking log together 
 to make a hotter flame, and try to close his ears 
 against those haunting catches of music. " Love 
 me? Like me?" He had to take his turn with 
 the rest of the world. 
 
 When Collins and Mrs. Floyd had finished, they 
 found Sonderby standing with his back to the fire. 
 
 " Good night," he said, as they came toward the 
 fireplace. " I m going to bed." 
 
112 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 As he disappeared up the staircase, Collins re 
 marked : 
 
 " He seems a little blue to-night." 
 
 " The rain," put in Mrs. Floyd, " is enough to 
 make any one blue." 
 
 " Oh, it isn t the rain that ails Sonderby," re 
 joined Collins. " The truth is, he ought to get 
 out of Broughton. He needs to be waked up. I 
 put him on the track of a job in Boston, two or 
 three weeks ago, that would just suit him, with an 
 electric company. Sonderby is a good fellow, but 
 he is a little slow; and the longer he stays in 
 Broughton, the slower he ll get. Isn t that your 
 experience, Bill ? " 
 
 He turned to Trumbull, facetiously. Trumbull 
 had listened with interest to Collins s attempt at 
 analysis, but did not altogether agree. 
 
 " Wai," he said, deliberately, " those winters 
 when I was down to Boston, in the Legislature, I 
 naturally took some account of the folks down there, 
 n I didn t find any that was smarter that is, the 
 smart ones than smart folks right here in Brough 
 ton. That ain t it. Some folks are born smart 
 pushers, drivers, you know. There w T as Mis 
 Trumbull," - and he hesitated, while the vacant 
 look came into his eyes. 
 
 " You mean," said Mrs. Floyd, gently, thinking 
 to help him out, " that it doesn t make any differ 
 ence where one lives." 
 
 Floyd made an impatient exclamation. 
 
THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 113 
 
 She went on without heeding him " that if 
 you re born to be smart, you will be smart ; and 
 that if you ain t " 
 
 " You won t," assisted Collins. 
 
 " Exactly," concluded Bill Trumbull, looking 
 admiringly at Tryphena Floyd, whom he had al 
 ways liked, ever since she was a child. " Wai, I 
 "spose I must be gittin across the street. Nigh 
 on to ten o clock, ain t it ? Sho ! Pesky rain, 
 ain t it? Good night good night," and he shuf 
 fled off. 
 
 " We must go too," said Mrs. Floyd. 
 
 " Haven t you any umbrella ? " asked Collins. 
 " Here, mine is in the corner. You ought to have 
 some rubbers too." 
 
 " She won t need them," said Floyd. 
 
 Collins looked doubtful. "See here, Johnny," 
 lie cried to the stable-boy, who had just come into 
 the office. " Take a lantern and show them to the 
 cottage. Find a dry place to get across, now. * 
 
 Mrs. Floyd looked up at the manufacturer, grate 
 fully. " Thank you," she said. 
 
 When the stable-boy came back, and set down 
 his dripping lantern by the fireplace, Collins had 
 gone, and the office was empty. The boy blew 
 out the lamps, and pulling Bill Trumbull s cush 
 ioned chair close up to the dying fire, dried his 
 fingers and his heavy shoes, and amused himself 
 by trying to find horses heads in the coals. He 
 fell asleep after a while, and when he awoke, the 
 
114 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 office was so dark and dismal, and the rain tapped 
 at the windows in such a ghostly fashion, that he 
 locked the front door of the silent hotel, and 
 climbed up to the attic to bed. 
 
 All night long the rain fell, and from time to 
 time the thunder rumbled over the hills, yet so 
 distant was it that one could hardly have told 
 whether it were thunder, or only the roar of a 
 freight train climbing a long grade down at the 
 Center, whence a favorable wind sometimes carried 
 the toilsome sound even as far as Broughton. 
 
 Sonderby, wakened for a moment, thought that 
 it was the midnight freight, and falling to sleep 
 again, dreamed that a train was carrying him away 
 from Broughton, and that his heart was strangely 
 light ; yet that he did not Avish to go, and tried to 
 leap from the platform, but failed, for his feet were 
 so heavy that he could not stir them. Then the 
 dream changed, and he was bow oar in his college 
 boat again, pulling desperately ; but instead of his 
 college mates the boat was manned by the minis 
 ter and his wife, Collins, and Mr. and Mrs. Floyd. 
 Mrs. Floyd was pulling stroke, her slim white arms 
 bare and rigid, and she quickened the pace till the 
 felon on his hand hurt so cruelly that he woke. 
 
 It was almost morning, and he did not go to 
 sleep again. 
 
 When he came down to breakfast, Collins was 
 already there, his high spirits of the preceding 
 evening fortified by a good night s rest, and unde- 
 
THE BROUGHTOS HOUSE. 115 
 
 terred by the prospect of a rainy Sunday. He 
 talked to Sonderby a good deal about the elec 
 tric company in Boston, and seemed pleased when 
 the school-teacher said that he had been thinking 
 the matter over seriously, and was rather inclined 
 to go. 
 
 " That s right," approved Collins. " You ought 
 to get out of this place, Sonderby, and make some 
 money. You are just the man they want, I know. 
 You d better write in the morning that you ll take 
 the offer." 
 
 " Well/ hesitated Sonderby, " there is no espe 
 cial hurry. I understood that their busy season 
 did not begin for three weeks or so, and that any 
 time before that " 
 
 u But that s not business," Collins interrupted. 
 " If you re going at all, there s no time to spare. 
 You want to get acquainted with the ways of 
 things down there before the busy season begins. 
 Why don t you go right off ? " 
 
 "I can t," replied Sonderby. 
 
 The manufacturer eyed him, sidewise, narrowly. 
 
 "You can t, eh? Why the dickens can t you? 
 Xot that I want to get rid of you, my boy," he 
 added, in a more kindly fashion. " It would knock 
 our quartette higher than a kite. But because I 
 am loafing up here half the summer, waiting for 
 those devilish strikers to get read} to go to work, 
 that s no reason why a young fellow like you, with 
 this big chance all ready for you, should sit around 
 
116 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 in this little country town, and get hayseed in your 
 hair." 
 
 Sonderby laughed. 
 
 "It s no laughing matter," persisted Collins, seri 
 ously. "I tell you the quicker you get out of 
 Broughton and into the A. S. & F. Works, the 
 better off you ll be. And now I ve said all I m 
 going to. It s none of my business, anyway." 
 
 " I am very grateful to you, Collins," said Son 
 derby, earnestly. 
 
 " That s all right. Now if you ll only pack up, 
 I ll believe you. You hang along as if there were 
 some woman in the case : as if " 
 
 " Hush up ! " 
 
 Collins stopped, lifting his black eyebrows a 
 trifle. He had only been joking in that last sen 
 tence, and Sonderby had spoken angrily. Ah! 
 And Collins closed his eyes as he took a long, med 
 itative draught from his coffee-cup. 
 
 Tryphena Floyd had just come in, and was tak 
 ing her seat opposite Sonderby. Her husband fol 
 lowed her, a moment later, and the conversation 
 turned, naturally enough, to the subject of the 
 weather. 
 
 A Sunday morning in a New England country 
 town ! Most of the people who had come up from 
 the Center in the Broughton stage the day before 
 had a definite vision of the morrow that awaited 
 them. It should be a bright morning, just warm 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 117 
 
 enough to make one realize how hot it would have 
 been in the city, and there should be enough breeze 
 to bend the meadow grasses, and rustle in the elm- 
 tops, and waft the white clouds slowly on their 
 way. It should be a quiet morning, with hardly 
 any sound except from the bobolinks, until the 
 church-bells began to ring, and the farm wagons to 
 rattle by on their way to church ; and in the white 
 meeting-house itself the windows should be wide 
 open, and if one did not like the minister, he could 
 help himself to a big old-fashioned palm-leaf fan, 
 and look outdoors, across the stone walls and 
 country roads and raspberry bushes to the mead 
 ows, and dream his childish dreams over again, and 
 gently fan himself to sleep. 
 
 But alas! this particular Sunday morning in 
 Broughton was destined to be a disappointment to 
 the visionaries. 
 
 The elm-tops swayed in the wind, indeed, but 
 they shook showers of drops from their dripping 
 leaves ; the road along Main Street was three inches 
 thick with mud. the grass in the meadows was 
 lodged with the violence of the storm, and a cold 
 rain fell incessantly. The wind had blown the 
 rain in upon the piazza of the hotel, and the chairs 
 were so wet that no one could sit out there. Evans 
 ordered a fire built in the sheet-iron stove in the 
 parlor, and another in the fireplace in the office ; 
 and the guests tried, dispiritedly, to make them 
 selves as comfortable as they could. 
 
118 THE BEOUGIITON HOUSE. 
 
 The quartette of " regulars " had some difficulty 
 in arranging their programme for the morning. 
 Floyd, who was in 110 humor for work, even had 
 the weather permitted, proposed whist ; but Mrs. 
 Floyd would not play, and Sonderby did not seem 
 enthusiastic. Collins said he had some letters to 
 write ; but when Floyd challenged him to a game 
 of euchre, he seemed willing to defer them. 
 
 " Evans," he remarked, calling the proprietor 
 into a corner of the office, " Mr. Floyd and I are 
 going to have a little game of euchre up in my 
 room. And Evans the morning is likely to be 
 cold." 
 
 " Yes, sir," replied Evans, intelligently. " With 
 lemons? " 
 
 " If you please." 
 
 Though Evans affirmed in the March town-meet 
 ing, and everywhere else, that he kept a " strictly 
 temperance house," it was evident that he was not 
 without experience in the art of running a hotel. 
 The Broughton farmers who voted " no license " 
 religiously every spring, after having consumed 
 hard cider all the winter, would have been shocked 
 enough if they had known of the Welshman s sub- 
 cellar. 
 
 When Collins and Floyd went upstairs, the 
 school-teacher and Mrs. Floyd were left in the 
 parlor, standing with three or four other people 
 around the sheet-iron stove. Mrs. Floyd seemed 
 ill at ease there, and after replying once or twice 
 
THE BROUGHTOX HOUSE. 
 
 to Sonderby s attempts at starting a conversation, 
 she whispered to him, * ; Come, let s go over to the 
 cottage." 
 
 He followed her into the hall. 
 
 " Why not ? " she asked, seeing his inquiring 
 look. "We can build a fire in the sitting-room. I 
 don t know why I didn t think of it before." 
 
 Sonderby took his hat and umbrella without a 
 word. 
 
 Wait till I get on my rubbers," she said, 
 eagerly. 
 
 Then holding his umbrella over her, he piloted 
 her across the stable road, now a rivulet, and 
 under the drenched lilac bushes, to the front door 
 of the cottage. 
 
 It happened that Collins, who had just stepped 
 to the window of his room to open the shutters, 
 caught sight of the pair under the umbrella. He 
 looked at them reflectively until they disappeared, 
 but for some reason or other he made no comments 
 to Floyd. 
 
 Tryphena, pulling off her waterproof and rub 
 bers in the tiny hall, opened the door of the 
 sitting-room. 
 
 " Will you walk into my parlor ? " she cried. 
 
 Sonderby watched her silently as she ran across 
 the room and closed the bedroom door. Then 
 she took off the top of the square, soapstone stove, 
 and surveyed the inside. 
 
 " What do you think ?" she demanded. " Don t 
 
120 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 you believe it will heat up ? It s most worn out, 
 though." 
 
 Sonderby took the heavy top from her hand, 
 and looked down into the huge, sooty interior. 
 His only answer was a smile, and that a rather 
 vacant one ; for the sight of her hand, tense in its 
 hold upon the soapstone lid, had made him think 
 of his dream of the night before. Was she the 
 stroke oar, and was she setting a pace too quick 
 for him, in spite of all he could do ? 
 
 He gathered himself together. " Oh, I guess 
 we can manage it," he said. " Where did your 
 aunt keep her kindling-wood?" 
 
 She led the way to the woodshed, in the rear of 
 the cottage, and gave him a basket which he filled 
 with chips and bits of old apple-tree wood, she 
 helping all the time, in the highest spirits. 
 
 u Give me the basket," directed Mrs. Floyd, 
 " and bring an armful of wood. You must make 
 yourself useful, if you expect me to take care of 
 you." 
 
 He picked up three or four sticks. 
 
 "Now bring one of those big chunks," she 
 ordered. "Aunt Tryphena used to have them 
 left big on purpose. Oh, I don t mean at the same 
 time with the others ! " 
 
 He had stooped and lifted a huge knot of maple, 
 in addition to what he held before. 
 
 " How strong you are ! " she said, admiringly, 
 then blushed a little and started for the sitting- 
 
THE BROUGHTOX HOUSE. 121 
 
 room, Sonderby following. He put down his 
 armful in front of the stove, breathing hard, but 
 not altogether because of the weight he had 
 carried. 
 
 "We must have some paper now," Tryphena 
 exclaimed, and going to the paper-rack that hung 
 against the wall by the window, she pulled out two 
 or three dustv copies of the The New York Observer. 
 
 " Don t you think these will burn ? " she asked. 
 
 "You mean that they are dry enough?" 
 
 " Well, Mr. Quickness ! Yes." 
 
 He was beginning to catch her infectious spirits. 
 Tearing the papers and crumpling them into loose 
 balls, he filled the bottom of the stove, and covered 
 them, as artistically as he could, with the least 
 mouldy chips, and a few splinters of wood. Then 
 Tryphena struck a match, turned the rusty damper 
 in the pipe, and touched off the papers. They 
 smoked prodigiously, but no flame appeared, and 
 she dropped on her knees and blew at the lower 
 draught, laughing meanwhile. 
 
 "Help," she bubbled. "You don t help at all." 
 
 Sonderby knelt too, and taking a big breath, 
 blew steadily upon the smoking paper, while Try 
 phena, her cheeks full of color with the unusual 
 effort she had made, watched him eagerly. A thin 
 flame spurted, then another. 
 
 " All right," said Sonderby, getting up and 
 brushing involuntarily the knees of his trousers. 
 
 " You re not very complimentary to my floor," 
 
122 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 she commented; "but never mind. Now let s sit 
 down and be comfortable." 
 
 Soiiderby had never seen her so gay. She 
 brought her own low rocker for herself, and pushed 
 toward him a high-backed, deep-cushioned chair, 
 that had been the peculiar property of Aunt 
 Tryphena. As they seated themselves on opposite 
 sides of the stove, it came over Sonderby that he 
 had been a fool ; that she was nothing but a girl 
 a girl of twenty-two, like three or four who had 
 been under him at the academy that she was 
 girlishly happy at heart, after all, and that his fears 
 for her, and his nervous dream about himself, Avere 
 the purest nonsense. He breathed freer. How 
 light her talk was, too, as she rattled on, about 
 Collins and Bill Trumbull and the lady with eye 
 glasses, and the last game of whist, while the fire 
 crackled merrily in the old stove, and the wet lilac 
 bushes dripped against the windows ! 
 
 There was such an odd flavor of sarcasm in all 
 she said, such a quaint way of putting things. 
 Sonderby had hardly more to do than to express 
 his assent or dissent. Moment by moment a 
 weight was rising from his heart. He had been 
 a sort of well-intentioned idiot, he kept thinking 
 to himself ; he ought to have known that he knew 
 nothing about women. 
 
 He, John Sonderby, boating-man, school-teacher, 
 posing as the discoverer of a woman s secret, the 
 sentimental meddler, the suspecter of his own 
 
THE BROUGHTOS HOUSE. 123 
 
 motives, the dreamer of unhealthy dreams? It- 
 was really too absurd. 
 
 He put the knot of maple into the stove, and 
 gave himself up to the happiness of frank, cosey 
 companionship with a woman he liked. An hour 
 passed, the happiest hour he had ever known. 
 
 They fell to comparing notes about their child 
 hood, and it appeared that their circumstances had 
 not been unlike. Sonderby s parents were no lon 
 ger living, and for years he had had to shift for 
 himself. He told Mi s. Floyd about his colleo-e 
 
 <- O 
 
 life, about the way he happened to come to Brough- 
 ton to take the school, and how he had stayed along 
 for three years. She listened amusedly to some of 
 his teaching experiences, understanding thoroughly, 
 on the one hand, the strong hold he had upon his 
 pupils, which had made the academy more pros 
 perous under his management than it had been 
 for many a year, and appreciating, 011 the other 
 hand, the prevailing Broughton dubiousness as to 
 the status of an academy teacher who seldom went 
 to church, who omitted the extempore prayer from 
 the devotional exercises with which the school ses 
 sion opened, and who talked to his scholars so 
 earnestly about common morality as to give rise to 
 the suspicion that he was a Unitarian. 
 
 She made him laugh, in turn, by telling him 
 some of her own adventures in the academy as a 
 schoolgirl, and little by little he found that he was 
 constructing for himself the whole of her life up 
 
124 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 till the time of her marriage. He felt as if he 
 knew her better than ever before ; and though she 
 did not once mention her marriage nor her hus 
 band, honest John Sonderby had a conviction that 
 that was sacred ground upon which she would not 
 enter with him, however strong their feeling of 
 comradeship might be. He wanted to ask her 
 advice about himself, about the position with the 
 A. S. & F. Company. So strong was his revulsion 
 of feeling against the mood he had been in the night 
 before, that he was conscious of a longing to con 
 sult her about leaving Broughton, feeling that that 
 very act would be a kind of expiation of the fact 
 that on the preceding evening leaving Broughton 
 meant chiefly to him an abandonment of her. 
 
 " I should like," he said, " to ask you about some 
 thing that concerns me pretty closely." 
 
 " Yes ? " she answered. 
 
 If he had not been intent on what he was saying, 
 he might have noticed that a sort of lassitude had 
 gradually taken possession of her. The sparkle 
 had begun to go out of her eyes, and the brilliant, 
 transient mood seemed to have left her weary. 
 
 " I have had a good position offered me in Bos 
 ton," he went on, " with the A. S. & F. Company." 
 
 " You are going away," she cried, drearily. " I 
 heard you say so to Mrs. Ellerton ; Mr. Collins 
 told us so last night. You are going away." 
 
 " I don t know," he stammered. " The salary 
 It is a very good position." 
 
THE BROUGHTOy HOUSE. 125 
 
 * ; Oh, yes," she said. " The money. Of course. 
 We must have something to live for money or 
 art," 
 
 The sudden bitterness of Tryphena s voice fright 
 ened him. It swept away the security in which he 
 had been sheltering himself all the morning, and 
 the old fear and uncertainty rushed back upon him. 
 
 I may not go," he stammered again. I don t 
 know." 
 
 " You are going," she murmured, and he thought 
 he saw a terror steal into her eyes. 
 
 " No," he cried, blundering straight to the heart 
 of the matter, " I wont go if I can stay and help 
 you." 
 
 There was a long instant of silence. Then she 
 rose and stretched out her slim white hand ; and 
 Sonderby thought, even in that intense moment, 
 of his dream. 
 
 " John Sonderby," she said, quite simply and 
 quietly, taking his right hand, "you are a good 
 man. But you can t help me. Xo one can help 
 me." 
 
 Then she relinquished her grasp, and sinking 
 into her chair, covered her cheeks with her hands, 
 but not enough to hide the swift-coming blushes. 
 Sonderby stood looking at her, crushing down a 
 fierce desire to take her in his arms. 
 
 " I m tired now : I guess I m too tired." 
 
 He understood her, and turning without a word, 
 opened the door, and strode out into the rain. 
 
126 THE BEOUGIITON HOUSE. 
 
 At the door of the Broughton House Collins 
 met him. " Floyd beat me at euchre," he remarked, 
 peculiarly, "and he felt so well over it, that he 
 got Johnny to drive him down to the Center. 
 Shouldn t wonder if he didn t get back till to 
 morrow." 
 
 "Is that so?" replied Sonderby, dryly, hardly 
 knowing what he said, or what Collins really 
 meant, though the slight odor of whiskey punch 
 that clung to the manufacturer might have en 
 lightened him. As the school-teacher passed the 
 door of the parlor, he saw the lady with eye-glasses 
 seated at the melodeon, turning over Collins s 
 music, which still remained on the rack from the 
 previous evening. While he was mechanically 
 mounting the stairs to his room, she began upon 
 the soprano of the duet : 
 
 Love me to-morrow, 
 Like me to-day ; 
 Kisses betray, 
 Kiss me to-morrow ! 
 
 and poor Sonderby, gripping the balustrade with 
 one hand, stopped to listen and thought of the 
 night before, and saw again the crouching figure 
 he had left in the cottage, and felt a passionate 
 wrath rising in his heart against Floyd, against 
 Collins, and against the whole vulgar, brutal world. 
 
VI. 
 
 MRS. FLOYD did not appear at dinner. Collins 
 was in a jovial frame of mind, and, failing to get 
 much talk out of Sonderby, tried with some success 
 to cultivate the acquaintance of the table-waitress, 
 a recent arrival from the Center. The school 
 teacher ate silently, except when his left-hand 
 neighbor, the gentleman upon whom Bill Trum- 
 bull had exercised his story-telling gift, questioned 
 him about the drives and the scenery near Brough- 
 ton. Sonderby replied as courteously as he could, 
 and, though his mind was not really on what he 
 was saying, he surprised himself by an unusual 
 fluency and readiness. 
 
 When the dessert was served, Collins tried him 
 again. 
 
 "What are you going to do this afternoon. Son- 
 derby?" 
 
 " I have something to do at the academy." 
 
 "What, Sunday?" 
 
 " Yes, some reading." As a matter of fact, he had 
 not thought of the afternoon until Collins spoke. 
 
 " I didn t know but you d be over at the cottage 
 again," said Collins, encouragingly, balancing a 
 piece of berry pie upon his fork. 
 
 127 
 
128 THE J3ROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 Sonderby made no answer, and Collins dropped 
 the subject. 
 
 " By the way," the manufacturer inquired, as 
 Sonderby was folding his napkin, " have you writ 
 ten that letter yet?" 
 
 " Not yet," was the stiff reply. Sonderby felt 
 the blood rising to his face. Collins smiled im- 
 perturbably; and Sonderby, the impotent wrath 
 coining into his throat again, left the table. 
 
 " Who is he ? " said the waitress, familiarly, as 
 she stood by Collins s chair. 
 
 "He s the school-teacher, Kittle," replied Col 
 lins, holding out his glass for some ice-water, " and 
 a first-rate fellow. He s a little off color to-day, 
 though." 
 
 While Collins was smoking his after-dinner cigar 
 in front of the fireplace, he noticed that Sonderby 
 walked through the hall, hat and umbrella in hand, 
 without glancing into the office. The manufac 
 turer strolled over to the window, curious to see 
 whether he would keep his word about going to 
 the academy. 
 
 Sure enough, Sonderby turned to the right, and 
 trudged off toward the academy, his feet sinking 
 almost to the ankle at every step, in the water- 
 soaked gravel of Evans s newly made road. Collins 
 watched him with a smile, and, sauntering again to 
 the fireplace, stood with his back to it, contempla 
 tively, while he finished his cigar. If the manu 
 facturer had any new ideas on that rainy Sunday, 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 129 
 
 he kept them to himself. After a few minutes he 
 went up to his room to write his letters. 
 
 John Sonderby, meanwhile, unlocked the front 
 door of the Doric-pillared academy, and entered 
 the dusty room where the working hours of three 
 years of his life had been spent. 
 
 He leaned his dripping umbrella against the 
 desk whence he had ruled his little world, and the 
 desk and the room seemed to him smaller than 
 ever before. He went into the " laboratory," as 
 he was fond of calling the tiny recitation-room 
 that contained the scientific apparatus of the 
 academy, and flung himself into a chair before 
 the acid-stained table. Upon the rear of the table 
 were ranged a row of books upon physics, the one 
 subject in which he had hitherto felt a strong and 
 permanent interest. He had economized strictly, 
 in order to buy these books, and to purchase much 
 of the electrical apparatus that was scattered about 
 the room. The hard-handed school committee of 
 Broughton had indeed been willing that the pupils 
 of the academy should learn something about the 
 telephone, after the wire had been put up between 
 the village and the Center ; but their appropriation 
 of money for purposes of experiment was so ridic 
 ulously small that the teacher had to pay most of 
 it out of his own pocket. It was in making some 
 experiments with a telephone-switch, one day, that 
 Sonderby hit upon an expedient for simplifying 
 the number of wires then in use. 
 
130 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 He communicated this idea, which, it is to be 
 said, he was not able thoroughly to work out, to 
 an expert connected with the A. S. & F. Works, 
 and it was to the correspondence which ensued 
 that Sonderby was really indebted for the offer of 
 a place with the company, though Collins, who 
 had had business relations with them, had indeed 
 spoken a good word for the school-teacher. 
 
 Sonderby sat in his chair, gazing across the 
 table stupidly at the row of text-books. If he cared 
 more about physics than about anything else in 
 the world, it was singular that he did not open one 
 of those books and satisfy himself. He had not 
 read much for three weeks past. He had spent 
 hours upon hours every day with his friends at the 
 Broughton House. He had grown to be quite 
 well acquainted with them, as he thought. Yet as 
 he sat there it came over him that he really knew 
 nothing about Floyd, nor about Floyd s wife. 
 Why was it that he could not help her, that no one 
 could help her ? He had suspected for some time 
 that she was unhappy, that her husband did not 
 care for her. For two hours he had been sure of 
 it. Yet what had that to do with him, the almost- 
 discoverer of a patent telephone-switch ? 
 
 Pity, the initiator, had done her task for him in 
 those weeks of summer, and he was no longer what 
 he once had been. He had a confused conscious 
 ness of a resolve to shield that woman, if he could, 
 when the time came to serve her, though mean- 
 
THE BROUGHTOX HOUSE. 131 
 
 while the sight of her white hands stirred him as if 
 in a dream, and his breath grew quick and his 
 head whirled. . . . 
 
 John Sonderby, school-teacher, roused himself 
 at length, and seizing Clerk Maxwell s Electricity 
 and Magnetism, opened it at the chapter on wt Con 
 duction in Three Dimensions," and resting his el 
 bows on the table, and his head upon his hands, he 
 read fiercely hour after hour, till the dusk closed 
 in upon the sombre laboratory, and he could see 
 no longer. Then he locked up the academy and 
 went home, chilled by the dampness and his long- 
 sitting in one position, but feeling steadier and 
 walking more erectly than when he came. 
 
 The dining-room of the hotel was already emp 
 tied. The waitress, Kittie, looked at him curi 
 ously, while she brought him some cold roast beef, 
 with tea and huckleberries. Collinses remark about 
 Sonderby s being off color had interested her, but 
 she failed to make much out of him. He noticed, 
 with some relief, that Mrs. Floyd had been at sup 
 per. He took pains to walk through the parlor 
 and reading-room, as he went out, and satisfied 
 himself she was not there. Looking in at the 
 
 O 
 
 office door, he saw several of the guests grouped 
 about the fireplace, but Collins and Bill Trumbull, 
 who were in the centre, were the only ones he 
 knew. Clearly, Mrs. Floyd had returned to the 
 cottage. 
 
132 THE BEOUGIITON HOUHE. 
 
 He stood for a while in the front door of the 
 hotel, his hands in his pockets, looking out into 
 the gloomy rain, and wondering how he could 
 spend the evening. He was in no mood for the 
 society of the group in the office ; he had been 
 alone all the afternoon, and fond of solitude as he 
 had commonly been, an evening spent in his own 
 room seemed rather lonely to him. He saw that 
 there was a light in the sitting-room of the cot 
 tage ; but something told him that Mrs. Floyd 
 would not wish to see him, had he even for his 
 own sake dared to go. 
 
 The bell of the Congregational church began to 
 toll, sounding heavily down through the swaying 
 elms. Sonderby took out his old silver watch : it 
 was half-past seven. Why not go to church, for 
 once ? This had been a strange Sunday ; indeed, 
 not a Sunday at all. He liked Ellerton since he 
 had come to know something of him ; the minis 
 ter was a straightforward fellow, \vlio said what he 
 thought, and would always say it in thirty minutes. 
 On the whole, why not go to hear him preach ? 
 The service would last an hour or so, and by that 
 time, Sonderby reflected, he might possibly be tired 
 enough to go to bed, and to sleep without dream 
 ing. 
 
 He slipped quietly out of the door, and taking 
 up again his soaked umbrella, started for the meet 
 ing-house. He could not help glancing at the 
 cottage as he passed, but the curtains were drawn, 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 133 
 
 There were in the muddy street few church-goers, 
 and most of these were young. He overtook one 
 of his pupils, a stooping, overgrown girl of sixteen, 
 and walked along with her, evidently much to her 
 surprise and pleasure. As they mounted the knoll 
 on which the meeting-house stood, he saw that the 
 front doors were unopened and the audience-room 
 unlighted. 
 
 "Why," he said, "isn t Mr. Ellerton going to 
 preach?" 
 
 "Oh, no," she replied. "Don t you remember? 
 It is the second Sunday of the month, and the 
 Young People s Society meeting takes the place 
 of the preaching." She spoke with some pride. 
 Sonderby would have retreated, but that he was 
 ashamed to do so. Besides, they were nearly 
 at the lecture-room entrance, and it was too late. 
 He entered with his pupil, but left her at the 
 door and sat down in one of the rear seats. 
 When he looked up, as the bell finished toll- 
 ing, the room was half full of people, and in the 
 leaders chair, placed in front of the pulpit, sat 
 Ruth Ellerton. She gave out the opening hymn, 
 and the stooping girl in whose company Sonderby 
 had come started the tune vociferously. While it 
 was singing, Sonderby picked up one of the cards 
 that were strewn plentifully about the seats, and 
 ran his eye over the list of topics and leaders for 
 the devotional meetings of the Young People s 
 Society of Christian Endeavor. He had heard a 
 
134 THE RROUGIITON HOUSE. 
 
 good deal during the preceding winter, in a casual 
 way, about the Y. P. S. C. E., which had been 
 started soon after Ellerton s settlement in Brough- 
 ton, but the school-teacher had never taken any 
 particular interest in the organization. He recog 
 nized now, in the neatly printed schedule, the 
 names of many of his pupils, and wondered that 
 they had courage enough to take such a prominent 
 part in the meetings. 
 
 Opposite the date of that Sunday, July 15, was 
 the name of the leader, Mrs. Arthur Ellerton, with 
 the topic, " Be not weary in well-doing," and a ref 
 erence to a Scripture passage. His scrutiny was 
 interrupted by a little fellow, who got up noisily 
 from his seat to offer the school-teacher a hymn- 
 book, which Sonderby, seeing that several persons 
 were looking at him, accepted with the best grace 
 he could muster, and sang the last two stanzas with 
 tolerable correctness. Then Mrs. Ellerton, in a 
 low voice and with an evident embarrassment, said, 
 " Let us pray," and, closing her eyes, rested her 
 head upon her hand and began the opening prayer. 
 Sonderby had never heard a woman pray, and was 
 profoundly touched by it. The grave, sweet voice, 
 the absolute simplicity, the reverence, the desire, 
 these things moved him as no petition had ever 
 done before. He did not dare look at her till she 
 had raised her face, and then he noticed the red 
 spot on her forehead where her hand had pressed, 
 and the moisture in her gray eyes. After a mo- 
 
THE BROUGHTOX HOUSE. 135 
 
 ment s pause, she read the chapter in the Epistle, 
 repeating, for emphasis, the verse selected for the 
 special topic of the evening. Her voice grew 
 clearer as she went on, and by the time the second 
 hymn was sung, and she began to talk, it seemed 
 to Sonderby that she was as self-possessed as she 
 had been at her own tea-table. 
 
 " Be not weary in well-doing, for in due season 
 ye shall reap if ye faint not." There is the accent 
 of conviction in those words which carries its own 
 weight without the necessity of comment. Ruth 
 Ellerton tried to do no more than to point out how 
 the personal character of the writer gave signifi 
 cance to his exhortations and his testimony, and 
 then to show the application of the words to the 
 members of the Broughton Young People s Society 
 of Christian Endeavor. 
 
 For everybody in Broughton worked, she said 
 with a smile (apparently forgetting Bill Trumbull), 
 and the main thing was to learn to do one s work 
 without weariness ; that is, without weariness of 
 spirit, for to be tired in body did no one any harm. 
 Purposeless work was what made us weary. One 
 must work with an inspiring motive, feeling that 
 God has given him that special work to do, because 
 he was fit to do it ; and the work that God gives 
 people is very likely to be work for others. 
 
 That was really all she said, though she ex 
 plained and illustrated it in a good many ways, 
 with rare tact and adaptation to the particular per- 
 
136 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 sons before her. She forgot all about Soiiderby, 
 after the first sentence or two, and gave herself up 
 to making the half-grown boys and girls, and the 
 few older persons present, feel the force of what 
 she was saying. Only once or twice did she seem 
 to be talking more to herself than to her audience, 
 and then she quoted Longfellow s Dante, and 
 used some words that Broughton folks were not 
 in the habit of hearing. Her tone grew more in 
 tense and rapid as she went on, and once or twice, 
 without knowing it, she gesticulated slightly with 
 the hymn-book that she held in her hand. The 
 room was very still as she finished. The Young 
 People s Society of Christian Endeavor was un 
 boundedly loyal, almost reverential, toward its 
 founder. 
 
 " And now the meeting is open," she concluded, 
 taking out her watch and laying it on the table 
 with a business-like air that seemed a trifle incon 
 gruous. " We mustn t have any time wasted. Let 
 us first, however, sing another hymn." 
 
 Soiiderby opened his book and sang the hymn 
 through with the rest. Then the stoop-shouldered 
 girl repeated a verse which had indeed 110 particu 
 lar reference to the subject of the meeting, but 
 which was sufficient to discharge the weekly obli 
 gation she had assumed in becoming an active mem 
 ber of the Y. P. S. C. E. 
 
 A young farmer from out on the North Brough 
 ton road rose and made some " remarks " so thor- 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 13T 
 
 oughly in the New England vernacular that many 
 of the village young people laughed, hut so com 
 pletely in sympathy with the leader s ideas that 
 she smiled at him, assisting!}*, in a manner that 
 
 would have turned the head of a more imaginative 
 
 & 
 
 youth. Then came another hymn, some more texts 
 of Scripture, and two or three hits of religious 
 poetry quoted by the village girls. 
 
 A small boy, the son of Parkinson, the store 
 keeper, offered prayer. So the meeting ran its 
 course, until every active member of the society 
 had taken some kind of part, and Mrs. Ellerton 
 rose punctually upon the minute, and gave out the 
 closing hymn. 
 
 John Sonderby, to tell the truth, did not follow 
 the progress of the meeting very closely, though 
 in some of the things that were said he felt a curi 
 ous interest. He sat a good deal of the time look 
 ing at the leader, with all the rest of the audience 
 blurred out of sight for him. He was comparing 
 Ruth Ellerton, as she sat there in her black silk, 
 her masses of brown hair glistening in the light of 
 the lamp on the pulpit, her face partly in shadow, 
 the strongest lines of it thrown out into unusual 
 relief, he was comparing this radiant, helpful 
 woman with another black-dressed figure, which 
 had stood opposite him that morning in the sitting- 
 room of the cottage, a slender, mournful figure, 
 with rigid hands and appealing eyes. But some 
 thing else than this, strongly as the involuntary 
 
138 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 contrast had moved him, was in Sonderby s mind. 
 He was thinking of himself. In the simple words 
 of the minister s wife nothing more in themselves 
 than what the Christian Church has been reiterat 
 ing for a great many hundred years there had 
 come to him a rebuke for his own way of life. 
 
 " Purposeless work ; " would not that describe 
 much of his existence ? So powerfully had the 
 events of the last twenty-four hours impressed his 
 emotional life, that he now perceived certain things 
 with a strange vividness, albeit they were seen in 
 an atmosphere as unreal as dreamland. 
 
 As the meeting broke up, he came to himself 
 with a start, and would have slipped out of the 
 door before the others, had not one of his pupils 
 stepped up to him and asked about something con 
 nected with the academy. He answered as well 
 as he could, but made clumsy work of it and lost 
 time, so that when the pupil left him and he 
 stooped down at last for his hat, it was only to find 
 Ruth Ellerton standing by him as he straightened 
 himself up. She already had on her waterproof, 
 and was going home. 
 
 " Good evening, Mr. Sonderby," she said, hold 
 ing out her hand. " It was very good of you to 
 come on such a rainy night." 
 
 He murmured something or other. 
 
 " Didn t you think the young people turned out 
 well?" she exclaimed. " Some of them came from 
 way over on the road to North Broughton." 
 
THE BROVGHTOX HOUSE. 139 
 
 "Very well," he assented, and they walked 
 down to the door together. She hesitated a mo 
 ment on the steps, over which was playing a thin 
 line of precipitous drops from the eaves above. 
 She wanted to hold up her best black silk under 
 her waterproof, but she had in her hands a Bible, 
 hymn-book, and package of Y. P. S. C. E. cards, 
 besides the parsonage umbrella. Sonderby, by an 
 intuition remarkable for him, guessed at her di 
 lemma, and without a word took her books with 
 one hand, and held his own umbrella over her 
 head with the other. 
 
 " Oh, thank you," she cried, and they started 
 down the hill toward the parsonage. " Mr. Eller- 
 ton is preaching down in the Center to-night, v 
 she explained ; " and so you see I have to carry my 
 own impedimenta. He always makes fun of me 
 for having so much." The reaction from the re 
 sponsibility of leading the meeting made her very 
 light-hearted. 
 
 " Won t you come in ? " she asked, as they 
 reached the parsonage gate. 
 
 " Just to the piazza," he answered. He was 
 thinking that he had lived three years in Brough- 
 ton and had never taken a woman under his um 
 brella in all that time, and to-day he had had two 
 there Tryphena Floyd and Ruth Ellerton. 
 
 ;i I hope you have had a pleasant Sunday," said 
 Mrs. Ellerton, as they stopped at her steps. "It 
 has been so very dismal outside." 
 
140 THE J3BOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 " Well," he answered, handing the books to her, 
 " I have been doing some hard work." 
 
 " Have you ? " she replied, gravely. " What was 
 it ? " She wanted to have him come in, but did 
 not dare ask him again. 
 
 " On Conduction in Three Dimensions, " said 
 Son derby. 
 
 "Oh! " She was waiting for him to say some 
 thing more, and had too much tact to refer to that 
 which came naturally into her mind ; namely, his 
 working on Sunday. 
 
 " Yes, but it s what you would call purposeless 
 work, I suppose." And he added bluntly, "You 
 hit me pretty hard to-night. 
 
 She did not know what to say. "But "she 
 began. 
 
 "I don t know what I work for," he went on, 
 bant upon expressing himself. " I never have 
 known." 
 
 " Why," she said slowly, after a long pause, " I 
 must stand by what I tried to say to the young 
 people, Mr. Sonderby. If 4 Conduction in Three 
 Dimensions is what you are best fitted for, then" 
 -and her voice trembled a little "isn t that 
 what God has given you to do ? Only, one must 
 do it unselfishly for others because God has 
 given it to us. Oughtn t that to give a purpose 
 to any kind of work? " 
 
 The words had come slower and slower at the 
 last. 
 
THE BEOUGHTOS HOUSE. 141 
 
 He hesitated for an answer. The muffled rattle 
 of a wagon could be heard out on the Xorth 
 Broughton road, and the rain kept dripping from 
 the Virginia creeper. 
 
 " I don t know." confessed Sonderby, finally. 
 ; Perhaps so. Good night ! " 
 
 " Good night ! " she said, and put out her hand 
 again, but it was so dark that he did not see it. 
 
VII. 
 
 NEXT to a rainy Sunday, a wet Monday is per 
 haps the most disheartening punishment that the 
 goddess of New England weather can impose upon 
 those who have failed to propitiate her. It is 
 curious, indeed, that Monday should be so un 
 popular the world over. However widely people 
 may differ in their theories about Sunday, they 
 agree, with a singular unanimity, that Monday, 
 even under the most favorable conditions, is some 
 thing of a trial to the spirit. 
 
 For those who make Sunday a day of pleasure- 
 seeking, as well as for those who strive to make it 
 a day of grace, Monday is " the day after." If it 
 happens to be rainy, so much the more unfortu 
 nate. City streets never look so cheerless as on 
 such a morning, when laborers, demoralized by 
 their holiday, go straggling to their work ; and 
 when even those people who on Sunday have made 
 high resolves and received new inspirations, find 
 their enthusiasm chilled by the sweep of the wind 
 and rain around the street corners, and soiled by 
 the very sight of the sticky, slippery pavements. 
 It seems discouragingly hard to take hold, to begin 
 again, unless it chances that one is lucky enough 
 142 
 
THE BBOUGHTOy HOUSE. 143 
 
 to be so busy that he cannot give a single instant 
 to the analysis of his feelings. 
 
 In the country, too, a wet Monday morning is 
 universally resented. Even in those dry seasons 
 when the farmers, gathering round the steps of 
 the meeting-house before the Sunday sermon com 
 mences, have agreed that it is about time for the 
 minister to begin to pray for rain, they have a 
 suspicion that a showery Monday is too prompt a 
 response to their wishes to be genuinely providen 
 tial. But Broughton farmers, in this particular 
 July, had no need for any rain. The haying was 
 late, as it was, and the satisfaction that they had 
 experienced upon Saturday afternoon, in the re 
 flection that if it had to rain at all, Sunday was a 
 good time for it and it would be over by Monda}-, 
 gave way, by breakfast-time on Monday morning, 
 to a philosophic ugliness of temper. 
 
 Over the wide stretches of upland that made up 
 the township of Broughton the clouds hung low 
 and heavy, and the rain still fell upon the soaked 
 meadows just as it had been falling for forty hours. 
 The cattle in the pastures, who had stood out in 
 the full downpouring of the cool showers of Satur 
 day evening, had by this time got heartily enough 
 of it, and stood huddling their steaming hides to 
 gether under the oaks and elms and maples, that 
 stood singly or in groups of two or three in every 
 bit of pasture-land. 
 
 There was more wind in the tree-tops, though. 
 
144 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 than had blown before since Saturday, and it came 
 in veering gusts, that to the knowing observers 
 indicated that the end of the storm was not many 
 hours away. Nevertheless, any haying for that 
 day was out of the question. 
 
 Tons of hungarian and timothy, all over the 
 township, had been so long soaked, standing in 
 the meadows in half-cured cocks, and so much oats 
 and corn had been lodged by the great wind of 
 Saturday night, that the farming folk of Broughton 
 might have been pardoned for feeling out of sorts. 
 
 Yet a genuine New England farmer, no matter 
 how deep may be his disgust at rain which comes 
 at a wrong time, will rarely have any open words 
 of discontent at the weather itself. He keeps 
 those, under such circumstances, for his wife. 
 
 The proprietor of the Broughton House, however, 
 had no wife upon whom to vent his wrath, nor did 
 he have any scruples, not being a native of New 
 England, about cursing its climate. Poor Evans 
 had made many rash predictions on Saturday 
 evening, and when Sunday proved them false, he 
 had only plunged in deeper by vouching that the 
 Monday skies would be as blue as Broughton 
 winds could fan them. Here was Monday morning 
 come, and the driver of the Center stage was 
 stamping with his rubber boots upon the piazza, 
 holding the dripping lines in his left hand, while 
 the horses stood with drooping ears and sunken 
 tails, as if it were night instead of morning, and 
 
THE HROVGHTQS HOUSE. 145 
 
 the closely drawn curtains of the stage were already 
 splashed with mud, just in coming from the post- 
 office to the hotel. 
 
 " All aboard ! * cried the lanky driver again, and 
 the lady with eyeglasses, enveloped in her water 
 proof, climbed in, followed by the gentleman inter 
 ested in Broughton fishing. 
 
 He had been protesting in the office against the 
 amount of his bill, demurring more particularly to 
 the extra charge for the fire which had been built 
 on Sunday morning in the stove in the parlor. 
 He paid it ; but Evans did not feel inclined to 
 accompany him to the piazza, as Avas the Welsh 
 man s custom with departing guests. The driver 
 buttoned the curtains over the door, stepped across 
 the wheel into the front seat, and pulling the boot 
 well up around his waist, clucked to his horses and 
 started off, but with none of the usual morning 
 brilliancy of style. 
 
 After the stage had gone, the hotel seemed 
 rather deserted. The remaining guests kept to 
 their rooms. As for the "regulars," Collins and 
 Sonderb}- had had breakfast together without much 
 conversation, at the ordinary time. The teacher 
 had slept like one of his own schoolboys, and he 
 went down to the academy shortly after breakfast, 
 for a dogged morning s work. Mrs. Floyd had 
 come over for breakfast very early, had eaten a 
 little, and slipped out before any one else entered 
 the dining-room. Her husband did not come at all. 
 
146 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 The reason for Floyd s absence from Broughton 
 at that hour was perhaps more readily appreciated 
 by Arthur Ellerton than by any other person. 
 When the minister rose at a quarter of five to see 
 whether the weather permitted his fishing engage 
 ment with Collins to be kept, the noise of the 
 shutters, as he turned them to look out into the 
 gray fog through which the rain was sifting, woke 
 Mrs. Ellerton. Her husband finished his brief 
 survey of the weather, and fond as he was of fishing, 
 was not sorry at the prospect of a couple of hours 
 more sleep, being tired after his hard Sunday. 
 
 " Did it go off well, down at the Center, Ar 
 thur ? " asked Mrs. Ellerton, drowsily. 
 
 " First-rate," was the response, as Ellerton closed 
 the shutters again, and drew down the curtain. 
 
 " Oh, by the way, I saw our friend Floyd at the 
 Center hotel, just before the evening service." 
 
 " Did you ? " said Mrs. Ellerton, more sleepily 
 than before. 
 
 u He was very glad to see me. In fact, he 
 wanted to insist on my taking a drink with 
 him." 
 
 " Arthur ! " exclaimed Mrs. Ellerton. 
 
 " Fact. I believe the clerk got him to go to 
 bed, after a while, though. I m sorry enough." 
 And the minister, as if in recognition of the fact 
 that nothing could be done about Floyd then and 
 there, proceeded to go to sleep in his sensible fash 
 ion. But Ruth Ellerton lay awake, shocked and 
 
THE BROUGIITOy HOUSE. 147 
 
 troubled, until Mary Jane jingled the rising-bell 
 at the foot of the front stairs. 
 
 In the course of the forenoon a buggy from the 
 Center deposited Floyd at the cottage door. He 
 had slept off the effects of his Sunday indulgence, 
 and had nothing to remind him of it except a head 
 ache and a misty remembrance of having made a 
 fool of himself somehow, somewhere in con 
 nection with Arthur Ellerton. Whatever may 
 have been the welcome his wife gave him at the 
 cottage, the artist did not remain there long after 
 his return. He strolled over to the Broughton 
 House, turning up his coat-collar against the rain, 
 not seeming to care that he was spoiling the 
 shine which his shoes had received at the Center 
 hotel. 
 
 Collins was in the office, wrapping a split tip 
 with silk, and hardly took his eyes off his delicate 
 work as Floyd came in. 
 
 " Look out ! " he cried, as the artist was about to 
 take the chair by his side ; don t sit on my glue- 
 pot, man." 
 
 True enough, the chair held a tiny o-lue-pot 
 made of brass, and a collection of silk threads and 
 colored feathers, from which Collins had been 
 amusing himself by making some flies. 
 
 The artist took another seat and stretched out 
 his feet to the fire. Bill Trumbull made some re 
 mark about the weather, with a covert reference to 
 the state of the roads between Broughton and the 
 
148 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 Center, which Floyd appeared not to understand. 
 When Collins finished winding the silk, and 
 fastened it with a skilful half-hitch, he turned to 
 Floyd and regarded him a moment with a kind of 
 grin, which might have been construed as a silent 
 reflection upon the consequence of Floyd s victory 
 at euchre. But he said nothing, and the three sat 
 there, with Evans as a morose onlooker at Collins s 
 deft handiwork, until dinner-time. 
 
 The quartette sat down together that noon, for 
 the first time since Sunday morning. John Son- 
 derby had not seen Tryphena since he left her in 
 the cottage, and his hand trembled as he unfolded 
 his napkin and looked across the table at her. 
 He expected to detect some change in her, or 
 at least that there would be some constraint in 
 her manner toward himself. But Mrs. Floyd re 
 turned his gaze -as tranquilly as she had done at 
 any time in the few weeks during which he had 
 known her. She even seemed more cheerful than 
 usual, and certainly looked prettier, for she had 
 put some white ruching in the wrists and neck of 
 her black jersey, for the first time since her aunt 
 had died. Was it merely a whim of the moment, 
 like the gaiety of Sunday forenoon, or was it the 
 beginning of a deliberate detachment of herself 
 from her past life ? At any rate, she was in good 
 spirits all through dinner. Floyd kept his peevish 
 temper in the background, and Sonderby tried to 
 blot the preceding day out of his mind and to im- 
 
THE BBOUGHTOX HOUSE. 149 
 
 agine that all was going as well with the Floyds as 
 it seemed to. 
 
 Collins had had rather a confined morning, and 
 Avas the least talkative of the four, but his eyes 
 went keenly from Floyd to Tryphena more than 
 once as the dinner progressed. 
 
 While dessert was serving, Mrs. Floyd declared 
 that from her seat, which commanded a glimpse of 
 the hills toward the southwest, she could see a bit 
 of blue sky. As the rain was still blowing against 
 the dining-room windows every few minutes, the 
 others doubted her assertion ; but she claimed that 
 the drops on the windows were shaken from the 
 elms and then carried by the wind, as if it were 
 real rain. By and by she admitted, just as they 
 were rising from the table, that her blue sky had 
 in some way disappeared ; but when the quartette 
 went out to the front piazza and watched the west 
 wind send patches of gray cloud scudding over the 
 elm-tops, so low as almost to touch them, while in 
 the northeast a blue-black heap of thunder heads 
 kept piling itself higher, Tryphena persisted that it 
 was nothing but " the clearing shower/ 
 
 She appealed to Bill Trumbull, who was picking 
 his way across the street to the hotel, after his 
 dinner in his daughter s house, to know if she was 
 not right. 
 
 " Wai, I guess you be," decided Bill, half because 
 he really thought so, and half because he didn t 
 like to disappoint Tryphena. However his decision 
 
150 THE IJROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 was reached, it settled the matter, and all agreed 
 that the wet spell was drawing to an end. 
 
 " Now let s celebrate by some whist," cried Mrs. 
 Floyd. 
 
 Collins assented. 
 
 " Phenie s ahead now, and is more anxious to 
 play than she was last week," remarked Floyd. 
 
 " Oh, Floyd, stop your growling, and go and 
 get the markers," ordered Collins ; and the artist 
 shrugged his shoulders and obeyed. The school 
 teacher was the only one who seemed not to wish 
 to play. 
 
 " I had something to do at the academy," he ex 
 plained, rather feebly. 
 
 "Since when?" said Collins, ironically. 
 
 u Since the middle of June," was on Sonderby s 
 lips, when he caught Tryphena s eyes. She was 
 looking at him with that shy, friendly glance, 
 which had attracted him to her the first day they 
 met. 
 
 " Please," she whispered. 
 
 She had never said that to him before, and John 
 Sonderby forgot all about certain resolutions he 
 had taken that morning, and the problems of Con 
 duction in Three Dimensions. 
 
 For an hour and a half the quartette sat in the 
 hotel parlor, around the old mahogany card-table, 
 and John Sonderby and Tryphena Floyd held 
 everything. 
 
 At last Floyd threw up his hand in disgust. 
 
THE BROVGHTOS HOUSE. 151 
 
 "It s no use today, Collins," he cried. "Let s 
 have a smoke." 
 
 They all rose, and Tryphena put the table back 
 into its place. 
 
 " "Well, I don t know," said Collins, taking out 
 his watch. " It s getting rather late. Suppose we 
 take another look at the weather." 
 
 Mrs. Floyd s "clearing shower" had not yet- 
 passed, but the rain was light now. All overhead 
 there were thin places in the clouds, and in the 
 west more than one strip of blue. The pile of 
 thunder clouds in the northeast had altoo-ether 
 
 o 
 
 sunk away. 
 
 k Sure enough." Collins remarked, u that last 
 prediction of Bill Trumbull s did the business. 
 Xo, Floyd," he added ; " we ll take that smoke 
 another day. I m going up to call on the parson." 
 
 " On the parson?" repeated Tryphena, in such 
 surprise that the others laughed at Collins s ex 
 pense. 
 
 Exactly," replied Collins, imperturbably : " the 
 parson and I were going fishing this morning if it 
 hadn t rained." 
 
 The manufacturer turned away, smiling, and 
 
 t, - O 
 
 went up to his room. 
 
 The remaining three stood on the piazza a few 
 moments longer. Sonderby thought of going down 
 to the academy, to take up the work he had 
 planned for the afternoon ; but by this time he was 
 in no mood for it. and could not bring himself to go. 
 
152 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 " Sonderby," said Floyd, yawning, " what do you 
 want to do ? " 
 
 " Billy, wouldn t it be a good idea for you to get 
 shaved?" suggested Mrs. Floyd. 
 
 Floyd passed his fingers over his lank, unshaven 
 jaw. 
 
 " Very likely," he answered, although somewhat 
 irritated by his wife s advice. 
 
 " I don t know but I ll go over to the barber s 
 shop with you, and sit around during the opera 
 tion," volunteered Sonderby. 
 
 Neither of these men altogether liked the other, 
 but circumstances had thrown them so together 
 that upon this afternoon each of them preferred 
 the other s company to being left alone. 
 
 "All right," Floyd replied, and lit a cigarette. 
 Then the two men got their hats, and leaving Mrs. 
 Floyd to turn over the papers in the reading-room, 
 started up the street toward Parkinson s store. 
 The first glints of sunshine were upon the elm 
 leaves and the grass, but the clayey soil of the 
 sidewalk was still slippery, and the road, where 
 they crossed it in front of Parkinson s, was ankle- 
 deep with mud. 
 
 The "general store" of Mr. Parkinson had been 
 familiar to Broughton people for a generation. 
 Built in the solid, ample style of architecture that 
 characterized the original Broughton tavern, the 
 store had been more fortunate than the hotel, in 
 preserving its original form and something of its 
 
THE BROVGHTOX HOUSE. 153 
 
 original color. A dingy white was still its pre 
 vailing tone, though the front, around the doors 
 and window-casings, was ornamented with bands 
 of blue and yellow, the result of a transient en 
 thusiasm of Mr. Parkinson for prepared mineral 
 paints. A broad piazza ran along the front, 
 reached from the sidewalk by three steps, the 
 lower one of which was splintered all along its 
 edge by the grinding of innumerable wagon-wheels 
 against it. Standing on the piazza, between the 
 windows and the door, were a long box of scythe- 
 blades, a bundle of wooden rakes, a patent three- 
 tined pitchfork, and a pile of empty cheese-boxes 
 that had been returned from the Center. There 
 was a bench there too, and a couple of chairs. 
 Within, two dark-painted counters, running the 
 whole length of the store on either side, were laden 
 with the most desirable or newly arrived goods in 
 stock. The right side of the store was mainly 
 occupied with dry goods : piles of flannel and 
 calico, packed away on fly-specked shelves; blue 
 pasteboard boxes marked k * Buttons," Wk Thread, 
 " Hose," protected by a sliding glass door ; and a 
 few rolls of black silks and cashmeres. On the 
 left were the groceries, boots and shoes, and the 
 hardware. Overhead, on plentiful hooks, were dis 
 played tin and wooden pails, oil-cans, rubber boots, 
 lanterns, and a few choice hams. In the "L part," 
 at the rear, which was accessible by a side entrance 
 to which teams could drive up, was stored a full 
 
154 THE TtROUGTiTON HOUSE. 
 
 line of flour and feed, kerosene oil, and molasses, 
 together with an assortment of single harnesses, 
 marked down, and warranted for a year. 
 
 But it Avas by virtue of its proprietor, rather 
 than through any distinctive excellence or abun 
 dance of the goods offered for sale, that Parkinson s 
 store had gradually driven every rival establish 
 ment out of Broughton, and built up a reputation 
 among the surrounding towns. Mr. Parkinson was 
 a little fat man, with a sleek laugh, who never 
 spoke disrespectfully of any one, and asked no 
 one s advice in regard to himself. 
 
 He had come to Broughton as a clerk in this 
 very store, thirty years previously, and after a 
 while had become partner and then owner. His 
 talent for collecting bills, and his blameless man 
 ner of life, had given him for years the office of 
 treasurer of the parish, and his name was often 
 mentioned for deacon in the church, though it was 
 the opinion of the older and most influential mem 
 bers of the Congregational body that Samuel Par 
 kinson, in spite of the gray in his neat beard, and 
 his fifty years, was still too young to serve in so 
 responsible and dignified a capacity. 
 
 If Parkinson had any disappointed ambitions, 
 however, no one ever knew it. He watched the 
 markets, was hospitable to all travelling salesmen, 
 listened to the talk of the farmers around his big 
 rusty-bottomed stove, and went down to Boston 
 three or four times a year to look around for him- 
 
THE BEOUGHTOX HOUSE. 155 
 
 self. He bought very cheap, and in the majority 
 of cases sold very dear though there was a mi 
 nority of magnificent bargains at Parkinson s " 
 that kept the housewives of Broughtoii in a con 
 tinual nutter. 
 
 Mr. Parkinson always averred his regret that 
 his successive rivals in Broughton abandoned the 
 effort to compete with him. - Competition is the 
 life of trade, he used to repeat, smilingly, from 
 behind his counter ; but though it may have been 
 the life of trade, it was generally the death, com 
 mercially speaking, of Parkinson s competitor. It 
 was in accordance wiih his amiable theory of politi 
 cal economy that he built, closely adjoining his 
 own store, a tiny one-story structure, which he 
 rented successively to a boot-and-shoe man, to a 
 ninety-nine-cent venture, a branch of the Center 
 establishment, and to a widow, who, attracted 
 by the growing reputation of Broughton as a sum 
 mer resort, hoped to sell ice-cream, cake, and con 
 fectionery during the summer months. 
 
 From each of these tenants Mr. Parkinson had 
 blandly required six months rent in advance, and 
 then had amused himself by conjecturing how long 
 the experiment would last, how many customers 
 would be attracted to the neighborhood of his own 
 store in the meantime, and how cheaply he could 
 buy in the bankrupt goods at the close. Brough 
 ton could support exactly one store, and Mr. Par 
 kinson knew it. 
 
156 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 His latest tenant, however, was less of a rival 
 than any of the preceding ones, being none other 
 than a barber. 
 
 A barber-shop was something entirely new in 
 Broughton, and the townspeople looked upon its 
 striped pole with an excusable pride. From the 
 day when the township was settled, under the 
 stockades of a fort against the Indians, down to 
 the time when Otto Meyer, a native of Bavaria 
 and a recently naturalized citizen of the Center, 
 concluded his arrangements with Samuel Parkin 
 son, the good people of Broughton had shaved 
 themselves and cut their own or rather one an 
 other s hair. 
 
 Of late, to be sure, the village butcher, in his 
 leisure moments, had acquired a good deal of skill 
 in giving boys what he called a " fighting cut," for 
 the sum of ten cents each. To the more aspiring 
 among the farmers sons, especially in the winter 
 season, about the time the annual singing-school 
 commenced its sessions, the butcher administered 
 his so-called "fancy cut," which left the hair 
 long on top and short up to the ears, and which, 
 when treated plentifully with oil, looked very 
 smooth and was Avell worth the fifteen cents it 
 cost. But the butcher, even in his most ambi 
 tious moods and in spite of his proficiency with 
 keen-edged tools, never dared to shave anybody, 
 and indeed it would have been a gallant man who 
 would have risked the operation. 
 
THE BBOUGUTOy HOUSE. 157 
 
 The male population of Brought on, therefore, 
 were favorably disposed toward Otto Meyer and 
 his scantily furnished shop. The smart pole took 
 away something of the rusticity of Main Street. 
 Some of the younger men in the village fell into 
 the habit of getting shaved at Meyer s regularly, 
 and he had also more or less custom from the 
 guests of the Broughton House. Floyd had been 
 one of his most faithful patrons, during the artist s 
 stay in town. Meyer had left Bavaria to escape 
 military service ; and Floyd, finding that the barber 
 had been in Munich, never tired of exchanging 
 with him impressions of that city. The conversa 
 tions were carried on mostly in German ; for Floyd 
 found that he could make himself understood, and 
 it rather tickled his fancy to lie back in a barber s 
 chair, up among the hills of Broughton, uid talk 
 familiarly about the Hofbraiierei, and the gilded 
 state chariots of the mad King Ludwig. Meyer s 
 knowledge of Munich, to tell the truth, was limited 
 to these two subjects ; but they possessed a peren 
 nial interest, and the more Meyer talked with Floyd 
 about them, the more fluent did the latter s vocab 
 ulary become. By dint of unlearning all he had 
 acquired previous to his emigration to America, 
 Meyer had become a very decent barber; but he 
 was vastly conceited about his skill, and dogmatic 
 in regard to everything that concerned his profes 
 sion. He did not conceal his contempt for the 
 average inhabitant of Broughton, and declared 
 
158 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 that nothing but the over-supply of barbers at the 
 Center had driven him up to this hill town, ten 
 miles from a railroad. Toward " Mr. Floyt," how 
 ever, he had a great respect, as was due to a man 
 who had seen the world and could therefore tell 
 when a razor was well handled. 
 
 When Sonderby and Floyd tried the door of the 
 barber-shop, they found it locked. 
 
 " Where is Meyer? " Floyd called out to Parkin 
 son, who was standing in the doorway of his store, 
 his hands behind his back, his rotund form com 
 fortably arrayed in white linen trousers and an 
 alpaca coat. 
 
 " Meyer, Mr. Floyd, is, I presume, asleep," was 
 the bland answer. 
 
 " Asleep ? " growled Sonderby. 
 
 " Without doubt," continued the storekeeper. 
 " On Mondays, gentlemen," and Mr. Parkinson 
 brought his hands to the front and smoothed out 
 with them a wrinkle in his coat, over the pit of his 
 stomach, " Meyer is generally inclined to sleep to 
 slumber, I may say. But I will try to rouse him 
 if you wish it." Mr. Parkinson, with a charitable 
 smile at the weakness of his fellow-men, opened 
 the side door of the shop, and went up the back 
 stairs to the room where Meyer slept. The Ger 
 man usually felt so lonely on Sunday that he 
 went down to drink a glass of beer with his com 
 rades at the Center; but once there, he could 
 scarcely confine himself to the single glass which 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 159 
 
 he usually mentioned to himself as his excuse for 
 going. 
 
 " Oh, I see," remarked Sonderby, who had 
 never interested himself in Meyer enough to be 
 come acquainted with the German s peculiarities. 
 He was about to say something more, but checked 
 himself, remembering that Floyd, too, had spent 
 his Sunday at the Center. 
 
 " Well," said Floyd, flushing somewhat, " it s 
 none of Parkinson s business." He did not look 
 at the school-teacher as he spoke, but wondered 
 whether Collins had said anything about that 
 game of euchre. Sonderby slapped vigorously at 
 a mosquito that had just alighted on his coat- 
 sleeve, but made no reply. 
 
 Mr. Parkinson descended the back stairs of the 
 shop and announced that Meyer would be ready 
 for business directly. 
 
 " Let s sit down over here," suggested Sonderby, 
 moving toward the bench on the store piazza ; " we 
 might as well be comfortable." There had grown 
 up some rivalry among the trio of men at the 
 Broughton House about finding the most easy 
 seats and making a parade of their idleness. 
 
 "I should hope so," replied Floyd. They 
 dropped heavily upon the bench, and leaning for 
 ward, rested their elbows on their knees. 
 
 Collins went by upon the other of the street, on 
 his way toward the parsonage. He was carefully 
 dressed, and carried his gloves and a silver-headed 
 
160 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 umbrella in his hand. He glanced at the store, in 
 passing, and waved his umbrella in recognition of 
 his acquaintances. 
 
 " Now there goes a man," remarked Floyd, con 
 fidentially, " who can drink like a fish, if he wants 
 to, and never show it. Oh, Collins is a deep one ! 
 He s a mighty moral fellow, he is, to go calling on 
 the minister ! " The artist chuckled in satisfaction 
 at his superior knowledge of character. 
 
 Sonderby resented that smirching laugh. " I 
 don t know anything against Collins," he said, 
 deliberately. 
 
 " Oh, neither do I," was the mocking response. 
 " Collins is quite a saint up here in Broughton. 
 But in New York He shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " Well ? " demanded Sonderby. 
 
 " Oh, I don t know anything about him, any 
 more than you do." 
 
 Why don t you shut up, then ? " 
 
 It was Floyd s turn to take offence. " What s 
 the matter with you ? " he cried, hotly. 
 
 At that instant Meyer unlocked the front door 
 of the shop, and sticking out his frowzled head, 
 glanced around with his sleepy eyes, and called 
 " Next ! " as automatically as if he had been work 
 ing all day. Both men laughed and forgot their 
 incipient quarrel. 
 
 "Go ahead, Floyd," said Sonderby. "I ll wait. 
 If he gets sufficiently waked up on you, I ll take a 
 turn later." 
 
THE BROUGHTOy HOUSE. 161 
 
 Floyd disappeared within the barber-shop, leav 
 ing to the school-teacher the possession of the bench. 
 Mr. Parkinson came to the doorway again, but 
 failed to engage Sonderby in conversation, though 
 through no fault of his own. Sonderby was some 
 what out of temper. He had planned at breakfast 
 to work steadily this week, morning and afternoon, 
 whatever happened ; and here was already another 
 afternoon spent like so many previous ones. He 
 wondered whether he had will-power enough to 
 carry out anything, good or bad. 
 
 He was disgusted with Floyd ; partly on account 
 of the artist s Sunday indulgence, and partly on 
 account of his just-uttered insinuations against 
 Collins. There was a deeper reason, too, for his 
 distrust of Floyd ; but this he could not as yet for 
 mulate exactly; he only knew that since Sunday 
 morning he had been justified in it. Yet what was 
 the use of puzzling and troubling himself any 
 longer about other people s problems ? Why not 
 cut himself loose from it all, write an acceptance 
 to the A. S. & F. Company, and leave at once for 
 Boston? Why not? It was for the same reason 
 that he did not go to the academy that afternoon, 
 when Tryphena Floyd asked him to stay and play 
 whist, and had said Please * : he could not go ; 
 that was all. But whether it was right or wrong 
 for him to stay, he could not have told for the 
 world. Whichever it was, he was in an uncom 
 fortable state of moral irritation. 
 
162 THE BEOUGIITON HOUSE. 
 
 He was not left long, however, to a solitary oc 
 cupancy of the store piazza. It was getting nearly 
 mail time ; the period of the day when, if at all, the 
 village awoke to a semblance of life. The sun had 
 come out at length to stay, and was as hot as if it 
 realized the huge task of drying which was await 
 ing it. Farm wagons began to rattle into Main 
 Street, their owners having found some excuse for 
 hitching up, toward the close of an idle day, and 
 driving into the village, even if it were only to call 
 at the post-office, and to inquire the price of gran 
 ulated sugar at Parkinson s. 
 
 Sonderby was watching one of these wagons, 
 which he thought was from Calvin Johnson s, when 
 a young fellow of nineteen stepped jauntily from 
 the store, and after a moment s examination of the 
 school-teacher, tapped him on the shoulder. 
 
 " How do you do, Mr. Sonderby." 
 
 " Why ! Hullo, Harry," exclaimed Sonderby, in 
 some surprise. " I didn t know you were here." 
 
 " Yes. Been up on a vacation ; but I m getting 
 sick of it," responded the newcomer, who had been 
 a pupil of Sonderby during the latter s first win 
 ter at the academy. 
 
 " Yes ? " asked Sonderby, looking with curiosity 
 at the boy, as he helped himself to a seat on the 
 bench, and took out his cigarette-case. 
 
 " Oh, Lord, yes ! it s too slow. Have a cigar 
 ette ? " and young Duffield, albeit a trifle bash 
 fully, extended his case to his old school-teacher, 
 
THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 163 
 
 Sonderby declined. "How do you like Bos 
 ton ? " he asked. 
 
 " Tip-top," said Harry, buoyantly, giving a slight 
 hitch to his ready-made trousers, to keep them 
 from bagging at the knees as he sat. Sonderby 
 noticed that his patent leather shoes were badly 
 worn off at the heels, and w r hile the boy was light 
 ing a cigarette and sucking it into a state of 
 animation, the school-teacher studied his very high 
 collar, very red tie, the brown Derby hat, a trifle 
 stained, that he wore well back on his head, and 
 the heavy ring that adorned his little finger. Two 
 years had evidently done a good deal for the 
 farmer boy. 
 
 " How are you feeling ? " inquired Sonderby, 
 who found it hard to get much variety into his 
 questions. 
 
 " Keen as a brier," was the prompt response. 
 
 " You re with the same firm ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir. Every time. Blank & Blank s " 
 and he named a huge dry goods house "is a 
 good place to stick to, if 3*011 once get in. They re 
 a square firm. Of course" apologetically 
 " you can t strike for big pay right off. You have 
 to wait a while. Now I ve had an advance in my 
 salary once already, and I m going to tackle the 
 old man for a raise the first of September. That s 
 the only way. Keep right at em. Make em give 
 it to you." 
 
 He did not find it necessary to explain that the 
 
164 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 advance referred to consisted in the change from 
 seven dollars a week to eight less than day- 
 laborers were making on his father s farm. 
 
 " You think you ll keep to dry goods, then ? " 
 
 " Certain. Why, my chum has only been with 
 the house two years longer than I have, and he s 
 now a floor-walker. Draws his fifteen dollars every 
 Thursday night." 
 
 Sonderby did not seem particularly impressed 
 by this tale of affluence. 
 
 " Say, but ain t it quiet up here in Broughton ? " 
 Harry went on. " Makes a man restless, don t it? " 
 
 "Well, I don t know," answered Sonderby, 
 doubtfully. 
 
 " Oh, it s all right if you like it," admitted the 
 boy. " Only it s dead. Deader n Julius Caesar. 
 There ain t anything going on. I tell you I was 
 surprised to see a barber s pole here, last week." 
 
 " He s a pretty good barber," volunteered Son 
 derby. 
 
 " Oh, yes, I tried him Saturday. Of course he 
 ain t what he d have to be at Young s or the Parker 
 House." 
 
 "He isn t, eh?" Sonderby knew these famous 
 hostelries only by name. 
 
 " Oh, Lord, no ! " From young Duffield s com 
 miserating tone one would have hardly suspected 
 that his acquaintance with Young s and the 
 Parker House had been gained simply by walking 
 by them. 
 
THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 165 
 
 There was something of a pause. Harry pulled 
 out his silver watch, jingling the big gilded chain 
 as he did so. 
 
 " Five-three," he remarked. * It does beat the 
 record how slow time goes. Told father I d stay 
 up in the street till six, and see if there wasn t 
 something going on. Well, say, how do you like 
 it here, Mr. Sonderby ? " 
 
 k> Very well, very well." 
 
 "I suppose so, or you wouldn t have stayed here 
 so long. Three years, ain t it ? " 
 
 ki Three years," repeated Sonderby. It doesn t 
 seem so very long." 
 
 k% It don t, eh ? Well, if you ever get tired of it, 
 Mr. Sonderby, you d better try Boston." 
 
 Sonderby rather enjoyed the youth s assurance. 
 
 " You think I d like it. do you?" 
 
 " Certain. Couldn t help it. There s a teacher 
 now at our boarding-house : Professor something 
 or other. Don t know as I know just where he 
 teaches ; but perhaps if you wanted to come down, 
 we could work something through him. Say, 
 you ll let me know, won t you, if I can do anything 
 for you?" 
 
 Harry Duffield had had a great respect for 
 Sonderby, ever since the teacher had collared him 
 one day, during that first winter, and he would 
 have been happy to use his present superior posi 
 tion for the school-teacher s good. 
 
 " Certainly," replied Sonderby. " Very glad to." 
 
166 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 "Well," said the boy, rising and taking out his 
 watch again. " Five-ten. Guess I m off. They ll 
 be looking for me down home. Glad to have met 
 you, Mr. Sonderby." 
 
 Sonderby got up and shook hands with him. 
 There was not so much muscle in Duffield s grip 
 as there had been on the day of their brief and 
 never-repeated struggle at the academy. " Good 
 by," said Sonderby. " Good luck to you." 
 
 " Thank you. Same to you. Say, you ll let me 
 hear from you, if you come, won t you ? " 
 
 Sonderby nodded. 
 
 " Well, hold on," exclaimed Harry ; " ain t that 
 Calvin Johnson s team ? What s the matter with 
 my riding down home ? It ain t the best walking 
 in the world to-day over these backwoods roads." 
 
 Sonderby was well acquainted with the big iron- 
 gray farm horses that were approaching, having 
 worked through many a long day with them, the 
 preceding summer. The driver of the team was 
 Rufus Johnson, Calvin s oldest boy, a stalwart, 
 sunburned fellow, somewhere in the twenties. He 
 pulled up his horses so that the wagon, upon which 
 rested a new hay-rick, might be weighed upon the 
 scales, and kept his seat, awaiting Parkinson s 
 leisure. 
 
 " Hello, Rufe," called out Duffield. 
 
 " Hello, hello ! " cried Rufus, in return, and 
 twisting the lines around the brake, he jumped 
 clumsily to the ground. 
 
THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 167 
 
 " Glad to see ye, Harry." He mounted the steps 
 of the store, his trousers tucked into his boots, his 
 unstarched linen shirt open a little at his powerful 
 throat. Pulling off his broad-brimmed straw hat, 
 he mopped away, with the back of his hand, the 
 sweat from his forehead, and shook hands with 
 young Duffield. Then he caught sight of the 
 school-teacher. 
 
 " How d ye do, Mr. Sonderby," he said, a smile 
 spreading over his broad face. 
 
 "How d ye do," replied Sonderby, putting his 
 hand into the hearty grip of the young farmer. 
 
 "I can tell ye we miss ye," exclaimed Rufus. 
 "How s your muscle? Arms sunburned yet? I 
 told father this morning that I guess we d have to 
 have Mr. Sonderby to mow that swamp for us. 
 Ain t forgot it, have ye ? " 
 
 "No," replied Sonderby, with a lau^h, "not 
 yet." 
 
 The year before he and Rufus had started to 
 mow with scythes a SAvampy piece of meadow not 
 accessible to the mowing-machine, and, proud as 
 each was of his strength, neither one of them 
 wanted to try over again which was the stouter 
 mower. Each had tried to tire the other out that 
 day, and both had succeeded. 
 
 "Why don t ye come down to see us?" de 
 manded Rufus, hospitably. " Mother keeps saying 
 that the maple syrup will be all gone before Mr. 
 Sonderby gets a taste of it." 
 
168 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 " I ve been meaning to come," apologized Son- 
 derby. It was the old story among the farmers, 
 this reluctance of Mr. Sonderby to move among 
 them socially. Nothing but their admiration for 
 him as a disciplinarian, and perhaps a lurking sym 
 pathy with his stubborn fashion of suiting himself 
 in whatever he did, kept them from taking serious 
 offence. 
 
 " Wai, jest come right along," reiterated Rufus. 
 " Ye don t have nothing to do, do ye ? Say, you re 
 stopping at the hotel now, ain t ye ? Well, won t 
 ye tell that feller there that does so much fishin 
 that we ve just posted our brook ? Father says we 
 might jest as well have a few of those trout our 
 selves." 
 
 U A11 right; I ll tell him." 
 
 " Thank ye. Good day. Come down, won t ye ? " 
 Rufus turned to Duffield, who had been rather left 
 out of the conversation. 
 
 "What were you saying to me a minute ago, 
 Harry?" 
 
 Duffield explained his unwillingness to walk 
 over the Broughton roads when a team was handy. 
 
 "Sure nough. The ground is a little bad. 
 Hadn t really thought on t. Ef ye 11 wait jest a 
 minute, till I can git my hay-rick weighed, and 
 some salt and turpentine, we ll go right along." 
 
 He started in search of Parkinson, followed by 
 Duffield. Sonderby sat down again, eying the 
 pair, as Rufus shouldered his way through a group 
 
THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 169 
 
 of loafers that had gathered by this time at the 
 store door. As the school-teacher thought of the 
 superb physique of the fellow, with a sort of envy, 
 too, of his calm, steady way, there came suddenly 
 into his mind an old bit of village gossip he had 
 once chanced to hear, which averred that Rufus 
 Johnson had " kept company " with Tryphena Mor 
 ton the winter before the latter went to Brooklyn. 
 
 Now Sonderby s imaginative nature had never 
 become much developed, and two months be 
 fore he would have no sooner found himself 
 speculating on the probable happiness of a marriage 
 between such persons as Tryphena Morton and 
 Rufus Johnson, than he could have found himself 
 envying the young farmer s calm and steady way. 
 A temperament of this latter quality he himself 
 possessed, he had been used to think, and what 
 had he to do with Broughton s gossip about its 
 3~oung people? But just now he could not help 
 wondering whether the gossip were true, and what 
 Rufus used to talk about when he went home with 
 the girl from singing-school, and why Tryphena 
 had not liked him, if indeed she had not. 
 
 His speculations did not end when Floyd came 
 out of the barber-shop. In response to Meyer s 
 repeated u Xext ! * and after exchanging a word 
 or two with the newly shaven Floyd, who said 
 that he would just stroll over to the post-office, 
 Sonderby took his seat in the barber s chair to 
 have his beard trimmed. The random word with 
 
170 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 Floyd seemed only to intensify the curiosity with 
 which Sonderby s mind attacked the possibilities of 
 the case. He turned it over and over, examining 
 what would have been the chances of Trypheiia s 
 being happy had she never left Broughton. He 
 recurred to it with nervous pertinacity, whenever 
 the barber s efforts to engage him in conversation 
 diverted him for an instant from the subject. 
 Meyer persisted too in talking about "Mr. Floyt," 
 and found great amusement in sly references to 
 the Center and Mr. Floyd s Teutonic appreciation 
 of the real uses of Sunday, until Sonderby, who 
 finally guessed that Meyer had seen the artist on 
 the day before, stopped him in disgust. But clos 
 ing Meyer s mouth could not keep Sonderby from 
 thinking about a certain country girl who had 
 gone down to Brooklyn and left behind her the 
 people who knew her best. All that had come to 
 her since was a consequence of that. 
 
 If Sonderby did not have at this moment the 
 peculiar moral insight that had seemed to come to 
 his aid the evening before as he looked at the 
 problem of his own life, he had at least such a 
 sense of detachment from the lives immediately 
 about him that he was conscious of assuming 
 toward them a new critical attitude. The life of 
 Tryphena Morton Floyd seemed to pass before 
 him for review, and for the instant no sympathy 
 for her deflected his judgment. There reappeared 
 to his mental vision the figure of the young fellow 
 
THE BEOUGHTOy HOUSE. 171 
 
 with whom he had just been talking. Harry 
 Duffield. Harry, too, had gone down to the city : 
 Boston or Brooklyn, it was all the same. How 
 many thousands of these New England farmer boys 
 there were, who drifted each year to the larger 
 cities, cheated first by false ideals of the glories of 
 business life behind a counter, and deliberately 
 blinding themselves afterwards to their real sit 
 uation and prospects ! Retaining of their country 
 origin only a certain physical endurance, an origi 
 nality of phrase, and a ready humor which made 
 them popular, how vain and evil and small they 
 grew! With what ill-concealed disdain did they 
 look back upon the serious, simple toil of their 
 fathers ! They got restless in the country now 
 after a few days ; the largeness, the slow patience, 
 the gravity of country life, was utterly gone from 
 them ; they were flippant, shallow. 
 
 It would have done no good now for Ellerton 
 to repeat his merry catalogue of the great Ameri 
 cans who have sprung from obscure country 
 towns; Sonderby, in the mood he was in, would 
 have matched Harry Duffield and other youths 
 like him against all of them. B}- very force of 
 contrast, Sonderby thought of Kufus Johnson, the 
 grip of his big fist, his kindly, slow speech, and 
 his comrade-like questions : " How s your muscle ? " 
 "Arms sunburned yet?" There was a man who 
 was not out of his place. 
 
 Meyer had pulled the apron from Sonderby s 
 
172 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 neck for the last time and had looked inquiringly 
 at the school-teacher for a minute or so, before the 
 latter realized what was going on. Then he got 
 out of the chair, surveyed his beard in the glass, 
 paid Meyer a quarter, the school-teacher did not 
 have many in his pocket, and went over to the 
 Broughton House for supper. But the train of 
 thought which was started in the barber-shop con 
 tinued all that evening. 
 
 When Sonderby went to bed, lie looked out of 
 the window, and felt the fresh northwest wind on 
 his face, and saw that the sky was starry again. 
 The rainy spell, with the confinement and over 
 strained emotional life of those two days, was past. 
 Yet he was still thinking of Tryphena Morton and 
 Rufus Johnson and Harry Dumeld. As he closed 
 the window, Rufus s questions reverted to him once 
 more, and going to the lamp that stood on his 
 bureau, he stretched out his forearm. The blue 
 veins crossed and knotted themselves upon the 
 white skin, as he clenched his fist and stiffened the 
 muscles, but there was no color except faint blue 
 and white. The brown, which had been burned so 
 deeply into his arms by two months exposure to 
 the sun as to be visible far along into the winter, 
 was all gone. The unused muscles were trem 
 bling already from the violence of his clench. 
 Sonderby dropped his hand moodily, and with 
 something of his old habits as an athlete still upon 
 him, searched in the bureau drawer for a tape 
 
THE BBOUGHTOy HOUSE. 173 
 
 measure. Then he pushed up his shirt-sleeve to 
 the shoulder, and doubling his arm, put the tape 
 around his biceps. He studied the figures once 
 - twice ; then with a muttered exclamation of 
 disgust he threw the tape into the drawer again, 
 as if the dimensions of his upper arm were sym 
 bolical of a great deal. It had measured fifteen 
 inches before he trained down for his last boat- 
 race ; it was more than fourteen at the end of the 
 summer at Calvin Johnson s ; it was barely over 
 thirteen now. 
 
VIII. 
 
 RUTH ELLERTON amused lier husband exceed 
 ingly, albeit without any intention on her part, by 
 her account of the conversation she had had with 
 Mr. Collins, upon that Monday afternoon. It was 
 not until more than a week after his call that she 
 happened to explain at length the way in which 
 die had entertained the manufacturer. 
 
 In the absence of her husband, who had driven 
 over to Canuck Corner, in the mud, to call on a 
 paralytic woman, Mrs. Ellerton had been sitting in 
 his study reading an article on " Labor Troubles," 
 in a well-known Review. 
 
 It was characteristic of Mary Jane, who an 
 swered Mr. Collins s ring, that knowing her mistress 
 to be in the study, she opened the door and ushered 
 Mr. Collins in there at once, without preliminary 
 formality. Mrs. Ellerton came forward to meet 
 the caller, Review in hand, and it was perhaps 
 natural that they soon found themselves discussing 
 the article she had been reading. 
 
 What Emerson said of the children of New 
 
 England, as they were in the two decades of 1820 to 
 
 1840, that they " were born with knives in their 
 
 brains," is as applicable to the New Englaiiders of 
 
 174 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 175 
 
 the last tAvo decades of the nineteenth century as 
 it was to that earlier generation. It is even more 
 applicable, perhaps ; for the anatomizing of society 
 is more keen and thorough, intellectual question 
 ings having taken a broader range than they did 
 then, and the development of certain social tenden 
 cies having reached such a stage that questions 
 and answers have been forced upon the most 
 unwilling. There is far less interest in theological 
 controversy than there was then. In spite of the 
 constant discussion of theological problems, and 
 the transient hubbub of excitement around some 
 subjects whose doorways open upon a theological 
 hinge, people are coming more and more to a tacit 
 understanding of each other, and to a willingness 
 to w T ork together religiously upon lines drawn far 
 within what would fifty years ago have been 
 regarded as the innermost boundary between the 
 essentials and the non-essentials. The relation of 
 man to God, the possibility of human knowledge 
 in regard to all the ways of God to man, are very 
 differently conceived, and very differently and 
 much less talked about, than they were then. 
 They are left to the individual conscience. The 
 public interest has largely turned to the relations 
 of man to man. Sociology has for the time being 
 usurped the place of theology as a subject for 
 popular discussion and debate. 
 
 Ruth Ellerton was a child of her generation, a 
 generation which gives to women the same educa- 
 
176 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 tion as to men, and in so doing places them under 
 equal obligations to face the social questions of the 
 day. Born of a family stock whose male members 
 had followed, for the most part, the ministry or the 
 law, the girl had inherited a vigorous intellect, and 
 an independent fashion of reaching her own con 
 clusions. She had the exceedingly rare gift of 
 taking serious things seriously. One of her earliest 
 recollections was that of lying awake at night, and 
 puzzling painfully over what had been told her in 
 Sunday-school. As she grew older, and learned 
 to interpret less literally what she read and heard, 
 these puzzles of her childhood disappeared for the 
 most part, though they came back now and then to 
 haunt her with a vague trouble. 
 
 Her girlhood, passed in one of the largest New 
 England cities, had brought to her more respon 
 sibility, and more of an insight into the social 
 condition of the poor in town life, than falls to the 
 share of the average young woman. At the time 
 of her marriage to Arthur Ellerton, she was busy 
 ing herself, heart and soul, in an association for 
 work among factory girls ; and was secretary and 
 treasurer of an organization for building improved 
 tenement houses. Indeed, Ellerton used to affirm, 
 shaking his head solemnly, that it had been a close 
 struggle between the tenement houses and himself, 
 as to who should win her permanent affections ; 
 though Ruth never had any answer to this accusa 
 tion, except a smile. 
 
THE BROUGHTOS HOUSE. 177 
 
 Her marriage, and removal to Broughton, changed 
 entirely the method of her practical efforts in 
 benevolence ; but it did not abate her interest in 
 the discussion of philanthropic and social topics, as 
 presented in papers, magazines, and books. She 
 rarely had opportunity to talk about these things 
 nowadays, except with her husband, and his ideas 
 upon many of the subjects that interested her were 
 not particularly fruitful. Arthur Ellerton had 
 never lain awake puzzling about anything. His 
 theological notions had been formed mainly in the 
 seminary of his choice, an institution which kept 
 itself popular by the judiciously non-committal 
 balance it managed to maintain upon points of 
 controversy. 
 
 Having once investigated a theological question, 
 particularly if under the guidance of one of the 
 sound but fair-minded professors he was fond of 
 quoting, Ellerton never had any desire to recur to 
 it again. For himself, he had k4 settled" it, and as 
 he cared but little to impress upon others the par 
 ticular shade of belief that was his own, and as 
 in the multiplicity of his pastoral work he found 
 scanty time for reading or thinking upon specula 
 tive subjects, he certainly got along under his 
 system very well indeed. 
 
 But Mrs. Ellerton was surprised and in another 
 minister she would have been disappointed at 
 his lack of interest in certain questions in which 
 she had always felt a vital concern. Yet her love 
 
178 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 for him was so great, and her respect for his ability 
 and honesty so unswerving, that her surprise at her 
 husband usually merged into a contrite feeling that 
 perhaps she herself had not been wise in giving the 
 matter so much importance. 
 
 She overlooked, too, much of her husband s 
 ignorance about Young Women s Unions, and the 
 sanitation of tenement houses. There was in 
 their present parish but little need of such things. 
 Scarcely a poor family was to be found in the 
 township, except at Canuck Corner, and among 
 the Irish people who were buying up little by little 
 the cheaper farms in the outskirts of Broughton, 
 along the road to the Center. Grinding poverty 
 and the herding of people together into foul quar 
 ters, which had created the familiar conditions for 
 Ruth Ellerton s city work, were unknown among 
 these hills. To be sure, the problems involved in 
 the task of stimulating this country town into a 
 more vigorous religious life were extremely diffi 
 cult; but Ellerton, with health, courage, common- 
 sense, and abundant consecration, was grappling 
 with them as best he could, and learning some 
 thing every month. Arthur was doing so splen 
 didly in his own parish work, Mrs. Ellerton often 
 reminded herself, that there was really no necessity 
 for his filling his brain with facts and theories about 
 systems of rent, co-operative schemes, building as 
 sociations, single-taxes, rights of employees, and 
 obligations of employers. She had been proud 
 
THE BROVGHTOy HOUSE. 179 
 
 enough of him when there was talk of forcing the 
 resignation of the village postmistress, that spring, 
 because of a change in the national administration, 
 and Arthur had so far forgotten the conventional 
 inactivity in politics expected of a minister that 
 he had been one to call a meeting to protest against 
 the postmistress s removal, and had introduced into 
 his " long prayer," on the next Sunday morning, a 
 pointed reference to the principles of civil-service 
 reform. Yes, Arthur s heart was in the right 
 place, she knew ; but nevertheless she was likely 
 to choose the hours when he was away for reading 
 articles upon her favorite topics. 
 
 The entrance of Mr. Collins into the study at 
 the point where the author of the paper on " Labor 
 Troubles " had reached the elucidation of the famil 
 iar principle that the interests of employer and of 
 employee, though apparently different, were funda 
 mentally the same, seemed to Mrs. Ellerton to be 
 singularly well-timed. She knew that Mr. Collins 
 was a woollen manufacturer ; and he had hardly- 
 seated himself and made some polite remark about 
 her reading which he had interrupted, when she 
 began to ply her visitor with questions about the 
 subjects suggested by the article. 
 
 Collins was taken unawares. He had never had 
 a woman make such inquiries of him before, and 
 the questions themselves were not easy to answer 
 off-hand. He had put on his good clothes and 
 taken his gloves and best umbrella in order to 
 
180 THE BBOUGIiTON HOUSE. 
 
 make a call at the parsonage, and thus to show 
 himself well disposed towards the minister, to 
 whom he had taken a liking. Certainly he had 
 not overlooked the fact that there was a Mrs. 
 Ellerton at the parsonage, though in the few min 
 utes that he had seen her at the Floyds he was 
 unable to get any more definite idea of her than 
 that she was tall and had a fine face. But now, 
 instead of the leisurely talk he had expected with 
 Ellerton, about the weather and the fishing, with 
 perhaps a few commonplace phrases thrown in to 
 the minister s wife, whom he expected to sit duti 
 fully by, here he was alone with Mrs. Ellerton, who 
 looked very pretty in a close-fitting gray dress with 
 a bunch of sweet-peas in her bosom, but who had 
 nothing particularly dutiful or meek in her man 
 ner of address, and who was cross-examining him 
 rapidly about his obligations as an employer of 
 labor. 
 
 It was rather hard. What added to the pecu 
 liarity of the situation was the fact that Collins s 
 employees were at that moment engaged in a long- 
 continued and sullen strike ; and, though Mrs. 
 Ellerton was ignorant of this, Collins suspected 
 that she knew it, and winced more than once under 
 her apparently innocent interrogations. When he 
 gradually got over his surprise, however, and saw 
 that she had a genuine interest in what she was 
 talking about, and that she really knew nothing 
 of the strike, he entered into the spirit of the 
 
THE BROUGHTOS HOUSE. 181 
 
 thing and told her much that she was curious to 
 know. 
 
 Collins was a thorough-going business man, when 
 he chose to be, and inherited from his father, 
 who had established the Collins Woollen Mills, a 
 shrewdness and executive ability that in times of 
 ordinary prosperity had assured him a liberal in 
 come and had enabled him to extend widely the 
 original plant. But just now the times were hard 
 and apparently growing harder, and in the little 
 manufacturing village where Collins, like his father 
 before him, was a virtual autocrat, matters had 
 taken such an unpleasant turn as not only to make 
 him glad to stay away for a while, but also to make 
 him willing to inquire seriously whether there 
 were any real dangers as many people alleged 
 which threatened the manufacturing industries of 
 New England. 
 
 With the best intentions in the world, however, 
 on the part of both Mr. Collins and Mrs. Ellerton, 
 they could not long stand on common ground in 
 their discussion of the labor problem. He spoke, 
 naturally enough, from the point of view of a busi 
 ness man, who had grown up into the Collins Mills, 
 and took the world as he found it. But if Mrs. 
 Ellerton could not understand all the technical 
 phraseology employed in the business world, which 
 Collins used as if it were perfectly familiar to her, 
 throwing in only occasionally a deferent "you 
 know, she puzzled him equally, if not more, by 
 
182 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 the ideal standards which she insisted that every 
 employer should follow. Mrs. Ellerton was per 
 haps as much indebted to Ruskiii and Tolstoi for 
 her political economy as she was to Labor Bureau 
 Reports and the United States Census, and when 
 she talked about "self-sacrifice in trade," and the 
 "higher law binding upon capital," he did not 
 have the remotest idea what she was driving at. 
 They struggled on for a while, but by and by he 
 referred irreverently to her " law of self-sacrifice 
 in trade " as " the blessedness of getting left," and 
 then she suspected that lie recognized no higher 
 law in trade than that of self-interest, and she was 
 quite sure of it finally when her " New Political 
 Economy " went dismally to wreck against his com 
 monplace but apparently incontrovertible maxim, 
 that " it takes two to make a bargain." 
 
 Nevertheless, with feminine persistence, she did 
 not altogether abandon the field of discussion to 
 which she had led the conversation. The question of 
 the protective tariff was that summer attracting the 
 public attention more than usually, and Ruth had 
 been trying diligently in her spare moments to find 
 out exactly what were the advantages of the high- 
 tariff system under which the people of the United 
 States were then living. The more she read, the 
 more sceptical she grew as to these alleged advan 
 tages, possibly because the most able and attractive 
 literature at her disposal was Unanimous in attack 
 ing the existing system. The presence of Mr. 
 
THE BROUGHTOS HOUSE. 183 
 
 Collins now gave her the first opportunity she 
 had had for months for talking with a business 
 man whose interests were closely concerned in 
 any proposed changes in tariff legislation. 
 
 She was eager to ask him about several things 
 which her husband would hardly have been ex 
 pected to know. But to her astonishment she 
 soon found that Collins had never given the subject 
 any thought worthy of the name. He had inherited 
 the Collins Woollen Mills, and a theory of the 
 paternal relation of the government to them, at 
 the same time, and did not question either inheri 
 tance. Surprised at a woman s interest in purely 
 economical subjects, he answered carelessly, almost 
 humorously, until he discovered that this gray- 
 eyed, fresh-cheeked young woman sitting there by 
 the pastor s desk, her foot almost touching his own, 
 was involving him in a gross contradiction. He 
 had assented, without thinking of the consequences, 
 to her postulate that the woollen manufacturers 
 and the wool-growers had identical interests, but 
 after two or three more of her innocent questions 
 he began to stumble, and was forced to admit, 
 before her series of interrogations ended, that it 
 certainly looked, from the outside, as if under the 
 present condition of things the interests of growers 
 and manufacturers were diametrically opposed. 
 Then, in spite of his politeness, Collins began to 
 grow nettled at the peculiar way the minister s 
 wife had of amusing a caller. She saw that she 
 
184 THE BROUGHTON 
 
 was treading on dangerous ground, and was almost 
 minded to turn the conversation to the subject 
 of the Broughton House, when a letter she 
 had received that morning from her old home 
 came into her mind. The letter was about tene 
 ment houses, and she could not resist asking Collins 
 about the method of rent in use at the Mills village. 
 He explained, a trifle impatiently, the policy of the 
 company, and heard with some incredulity her 
 excited exposition of the plan then on trial by 
 the association with which she had been connected. 
 His impatience gave way to a mild disgust when 
 she asked him about the system of drainage in use 
 at his company s cottages. He did not know any 
 thing about the drainage in the first place, and in 
 the second, his vocabulary for expressing himself 
 on such subjects had never been tested by the 
 presence of a feminine auditor, and he found the 
 conversation embarrassing. He feared, too, that he 
 was not making the best impression in the world 
 on the minister s wife, and felt that the fault lay 
 in her intruding her interest into subjects that 
 lay solely within the scope of the masculine com 
 prehension. Finally he lost his temper, and in 
 defence of the cottages under his control, asked by 
 way of comparison if she had ever been at Law 
 rence or Lowell. On her replying in the negative, 
 he used, in describing the way the operatives along 
 the Merrimac lived, a simile so brutal that it 
 shocked her, as he intended it should, and before 
 
THE BROUGHTOy HOUSE. 185 
 
 she could fairly recover herself, he changed the 
 subject so markedly that she took the hint. 
 
 The last five minutes of his call were charming. 
 As if in recognition of the fact that she had been 
 boring him, Mrs. Ellerton did her utmost to put 
 him in good humor, and with a woman as pretty 
 as the minister s wife for a hostess, Collins was 
 not after all a caller very difficult to please. He 
 went away with a delightful, if slightly confused 
 impression of her, left a message for Mr. Ellerton, 
 and promised to come again. 
 
 When Mrs. Ellerton gave her husband, one day 
 when she was in the mood for it, a detailed de 
 scription of her discussion with Collins, he went 
 from one peal of laughter into another, and the 
 more accurate she grew in her repetition of their 
 mutual questions and answers, the more entertain 
 ment did Ellerton seem to find in them. He never 
 took his wife s researches into economic subjects 
 with quite the seriousness they deserved, and, as 
 has been said, he did not share at all her zeal for 
 the improvement of tenement houses. 
 
 " Well, what was that shocking tiling he said 
 about Lawrence?" he asked. "It seems that that 
 put the finishing touch on that frivolous discus 
 sion." 
 
 "Arthur, it was perfect!} horrid!" she cried, 
 earnestly. " And he said it in such a cold-blooded 
 way." 
 
 He waited for her to repeat Collins s remark. 
 
186 THE EEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 "Why," and she uttered the words as if they 
 soiled her lips, u he said that the operatives there 
 live like like worms in a bait-box and that the 
 factory owners don t mind it if they do." 
 
 It was Ellerton s turn to grow grave. " Rather 
 a forcible figure of speech, my dear, I ll admit," 
 said he. 
 
 "Well," he added, after a moment s pause, in 
 which Mrs. Ellerton had shut her eyes as if to 
 close something out of her vision, " I must say 
 this : he s taken his comparison from something 
 he s familiar with. He s a fisherman through and 
 through. And that reminds me, if we re going 
 trouting together before this season closes, I must 
 go down to the hotel now, and make an engage 
 ment with him." 
 
 Ellerton crossed to his wife s chair, and bending 
 above her, kissed her forehead. 
 
 " Good by, my dear, I ll make Collins take that 
 back. He didn t dream of your really remember 
 ing it, I know. But if there were more people in 
 Lawrence like you, Ruth, I don t doubt that it 
 would be better for Lawrence that s all." 
 
IX. 
 
 WHEN Mr. Ellerton reached the Broughton 
 House in search of Collins, he found the piazza 
 tolerably well filled with summer guests, but there 
 was no one in the long line of red rocking-chairs 
 whom he recognized. He entered the office and 
 looked around for some one of whom he might 
 inquire for Collins. The room was empty, except 
 for a couple of little city misses in tennis-suits, 
 who were laughing at the lithograph of Daniel 
 Webster. The minister turned to go out again, 
 when he met Bill Trumbull, who was coming in. 
 
 " I wonder if you can tell me where I shall find 
 Mr. Collins," Ellerton asked at a venture. 
 
 "Wai, I guess so," replied Trumbull, benevo 
 lently, seating himself by way of preliminary in 
 his cushioned chair. " Let s see," and he struck a 
 match on the bottom of the chair, while with the 
 forefinger of his left hand he pushed the tobacco 
 tenderly into the bowl of his pipe. Mr. Floyd, 
 he s workin this afternoon. Got an order for a 
 picture yesterday, clear from Chicago. The school 
 teacher, he s down to the academy. Collins 
 lemme see ; Mrs. Floyd, she s gone red-raspber- 
 ryin , all alone. Mr. Collins, oh, now, come to 
 
 187 
 
188 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 think of it, I guess you ll find Mr. Collins down to 
 the Holler, try in to git that ere trout." 
 
 The minister sat down at this point, yielding to 
 the spell that usually came over those who stood 
 up before the seated and conversationally inclined 
 Trumbull. " I don t believe he ll git him," con 
 tinued Bill. " Along in June, when Mr. Collins 
 come up here, he says to me, Bill, I won t go 
 back without that trout down in the Holler. I 
 didn t say nothin , but thinks I, you ll have to 
 ketch im first." 
 
 " He s a big one, is he ? " inquired the minister, 
 who remembered that Collins had said something 
 about this fish on the afternoon at Floyd s cottage. 
 
 " Big one ? " ejaculated Bill, and he took a long 
 pull at his pipe. " Of course he s a big one. 
 When you have a hole under a rock like that, with 
 water eight or ten foot deep, you don t ketch noth- 
 in else but big ones. The little trout are afraid 
 to go there, don t you see? Afraid they ll git 
 gobbled up by the old ones. I never yet see this 
 trout, though," admitted Bill, dispassionately; 
 " Collins says he s a three-pounder." 
 
 " He is, eh ? " cried Ellerton, excitedly. 
 
 " Yes, sir ! But I don t think you can ketch 
 that trout with a hook. I told Collins says I, 
 why don t you go down there some night with a 
 torch n spear him? But Collins said he d be " 
 Trumbull remembered he was talking with the 
 minister and hesitated an instant " darned if he d 
 
THE BROUGHTOX HOUSE. 189 
 
 spear that trout himself, or let any one else spear 
 him, with a lot more about it s bein unsportsman 
 like. Xow, when I was a boy. if we couldn t git 
 em one way, we would the other. Anything 
 to git em. There wa n t so much talk then about 
 sportsmen/ but we used to git the fish, by 
 Johnny 
 
 " Ah, ha ! " threw in Ellerton, to show his interest. 
 " Yes, sir. Did you ever see a three-pound 
 trout ? Do you know what they look like ? " 
 
 fc Xo," answered Ellerton, modestly. The largest 
 brook-trout he had ever taken weighed a pound and 
 a quarter, and there had been glory enough in 
 that. 
 
 k - Wai, just look at that mantel-piece." Bill 
 waved his pipe toward the fireplace. Do you see 
 that narrer notch, not the end one. but the narrer 
 one?" 
 
 "Yes," said Ellerton, who had jumped up to 
 examine the mantel-piece. 
 
 " That trout weighed two pound ten ounces. 
 Pretty close on to three pounds, ain t it ? There 
 was a boy caught that trout, not more n five or six 
 years ago. Jerked him right out of the water, with 
 a crooked hardback pole ; n I guess the boy was 
 about as scared as the fish was. Ran all the way 
 home, anyhow, holclin onto the trout with both 
 hands, n draggin the pole behind him along the 
 road. Didn t dast take the hook out of his mouth, 
 ye see, for fear he d git away." 
 
190 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 Ellerton laughed, with a remembrance of his own 
 boyish rapture, when he caught his first trout, from 
 a tiny stream in a Pennsylvania meadow. " What s 
 this end notch ? " he asked. 
 
 Bill Trumbull settled himself more comfortably 
 in his chair and crossed his legs. "That end 
 notch?" he repeated, as if to give the minister fail- 
 warning. " That, sir, was cut close to the end of 
 the tail of the biggest trout that was ever ketched 
 in the town of Broughton." He waited a moment, 
 to give these solemnly uttered words their due 
 impression. " That was back toward the end of the 
 war, in the spring of 1864. Just an even four 
 pounds. Samuel Parkinson weighed that trout, 
 and says he, If that fellow had had one more fly 
 for breakfast, he d weigh over four pounds. " 
 
 But just here, in the very prologue of the narra 
 tive Ellerton knew was coming, it occurred to the 
 minister that Collins might be catching a three- 
 pound trout at that very moment ; and much as he 
 would have enjoyed the history of the four-pounder 
 taken in 1864, the possibility of seeing the smaller 
 fish actually landed was more tempting. 
 
 " Well, I declare, that was a big one," he inter 
 rupted. " Look here, Mr. Trumbull, do you think 
 Mr. Collins would mind my going down there and 
 watching him ? " 
 
 " I dunno s he would," replied Bill, slowly, dis 
 simulating as well as he could his disappointment 
 in not being asked to finish his story. " You know 
 
THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 191 
 
 enough to keep still, don t ye, and keep out of 
 sight?" 
 
 " Oh, yes," laughed Ellerton. " How do you get 
 down there from here? I ve never been there 
 but once." 
 
 " Go right down the cow lane behind the stable," 
 directed Bill. " You ll have to cross a little bit of 
 medder, but I guess twas mowed yesterday. Then 
 follow the path right through the pasture, and 
 there you be." 
 
 " Thank you. I rather believe I ll go down." 
 
 "Wai, I guess twon t do no harm," said Bill, 
 with good humor beaming from his mild, vague 
 eyes. "I told Collins, sez I, that trout ain t 
 going to be hooked. Still, you can t never tell, in 
 trout-fishm . He s goin to try a couple of banty 
 chickens for bait to-day. Curious kind of bait, too, 
 now, ain t it ? " 
 
 "It is, indeed," replied the minister. "Good 
 day," and he shot out of the office, brushing in the 
 doorway against the two little girls in tennis-suits, 
 who had been listening with great interest to the 
 conversation, and who were trying to get up cour 
 age to ask Bill Trumbull about the stuffed wild 
 cat in the corner. But they did not dare, and ran 
 away after a while, with laughing whispers, leav 
 ing Bill to sit alone before the fireless hearth, and 
 to perfect certain commendatory phrases about the 
 parson that were forming themselves in his mind, 
 
192 THE BROUGIITON HOUSE. 
 
 in. spite of liis chagrin at Ellerton s premature 
 departure. 
 
 Ellerton picked his way through the stable-yard, 
 vaulted over the bars into the lane in a style that 
 made the stable-boy envious of him, and walked 
 rapidly down the lane toward the Hollow. It was 
 already rather late in the afternoon, and a slight 
 film of cloud was over the sky. Ellerton had not 
 yet had leisure enough to get acquainted with 
 Broughton by-paths, and he hesitated an instant at 
 the end of the lane. On getting into the meadoAv, 
 however, he found a slender path winding close to 
 the fence, among the rank golden-rod, not yet in 
 blossom, and the ox-eyed daisies and spirea. The 
 grass had been cut close up to this tangled border 
 along the fence, and lay in browning swathes just 
 as it had fallen. Beyond the meadow, the path led 
 over a rickety stone wall into a pasture, and here 
 it wound up hill among quartzite bowlders, and 
 through dark green patches of sweet-fern, bright 
 ened here and there by the purple and white 
 blossoms of the twining morning-glory. When 
 Ellerton gained the summit of the pasture, the 
 Hollow opened before his feet. 
 
 A long pool lay gleaming there below. Toward 
 it the pasture sloped steeply down, covered as on 
 the other side of the hill with detached bowlders 
 and clumps of fern, only that the northern slope 
 was colder, and wet with many a tiny spring, all 
 choked with peppermint and spearmint. 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 193 
 
 At the head of the pool, to the right, was a 
 huge ledge with piles of broken rock, from which 
 came the roar of falling water. All along on the 
 north, beyond the pool and facing Ellerton as he 
 stood, extended this high gloomy ledge, bending 
 gradually toward the west, so that in the after 
 noon its shadow darkened the water. Two or 
 three huge hemlocks were growing at the crest of 
 the ledge, and a pair of crows were circling around 
 them excitedly, though it was long past breeding- 
 time. Below the hemlocks, and covering much 
 of the precipice with their lighter green, grew 
 birches, soft maples, and hardbacks, wherever they 
 could gain a foothold between the crevices. A 
 profoundly quiet place the Hollow seemed to Mr. 
 Ellerton, in spite of the noise of water and the 
 cawing of the crows, and it seemed a trifle lonely, 
 too, albeit only a quarter of a mile from the vil 
 lage street. Suddenly he caught sight of Collins, 
 crouching in the grass behind a long bowlder near 
 the head of the pool, and all thought of the land 
 scape went out of his mind in a moment. De 
 scending carefully, though not without dislodging 
 a few round stones which rolled down dangerously 
 near the water, he made his way toward the fisher 
 man, creeping the last few paces until he gained 
 the shelter of the rock behind which Collins was 
 squatted. The latter looked up with a nod of 
 welcome. 
 
194 THE BROUGIITON HOUSE. 
 
 "Hullo," he said, as the minister reached his 
 side. "How d ye do?" 
 
 " First rate," Ellertoii whispered. " I hope I m 
 not taking too much of a liberty." 
 
 "Nonsense!" replied Collins, in his low, vibrant 
 bass. " And you needn t whisper. The water up 
 there makes so much noise that the fish can t hear 
 us. I doubt if they hear much, anyway." 
 
 Ellerton swung himself over on his hip, and 
 stretched out, regardless of the damp, clayey 
 bottom. 
 
 " Look out for my chickens," called the fisher 
 man, with a smile, as the minister planted his el 
 bow almost in a Derby hat, which lay bottom 
 upwards, propped with a couple of stones. Eller 
 ton looked over into it, and saw two newly hatched 
 bantams, incredibly small and noisy. 
 
 " I thought of trying some partridge chickens," 
 Collins explained, "but they re too big by this 
 time, even if I could find any. What do you think 
 of the bantys?" 
 
 "Well, they re small enough," answered Eller 
 ton. " I ve heard of catching big trout with a 
 partridge chicken, but never saw it tried." 
 
 " I ve seen a Canada Indian do it," said Collins, 
 " but that isn t doing it myself. I tried the same 
 thing with two young field-mice the other day, but 
 it was no use. And I had a little green frog fas 
 tened to a salmon hook and swimming all over 
 that hole, last night, but the trout wouldn t even 
 
THE HROUGHTOy HOUSE. 195 
 
 look at him." Collins busied himself, as he spoke, 
 with making a gut slip-noose. 
 
 " You re sure he is there ? " inquired Ellerton. 
 
 " He rose the other night at a white miller-fly," 
 replied Collins, "but I didn t hook him. Oh, 
 he s there sure enough. Just below that little 
 whirlpool, in line with those brakes, is where he 
 rose. Go on ! Stick your head up and take a 
 good look at it." 
 
 The minister peeped over the top of the rock 
 and took a long look, uttering under his breath 
 an enthusiastic interjection. Through the ledge, 
 above the pool, the water had cut a straight, pol 
 ished channel, down which the brook shot at tre 
 mendous speed into a round pot-hole. The rocks 
 all around were black and slippery with the flying 
 spray, and the pot-hole was white as milk with the 
 churning swirl and the foam. As the brook poured 
 out of its confined space into the broad current of 
 the pool, a big willow stump overhung the water, 
 on the side nearest Ellerton, and its roots seemed 
 to catch the mighty rush of the current, and to 
 deflect it to the other bank, toward the shelving 
 ledge of rock. The fine purple rootlets of the tree 
 fringed all the nearer bank, for twenty feet or 
 more below the stump. From the willow to the 
 opposite ledge there was a width of a dozen or 
 fifteen feet, and a depth of ten; but the pool 
 shoaled gradually, as it broadened, and though 
 along the rocky side there was deep and black- 
 
196 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 looking water for fifty feet or more, the lower end 
 of the pool was shallow, and its bottom covered 
 with fine gravel. Here the village boys came 
 sometimes to bathe, and once in a great while a 
 party of little girls, watched jealously by some 
 older woman, would dare to invade the loneliness 
 of the Hollow, in order to dabble and wade in the 
 shallowest places of the pool, and even to try 
 swimming across, at a safe depth, to the ledge on 
 the northern side. 
 
 Ellerton s rock was six or eight yards from the 
 bank, and about the same distance from the head 
 of the pool. The water glided past him, brim 
 ming and smooth, and he could look far down, past 
 the purple fringe of willow roots, into the lucent 
 amber-colored depths. He could almost see, by 
 the presentative power of his fisherman s imagi 
 nation, that the big trout was there. 
 
 " Well, I declare ! " he exclaimed, sinking back 
 on the wet grass again. Collins grinned sympa 
 thetically. 
 
 "That s about right, isn t it?" he remarked. 
 " And now for my banty chicken." 
 
 He took one of the tiny squeaking things from 
 his hat, gently enough, and fitted its breast into 
 the curve of a salmon hook so that the point pro 
 truded half an inch or so above the bantam s wing. 
 Binding the chicken in place with half a dozen 
 turns of yellow silk thread, he knotted a strip of 
 cork, to which were fastened some feathers, under 
 
THE BROUGHTOS HOUSE. 197 
 
 the incipient tail of his peeping bait. Then hand 
 ing the chicken to Ellerton to hold, he rapidly put 
 his rod together, measured with his eve the dis- 
 
 O * 
 
 tance of the cast required, and adjusted his rod. 
 The long gut leader to which the hook was fas 
 tened was curled in tangled spirals, and Collins 
 wet his fingers and pulled it straight. Taking the 
 precious bait in his left hand, he lifted the upper 
 pan of his body cautiously above the rock, and 
 while Ellerton lay flat, trembling with excitement, 
 there was the sudden whistle of the dainty split 
 bamboo rod. as CoLUns s arm straightened, and the 
 bantam chicken soared out on the prettiest imagin 
 able flight and landed lightly on the head water of 
 the pool, above the stump, just where the last rip 
 ples from the pot-hole began to smooth themselves. 
 Collins s eye twinkled: a live chick was an awk 
 ward thing to cast, but he had put it on the desired 
 spot as deftly as if it were only an ordinary brown 
 hackle. The chicken righted itself instantly, as 
 its lesr^ and winsps were free, and began its flutter 
 ing and dangerous voyage down stream, hindered 
 rather than helped by the cork, which had slipped 
 so far back that it made the chicken s head bob 
 ridiculously into the water, every foot or so. tip 
 ping after the manner of a young peeping sand 
 piper. There was breathless stillness, except for 
 the fine click of the reel, as the bait was swept 
 along toward the little whirlpool where the trout 
 had last risen. It was just at the spot in a moment 
 
198 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 more, then whirled twice or thrice in the eddy, 
 hesitated, and floated on again in its bobbing, 
 splashing, struggling fashion ; but no trout rose at 
 it. The twinkle went out of Collins s face : he 
 leaned far over and began to let out line, as the 
 bait was carried down the pool, just outside of the 
 dark shelf of rock, in the shadow of the trees. 
 Fifteen eighteen twenty yards of line were out 
 besides a six-foot leader, when Collins drew the 
 bait across the lower end of the pool, just where 
 the stream began to ripple again, and commenced 
 to reel in, without a word. When the bait had 
 crept up the nearer side of the pool to within a few 
 yards, Collins lifted it out of the water and caught 
 it in his hand, as it swung dangling past him. 
 
 " The cork s no help," he remarked, examining 
 the panting, drenched atom of yellow fuzz that lay 
 in his palm. " D you think he d float again with 
 out it?" 
 
 Ellerton nodded his assent, despite a certain 
 sneaking pity for the chicken. 
 
 Collins pulled out a penknife and cut the cork 
 loose. He stood the chicken up on his palm, and 
 laughed at its unsteady efforts to keep its feet, and 
 at the pertness of its black eyes. Then he tossed 
 it into the air, and the eight-ounce rod threw it 
 lightly up the pool again, this time placing it under 
 the willow stump, in quieter water. There was 
 less splashing, too, as the chicken got itself right 
 side up, though without the cork it floated steadier 
 
THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 199 
 
 than before. Again it was carried over toward the 
 ledge, paused in the eddies, and began to glide 
 down past the blackest water. Feebler and feebler 
 grew the struggles and the peepings, more and 
 more often did the tiny yellow head go out of sight. 
 Collins shook the tip of his rod a little to make 
 the motion of the bait more lifelike, and drew it 
 back and forth along the lower pool, but all in 
 vain. The three-pounder was either sulky or not 
 hungry. When the bait floated over into the shal 
 lowest water, a dace nibbled at it, to Collinses silent 
 wrath. He jerked it away and drew it up stream, 
 rather limp now, and soaked out of much resem 
 blance to a saucy bantam chick. When it was 
 opposite the rock Collins whipped it out of the 
 water, and with scarcely a motion of his supple 
 wrist sent it across the pool again, below the eddy, 
 and drew it straight in toward him rapidly, in a 
 discontented fashion. Almost automatically, and 
 hardly glancing at the hook, he repeated this, twice, 
 three times, apparently making up his mind whether 
 it would be worth while to try the other chicken. 
 But the third time, as he pulled the bait in over 
 the water and was just snapping it carelessly into 
 the air toward the rock, there was an eager rush 
 and a cleaving splash, and the huge trout, in hot 
 pursuit, leaped half out of the water like a salmon, 
 with wide-open mouth, and missing the yellow 
 morsel, was driven straight toward the bank by 
 the impetus of its spring, so that both men saw it 
 
200 THE SEOUGIITON HOUSE. 
 
 clearly as it shot forward, then turned, with a sin 
 gle sullen nap of its broad tail, and darted off into 
 deeper water again. 
 
 The men looked at each other with dilating eyes, 
 and each caught his breath. Collins sank on his 
 knees, twitched the wet bantam chicken, in his 
 excitement, right into the minister s face, then 
 grabbed it and tried to untie the silk, but, old 
 fisherman that he was, his hand trembled so that 
 he failed to hold the knot. 
 
 " Untie it," he whispered. 
 
 Ellerton took the chicken in his palm. It was 
 quite dead. 
 
 "Cut it," ordered Collins. "No, it s got to be 
 untied; I haven t any more silk. Wait a minute." 
 He pulled out a cigar and lit it nervously. 
 
 But Ellerton had already taken the thread off, 
 and laid the dead chicken on the rock. 
 
 " Now my hat, quick ! " cried Collins. " We ve 
 got to try him with this other one : he won t come 
 over here again." 
 
 He tied the second chicken to the hook, swiftly, 
 puffing hard at his cigar. It took a minute, this 
 changing of the bait, but it seemed like ten. When 
 all was ready he crawled out to the end of the 
 rock, cautiously, exposing nothing but his arm and 
 head. Ellerton lay beside him, flat on his stomach 
 in the wire-grass. The sun was down almost below 
 the northwest bend in the ledge, and just as Collins 
 dragged himself forward the last inch, and took, a 
 
THE BEOUGHTOS HOUSE. 201 
 
 firm grasp of the butt of his rod, a shadow came 
 quite over the water, and a hundred little ripples 
 shivered across it. 
 
 "Xow for you," muttered Collins; and once 
 more the rod whistled and the bait new out over 
 the steel-gray pool. 
 
 It was a nervous cast though, and fell short. 
 But that was no matter. The bantam shook its 
 downy wings, drifted free of the outer circle of the 
 eddy where it had fallen, and floated off, squeak 
 ing, just below the clump of brakes that bent down 
 into the water. But there the big trout, not to be 
 foiled a second time, darted up from his lurking- 
 place, and with the waters swirling all around him as 
 he leaped, closed his wide jaws over the trembling, 
 frightened bit of yellow fuzz, and, with a vicious 
 sideways shake of the head, plunged straight for 
 the bottom. Collins struck sharply, jumping to his 
 feet, but the rod straightened in his hand, and the 
 empty line flew back into the air. 
 
 The three-pounder had caught the leader between 
 his teeth and cut it as if with scissors. 
 
 Collins stood motionless for twenty seconds, star 
 ing blankly at the water. Then he took his thumb 
 from the reel, letting it buzz until the line was 
 wound, and then began to unjoint his rod, 
 silently. 
 
 Ellerton, watching his smooth, olive face, clear- 
 cut chin, and square shoulders, caught for a mo 
 ment a fanciful resemblance between the manufac- 
 
202 THE JU?OUGIITON HOUSE. 
 
 turer and Napoleon Bonaparte. Perhaps that was 
 why he exclaimed : 
 
 " Well, I declare ! That was a Waterloo." 
 
 Collins turned and looked at him with his lumi 
 nous black eyes, not knowing whether to laugh or 
 swear. He compromised by pulling out another 
 cigar, and offering it to the parson. Ellerton, 
 though the most abstemious of smokers, took it, as 
 the most practical expression of his sympathy for 
 the fisherman s feelings, and, borrowing Collins s 
 cigar for a light, he blew out two or three mouth- 
 fuls of smoke before the manufacturer had said 
 anything. 
 
 " Hang it ! " finally ejaculated Collins. " I ought 
 to have had a wire leader." He picked up his hat 
 and put it on, and then taking the draggled, origi 
 nal chicken from the rock where Ellerton had laid 
 it, and jerking it spitefully down to the dace in the 
 shallows, he sat down on the rock himself and 
 crossed one knee over the other. Ellerton stood 
 in front of him, brushing ineffectually with one 
 hand the wet clay from the knees of his ministerial 
 trousers. 
 
 " Well," demanded Collins, his deep voice shak 
 ing yet from the excitement he had been under, 
 " what do you think of him ? " 
 
 " Think of him ! " replied Ellerton ; " I saw him ! 
 I didn t suppose a trout that size ever grew." 
 
 Collins smiled at the boyish sparkle of enthusi 
 asm in the minister s eyes. " Oh, they grow," he 
 
THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 203 
 
 exclaimed, knocking the ashes off his cigar ; " the 
 thing is to hook em." 
 
 " Let me look at the gut," said Ellerton. 
 
 Collins took it out of his pocket, and they scru 
 tinized together the clean cut where the trout s 
 teeth had severed it. 
 
 " Yes," remarked the minister ; " I suppose wire 
 would have been better." 
 
 It is an unusually genial fisherman who can 
 allow any one else to join, even most indirectly, in 
 the criticism of his own methods of procedure, and 
 there was some asperity in Collins s tone as he re 
 plied, " But I didn t have any. Didn t bring any 
 with me, and there isn t one within twenty miles. 
 It wouldn t do any good now," he added ; " this 
 chicken business is played out. I shall have to 
 wait till he has digested that salmon hook, any 
 way." 
 
 " Don t you think he d rise to bait again ? " 
 
 "Not right off," was the response, and Collins 
 twinkled grimly ; " not to-night or to-morrow. I 
 propose to have him yet, though," he said, after a 
 moment s silence, "game-law or none. There are 
 eight days before the first of August, anyhow." 
 
 "I suppose you could spear him at night, 
 couldn t you?" suggested Ellerton, remembering 
 what Bill Trumbull had said at the hotel. 
 
 " Spear him ? " repeated Collins, wrathfully. 
 " Of course I could if I wanted to. So could any 
 pot-hunter. I told Bill Trumbull that when I sank 
 
204 THE BEOUGIITON HOUSE. 
 
 so low as to spear that trout, because I couldn t 
 hook him, I d never show my head in Broughton 
 again." 
 
 The minister changed the subject, judiciously. 
 " I suppose Bill has been something of a fisher 
 man, in his way, hasn t he ? " 
 
 " Bill? " inquired Collins, relaxing. "I shouldn t 
 wonder. But it won t do for me to spoil any of 
 his stories by telling them myself. I half wish he d 
 seen that fish in there, this afternoon," and Collins 
 shifted his position so as to take a regretful look 
 at the surface of the pool ; " it would have been 
 enough to keep him going for a year." 
 
 Ellerton walked over to the bank and stood with 
 his hands in his pockets, gazing down at the wav 
 ing willow roots. A frog leaped from under his 
 feet into the water, and the sudden splash made 
 both men start, and then look smilingly at each 
 other. 
 
 " No," said Collins ; " that trout won t jump 
 again for us to-night. We might as well go 
 home." 
 
 "Sure enough," replied the minister, glancing 
 at his watch ; " it s supper-time. By the way, when 
 can we have the little fishing-trip that that rainy 
 Monday spoiled for us ? " 
 
 " Oh, any time," answered Collins, cordially ; 
 " only it must be pretty soon ; " and they debated 
 for some minutes before they could find a day and 
 hour for which Ellerton had not some engagement. 
 
THE BKOUGHTON HOUSE. 205 
 
 The talk grew rather aimless after that, and by and 
 by they started up the hill toward the village, Eller- 
 ton halting more than once to look back into the 
 Hollow, where the pool stretched black and still. 
 He forgot all about the conversation he had meant 
 to have with Collins on one or two of the subjects 
 his wife had discussed with the manufacturer. 
 He had intended to ask Collins what he really 
 meant about the state of things in Lawrence, and 
 whether it was the fault of the mill-owners, the 
 operatives, or the churches. He had had a desire 
 to know how his new acquaintance stood on some 
 of these social questions, not so much in the hope 
 of getting light on the questions themselves, as was 
 the case with his wife, but rather with the pur 
 pose of rinding out what manner of man this dark- 
 faced, gentlemanly sportsman was. He thought 
 that the minister in the village where the Collins 
 Mills were situated was an acquaintance of his, 
 and by asking Collins about it he had hoped to 
 discover what was the manufacturer s own attitude 
 tow r ard the church. But all these desires, sincere 
 as they were, were for the time being obliterated 
 by the hearty natural interest he had taken in Col 
 lins as a fisherman, and so it was about trout and 
 salmon and related themes, and not about mills and 
 churches, that the two men continued to talk, as 
 they followed the winding path up the hill. 
 
 It was only a quarter of an hour before that 
 Mrs. Floyd, returning from her solitary expedition 
 
206 THE BEOUGIITON HOUSE. 
 
 to a neighboring pasture, had set down her heaped 
 pail of red raspberries by the bars, at the summit 
 of the hill, while she clambered over. She had 
 rested there a few minutes, leaning her hands 011 
 the top bar, looking down into the darkening Hol 
 low, ignorant of the presence of the fishermen, and 
 thinking of the first time she had gone there to 
 bathe in the shallow part of the pool. How the 
 water had frightened her, as it stole up over her 
 knees, and how dear Aunt Tryphosa, sitting on the 
 bank, had shaken and squealed with laughter! 
 Then Tryphena Morton Floyd looked down at her 
 stained fingers, all scratched with the thorns of the 
 raspberry bushes, and wondered how many times, 
 when a child, her fingers had rested here on the 
 bars, tinier fingers then, and browner, but just as 
 scratched and stained. Somehow the pail seemed 
 heavier when she took it up again, and she stum 
 bled slightly more than once, as she followed the 
 lonely path through the meadow to the cottage. 
 
 " Hullo! " said Collins, as the two men reached 
 the top of the ascent, and got over the bars. 
 " Some one has spilt some berries," and picking up 
 and tossing into his mouth three or four big rasp 
 berries that were lying under the lowest rail, he 
 answered one of Ellerton s queries about the 
 Rangely Lakes, and they sauntered on towards the 
 hotel. 
 
X. 
 
 THE order for a picture which Floyd had re 
 ceived from Chicago was given by old Watson. 
 Nearly two weeks had passed since that hot morn 
 ing when Mrs. Floyd had torn Watson s first letter 
 in two, and tossed the pieces at her husband s feet. 
 Day after day, in this slow interval of time, Floyd 
 had managed to be at the post-office in the after 
 noon when the mail was opened. He had gone 
 with no definite expectations, for he knew that the 
 eccentric broker would not be likely to refer again 
 to the return to Munich until the month was past, 
 and yet he had a restless feeling that something 
 important might come for him at any time. 
 
 On the afternoon when the sallow postmistress 
 handed him a second letter addressed in the 
 cramped, familiar hand, it happened that Collins 
 was in the company of the artist. 
 
 Floyd s first impulse was to thrust the letter into 
 his pocket, unread ; but knowing that Collins s eye 
 was upon him, he decided to tear it open, and did 
 so with affected carelessness. But his hand shook 
 a little notwithstanding, and in his jerk at the end 
 of the envelope he tore the enclosed note half 
 across. It was an unpleasant reminder of the fate 
 
 207 
 
208 THE miOUGUTON HOUSE. 
 
 of Watson s iirst communication. An eager look 
 came into his palish eyes as he read. 
 
 " Hullo ! " he muttered, " I m in luck ; " and, 
 determining to carry matters through as uncon 
 cernedly as lie had begun, he passed the single 
 blotted page to Collins. 
 
 The manufacturer ran his eye over it. " Humph ! " 
 he exclaimed. "Two hundred and seventy-five 
 dollars for a small picture ; I should think that 
 was doing very well. It s more than I d give you, 
 Floyd, anyway. But can you paint it in two 
 weeks ? " 
 
 Floyd took the letter again and studied the date. 
 Cunning old Watson had not written a word about 
 Germany, but the price he offered for a picture 
 "about 12 x 17" was exactly the amount of the 
 first check he had ever sent Floyd, to pay his 
 expenses over to Munich, and the date by which 
 the picture was to be done was set exactly a month 
 later than his letter of two weeks before. 
 
 " Oh, yes," replied Floyd, " I can paint it in two 
 weeks easily." As they walked back to the hotel 
 he talked with noteworthy gravity and conceit 
 about his powers of rapid execution, but Collins 
 did not seem to be profoundly impressed. How 
 ever, as they reached the Broughton House, he 
 said: 
 
 " Now, look here, Floyd. In honor of your luck 
 we ll have a game of euchre, if you say so. You 
 can t go to work to-night." 
 
THE BROUGHT03 HOUSE. 209 
 
 The artist scowled, perhaps at some inglorious 
 recollection. " Oh, I don t mind, he assented. 
 " Only it mustn t be for long/ he added, with a 
 deprecatory meaning that Collins understood. 
 
 " All right," smiled the latter, and entered the 
 office to drop a discreet word into the Welshman s 
 ear. But Collins kept the agreement, and the 
 game of euchre was a brief one. 
 
 Next morning the artist turned over the contents 
 of his portfolio in search of some sketch that he 
 might use for the picture. He thought at first of 
 the old mill, out on the North Broughton road ; but 
 he could scarcely finish that in the required time, 
 and besides, he knew that Watson s preference 
 would be for figure -painting rather than for land 
 scape. He hesitated a moment, too, over the 
 hastily executed portrait of Sonderby, and was 
 surprised by its evident excellence into thinking 
 that he might dress up the figure in armor and vel 
 vet if his studio were only accessible and call it 
 an imaginary portrait of some mediaeval character. 
 But this was only a passing fancy. He finally hit 
 upon a Venetian sketch a girl leaning upon a 
 fountain as something which would please Wat 
 son, and which he could easily reproduce in oil. 
 He had sketched in the fountain with considerable 
 care, originally, and all that he wished for a back 
 ground the faade of a palace and a glimpse of a 
 canal his other Venetian drawings could easily 
 supply. To be sure, he needed a model ; but Try- 
 
210 THE BEOUGIITON HOUSE. 
 
 phena had often posed for him before, and he saw 
 no reason why she should now refuse. 
 
 He had not spoken to her of the order he had 
 received until breakfast-time, in the presence of 
 Collins and Sonderby, the latter of whom showed 
 much interest in the artist s good fortune. Try- 
 phena listened with unusual trepidation to her 
 husband s bombastic attempts to make light of the 
 matter, as if it were an ordinary thing to have such 
 conditions attached to a bargain for a picture ; and 
 when, in response to an innocent inquiry from the 
 school-teacher, Floyd answered that the painting 
 was going to Chicago, she felt as if something 
 choked her. She knew then that her husband had 
 heard from Watson again, and she did not doubt 
 in her own mind that they had reached an under 
 standing. 
 
 Nevertheless, so well had she learned to keep 
 her thoughts and feelings to herself except on 
 those rare occasions when impulse got the better 
 of her that when Floyd asked her after break 
 fast if she would not play model for a while, he 
 was surprised himself at her obedient, almost gen 
 tle, acquiescence. 
 
 " Of course I will, Billy," she answered. 
 " Haven t I always ? " 
 
 Those last words made him glance suspiciously 
 at her, imagining some meaning deeper than ap 
 peared upon the surface ; but her face and her tone 
 were for him impenetrable, and the words were 
 
THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 211 
 
 after all natural enough. Together the artist and 
 his wife went into the back yard of the cottage 
 and looked around for a suitable place for the 
 morning s work. A fountain easily brought to 
 mind the well-curb, and after squinting at this 
 two or three times, Floyd decided that it would 
 do. It was about the right height for Mrs. Floyd 
 to lean against, and an ancient brass kettle of 
 Aunt Tryphena s, balanced on the edge of the 
 curb, made a tolerable substitute for the water- 
 pot, upon which the Venetian girl in the sketch 
 was resting her hands. The artist arranged care 
 fully the drapery of his wife s skirts, fastening 
 them high enough to show her ankles, for he 
 wanted to paint the counterless slippers which the 
 Venetian women wear 011 the street. As he pinned 
 and pulled her dark flannel dress, and arranged a 
 red shawl upon her shoulders, with momentary 
 glances at the sketch he held in one hand, he 
 thought with a smile of the girl who had posed for 
 him in Venice. A stupid thing she had been, un 
 used to posing, and unable to comprehend a word 
 of his scanty Italian vocabulary, but patient with 
 his pullings and twistings, and blushing withal. 
 How prettily she had smiled when he paid her the 
 fifty centesimi an hour ! She had high cheek 
 bones, and a broad, low forehead, with chestnut 
 hair parting over it, like some of the old pictures 
 in the Accademia. How she had pattered off over 
 that little arching bridge by his pension, when he 
 
212 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 had done with her, her red slippers flapping and 
 scuffling merrily along, and how coquettishly she 
 had peeped back at him as she turned the corner 
 by the canal ! Floyd shrugged his shoulders, 
 almost imperceptibly, as he thought of her, and 
 then stepped back and took a critical survey of his 
 present model. It was not bad, though, that pose 
 of Phenie s ; in fact, it was good, good enough. 
 
 " Bellissimo t" he exclaimed. " Non c e male! 
 SI Si!" 
 
 Mrs. Floyd supposed he was talking German, 
 and made no response, except to shift her elbow 
 slightly where the edge of the curb began to cut 
 it. The artist frowned ; the movement destroyed 
 a line he wanted to keep. 
 
 " No," he cried ; " that won t do." Then, more 
 considerately, he added, " Put your handkerchief 
 under it, Phenie." 
 
 She was not so patient as the other one, he 
 thought, setting up his easel and stool under 
 the shadow of the grape-vine that hung over the 
 back porch. The other one ! His smile and his 
 good-humor came back to him. What was the 
 use of thinking of that time as of something irre 
 trievably past for him, as he had been in the habit 
 of doing ? Past ? Venice was there, never fear ; 
 and his red-slippered model, or plenty more like 
 her. Past? The Hamburg steamer, sailing that 
 day from New York, would make the passage, say, 
 in nine days. He could take the train for Berlin, 
 
THE BROUGHTOS HOUSE. 213 
 
 catch the night express southward, and be in 
 Munich the next afternoon. There he would pick 
 up two or three of the boys, and persuade them to 
 make a party for Venice ; and then for the morn 
 ing train that he had taken before, up through the 
 Tyrol, and over the Brenner pass, and down the 
 long slopes to Verona ; thence eastward, till in. the 
 evening the train would creep out over the marshy 
 plains, and the salt air of the lagoons would blow 
 in at the car-windows ; then would come the long, 
 white bridge, with the Adriatic lapping against its 
 piers ; and finally, they would hurry out of the 
 bustling little station on to the black stairs, where 
 the shouting gondoliers were waiting for them: 
 they would jump in, and glide off down the Grand 
 Canal in the darkness. Venice ! It was only two 
 weeks away from Broughton. 
 
 " Have you begun yet, Billy ? " interrupted Mrs. 
 Floyd. 
 
 "No," ejaculated Floyd, coming back suddenly 
 to New England. 
 
 " Will you get my hat ? The sun is pretty hot 
 here. That is, if it won t make any difference for 
 the beginning." 
 
 He brought her the hat, in momentary shame at 
 his thoughtlessness. He had a cool seat in the 
 shade himself. But as soon as his canvas was 
 ready, and the picture fairly under way, he began 
 again to plan out, in a kind of undertow of thought, 
 the details of a trip to Europe, perhaps of the par- 
 
214 THE BEOUGIITON HOUSE. 
 
 ticular trip that liis morning s work was making 
 possible for him, and his wife s comfort or discom 
 fort in her posture by the well-curb went entirely 
 out of his mind. It seemed good to him to be at 
 work again upon something definite, and to know 
 now what he could count on. 
 
 The last two weeks had been, for the most part, 
 very uncomfortable ones for the artist. Waiting, 
 without action, is a difficult matter for the best of 
 men under the best of circumstances ; so much the 
 more was it hard for Floyd, hesitating before a 
 step that was to consummate his selfishness. The 
 weather, too, had been cold and rainy, except on 
 two or three days, and Floyd was dependent on 
 fine weather for a good share of his happiness. 
 Just now, of all times, to be shut up in doors with 
 Tryphena, and to feel the mute reproach of her 
 presence, while each of them was guessing what 
 was covered beneath the commonplace of the 
 other s scanty talk, was doubly trying. He had 
 spent as much time as possible at the Broughton 
 House, or in Meyer s shop, for ten days past, espe- 
 pecially since that unfortunate Monday morning 
 when he had returned from the Center with a 
 headache, and Tryphena had said nothing to him 
 at all ; but had only looked at him, and made him 
 feel suddenly afraid of her. 
 
 Even the whist, upon which he had relied for 
 passing a good many hours without the necessity 
 of saying anything, and yet with the semblance of 
 
THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 215 
 
 sociability, seemed to be getting into disfavor of 
 late, and it grew difficult to gather the quartette. 
 Son derby, in particular, had been growing unman 
 ageable for a week past ; had refused to play more 
 than once, alleging that there was important work 
 for him to do at the laboratory, and exhibiting 
 altogether a sulky and grumpy state of temper. 
 Collins, however, as if to make up for the moodi- 
 ness of his table companion, had shown an in 
 creasing friendliness. He and Floyd had loafed a 
 good deal together, and once Collins had insisted 
 on taking Mrs. Floyd to drive in the best buggy 
 that the hotel stable afforded. 
 
 " Billy," interposed Tryphena again, " this ket 
 tle is slipping out from under my arm. If you don t 
 want to have me move, hadn t you better fix it?" 
 
 Floyd put down his brush and maul-stick, and 
 balanced the kettle again, hardly noticing how hot 
 it had become already in the direct glare of the sun. 
 He stepped back to the easel and eyed Mrs. Floyd 
 a second or two, and then went up to her and 
 took off her hat. 
 
 " I want to get the head and shoulders just 
 the outline now," he said. "No, Phenie, don t 
 look so far to the right. Just about at those plum- 
 trees. No, a little higher ! Try looking off at the 
 tops of those hemlocks above the Hollow : raise 
 your eyes a little that s it ! " 
 
 It was just the attitude he wanted for his indo 
 lent Venetian girl, waiting at the fountain. 
 
216 THE BEOUGIITON HOUSE. 
 
 " Can you keep it so, Pheiiie ? " he cried. 
 
 " Oh, yes, Billy ! " she answered, patiently. 
 He made sure of the outline with as rapid 
 strokes as possible, but it was a matter that re 
 quired careful handling, and a full half-hour had 
 slipped by before she could put on her broad- 
 brimmed straw hat again. She had grown faint 
 and dizzy. Floyd, in the shadow of the grape- 
 trellis, and well satisfied with the beginning he 
 had made, painted on and on. He was conscious 
 that every touch of the brush was liberating him 
 from the bondage he was under, bringing him just 
 so much nearer the end. He watched the slender 
 figure leaning against the well-curb, now consid 
 ering her artistically, as his model, and now 
 practically, as Mrs. William J. Floyd. As he 
 thought of her under these two aspects, a sardonic 
 gleam of amusement passed slowly over his face. 
 
 Floyd was not particularly quick, mentally, but 
 the humor of the situation grew more and more 
 apparent. Here was his wife, quietly posing for 
 him, in order that he might earn money enough to 
 leave the country and abandon her! There was 
 something grotesque about it which appealed to 
 Floyd s fancy ; a droll foreign flavor, like that of 
 some operetta or light comedy, or like some of the 
 atelier stories he had heard. It seemed comical 
 that it should all happen to him, that he should 
 be the hero of it. Then, by a singular logic, 
 he began to persuade himself that Tryphena was 
 
THE BEOUGHTOy IIOUSE. 217 
 
 playing her cards with a very fine hand, that she 
 understood thoroughly the significance of Wat 
 son s ordering this picture, and posed for him 
 because she wanted to hasten his going. Phenie 
 must know as well as he that they were not made 
 for each other ; that the sooner the sorry imperson 
 ation of their r61es was over, the better for them 
 both. Phenie could get along perfectly well 
 without him ; she owned the cottage, and she 
 could remain in Broughton and teach school, or 
 do something of the sort. Yes, it was clear she 
 wanted to have him go, or she would not thus 
 clear the path for his departure. It was no won 
 der she was willing to pose for him, and help the 
 picture along ! She was a deep one ! Again there 
 came over the artist the old feeling that this slight, 
 imperturbable country girl was stronger than he, 
 and more clear-sighted; that she could look 
 straight through his subterfuges and excuses ; 
 could guess at his half-formed wishes, and shape 
 her own plans accordingly ; that her silent acqui 
 escence was only a barricade behind which she 
 mined incessantly, and against which he was ever 
 to be baffled. But what of that ? What difference 
 did it make ? A fortnight more, and it would all 
 be over. 
 
 At no time during the two weeks now past had 
 Floyd distinctly stated to himself that he was 
 going away. He had never deliberately formulated 
 the question until that bright morning out by 
 
218 THE BEOUGIITON HOUSE. 
 
 the old mill, and then he had set it aside, 
 unanswered. But in this interval of waiting, 
 his will had taken to itself an unconscious 
 strength ; and now, when he came to examine the 
 state of his own mind, he found that leaving was 
 no longer a defiant desire, but a fixed fact, grown 
 fixed while he had eaten and slept and idled, and 
 now strengthened by the very weight of his moral 
 inertia. To decide to remain in America now 
 would have been a change of mind for him, though 
 he was entirely unable to say when he had made 
 up his mind to go. 
 
 And Mrs. Floyd, standing there by the worm- 
 eaten well-curb, on the old stones which her own 
 childish feet had helped to wear hollow, what was 
 she thinking about ? 
 
 There was time for her to think about many 
 things, in that long forenoon. Gracefully enough 
 she leaned there, with her skirts pinned back from 
 her slender ankles, improvised Venetian slippers 
 on her feet, a gaudy red shawl draped around her 
 waist as if it had slipped down from her shoulders, 
 her thin fingers clasped over the rim of the brass 
 kettle, which shone in the sun till it seemed as 
 true a gold as the wedding ring upon her hand. 
 Her face was turned away from the painter, but 
 by the curves of the throat, the line of the uplifted 
 chin, and the merest glimpse of her profile, with 
 the long eyelashes and the expectant brow, one 
 could know that she was waiting for something. 
 
THE BEOUGIITON HOUSE. 219 
 
 For what ? If in Venice, for a window to open 
 in the palace opposite, for her lover to come 
 sauntering over the bridge, for her noonday dream 
 to dream itself out, ere she filled her water-bucket 
 and went home. But it was not in Venice, it was 
 only in Broughton ; and Tryphena Floyd s eyes 
 were apparently fixed on the tops of Samuel Park 
 inson s plum-trees, or perhaps on the black boughs 
 of the hemlocks over the Hollow, a quarter of a 
 mile away. The wind might brush through the 
 plum-trees again, and shake another greengage to 
 the ground ; possibly a crow might flap remi- 
 niscently around its old nest in the hemlocks ; but 
 that was all which could happen, if one leaned 
 there on the well-curb and watched a whole summer 
 long. Was Mrs. Floyd really waiting for anything? 
 
 Yes. One day with fatalistic acquiescence, the 
 next with a passion of revolt, now with dumb 
 moods when her mind seemed not to work at all, 
 and now with hours of fantastic gaiety, but above 
 all with that endurance which is a part of an 
 honest woman s heritage, Mrs. Floyd was waiting 
 for the end of the month. A more solitary person, 
 for one who must face the great crisis of a life, it 
 would have been difficult to find. She had rightly 
 said to Sonderby, in a moment when the barriers 
 she had set between herself and others were for 
 the moment fallen, that no one could help her. 
 For what help was there ? She had no hold upon 
 her husband ; that was the bare but the sufficient 
 
220 THE 13 HOUGH TON HOUSE. 
 
 fact. She had been slowly suspecting it for a long 
 time, and in the last few days she had felt sure of it. 
 It was " their business " solely, as she had said, 
 and there was help neither in him nor in herself. 
 She had no friends to whom she could go for advice, 
 except, perhaps, Aunt Tryphosa, and she had a 
 conviction that Aunt Tryphosa would not under 
 stand. 
 
 Broughton folks she knew well enough out 
 wardly, as they knew her, but the experience of 
 the past three years seemed to set an infinite dis 
 tance between her and these kindly inquisitive 
 people with whom she had been acquainted from 
 her childhood. She recognized the uselessness of 
 asking counsel from any of them, even if her pride 
 had allowed her to do so. It was her own affair. 
 If she had made a long mistake, so much the worse 
 for her. Her life had been aimless and empty 
 enough, till she began to love Billy Floyd ; and he, 
 or else her love for him, had for a while filled it 
 sufficiently. Now her husband seem to shrink, to 
 shrivel while she watched him even, and life 
 seemed to expand with each day, to recede from 
 her poor pitiful experience, and leave it dwindling 
 there ; but alas ! life, as it widened round her, 
 was itself a void. Strange moods of apathy grew 
 more frequent with her, as day after day crept by 
 and brought no exterior change. She came to think 
 sometimes that it made no difference whether 
 her husband went or stayed : if he sailed for Mu- 
 
THE BEOUGUTON HOUSE. 221 
 
 nich when the month was up, or if he remained, 
 and they two lived together till their hair grew 
 white and their steps tottering, it would be the 
 same; in either event all was over between them: 
 their experiment was already finished. 
 
 Hotly did the sun pour down upon the back 
 yard of the cottage, through that midsummer 
 morning, and in spite of Mrs. Floyd s broad- 
 brimmed hat, a faintness came over her at inter 
 vals. Posing was wearisome work, too, and for 
 months she had had no practice in it. But ex 
 hausted as she w^as, it was scarcely an unwelcome 
 way of spending her morning. There was nothing 
 for her to say, nothing for her to do, except to 
 keep in position, and yet she had a consciousness 
 that she was fulfilling her obligations to the end ; 
 that she was aiding her husband, obediently, un- 
 questioningly, as she had ever tried to do. That 
 he was coolly planning to forsake her made no dif 
 ference in her duty, as Mrs. Floyd with her 
 New England conscientiousness conceived her 
 duty, and the self-abnegation, for Floyd s un 
 worthy sake, brought her a strange, sad pleasure. 
 It was after eleven when the artist finally declared 
 that she had done enough, took the kettle from 
 her creased fingers, and unfastened the safety-pins 
 which he had used in draping her skirts. Two or 
 three times in the morning he had advised her to 
 rest a little, but she had refused. Now as she 
 straightened herself, and the blood coursed freely 
 
222 THE BROUGIITON HOUSE. 
 
 through her cramped limbs again, a sudden dizzi 
 ness nearly made her fall. He saw it and put his 
 arm around her, and then as she steadied herself, 
 he kissed her, not without a certain embarrass 
 ment, upon the temple. She did not look up at 
 him; if she had, he would have seen the quick 
 tears well up from her eyes. She had been so 
 happy once, when he had kissed her. 
 
 " You ve done enough for all day, Phenie," he 
 repeated, in good spirits at the progress made, and 
 perhaps thinking more of that than of her. " I ll 
 work at the background this afternoon." 
 
 After dinner, therefore, there being no whist 
 that day, she took from the buttery a six -quart 
 pail, and went off after red raspberries, leaving her 
 husband painting away by himself, absorbedly. 
 When she came back at supper-time, carrying 
 slowly her full pail across the garden, which she 
 had reached from a footpath that led out toward 
 the high pasture around the Hollow, Floyd had 
 stopped work. He had placed his easel in the 
 kitchen, though, and she stood before it a minute 
 or two, wondering, after all, at the great gift that 
 Billy had. Perhaps there was a future before him 
 yet the future of which they both had dreamed, 
 in those happy months after they were married. 
 It might come yet, for him, but for her ? 
 
 She turned away, and lifted her pail of berries 
 again, wearily. What could she do with them, now 
 she had them ? She had not thought any further 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 223 
 
 than the amusement of picking them, and of play 
 ing she AY as a child once more. She did not want 
 them, after all. There were plenty of berries in 
 the kitchen of the hotel, and there was no use 
 in giving them to Evans. She did not like the 
 Welshman, anyway. Finally, she carried them 
 across the street to Bill Trumbuirs daughter. 
 
 " Perhaps your father would like to eat some 
 berries," she said, timidly. " The first time I ever 
 went red-raspberry ing, he went with me. Ask him 
 if he remembers it, will you, Mirandy ? " 
 
 She came back to the cottage with her empty 
 pail, in time to give a shy bow to Mr. Ellerton, 
 who had just left Collins at the corner of the 
 Broughton House. Then she washed the rasp 
 berry stains from her fingers, brushed her dark 
 hair smooth, and tying round her throat a bit of 
 lavender ribbon she had worn in her girlhood, went 
 over to supper. 
 
 The next morning she posed again, and the next, 
 and the day after. Strange hours they were for 
 her; in which 110 new ideas came to her, and 
 scarcely any new impressions, but a flood of old 
 memories. Old things lay all about her there 
 the back yard with its thick, slippery grass ; the 
 flower-garden, whose yellow lilies, hollyhocks, and 
 sunflowers were going to seed unheeded ; the fruit 
 orchard, where the Bough apples were rotting on 
 the ground ; the old well itself, whose mossy stones 
 once seemed to her to stretch down so endlessly 
 
224 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 deep, and whose water lay there cool and dark, as 
 she gazed down into it now, in the long hours of 
 posing. She wondered how it could keep so dark 
 and cool, being only a few feet from the blazing 
 sunshine. Peace in the midst of trouble Mrs. 
 Floyd did not understand ; she understood only 
 how to be calm. 
 
 It happened once or twice that Collins sauntered 
 over to the cottage in the morning, and sat down 
 beside the artist to watch him at his work. The 
 manufacturer usually smoked in silence, with an 
 occasional shrewd observation to Floyd about the 
 picture. Tryphena did not mind his being there, 
 and scarcely thought of him, except in the resting- 
 time, when she occasionally seated herself by him 
 on the grass, under the trellis, and was rather glad 
 that some one was there to talk to. But as soon 
 as she was in position again, looking away from 
 the men, out over the garden idly, he went out of 
 her mind, being a part of that present which seemed 
 for the time like a blank to her, in comparison with 
 all the figures and fancies of the past. 
 
 One thing only, in those days given to the Vene 
 tian girl, occurred to bring the quartette together, 
 except at meal times. That was a drive, upon the 
 manner of which Collins had set his heart. An 
 ancient carryall of Bill Trumbull s, which had 
 hitherto, during Evans s proprietorship, stood un 
 used in the hotel stable, had just been repaired, in 
 accordance with Collins s advice. The top had been 
 
THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 225 
 
 removed, side-bar springs substituted for the origi 
 nal ones, and with new cushions and liberal coats 
 of varnish, the vehicle assumed a tolerable degree 
 of respectability, despite its somewhat anomalous 
 character. It would hold four very comfortably, 
 and a lank bay mare, belonging to Evans, was war 
 ranted of sufficient strength to pull the quartette 
 over the Broughton hills as fast as they wished to 
 travel. 
 
 Collins had a good deal of difficulty in arrang 
 ing the time for the excursion, for both Floyd 
 and Sonderby were someAvhat obstinately bent 
 on following their own concerns. But the manu 
 facturer was accustomed to have his own way, 
 and one afternoon, about four o clock, they all 
 started off for a drive around the Canuck Cor 
 ner road. Collins held the reins, and Floyd, sit 
 ting beside him, flourished the whip. . It was a 
 perfect afternoon, and they rattled along gaily 
 enough, up hill and down, for an hour or more. 
 Then, not meaning to be late for supper, Floyd, 
 who was driving by this time, turned the mare 
 into an old road that led back to the village by a 
 shorter way. The road had been badly washed 
 out by successive spring rains since it had been 
 last repaired, and the artist was as ignorant a 
 driver as ever grasped the lines. Collins had ad 
 monished him once or twice. As they plunged 
 down a little hill and the carryall struck sharply 
 against the water-ridge at the foot of it, pitching 
 
226 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 them all forward in their seats amid a general ex 
 plosion of laughter, the half-worn hold-backs broke. 
 The carryall was thrown against the mare s hind 
 quarters, but she stopped, though dancing in some 
 alarm. Floyd did not understand what had hap 
 pened, and, gathering the ends of the lines in his 
 right hand, struck her across the loins. Then the 
 mare flung her bony head straight out, with the bit 
 in her teeth, and ran. Floyd, thoroughly scared, 
 pulled impatiently at the reins : on seeing that the 
 mare only ran the faster, he loosened them nervously 
 and screamed, " Help ! " Collins grabbed the lines 
 and gave them a savage jerk, which brought the 
 mare s head into the air for an instant, but for 
 an instant only ; he could not hold it, and she 
 shook her neck and got it straight out before her 
 again, and blindly galloped on. Collins, tugging 
 in vain, half turned in his seat and shot a glance 
 at Sonderby. The ex-oarsman rose upright, lock 
 ing his knees into the back of the front seat, and, 
 leaning far forward, wrapped the lines around his 
 hands; then, drawing a long breath through his 
 clenched teeth, he began to straighten, with a slow 
 sidewise swaying that threw his weight now on 
 one line and now on the other. Slow, terribly 
 slow it seemed, for there was no chance for any 
 thing but pure muscle, man against horse. Slow, 
 but steady, first one side, then the other. Slow, 
 for John Sonderby s arms were not so big as they 
 once were, though his legs and back and loins were 
 
THE BROUGHTOy HOUSE. 227 
 
 like iron. Oh, so slow, with Canuck Hill sloping 
 down ahead of them through the trees ! 
 
 Yet, before they reach it, the mare tires under 
 the cruel weight upon her jaw; lower sinks her 
 stiffened tail ; her ears are twitching, and ha ! 
 up comes her head, with the foam flying from her 
 lips ; up and back over her trembling shoulders is 
 it pulled now, as John Sonderby straightens him 
 self at last, the quick breath hissing through his 
 teeth, a victorious blue light in his eyes, the brown 
 hair blown back from his bare temples, where the 
 blue veins are corded. 
 
 Floyd jumped, as soon as the carryall slowed up. 
 Collins followed him, a minute later, but only to 
 get the mare by the head. When she was quieted, 
 Sonderby dropped the reins, and got out, lifting 
 Mrs. Floyd after him. Nobody said anything for 
 a minute or two. The men busied themselves 
 with the harness. Finally Collins muttered, as he 
 drew out his penknife to cut a new hole in the 
 broken strap: 
 
 %; It was a close call, Sonderby." 
 
 That was all that was said. Floyd came up 
 rather shamefacedly, and they got in, and walked 
 the mare home. Tryphena did not speak. She 
 had not felt so much frightened as she had always 
 thought she would be, if run away with. 
 
 But as they turned into the village street, down 
 at the academy end, Mrs. Floyd made one of those 
 impulsive movements which she seemed unable to 
 
228 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 control. Whether in disgust at her husband s 
 cowardice, or in admiration of the courage and 
 strength of the man beside her, but at any rate, 
 with a fierce swiftness, like the maternal caress of 
 some animal, and yet with a shyness as of a girl, 
 she laid her hand for an instant on Sonderby 7 s 
 arm. 
 
XL 
 
 ONE other thing distinguished that week, the 
 last in July, from the ones which had preceded it. 
 Collins seemed to be knitting a close intimacy with 
 Floyd. As the picture of the Venetian girl grew 
 upon the canvas, the longer and more frequent be 
 came the manufacturer s visits to the back yard of 
 the cottage. In the late afternoon, when Floyd 
 had finished work for the day, or in the evening, 
 the two men sat in Collins s room, and played 
 euchre. Floyd, who was a constant talker when 
 in good-humor, found Collins a more attentive 
 and respectful listener to his experiences and theo 
 ries than had formerly been the case. As John 
 Sonderby had noticed on the first day Floyd dined 
 at the Broughton House, Collins had once taken 
 scanty pains to conceal his tolerant contempt for 
 the artist, But nowadays he cultivated Floyd 
 assiduously, much to the elevation of the latter s 
 opinion of himself. 
 
 The prosecution of this somewhat peculiar friend 
 ship was furthered by the fact that, as July came 
 to a close, the quartette met less and less often for 
 the whist and singing and random talk, which 
 had filled up so much of the time earlier in the 
 
 229 
 
280 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 month. The responsibility for this change was 
 generally flung upon Sonderby, who seemed to be 
 more moody every day and more perverse in the 
 disposition of his leisure. Taciturn always, his 
 increasing silence at the table grew sometimes 
 uncomfortable for the others; and Collins, who 
 had from the first liked the fellow, did not hesitate 
 to quiz him about the cause of his " blueness," 
 watching him the while with an observant eye. 
 Sonderby pretended to have at the laboratory of 
 the academy some important work which demanded 
 all his time ; and he explained one day to Collins, 
 incidentally, that he Avas fitting himself for his 
 duties with the A. S. & F. Company. But it 
 happened repeatedly, especially in the evening, 
 when he went toward the academy, alleging that 
 he had no time to spare, that he really did not go 
 to the laboratory at all, but tramped off alone in 
 the dusk, over the country roads, going at the top 
 of his speed and tiring himself. Two days he spent 
 in the hayfield of Bill Trumbull s son-in-law, offer 
 ing his services with the explanation that he needed 
 exercise, and that it would be an obligation to him 
 if he were allowed to help the farm hands out in their 
 late haying ; and both nights he looked so white 
 and tired at supper, that Mrs. Floyd timidly or 
 dered the Irish waitress to bring him some tea, and 
 Mr. Collins wanted to insist, afterward, on his 
 taking a swallow of whiskey, which the school 
 teacher gratefully declined. 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 231 
 
 Floyd s new enthusiasm for work, too, did some 
 thing to assist in the apparent disintegration of the 
 quartette. The increasing number of strangers 
 at the Broughton House made the four regular 
 boarders less observed, and the red rocking-chairs 
 along the piazza no longer made upon them any 
 mute claim for occupancy. It made no particular 
 difference, even to Evans, whether they stayed 
 after dinner to play whist, or were sitting on the 
 piazza when the afternoon stage lumbered in. 
 Guests in plenty there were by this time to occupy 
 all of the chairs, and to give an unwonted appear 
 ance of animation to the hotel. It certainly seemed 
 as if the Welshman s luck had turned for good, 
 and prosperity agreed with him. He no longer 
 slid anxiously around the office and dining-room, 
 watching pertinaciously the conversation of his 
 boarders ; but instead, stepped smartly through 
 the hall or along the piazza, as if business pressed 
 him hard, carrying his cunning, narrow head erect, 
 while his bead eyes glistened with pleasure. He 
 bought a new suit of clothes, paid off all his help, 
 and began to settle with the farmers of the neigh 
 borhood for the butter, eggs, and other produce 
 delivered during the preceding summer. 
 
 To be sure, the majority of the Broughton 
 House guests did not remain many days, but new 
 ones came infallibly to take their places, and to 
 increase the Welshman s triumph. Evans was 
 now indifferent whether the quartette remained 
 
232 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 with him ; he begrudged Sonderby his second-floor 
 front room, for which the school-teacher paid but 
 half what it would bring now; he was anxious to 
 keep on the right side of Collins, for various rea 
 sons ; but as for the Floyds, he had taken them 
 below cost originally, and Floyd was an enormous 
 eater, while Mrs. Floyd was to him an uncongenial 
 person. Now that the season was an assured suc 
 cess, he made no longer any particular effort to 
 please the patrons with whom his prosperity had 
 begun. His manner toward Trunibull grew stead 
 ily in insolence ; and though he did not as yet dare 
 to turn him out of the office, and was forced to 
 satisfy himself by planning how he would do it 
 when the time ever came, he succeeded in annoy 
 ing his predecessor by outspoken criticisms of Bill s 
 favorite newspaper, the Springfield Republican, 
 and by removing the cushioned chair from the 
 office, occasionally, when Bill was coming over for 
 a tranquil smoke. 
 
 To Bill Trumbull, the fact that the quartette 
 had for ten days or more fallen increasingly into 
 the habit of separating soon after meal times, 
 brought a good deal of mild disappointment. He 
 liked to see the young folks together, enjoying 
 themselves. Toward Tryphena he felt almost a 
 fatherly affection, and indeed he was the nearest 
 approach to a father she had ever known ; for 
 Abner Morton had gone to the war with Bill s 
 
THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 233 
 
 brother, and the hitter s dinted sword was all that 
 had ever come back of either of them. 
 
 Bill had alwa} T s felt a little uncertainty about 
 Tryphena s husband ; for however shiftless Trum- 
 bull might be, he shared in the Xew England 
 suspicion of any one who got his living in irreg 
 ular ways, ways not sanctified by orthodox Xew 
 England traditions. He admitted, in confidential 
 moments when the artist was the subject of dis 
 cussion, that he couldn t " understand the critter." 
 But with Collins and Sonderby, Bill s relations 
 had been so genial that the diminution of the 
 hours of intercourse with them made him feel 
 rather lonesome. He disliked to have Collins and 
 Floyd sit upstairs so much of late ; if it was 
 nothing but a game of cards and a glass of cider 
 they wanted, there was no necessity of so much 
 secrecy about it although in the days of i; Trurn- 
 bull s," or rather of "Mis TrumbulL" not even 
 the glass of cider could have been obtained at the 
 hotel. 
 
 Perhaps more than all else, Bill missed the 
 singing in the parlor. Without knowing anything 
 more about music than the singing-schools of his 
 boyhood had taught him, he grew constantly in 
 fondness for it, as his contemplative life lengthened, 
 and since the death of Mrs. Trumbull he was con 
 scious of a mournful and quite indefinable pleasure 
 in listening to certain tunes, especially some of 
 those contained in Moody and Sankey s hymn- 
 
234 THE BEOUGHTON UOUSK. 
 
 books. But the singing had grown less frequent, 
 too, together with the whist, and Bill s ludicrous 
 hints about the danger of the melodeon getting 
 out of tune if it were not used, had apparently 
 failed to have any effect upon Collins. It was 
 greatly to the secret satisfaction of Bill Trumbull, 
 therefore, that on that Friday evening when they 
 returned from their drive around by Canuck 
 Corner, the young people did not seem inclined to 
 separate after supper. They had come back late, 
 and had been the sole occupants of the dining- 
 room; for Broughton air gave strangers a good 
 appetite, and the guests of the hotel were very 
 prompt at their meals. The supper was at first a 
 silent one, like the latter part of the drive ; but 
 gradually, as they recovered from the nervous 
 strain that had affected them all, more or less, they 
 seemed on more intimate terms with one another 
 than had recently been the case ; and if the talk 
 was less demonstrative than it had been during the 
 first hour of their driving, it was more genuine. 
 When they came out into the office, Bill Trumbull, 
 who was the only person in the room, got up from 
 his cushioned chair and made Tryphena take it. 
 It was an act of gallantry so unusual for him, and 
 so opposed to his ordinary chair-keeping, conversa 
 tion-inviting method of hospitality, that it made 
 an impression upon them all. On his inquiring 
 about the drive, Collins gave a laconic account of 
 what had happened, amid plenty of "Sho s" from 
 
THE BBOUGHTOS HOUSE. 235 
 
 Bill, and a modest disclaimer from Sonderby. 
 Then Trumbull, seeing they were gathered com 
 fortably around him, began to draw upon his store 
 of reminiscences of skittish horses, and told all the 
 gruesome and ludicrous runaway accidents that 
 had happened in Broughton for forty years. From 
 uncontrollable steeds he passed gradually to trained 
 ones, and gave an exhaustive account of an ex 
 hibition of trick-horses he had seen in Boston the 
 second winter that he had been a member of the 
 Legislature. 
 
 Seeing that his auditors were in an appreciative 
 mood, he made a skilful transition to the subject 
 of raising colts, and it was ten o clock by the time 
 he had finished telling about the marvellous colts 
 he had reared, and how the fastest of them would 
 have been entered for the 2.40 trotting race in the 
 annual cattle show and fair at the county seat in 
 1876, had it not been for the unconquerable aver 
 sion of k Mis Trumbull " to " hoss-racin ." In 
 short, Bill s talk was of the most delightfully fla 
 vored character, and for once, as it happened, they 
 were all content to listen to him, and sorry to break 
 up at last. It had been like "old times" the 
 old times which were only a few days back, after 
 all. 
 
 Saturday morning was spent much as usual. 
 Collins drove off before daylight to a brook a dozen 
 
 / O 
 
 miles distant. Ellerton had arranged to accom 
 pany him, but had been obliged to give it up. 
 
236 THE 23ROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 Mrs. Floyd posed again, though for a short time 
 only, as the picture was making capital progress, 
 and Floyd had almost reached the point where he 
 could dispense with the services of his model. 
 Sonderby came to the cottage for a while, shortly 
 before dinner, and lounged on the grass, chatting 
 leisurely with Tryphena, as if to take Collins s 
 place. Just as the hotel dinner-bell was jangling, 
 Collins returned, his six-pound basket more than 
 half full of trout, small dark ones with yellow 
 bellies, caught in the shadowy streamlets of a great 
 alder swamp. At table he narrated his adven 
 tures, and finished by declaring that he had planned 
 a fishing excursion for all four of them on the 
 Tuesday following. That day, he explained, was 
 the 31st of July, and the last available opportunity 
 for fishing, for the game law prohibited the taking 
 of trout after the first of August. So decidedly 
 did the manufacturer seem to have set his heart 
 upon the fishing party, that they all agreed to go, 
 and spent most of the dinner hour in discussing 
 the details of the project. When they came out 
 upon the piazza, the other guests were mostly 
 assembled at the western end, to watch a game of 
 tennis upon the court which the elated Evans had 
 recently been at the expense of constructing there. 
 They looked on for a while, but finally betook 
 themselves to the other end of the piazza, Avhere 
 they sat, aimlessly conversing, until the stage 
 
THE BROUGHTOX HOUSE. 237 
 
 from the Center jolted up against the Broughton 
 House steps. 
 
 Floyd and Sonderby looked at their watches, 
 surprised that it was so late ; and the artist, mum 
 bling something about his picture, got up and 
 stretched himself. 
 
 " Going to work any more ? " asked Collins, 
 compassionately. 
 
 Floyd nodded, squinting at him familiarly. 
 
 " Well, go ahead," Collins remarked. >; I did 
 my work this morning ; " and he examined the 
 mosquito and midge bites on his wrists, and 
 thought, in satisfied retrospection, of the mud and 
 the tangle of roots and branches in the swamp 
 where he had crouched all that forenoon. Floyd 
 lounged off, whistling the air of a German student 
 song, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders stoop 
 ing. 
 
 " Oh, say ! " he cried, turning back at the corner 
 of the piazza, where the new sign cast a strip of 
 shadow oyer his face as he spoke, " Will you get 
 my mail, Collins, if there is any ? " 
 
 " Hm humph," grunted Collins, affirmatively, 
 being at that instant engaged in lighting a cigar. 
 
 Floyd disappeared, and before long Tryphena 
 found the sun too hot" upon the piazza and went 
 oyer to the cottage, taking with her a magazine 
 from the reading-room of the hotel. The two 
 men sat for a quarter of an hour longer, exchang 
 ing an occasional remark, and then Collins said 
 
238 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 that he guessed he would go up to the office for 
 his mail. Sonderby volunteered to accompany 
 him ; but when they were opposite Parkinson s, 
 Collins noticed Meyer sitting disconsolately in 
 front of his shop, and decided thereupon that he 
 would have his hair cut. 
 
 " I ll get your mail," said Sonderby, a little at a 
 loss what to do with himself. 
 
 " All right. Oh, if there s anything for Floyd, 
 bring it along, will you ? " 
 
 But when Sonderby reached the post-office, he 
 found a letter for himself, and being a man with 
 the slenderest correspondence, was surprised into 
 forgetting his errand for Collins. He started back, 
 reading his letter, which was from the A. S. & F. 
 Company, courteously reminding him that the 
 offered position could not be held for him much 
 longer and requesting a reply at his earliest con 
 venience. Sonderby read it through, and folded it, 
 moodily. Of course the A. S. & F. people were 
 right; he had not been business-like with them. 
 Just then he remembered that he was to get Collins s 
 mail, and he retraced his steps to the office. The 
 postmistress gave him a whole handful of letters for 
 the manufacturer, and then Sonderby asked if 
 there was any thing for Mr. Floyd. 
 
 "William J. Floyd," she repeated automatically, 
 handing out a long envelope. 
 
 Sonderby glanced at it, almost unintentionally, 
 as he turned away from the window. It was 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 239 
 
 stamped in New York the day before, and on the 
 upper left-hand corner was printed: Hamburg 
 Line. Honest John Sonderby wondered for an 
 instant why Floyd should have any correspondence 
 with the steamship company, but his mind soon 
 went back to his own letter. It was evident that 
 a final answer could not be long delayed. 
 
 As the school-teacher crossed the road to the 
 barber s shop, he was conscious of the old awkward 
 balance, not perceptibly adjusted, so far as he 
 could see, by his dogged work of the last ten 
 days : upon the one hand, a life work for which 
 he was fitted, upon the other well, he could 
 not exactly phrase to himself what was upon the 
 other, but there was pity there, and sentiment and 
 half-mastered passion, a chivalrous longing to be 
 of help, as well as a sluggishness of will, and the 
 treacherous force of the solitary, purposeless life 
 he had led for three years all these and more 
 were heaped confusedly there, and he knew that in 
 some fashion they must be swept away before he 
 could leave Broughton. When he entered Meyer s, 
 he found Collins enveloped up to his chin in the 
 barber s apron, and Meyer indulging in one of his 
 usual panegyrics upon " Mr. Floyt." 
 
 " Oh, he will not stay in America," the barber 
 was saying. "See you, it is too bourgeois. He 
 must go again to Germany, to the home of art." 
 Meyer stopped as he saw Sonderby standing in the 
 doorway. 
 
240 THE SEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 "Here are a lot of letters for you," said Son- 
 derby, tossing them into Collins s lap. " And there 
 is one for Floyd," he added. 
 
 Collins extricated one hand from beneath the 
 apron, and picked up the last one dropped. One 
 glance at the envelope and he let it fall again, 
 face downward. Then he turned over his own 
 mail indifferently ; but as he sat his chin buried 
 in the apron while Meyer was trimming the back 
 of his neck he rolled up his black eyes till they 
 rested upon Sonderby with that quiet, searching 
 scrutiny to which he had subjected the school 
 teacher ever since he had seen the latter go over 
 to the cottage, one rainy Sunday morning, holding 
 an umbrella over Mrs. Floyd. But Sonderby did 
 not notice the look, and sat down to wait for Col 
 lins, taking up the pink-tinted Police Gazette from 
 the barber s table only to toss it away again in dis 
 gust. When the manufacturer was ready, the 
 men walked slowly back toward the hotel; and 
 when Collins turned in at the cottage, Sonderby 
 followed him, unasked. They found Floyd in the 
 back yard, engaged in touching up with sienna 
 brown the shutters of his Venetian palace. 
 
 " Hullo ! " he said, as they dropped beside him 
 on the grass, but he did not stop work. They 
 watched him for a while, in some admiration of the 
 skill with which he was manipulating his tiniest 
 brushes, Collins made no reference to the mail; 
 
THE BKOUGHTON HOUSE. 241 
 
 and Sonderby, thinking he had forgotten Floyd s 
 letter, finally observed : 
 
 " There was a letter for you, Floyd." 
 
 The artist looked up quickly. 
 
 " Oh, yes," said Collins, taking it out of his 
 pocket, with a slight air of embarrassment, and a 
 peculiar smile, " Sure enough." 
 
 Floyd reached out his hand for it. He scowled 
 involuntarily as he recognized the steamship com 
 pany s stamp upon the corner, then remarked, 
 with a feigned indifference assumed for Son- 
 derby s sake, for he suspected that the teacher 
 might have noticed the envelope : 
 
 " Another advertisement. Those steamers have 
 kept sending their sailing lists to me, ever since I 
 went over on their line." 
 
 Nevertheless, Floyd carefully put the advertise 
 ment into his inside pocket, and Collins changed 
 the subject abruptly. 
 
XII. 
 
 THAT evening after supper Bill Trumbull began 
 again, and with more hope than usual, to throw 
 out hints about the melodeon. Collins indeed 
 would have needed little urging, any of the time, 
 and seeing that the others were lingering about the 
 office just as they had done the evening before, he 
 proposed that they honor Bill with some music. 
 Accordingly the quartette gathered around the 
 melodeon in the parlor, and Collins struck up 
 " Old Black Joe," which was one of the first pieces 
 they had ever attempted, and which by dint of 
 practice they had succeeded in mastering. " Way 
 down upon the Suwanee River " followed, and then 
 came " In the Sweet By and By," which opened the 
 way naturally for two or three specimens of sacred 
 melody, in which Bill Trumbull, sitting in the 
 office, took a melancholy comfort. 
 
 Little by little a group of the Broughton House 
 guests gathered at the parlor door, and began to 
 applaud at the end of each secular tune, and to 
 nod the head, with commendatory sighs, at the 
 close of the religious ones. 
 
 Collins rather enjoyed it, but the others were 
 embarrassed. It was so different from the last of 
 242 
 
THE BROFGHTOy HOUSE. 243 
 
 June and the first of July, when they had had the 
 parlor all to themselves, and could try as many 
 musical experiments as they liked ! As the crowd 
 assembled at the piazza door, and finally even in 
 the hall-way, shutting out Bill from view entirely, 
 the singing grew more and more unsteady. At 
 last Collins reached his favorite duet, and as he 
 smoothed out the sheet of music upon the rack, 
 Floyd whispered to Sonderby, " It s about time for 
 us to get out of this, isn t it? v 
 
 Sonderby nodded assent, and his fancy catching 
 at a double meaning in the artist s words, he was 
 conscious of a humorous sort of transient liking 
 for the fellow. Floyd, too, knew when he was 
 superfluous ! Two weeks before, he, John Son 
 derby, had listened to this duet with a vague pain 
 and with strange, disordered thoughts ; very well, 
 perhaps the husband, too, read something into 
 those battered concert-room lines ! The two men, 
 at any rate, sat down together in the corner. 
 
 Kiss me to-day, 
 Wait not the morrow; 
 Waiting is sorrow, 
 Love me to-day! 
 
 Collins was not nervous, certainly. He rolled out 
 the magnificent bass notes, lifting his shoulders 
 the while, and throwing back his head so that he 
 gazed into Tryphena s face as he sang. Sonderby 
 had never seen Collins look like that before ; he 
 
244 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 took a sudden dislike to the thick lips, and to the 
 eager, gleaming eyes, and to the whole dark, up 
 turned, desirous face. 
 
 Tremblingly began the soprano : 
 
 Love me to-morrow, 
 Like me to-day; 
 Kisses betray ; 
 Kiss me to-morrow ! 
 
 And in John Sonderby, who was forgetful of him 
 self now, instead of absorbed in himself, as he had 
 been a fortnight before, there rose something which 
 made his fist clench and the muscles stiffen along 
 his arm, as the bass broke in with the sudden, pas 
 sionate 
 
 Kiss me to-day 
 
 Ah ! but Collins s touch on the keys was careless ; 
 he struck a false note, and there was such a discord 
 that he stopped, involuntarily, an instant, leaving 
 the soprano s frightened 
 
 Kiss me to-morrow 
 
 to flutter alone, and as he impatiently struck the 
 right key, she broke down altogether, and turned 
 impulsively away. 
 
 The guests at the doors applauded encourag 
 ingly, and there were murmurs of " Go on " ; but 
 Mrs. Floyd shook her head and moved helplessly 
 toward her husband. 
 
 "Let s go back," she whispered. The men 
 rose ; and Sonderby shouldered his way, somewhat 
 
THE BBOUGHTOX HOUSE. 245 
 
 impolitely, through the people in the hall, followed 
 by Mrs. Floyd and the reluctant Collins. 
 
 " Wai," said Bill Trumbull, when they regained 
 the office, "that was nice. Reel nice. Kind o 
 soothin . Much obliged to ye. Sit clown." 
 
 They sat down for a while, but the talk was 
 rather constrained, and they broke up early. 
 
 Sunday morning was bright and hot. The mist 
 rose slowly from the hills, like smoke, and the air 
 was windless. The dog-days had begun. In the 
 dining-room of the Broughton House, at breakfast- 
 time, it was already close, and the flies settled un 
 pleasantly upon the tables. The women guests 
 wore their thinnest morning gowns when they 
 came in to breakfast, and their husbands looked 
 uncomfortable and sticky in the starched Sunday 
 linen for which they had discarded their secular 
 flannels and cheviots. In the costumes of the four 
 persons at the head of the first table,- however, 
 there was not much that was peculiar to the day. 
 Mrs. Floyd wore the black alpaca dress which she 
 usually had on at breakfast, and the artist was 
 arrayed in his negligently buttoned flannel shirt. 
 Son derby was the only one of the four who clung 
 to the New England tradition of dressing up on 
 Sunday morning, though the school-teacher s black 
 cut-away, worn shiny long ago, was a somewhat in 
 effective tribute to the venerable custom. Collins 
 
246 THE BEOUGUTON HOUSE. 
 
 noticed it, however, and took into his head the 
 freak of going to church. 
 
 A month or so before he had without much diffi 
 culty persuaded the others to go with him, but 
 to-day the artist positively refused, and Collins 
 did not appear to urge him. Mrs. Floyd hesitated 
 a long time, but finally agreed to go, and Sonderby 
 thereupon decided to accompany the party. They 
 started from the cottage when church-time came, 
 leaving Floyd at work upon his picture. As they 
 turned into Main Street, Bill Trumbull joined them. 
 Attired in a neatly brushed blue suit, with a new 
 straw hat bound with a black ribbon, Bill looked 
 exceedingly respectable. He surveyed the trio 
 with paternal interest. 
 
 " Goin to church, be ye ? That s right ! Come 
 and sit long o me, won t ye ? Mirandy s baby s 
 got a leetle tetch of cholery morbis, and she s 
 goin to stay to home." 
 
 Collins accepted for the party the proffered invi 
 tation; and they all walked along together, Collins 
 holding Tryphena s black parasol over her head, 
 somewhat to her embarrassment, for such a cour 
 tesy was unusual in Broughton, and would be 
 noticed by every woman on the street, while the 
 school-teacher and Trumbull brought up the rear. 
 Bill had not been much of a church-goer during 
 his active days of proprietorship of the hotel, hav 
 ing always considered that the entertainment of 
 his guests was his first duty ; but since the death 
 
THE BEOUGHTOS HOUSE. 247 
 
 of Mrs. Trumbull he had been pretty regular in 
 his attendance, and was regarded as being in a 
 hopeful state of mind. He ushered his friends 
 with commendable dignity into the Trumbull pew, 
 which, though it had never during the memory of 
 Samuel Parkinson, parish treasurer, paid a penny of 
 rent, was always reserved, at the spring allotment 
 of pews, for the genial hotel proprietor. 
 
 The faded green cushion was not uncomforta- 
 
 O 
 
 ble. and the back, albeit a trifle too perpendicular, 
 might easily have been worse. One of the big, 
 tall side windows of the church was close to the 
 end of the pew, and a breeze almost always found 
 its way in ; for the high white church on the knoll 
 was in an airy place, from whatever quarter the 
 wind might happen to be blowing. In short, Col 
 lins had not been wrong in declaring at the break 
 fast table that the Orthodox church was the coolest 
 spot in town on a hot day. 
 
 Arthur Ellerton preached that morning an amia 
 ble, sensible, exhortatoiy discourse on the subject 
 of kk Family Religion." Bill Trumbull listened at 
 tentively, his blue eyes set encouragingly upon the 
 young pastor, and growing moist, once or twice, 
 at some allusion. John Sonderby, sitting next 
 Trumbull, did not give any particular observance 
 to what was said. His thoughts were far afield. 
 When the minister announced the meeting of the 
 Young People s Society of Christian Endeavor, and 
 the topic, Sonderby wondered if Ruth Ellerton 
 
248 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 would be there, and what she could say upon it ; 
 and then he began to think over what she had said 
 on that rainy Sunday evening in the lecture-room, 
 and how he had walked home with her and listened 
 to her grave, hesitating, anxious words to himself 
 as they stood on the parsonage steps. But that 
 was the nearest he came to any line of reflection 
 connected with the church service. 
 
 Collins contemplated the bare white-painted 
 interior, and the farmer and village people who 
 nearly filled the pews, with a pleasurable sort of 
 criticism. He had spent enough weeks in Brough- 
 ton, during half a dozen years, to become fairly 
 familiar with its types, and to get some amuse 
 ment out of them. He listened good-naturedly to 
 the efforts of the choir, arid half wished he were 
 one of them. Ellerton, standing up there in the 
 high mahogany pulpit, with its quaint pillars and 
 queer twisting stairs, was rather an interesting 
 figure to Collins, and he thought of the parson s 
 zeal for fishing and for other matters of this world, 
 and at the same time was convinced that Ellerton, 
 in the course of the thirty-minute sermon, was say 
 ing a good many practical things, which might 
 very likely be true. 
 
 Tryphena looked out of the window more or 
 less, not finding that the discourse upon " Family 
 Religion " had any special helpfulness in its appli 
 cation to the Floyd family. She knew Aunt 
 Tryphena would have been pleased by all that 
 
THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 249 
 
 Ellerton said, and then she looked across the road 
 to the old burying-ground, with its thick rows of 
 blackening, lichen-grown slabs, and tried to pick 
 out Aunt Tryphena s grave. 
 
 Two or three pews behind Trumbull sat Ruth 
 Ellerton, watching Sonderby and his companions 
 with a kind of trouble in her heart. As the weeks 
 had slipped away, her conviction had increased 
 that this summer was forcing* upon the school 
 teacher a spiritual crisis, and that the influences 
 surrounding him, in his life at the hotel, were not 
 favorable. But she really knew little about him : 
 he had not even called, after his invitation to tea 
 at the parsonage. Neither had the Floyds re 
 turned the Ellertons call, and with Ruth Ellerton s 
 pity for the slender young woman before her, look 
 ing out of the window with idle eyes, there was 
 mingled a quite feminine consolation in the fact 
 that at any rate she had fulfilled her own social 
 duty toward the artist s wife. Still, she wondered, 
 as before, what sort of woman Mrs. Floyd was, 
 and why Mr. Sonderby was so attracted by her, 
 and what the manufacturer, Mr. Collins, found to 
 interest him in these people whose pursuits were so 
 unlike his own. Mrs. Ellerton saw, too, that Bill 
 Trumbull was the only one of the four who was giv 
 ing much regard to Arthur s sermon, and she felt 
 vexed that her husband had happened to choose this 
 special topic for that Sunday. If he had only been 
 preaching about something else something that 
 
250 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 might touch those indifferent people in that Truin- 
 bull pew ! If she could only signal to Arthur in 
 some way, and get him to make an excursus, or an 
 application, or something or other that would 
 catch the attention of these people and hold them 
 and win them thereby to the Truth! And the 
 time was going so fast ! Paul s phrase about the 
 " foolishness of preaching" Mrs. Ellerton had 
 never been able to apply, least of all to the ser 
 mons of her husband. 
 
 When the benediction was pronounced, and the 
 audience worked its way toward the front doors, 
 Mrs. Ellerton, who remained to teach her Sunday- 
 school class, stood at the end of her pew as the 
 Broughton House people passed out. Collins 
 bowed, and Sonderby nodded, with a friendly rec 
 ognition in his face ; but Mrs. Floyd happened to 
 be looking in the other direction. 
 
 On the way back to the cottage, Bill took it 
 upon himself to entertain the company, albeit in 
 a decorously subdued fashion, by his opinion of 
 the sermon, of the minister, and of ministers in 
 general. The sermon he declared to be "Scrip- 
 teral," and the minister a " likely one," a " dreadful 
 smart man," the more so when contrasted with 
 the other clergymen of the conference, whom Bill 
 described as " runnin emptins," and " good enough 
 for a lowery day," to the mystification of Collins 
 and the amusement of the others. 
 
 The dinner hour was not very sociable. Perhaps 
 
THE BROUGHTOX HOUSE. 251 
 
 it was the hot weather. At any rate, the mutual 
 intimacy of the quartette, which had seemed to 
 thrive again since the runaway, appeared now to 
 be diminishing once more. Floyd talked mostly 
 with Collins. Mrs. Floyd and Sonderby found 
 nothing to converse about which they had not 
 already discussed two or three times. Yet Son 
 derby was never bored with her, nor annoyed into 
 that sulky reticence whither he often withdrew 
 when talking with persons who did not appeal to 
 him; his principal feeling in these times of un 
 profitable intercourse with Mrs. Floyd was one of 
 disappointment, because he knew how much they 
 might say to each other in the right time and 
 place. 
 
 It was with this sentiment of disappointment, 
 pathetic in its realization of the true things and 
 the deep things which were crowded out by con 
 ventionality, by circumstances by their set habit 
 of trite "talk, too, it must be said that John Son 
 derby left Tryphena after dinner and went to his 
 room. He spent there a restless, suspicious two 
 hours. Once or twice he sat down at his desk 
 and took a sheet of paper, in the pretence of writ 
 ing to the A. S. & F. Company, but he knew that he 
 was only creating for himself a deliberate illusion. 
 He could not write them definitely. It was the 
 old story. Fourteen days had slipped away since 
 he had had any serious talk with her, since any 
 thing but commonplaces had passed between them. 
 
252 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 True enough, she had laid her hand on his arm 
 once, not so swiftly and shyly but that he had 
 noticed it, and would almost have given the right 
 arm itself to know just what she meant by it. 
 Yet he did not know. The old story, with the 
 same characters, the same plot, and the end not 
 yet. Till something was cleared out of the way, 
 something settled in himself, and he knew well 
 enough that this something, whatever it was, had 
 to do with Tryphena Floyd, he could not go to 
 Boston. The fourteen days, with their alterna 
 tion of severe mental application and benumbing 
 manual labor, had, at least, made him less restless, 
 forced him to think less of himself ; but now in 
 the leisure of Sunday, he seemed to have gained 
 nothing by it all. 
 
 A noise of wheels outside, in the direction of 
 the cottage, and Collins s deep, vibrant laugh made 
 him go to the window and open the shutters, which 
 had been tightly closed because of the heat. The 
 hotel buggy stood in the driveway between the 
 cottage and the Broughton House, and in it were 
 Collins and Mrs. Floyd. Floyd stood by the 
 horse s head. 
 
 Collins held the reins in his right hand and was 
 leaning across her to tuck the duster around her 
 knees. She was saying something to him, and 
 Sonderby noticed, with a curious particularity of 
 attention, that she wore a bonnet he had not seen 
 before, and that her eyes were animated and her 
 
THE EEOUGHTON HOUSE. 253 
 
 cheeks colored as she looked down at Collins, 
 stooping across her, while she drew on a pair of 
 dark brown lisle-thread gloves. Collins chirped 
 to the horse, and off they went toward the east 
 part of the town. Sonderby closed the shutter 
 viciously and began to pace up and down the room 
 again, with his hands in his pockets. He was more 
 hurt by what he had seen than he would have 
 owned to himself. He had no earthly objections 
 to Mrs. Floyd s going driving with Bruce D. Col 
 lins if she wanted to ; she probably knew Collins 
 as well as he, John Sonderby, did. He was not 
 over-scrupulous about social conventionalities, but 
 he had, nevertheless, a sort of sentiment which 
 protested against her going off with Collins in this 
 way on Sunday afternoon. 
 
 Sunday driving was regarded by Broughton peo 
 ple as sacrilegious, fit only for persons who be 
 longed in the Center, and for summer boarders, 
 who brought with them to the country their Sab 
 bathless ways. Now Mrs. Floyd knew the village 
 opinion perfectly well, for it was the atmosphere 
 in which she had grown up to womanhood. Her 
 open disregard of it struck the school-teacher un 
 pleasantly ; it betrayed too much indifference to 
 the standards of right and wrong that prevailed 
 in the community, and Sonderby, though indepen* 
 dent enough himself in such matters, shared the 
 common masculine conviction that nice women 
 should do just as other nice women do. He knew 
 
254 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 that Mrs. Floyd was in some sort of trouble, nay, 
 a very definite kind of trouble, and he did not care 
 to think of her driving off gaily on a Sabbath after 
 noon with a thorough worldling like Collins. It 
 made her seem as much of a worldling as Collins 
 himself. 
 
 Sonderby stopped suddenly in his walk, after a 
 variety of reflections of this character, and said to 
 himself, " Look here, my son, is the fact that she 
 has gone driving with another man really what ails 
 you?" He faced the question honestly, but for 
 the life of him he could not answer ; and then 
 came a quick revulsion of feeling against all this 
 introspection, and he felt smothered for some free 
 air. What did he know about himself, about her, 
 about anything ? 
 
 He put on his walking-shoes and an old cap, and 
 hurried out into the diffused glare of the dog-day 
 sunshine. Unscrupulous about his own defiance 
 of Broughton customs, he tramped off down the 
 street at a racing pace, in front of the trim white 
 houses where the Sabbath-keeping villagers sat on 
 their front piazzas, with religious newspapers in 
 their hands, discontented children around their 
 feet, and upon their lips questions and guesses as 
 to the passing teams. He left the academy on the 
 right, and climbing one long hill after another, got 
 rapidly out of sight of the village. The road was 
 white with fine dust; the purple milkweed blossoms 
 were ashy gray with it ; it was thick upon the plan- 
 
THE BROUGIITOX UOUSE. 2oO 
 
 tain leaves that pushed themselves out upon the side 
 of the roadwa} . Xo birds sang ; only the swallows 
 circled low over the meadows, or twittered under 
 the barnyard eaves of the deserted farmhouses, all 
 along the desolate road. Hotter and hotter glared 
 the sun, as it fell lower in the hazy west. But 
 John Sonderby cared for neither the dust, nor the 
 swallows, nor the sun. He threw himself desper 
 ately into physical exertion, letting his mind go 
 out entirely like a candle. He was conscious 
 only of his rapid breathing, and of the play of his 
 muscles. Nevertheless, at five o clock, when he 
 was seven or eight miles from Broughton, he felt 
 thirsty and a trifle faint, and stopped at a farm 
 house for a glass of milk. It was one of his own 
 pupils an awkward-looking boy who came to 
 the kitchen door ; and then Sonderby remembered 
 that the fellow lived out that way. He asked for 
 some milk, and the boy summoned a bustling 
 mother, who made the school-teacher come in ; and 
 although in some surprise at Sonderby s Sunday 
 walk, she kept her curiosity to herself. The milk 
 tasted good to him ; there was a likable, homely 
 flavor, too, to the conversation of these farming 
 folks, to whom "the street" represented a world of 
 civilization and culture to which they did not at all 
 aspire, except in so far as they prized the academy. 
 In chatting a half-hour with them, Sonderby forgot 
 all about the Broughton House ; and they were so 
 evidently glad to see him, and the farmhouse seemed 
 
256 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 so hospitable and quiet, that he accepted their invi 
 tation to take supper. It was thick dusk when he 
 started toward the village at last, and in trying to 
 make a short cut through a wood-road he lost his 
 landmarks, and was forced into a detour of two or 
 three miles. When he finally got into the right road 
 again, it was so dark that he could scarcely see the 
 floury dust through which his feet were ploughing. 
 By and by the stars became more radiant, though 
 the night was thick and hot, like the day, and full 
 of mist. At half-past nine he saw the lights of the 
 village, and by a quarter of ten he was under the 
 looming shadow of the academy, almost at home. 
 
 He sat down on the academy steps a moment to 
 rest, leaning his back against one of the big hollow 
 Doric pillars, with both hands clasped around his 
 knee. The fluting of the pillar pressed sharply 
 against his head, and he pushed his cap back till 
 it served as a cushion. Then he sat motionless. 
 The old academy steps ! How many times he had 
 come out upon this southeast corner of them, 
 cracked school-bell in hand, to summon the boys 
 and girls from their rough and silly games upon 
 the playground ! How many times had he shov 
 elled them off, winter mornings, when they were 
 drifted more than a foot deep with snow ; and how 
 cold it had been inside, when he had unlocked 
 the door and kindled a fire in the stove, a huge, 
 bulging-sided, hippopotamus-looking affair, and 
 then had swept the room before he went back to 
 
THE BROUGHTOX HOUSE. 257 
 
 his boarding-house for breakfast ! Three winters ! 
 Three years ! It was a long time ; a solitary, and 
 in some sense unfruitful period, yet not unlabo- 
 rious. Perhaps, Sonderby thought to himself, he 
 was after all as well fitted for school-teaching as 
 for anything else. Xot that he cared anything 
 about it, really, except that it gave him a living, 
 and kept him fairly busy ; but what more could 
 one expect ? He might, too, have made more of 
 his opportunities. There, for instance, was the 
 young fellow at whose house he had taken supper 
 that night ; why could he not have gone there 
 long before and learned to know the boy bet 
 ter and found out what was wisest for him to 
 work at in the academy? There was the stoop- 
 shouldered girl with whom he had walked to the 
 Y. P. S. C. E. meeting; for three years she had 
 been under him, and he had hardly ever spoken 
 to her except in recitation time ; it would have 
 been so easy to give her a little pleasure. There 
 was Hark ! 
 
 Down on the Center road, in the very outskirts 
 of the village, some one was singing. Hark ! 
 Above the chirp of the crickets and the grating of 
 the tree-toads, there came a clear, rich voice : 
 
 And now whate er befalls me. 
 I go where honor calls me; 
 Farewell, farewell, 
 My own true love, farewell. 
 
258 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 " It s Collins," Sonderby muttered, and listened 
 again, while the academy and all connected 
 thoughts were carried out of his mind by the 
 rush of associations which that distant voice 
 brought with it. 
 
 Farewell, farewell, 
 
 My own true love, farewell. 
 
 There was silence once more, except for the crick 
 ets. Three or four minutes passed. Then, start- 
 lingly near, this time, so quiet was the night, came 
 the rollicking bass : 
 
 Good night, ladies, 
 
 Good night, ladies good night, ladies, 
 
 We re going to leave you now. 
 
 Merrily we roll along, roll along, roll along, 
 
 Merrily we roll along, 
 
 O er the dark blue sea. 
 
 Sonderby turned, and looked around from behind 
 the pillar. The singer was still invisible, though 
 only a hundred yards away, on the other side of 
 the academy, apparently in front of one of the first 
 houses on the Center road. 
 
 Sweet dreams, ladies, 
 Sweet dreams, ladies, 
 Sweet dreams, ladies, 
 We re going to leave you now. 
 
 There was no mistaking the voice. Sonderby 
 thought of a foggy night in June, before the 
 Floyds came, when Collins had made him go out 
 for a walk on the North Broughton road, and had 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 259 
 
 stopped at every farmhouse and insisted on singing 
 a serenade. Collins had been in peculiarly high 
 spirits that night, and the school-teacher had since 
 suspected that he had been drinking a little. Son- 
 derby wondered who was with the manufacturer 
 
 now. 
 
 Farewell, ladies, 
 Farewell, ladies, 
 Farewell, ladies, 
 We re going to leave you now. 
 
 " Oh, shut up, Collins ! Come along ! " inter 
 rupted a hoarse voice. The school-teacher sat up 
 straight and pulled his cap forward. Of course it 
 was Floyd, Floyd and his friend Collins ; one 
 might have guessed it. The grumbling murmur 
 of their voices drew nearer and nearer, up the 
 fork of the road; they were not keeping step, 
 and Sonderby seemed to hear the shuffle of many 
 feet in the dust. In a moment more they were 
 abreast of the academy, and Sonderby heard 
 them halt, though he could scarcely make out their 
 figures. 
 
 " Say, les sit down," Floyd said. " It s so 
 damned hot ! Les sit clown." 
 
 "All right," chimed in Collins s voice, with 
 jocund emphasis. " Mr. William J. Floyd, I will 
 sit down to your health. c How can I bear to 
 leave thee ? And clapping the artist on the 
 shoulder, Collins dropped heavily on to the acad 
 emy steps beside him, at the opposite end from 
 
260 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 Sonderby, who sat motionless behind his pillar, 
 feeling something like a thief. 
 
 " Say, don t sing any more," growled Floyd. 
 " You ll wake up the whole town." 
 
 " What do you care for the town ? " demanded 
 Collins. " You profane old euchre-player ! Much 
 you care for the town of Broughton." 
 
 Floyd made no reply. He was trying to recall, 
 as well as his somewhat fuddled brain would allow, 
 just what he had said to Collins, confidentially, 
 over that last glass of punch. There was some 
 dispute about a jack of hearts, and they had quar 
 relled and stopped playing, and made up, and in 
 the succeeding burst of friendship he had told Col 
 lins something about Munich, or Venice, or Wat 
 son, or Phenie, or something, so much he could 
 remember. Then it had grown so hot in Collins s 
 room, and the lamp was so bright, as bright as 
 two, and Collins was a good fellow, a damned 
 reliable fellow, and they had come out to walk 
 together, and Collins had been singing at every 
 house on the Center road : Collins must have had 
 too much punch. 
 
 " Collins," Floyd remarked, after this mental 
 excursion, " you re a good fellow. You re a good 
 friend of mine. Say, ain t you ? " Floyd was 
 struggling against an unusual thickness of speech. 
 
 Collins grunted affirmatively and waited. 
 
 " I d like to splain something to you, Collins," 
 Floyd continued, with gravity. " I don t want to 
 
THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 261 
 
 have you get a wrong impression of me of any 
 such friend of yours, as you are a friend to me. 
 Perhaps you misunderstood what I said about 
 that matter, you know. Now I want you to under 
 stand that I m a gentleman ; a gentleman and an 
 artist. Did I say anything about going away ? " 
 
 " Going away ? " repeated Collins, in a feigned 
 tone that struck Sonderby instantly as insincere, 
 and made him think that the manufacturer was 
 not so drunk as he pretended to be. " Going 
 away ? " Collins seemed to be searching in the 
 dim recesses of his memory. 
 
 " Yes," said Floyd, anxiously. " Don t you 
 know ? To Munich pretty soon." 
 
 " Oh ! " Collins evidently recalled something 
 of the sort. 
 
 " Say ! I don t want to have you misunderstand 
 me. It s going to be a square deal, you know 
 nothing underhanded about it. I want to have 
 you understand that I m a gentleman, Mr. Collins, 
 Mr. Bruce D. Collins. If I am obliged to go to 
 Munich temp rarily temp rarily I shall sup 
 port my wife while I am over on the other side 
 a a temp rarily, 
 
 " Of course," broke in Collins, soothingly. 
 
 " Oh, well, that s all right," Floyd went on, re 
 lieved by Collins s answer. " I didn t want to have 
 you think there was to be any funny business 
 you know leaving Phenie here ah bandon- 
 ing her to th elements, you know. I m a gentle- 
 
262 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 man, Mr. Collins ; you re a gentleman. Say ! you 
 know my wife, don t you ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes," assented Collins. 
 
 " That s all right, then. I wouldn t say this ex 
 cept to a friend a friend of my family, Mr. Col 
 lins. You don t think it s anything d rogatory, do 
 you, for me to engage a single passage on the 
 Ham Ham - 
 
 " Hammonia ? " put in Collins. 
 
 " On the Hammonia. My wife can take care of 
 herself, Mr. Collins, right here in Broughton. 
 She s a property-holder. She s independent. But 
 I m not independent in Merica, Collins ; it s a free 
 country, but I m not independent. Say ! you don t 
 think there would be anything d rogatory, do 
 you?" 
 
 " Derogatory ? Hell, no ! " The explosive em 
 phasis of Collins s voice seemed to clear up the 
 moral difficulty that bothered poor Floyd. 
 
 " Well, that s all right, then. This is between 
 us, Mr. Collins, you being a friend of mine n a 
 friend of my family. Say ! it s hot, ain t it ? What 
 time is it ? " 
 
 Collins fumbled in his pocket, and then a parlor 
 match spurted. Sonderby shrank close behind his 
 pillar. 
 
 " Not much after ten," replied the manufacturer, 
 consulting his watch. " It isn t late." And he 
 began to whistle the air of " We won t go home 
 till morning." 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 263 
 
 " No, les go home now." A state of stupor was 
 succeeding the mental effort to which the artist 
 had subjected himself. He got up, rather noisily, 
 and endeavored to pull Collins after him ; but the 
 manufacturer kept his seat, and Floyd fell over 
 on to him, amid some laughter. Then this com 
 panionable pair rose simultaneously and started 
 of! with locked arms, Collins singing, but almost 
 under breath, the chorus of " Good night, Ladies." 
 
 Merrily we roll along, roll along, roll along, 
 Merrily we roll along, o er the dark blue sea. 
 
 " The dark blue sea, " repeated Floyd, in a 
 hoarse murmur. " What do you know about the 
 dark blue sea ? Next week, Mr. Collins, Mr. 
 Bruce D. Collins, next week, the dark 4 O er 
 the dark " 
 
 And failing to complete his sentence, and failing 
 equally to hit the proper key of the chorus, Floyd 
 subsided into silence, as the two men went on up 
 the road, which turned under the elm arches here, 
 as if entering a huge black cavern. 
 
 John Sonderby leaped to his feet, and stood 
 listening till the footsteps grew faint, and he could 
 hear nothing but the pounding of his own heart. 
 Then he dashed his fist into the palm of his other 
 hand, with a smothered cry. How stupid he had 
 been ! Floyd not only did not love her, but he 
 was going to leave her, to leave her there in 
 Broughton alone. And he had blabbed his plan 
 over a drunken game of euchre. The hound ! 
 
264 THE BROUGHTON PIOUSE. 
 
 The blood rushed into Sonderby s temples till he 
 was dizzy, and in the blackness of the misty night 
 around him, he saw again the slim, white, rigid 
 arms, and heard again the low, despairing words 
 words not of a dream, but of a real woman toward 
 whom his heart had opened and who had sat all 
 that summer by his side " You cannot help me 
 no one can help me." 
 
 Not help her? Not be with her? Not give 
 himself over to her ? He sank back on the academy 
 steps again, a strange elation in his heart. . . . 
 
 The next morning Arthur Ellerton, who had 
 been recently chosen a member of the Broughton 
 school committee, called upon Sonderby to learn 
 whether he would continue at the academy for 
 another year. 
 
 "I declare, that Sonderby is a queer fellow," 
 the minister said to his wife, on his return. 
 
 Ruth Ellerton was in the sitting-room, wearing 
 a big calico apron, and shelling peas for dinner. 
 She put up her hand for her husband to kiss as he 
 came in. 
 
 " I don t know what to make of him," he con 
 tinued, dropping Mrs. Ellerton s hand, although 
 very deliberately. " He was up in his room in the 
 hotel, with his door locked, and if I hadn t known 
 he was a perfectly straight fellow, I should have 
 said he had been on a debauch. Appeared not to 
 have slept ; wouldn t look me in the face." 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 265 
 
 " Oh, Arthur ! " remonstrated Mrs. Ellerton, a 
 troubled look coming over her beautiful gray eyes. 
 
 " But he s going to stay." 
 
 " Is he ? " she cried. " I am so glad ! You re 
 sure he isn t going to Boston ? " 
 
 ** He told me he had just written declining some 
 offer there. I presume it was the one we heard 
 about. I felt a trine awkward about the possible 
 reduction of the salary, though," added Ellerton, 
 taking off his coat and sitting down to help 
 shell the peas ; " but I had to tell him that the 
 committee thought it doubtful whether the same 
 salary could be paid another winter. It seems 
 that they all want to have him stay, even if he has 
 shortened the devotional exercises and doesn t call 
 upon the parents. They say that the scholars will 
 do anything for the fellow. Still, nine hundred 
 dollars is a good deal for us to raise, and I told 
 him so." 
 
 "What did he say?" 
 
 " That was one of the queer things about it, for 
 he must be poor ; of course he s poor. He looked 
 at me it was almost the only time when he did 
 look square at me and said it wasn t a matter 
 of salary with him." 
 
 " Oh, he is such a splendid fellow, Arthur ! " 
 she exclaimed, her eyes growing soft with enthu 
 siasm. " He could do so much good here ! We 
 must ask him again to tea." 
 
XIII. 
 
 TUESDAY, the thirty-first of July, was the day 
 decided on for that fishing-party upon which 
 Collins had set his heart. All the afternoon 
 before he had spent in the back yard of the cot 
 tage, with his rods and tackle spread around him 
 on the grass, engaged in preparing a complete 
 outfit for the other members of the quartette. 
 Mrs. Floyd, as well as the men, had been made 
 to promise to try her hand at throwing a fly, and 
 Collins had planned to finish their sport at the 
 meadows of Calvin Johnson s farm, where they 
 could probably get permission to fish, as it was 
 the last day upon which the game laws allowed 
 the taking of trout. In this open ground Mrs. 
 Floyd could easily make her maiden effort. She 
 seemed a good deal interested in the prospective 
 adventure, and plied Collins with many a droll, 
 oddly phrased question as he fitted up for her use 
 an old rod so light that even her slender hand 
 scarcely felt its weight and repaired its tiny 
 nickel reel, till it was in working order. 
 
 While the manufacturer and Tryphena were 
 chatting about the fishing-tackle, and she was 
 helping him now and then, by holding a thread 
 
 266 
 
THE BBOUGHTOy HOUSE. 267 
 
 tight while he knotted it, or handing him his pot 
 of glue, Mr. Floyd sat diligently upon his painting- 
 stool, a yard or two away, and worked on at his 
 Venetian girl. A few lucky hours more and the 
 picture would be finished, except for the varnish 
 ing and the last touches. Floyd had fished with 
 Collins several times that summer, and was fond 
 enough of the sport to listen to all the talk 
 between Tryphena and the manufacturer, and 
 occasionally to put in a word of his own. 
 
 John Sonderby was the only one of the four 
 who betrayed 110 particular interest in trout and 
 the expiration of the time allowed by the game 
 laws. Nevertheless, he loitered all that Monday 
 afternoon at the cottage, stretched out in the 
 shade of the trellis, and resting on his elbow, sunk 
 deep in the luxuriant grass. His old cap was 
 pulled low down upon his forehead, to keep the 
 glare out of his eyes. The school-teacher seemed 
 to have plenty of time at his disposal and made 
 no mention of any work at the laboratory. Once 
 when Collins looked around for something with 
 which to hammer a bit of wire straight, Sonderby 
 pulled the big brass key of the academy out of his 
 pocket and tossed it toward the manufacturer, as if 
 the key were worth as much for a hammer as for 
 anything else. None of them had seen anything 
 of Sonderby during the morning, except for a 
 moment, when he ran down, disorderly dressed, 
 from his room at the hotel, to give to the stage- 
 
268 THE BROUGI1TON HOUSE. 
 
 driver a letter for Boston, to be dropped into the 
 mail-car at the Center. But if the school-teacher s 
 morning had been somewhat unsociable, like so 
 many of his mornings latterly, he evidently tried 
 to make amends for it in the course of the after 
 noon. Not a word said by any of the three 
 escaped him ; from under the visor of his cap his 
 eyes watched every motion, and he spoke, when 
 at all, with a promptness and decision which were 
 in curious contrast with the indolence of his 
 attitude. When the artist laid down his brushes 
 about half-past four, and started off round the 
 corner of the cottage, Sonderby apparently dis 
 concerted him a little by asking if he was not 
 going to the post-office, and by volunteering to 
 keep him company; whereat Floyd explained 
 that he was only going to Meyer s. But when 
 Sonderby said that he was going to the office 
 anyway, and would bring back Floyd s mail, Floyd 
 decided that he might as well go himself, after all. 
 It was rather a clever piece of acting, on both 
 sides, and Collins, who chose to be secretly 
 amused at Floyd s changes of mind, understood 
 but one-half the comedy. For John Sonderby, in 
 his blunt, thorough way, was "shadowing" the 
 artist. 
 
 The two men came back without any mail ex 
 cept Collins s Republican, and Sonderby, resuming 
 his former position, tore open the wrapper, and 
 read slowly to Collins the scores of the Saturday 
 
THE BROVGHTON HOUSE. 269 
 
 ball games, printed in an abridged form in the 
 Monday issue. Sunday papers had not yet pene 
 trated so far as Broughton. Floyd went on with 
 his work rather peevishly. He suspected that 
 Collins would laugh at him that night, if they two 
 slipped off by themselves, about his anxiety for 
 securing his own mail, and he wished that he had 
 not told Collins so much about his plans, though 
 he reflected, with some dissatisfaction, that he 
 had only a vague remembrance of the extent to 
 which he had confided in the manufacturer. 
 
 But after supper, when Floyd invited Collins to 
 take a stroll, Sonderby impolitely proposed to ac 
 company them. The stroll was not a long one. 
 Collins smoked dispassionately, Floyd discontent 
 edly, Sonderby not at all ; but to make up for it 
 the latter carried on most of the conversation. 
 For the first time in his life, he was measuring 
 himself against another man perhaps against 
 two men in cunning, and there was an exhila 
 ration in the struggle. When they reached the 
 cottage, on the way back, Sonderby s quick eye 
 detected Mrs. Floyd sitting alone, in the window 
 by the lilac bushes. She had not lighted a lamp, 
 though it was fast growing dark. 
 
 " Floyd," said Sonderby, "you d better invite 
 us in to play whist. There is too much of a crowd 
 over at the hotel." 
 
 He turned up the path without waiting for an 
 answer, and the other men followed him, Collins 
 
270 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 smiling slightly, all to himself. He had formed 
 a theory of his own about Soiiderby s attitude 
 toward Tryphena, and was partly right, as a 
 shrewd worldling is apt to be, and partly wrong, 
 as a shrewd worldling is sure to be. Besides, he 
 knew nothing about Sonderby s stopping to rest 
 against the east pillar of the Doric-fronted acad 
 emy, some twenty-four hours before. 
 
 Mrs. Floyd brought out from the parlor of the 
 cottage a room never used nowadays a couple 
 of high, queerly modelled brass lamps, and the 
 quartette sat down to play. Sonderby held some 
 remarkable hands, among them a trump-sequence 
 from the eight-spot up, and he and Mrs. Floyd 
 increased their lead, in the course of the evening, 
 by more than thirty points. 
 
 The sky was cloudless on Tuesday morning, and 
 the wind straight from the west. But there was 
 no dew on the grass, and the air was singularly 
 clear, as if it were late autumn. The summer 
 boarders at the Broughton House were delighted 
 by the change from the close, sticky atmosphere 
 which the dog-days had brought, but Bill Trum- 
 bull remarked sagaciously that it was a " weather- 
 breeder." In the course of the forenoon the wind 
 fell, and the heat increased. Evans gave his four 
 " regulars " an early dinner, and shortly after noon 
 the carryall was waiting at the side door of the 
 hotel. 
 
 Collins had planned to reach the head-waters of 
 
THE BROUGHTOX HOUSE. 271 
 
 the Johnson Brook in time to begin fishing by 
 three o clock, knowing that in the four or five 
 hours of daylight that would remain, the fishing 
 would probably grow steadily better, and that it 
 would be lighter, after sunset, down in the open 
 meadows by the farm, where the sport would close, 
 than it could possibly be up in the w^oods. Just 
 as Collins had helped Mrs. Floyd into the front 
 seat of the carryall which was to be drawn this 
 time by a stout black farm-horse, instead of the 
 bay mare a buggy from the Center was pulled 
 up at the corner of the hotel. The horse was 
 lathery from his ten miles of uphill work, and 
 three men got down from the narrow seat. Col- 
 lins s face fell for an instant as he recognized them, 
 but a sort of triumphant twinkle was in his eyes. 
 It was a committee of the striking operatives in 
 the Collins Mills. Advices from the treasurer of 
 the company had warned Collins that the strikers 
 funds were nearly exhausted, and that a compro 
 mise could probably be effected. A telephone mes 
 sage that morning had informed him that he might 
 be waited on by a committee, since he had sent 
 word that he could not leave Broughton at 
 present. 
 
 " We ll have to wait a minute," said Collins to 
 his friends, and handing the lines to Mrs. Floyd 
 he stepped forward to greet the newcomers. 
 
 "Hullo, George," he said, shaking hands with 
 one of the men, who had grown up in the service 
 
272 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 of the company, and had played ball with Collins 
 many a season in the old Collins Mills team. 
 
 " How d ye do, Mr. Collins ? " was the respectful 
 answer. The manufacturer nodded to the other 
 two, whom he did not know so well, and waited 
 for them to announce their errand. 
 
 " You see, Mr. Collins," began George, the 
 spokesman of the party, "we thought that seeing 
 you couldn t come to the Mills just now, we d 
 come and see you." 
 
 "That s right," responded Collins. "Glad to 
 see you." 
 
 " Can we have a bit of a talk ? " inquired George, 
 looking around uneasily at the various persons who 
 were regarding the group. 
 
 " Well, George," was the deliberate reply, " I m 
 sorry to say that I have an engagement just now, 
 but I shall be back by and by." 
 
 However strongly Collins might have set his 
 desires on the fishing-party, he never believed in 
 letting his pleasure interfere with business ; but 
 this time, confident that he could dictate his own 
 terms to the strikers, he wanted to teach them 
 what he considered a lesson. They had had him 
 under the hammer long enough. They were 
 ready to come to terms now ; well, he would show 
 them that he himself was not over-anxious. 
 
 " About what time, Mr. Collins ? " asked George, 
 taking a furtive glance at his shaky Waterbury 
 watch. 
 
THE BBOUGHTON HOUSE. 273 
 
 "I really can t say," replied Collins, with an 
 ugly kind of carelessness. There was for him a 
 tyrannical delight in the situation. Relaxing a 
 little, he turned to Eyans, who was standing near 
 by, on the piazza. " Eyans, I wish you would giye 
 these gentlemen some dinner. Do as well by them 
 as you can. Johnny, take that horse to the stable 
 and rub him down. Collins was a generous fel 
 low, when it did not derange his plans. Then, 
 with a not unfriendly nod to George, and a " See 
 you later," he turned to the carryall, where Floyd 
 and Sonderby had by this time taken their places, 
 and jumping in he took the reins from Mrs. 
 Floyd, and the quartette started on their excur 
 sion. 
 
 The three operatives stood upon the end of the 
 piazza and watched them drive by. From under 
 the back seat protruded the ends of the fishing- 
 rods. One of the committee jogged George with 
 his elbow and pointed to them, muttering : 
 
 " Engagement ! What d ye think of that for an 
 engagement? Fishin engagement!" 
 
 George s only answer was a curse. Collins s 
 action meant a day s delay; the funds of the 
 Woollen Operatives" Union had been getting lower 
 and lower, and were now quite gone ; the strikers 
 pride had gone too, and they wanted bread for 
 their wives and babies. The operatives were will 
 ing to come back at the old schedule of prices, 
 rather than remain out longer. Collins s political 
 
274 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 economy was victorious : it had taken two to make 
 a bargain ; and now he had driven off on a pleas 
 ure party of his own, leaving the committee help 
 lessly there on the Broughton House piazza, as if 
 he meant to enforce a lesson that was already plain 
 enough. 
 
 As Collins drove up Main Street past the parson 
 age, he checked the carryall suddenly as though 
 an idea had occurred to him, but after a moment s 
 hesitation he chirped to the horse again, and turned 
 him into the road to East Part. 
 
 " What was the matter ? " asked Mrs. Floyd. 
 
 " Oh, nothing," he answered, with a grim smile ; 
 " I had half a mind for a minute to give those 
 fellows a letter of introduction to the parson s 
 wife. She likes that sort of thing, strikes 
 philanthropy and drain-pipes likes to fool with 
 it. But I guess it wouldn t hardly do. Those 
 fellows might destroy my reputation with the 
 minister; eh, Floyd?" 
 
 Floyd made some humorous reply, and the strik 
 ers committee was thenceforward forgotten. 
 
 The road to East Part, which, like the North 
 Broughton road, came into the village street close 
 by the meeting-house, had once been the most 
 thickly settled highway in the town. For a mile 
 or more after leaving the meeting-house the farms 
 were still well kept up. But gradually the soil 
 grew stonier, the hills increased in height, and 
 unoccupied houses and half-tumbled-down barns 
 
THE BROUGHTOX HOUSE. 275 
 
 began to come in sight on either hand. The East 
 Part folks had had the Western fever back in 1830, 
 and from almost every farm the youngest and best 
 had emigrated to Ohio and settled on the Western 
 Reserve. That section of Broughton township had 
 never recovered from the loss, and in what had 
 once been the village of East Part there were now 
 but half a dozen houses, a churn factory, and a 
 dilapidated Baptist church, never used. As the 
 carryall rattled along past the decayed settlement, 
 and a few old men and women stood in their wood- 
 house doors to peer at the conveyance, the forlorn- 
 ness of the place set Collins into some vigorous 
 talk about the folly of going West, or even of 
 drifting cityward, when there was plenty of good 
 land all through Xew England to be had for a 
 song. Sonderby joined in heartily. He admired, 
 as always, Collins s practical common sense, and 
 what the manufacturer was saying chimed com 
 pletely with his own convictions. But the ten 
 minutes of conversation about the decay of New 
 England was the only serious talk there was upon 
 the drive, and Mr. and Mrs. Floyd took no part 
 even in that. By instinct all these four people, so 
 singularly thrown together for a summer, chose 
 desultory themes for a chance sentence or two, 
 avoiding anything that might signify much of what 
 was in their hearts. Each man had plans of his 
 own, which he was bent on keeping secret from 
 the others, although Floyd s plans were now for 
 
276 THE EEOUGIITON HOUSE. 
 
 the most part clear, thanks to his fondness for Col- 
 lins s society. Tryphena alone of the quartette had 
 no plans, no future ; she was merely waiting. For 
 such a person, and indeed for any person, what 
 better way to spend the time than in brisk driving 
 along a country road? It satisfies the eye and 
 gives some occupation to the mind ; it may even, 
 under the proper circumstances, do something for 
 the heart. 
 
 The artist eye of Tryphena s husband caught 
 every point of interest in the landscape, and, being 
 fond of monologue, and having a sort of knack at 
 describing natural objects, Floyd contributed de 
 cidedly to the entertainment of the party during 
 their hot drive of more than two hours. It was 
 he who explained how the male bobolinks changed 
 their plumage before they wandered South; how 
 the cicadas, piping shrilly in the elms in the pas 
 tures, had come up out of the ground as grubs, 
 and had left their glistening empty skins, split 
 neatly down the back, upon fences and tree-trunks ; 
 why the milkweed pods hung, as it were, upside 
 down; why the line of hills they saw in every 
 direction seemed higher than a photograph would 
 show it, and lower than an artist must draw it; 
 and why the sky was always of a paler blue at the 
 zenith : common enough phenomena, all of them, 
 but a source of enthusiasm to the tall, vagabond- 
 like artist, and not without a certain attraction, 
 
THE BEOUGHTOy HOUSE. 277 
 
 when he described them, even to persons who had 
 a thinly veiled contempt for the describer. 
 
 When the carryall had gotten well past East 
 Part, a pair of marsh hawks started up from the 
 meadow, and flew persistently along in advance of 
 the quartette, skimming over the boggy ground 
 and alighting until the carriage drew near again, 
 when they would take wing once more. Floyd 
 was in rapture over them, and indeed the graceful, 
 powerful-winged creatures, so friendly, yet with 
 such instantaneous possibilities of endless flight, 
 fascinated the other occupants of the carryall as 
 well, though none of them felt the peculiar anal 
 ogy w^hich made Floyd happy as he watched 
 the birds. He could take wing, too, presently! 
 The road became rougher and rougher, now climb 
 ing long, stony ascents, broken billow-like by 
 rounding hillocks, and now diving steeply down 
 into shady ravines, where mountain brooks were 
 brawling, or singing quietly to themselves in the 
 silence of the afternoon. There were long spaces, 
 too, quite in the woodland, where the beech 
 branches met over the roadway, which was so nar 
 row here that one could sit in the carriage and 
 
 O 
 
 pick the blackberries from the sloping bank above 
 the road. Collins walked the horse very slowly 
 through the woods, and none of the four were 
 inclined to laugh so loudly as they had done out 
 in the dusty sunshine. More than once they were 
 all silent, and there was no noise except the crush 
 
278 THE BEOUGIITON HOUSE. 
 
 of the wheels into the black, rich earth, and the 
 squeaking of the whippletree. Then when they 
 got out into the sudden glare of light, and Collins 
 whipped up the horse, all four would begin sud 
 denly to talk and laugh about nothing. 
 
 From the top of a hill, where they paused once 
 to admire the view, caught in glimpses through 
 the tangle of fox grapes overrunning wild cherry- 
 trees, they could see the smoke that hung over the 
 Center. So marvellously clear was the atmosphere 
 that last day of July, that Floyd may have had 
 reason to assert, as he did most stoutly, that he 
 could see the telegraph-poles running over a bare 
 hill towards the Center, though the hill was at 
 least seven miles away. At any rate, the con 
 centric circles of hilltops all round the horizon 
 seemed to stretch out further than ever before, 
 and to assume more subtle gradations of deep- 
 toned blue, until it grew so pure and delicate, that 
 Mrs. Floyd declared the color to be just that of 
 Aunt Tryphena s old blue china, at which com 
 parison the men were inclined to laugh, though 
 Floyd supported his wife with more approval than 
 he commonly exhibited. While they were looking 
 off toward the northeast, Floyd called their atten 
 tion to what seemed a thin, white mist coming 
 over the blue. The mist thickened to a line of 
 cloud, and almost while they watched, a row of 
 pearl-white shining thunder-heads silently ranged 
 themselves along the horizon. Collins wiped the 
 
THE BROUGHTOy HOUSE. 279 
 
 perspiration from his forehead, and wished there 
 were a little wind. 
 
 It was nearly three when they reached a long 
 stretch of swampy ground, shut in on three sides 
 by abrupt, closely wooded hills, where the Johnson 
 brook had its source. The air was damp and 
 heavy, here in the swamp, and the mosquitoes were 
 vicious. The wheels sank deep into the rotten 
 corduroy road, and Collins had difficulty in keep 
 ing the tired horse up to a trot. Finally there 
 was a slight ascent, and the alders and hackmatack 
 gave way to birches and hemlocks, while up 
 through the woods at the right came the hollow 
 sound of a cascade. 
 
 "All right ! " cried Collins, triumphantly. " Here 
 we are ! Just on schedule time, too." 
 
 Jumping out, he took the horse by the head, and 
 forced him into the bushes by the side of the road, 
 so that the carryall might not block the way of 
 any chance passing team. The others got out too, 
 and while Collins was engaged in improvising a 
 hitching-rein out of one of the lines, and fastening 
 the steed securely to a birch sapling, he kept up 
 a running explanation of the topography of the 
 neighborhood. They were on a sort of watershed. 
 The Johnson brook, gathering itself slowly from 
 under the knotted alder roots, flowed sluggishly 
 and aimlessly enough until it crossed the road, 
 near where the carryall stood. Then it plunged 
 downward through the woods, in many a long cas- 
 
280 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 cade, and after a couple of miles of headlong 
 tumbling came out upon the broad Johnson mead 
 ows. Collins proposed that one of the three 
 should fish down through the woods. He himself 
 would try the swamp for an hour, and the third 
 man, by walking up the road an eighth of a mile, 
 would strike the upper branch of Bear brook, and 
 could fish there for an hour or so likewise. Floyd 
 chose the Bear brook, leaving to Sonderby the woods. 
 Collins then went on to explain that after an hour, 
 he and Floyd would meet again at the carryall, 
 where Mrs. Floyd could in the meantime wait, and 
 that they would then drive down around a spur of 
 mountain and reach the Johnson farm. There 
 they would leave the horse, and fish up through 
 the meadows till they met Sonderby. 
 
 The plan, which Collins had evidently thought 
 out with some care before leaving the Broughton 
 House, seemed agreeable to everybody. Floyd 
 drew on a pair of rubber boots, and slinging an old 
 fish-basket of Bill Trumbull s over his shoulder, 
 tramped off up the road toward Bear brook. Col 
 lins and Sonderby lifted the front seat out of the 
 carryall, and taking it to a shady spot on the road 
 side, arranged a comfortable place for Mrs. Floyd. 
 She declared that she was not at all afraid to wait 
 alone, and would amuse herself by looking for 
 blackberries, if she got tired of sitting still. Son 
 derby took off his coat and flung it over the back 
 of the seat, saying that he would be more com- 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 281 
 
 fortable without it, and that it might make the iron 
 back a trifle softer. Then the men bade her good 
 by, and walking back a few rods over the road 
 which they had come, separated: Collins, with a 
 disgusted look at the crowds of mosquitoes around 
 his head, pushing his way skilfully through the 
 bushes on the edge of the swamp ; and Sonderby 
 striking straight down through the woods toward 
 the cascades. 
 
 The mountain side was precipitous, and the 
 school-teacher slipped every few steps upon the 
 rotten leaves that slid away under his feet and 
 left the stony ledges bare. But he was a fair 
 woodsman, and by dint of swinging himself along 
 from sapling to sapling, he descended rapidly, 
 despite his awkward fishing-boots, and the bor 
 rowed rod, which he was forced to carry carefully. 
 It was perfectly still in the woods, except for one 
 or two scurrying chipmunks, and not a breath of 
 air was stirring. Sonderby was hot and breathing 
 hard when he reached the upper cascade, and 
 paused a moment to watch the stream take its 
 arching leap. Here the vibration of the shock of 
 falling water made a sort of breeze that shook the 
 leaves of the cushion-berry and the maidenhair 
 ferns along the channelled rocks, and the air was 
 deliciously cool from the spray. The school 
 teacher worked his way downward, over the wet 
 rocks, till he stood at the bottom of the cascade, 
 where the water struck unevenly against a quartz- 
 
282 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 ite shelf, and whirled on again into an oval pot 
 hole, four or five feet deep. Sonderby dabbled his 
 fingers in it, disregarding the drenching spray that 
 was falling around him, and was mightily tempted 
 to strip off his clothes and take a plunge. But he 
 gave up the idea as unworthy a fisherman in the 
 first quarter of an hour of possible sport, and kept 
 on down the shelving ledges where the moss grew 
 so thick that the water swept over them almost 
 silently, leaving shining bubbles in the moss along 
 the under edge of each brink. The lower cas 
 cades were not so fine as the upper, being scarcely 
 more than a succession of short plunges down a 
 long, irregular incline, at the foot of which, Collins 
 had said, the fishing began. 
 
 Sonderby got down to within a few yards of the 
 bottom, and then reflected that he would better 
 put his rod together, as at the bottom of the last 
 cascade there would probably be trout that had 
 run up stream as far as possible. He drew the 
 rod from its case, and reached for the side-pocket 
 where he had put line, reel, and bait-box. Con 
 found it! He had left his coat on the carriage 
 seat. Why had he not been bright enough to take 
 those things from his pocket when he spread out 
 his old coat for Mrs. Floyd to lean against? 
 
 Well, there was nothing for it but to go back. 
 Slipping the rod out of sight under a rotting log, 
 and taking a single glance at the chain of pools 
 below him, over whose surfaces the midges were 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 283 
 
 dancing and in whose depths, no doubt, the trout 
 were lurking, Sonderby turned on his heel and 
 started back on his stiff, upward climb. Bent 
 almost on all fours, he clambered rapidly over the 
 rocks by the lower cascade, and did not pause till 
 he stood panting at the foot of the upper one, 
 where he had Avaited an instant in coming down. 
 The heat seemed to grow more oppressive every 
 moment. Dropping his cap at the edge of the 
 stream, and putting one knee on it to avoid wet 
 ting his trousers, he flung his weight forward on 
 his hands, and stretched out to drink, swallowing 
 the water in big gulps. He straightened up on 
 one knee again, with a long, satisfied breath, 
 and dashed away with his hand the drops that 
 were falling from his brown beard. Then his brow 
 contracted, his hand fell, and his eyes looked 
 vacantly into the water. 
 
 Ah, sure enough ! She would be there. She 
 would be there all alone. It was so long since he 
 had seen her alone, since he had had any real 
 words with her; never, in fact, since that Sunday 
 morning when they had been together in the sit 
 ting-room of the cottage. He had tried to avoid 
 her, to keep down by dint of furious mental and 
 bodily work his wild thoughts about her. Almost 
 he had succeeded; then came the disclosure he 
 had overheard at the academy, and for the first 
 time he knew the truth about her trouble. His 
 choice, then, had been instant : he had given up 
 
284 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. f 
 
 his prospects in Boston, he had given up trying 
 to keep her out of his mind. He had devoted 
 himself to her, scarcely knowing what he was 
 doing, or what would probably come of it all 
 disregarding the right and wrong of the matter, 
 if indeed there were any such things in the con 
 fusing tangle resolved only to stay in B rough- 
 ton by her side, to watch her husband like a hawk, 
 and to show her, when the time came, that she might 
 call on him for anything, anything. He had spent 
 all Monday as near her as he could ; nothing but 
 accident had separated them this afternoon, and 
 now accident was bringing him back up through 
 the woods to the lonely road where she was wait 
 ing. He would find her sitting on the carriage 
 seat which he had helped place for her, and lean 
 ing back against his own old coat. It was acci 
 dent ; but it seemed like fate. 
 
 Sonderby rose to his feet, knocked the wet sand 
 off from his cap mechanically, and started for the 
 top of the gorge. What should he say to her? 
 " I have left my line and reel in my coat and had 
 to come back for them. Good by again." Was 
 that all? 
 
 Was that all, when he might not have another 
 chance to tell her that he knew Floyd s cowardly 
 plans, that he would do anything, everything, she 
 wished that his future was nothing to him, 
 that no ! it was not all, and it would not be all ! 
 A few minutes would bring him to the road ; and 
 
THE BEOUGHTOS HOUSE. 285 
 
 he swung himself up from tree to tree with power 
 ful pulls, ascending in swift, zigzag lines. But 
 how hot it was ! There was not air enough to 
 breathe, and his heart thumped as if he were 
 suffocating. The light of the clearing was just 
 ahead of him ; now he climbed up the last ledge 
 of leaf-drifted rock, and pushed his way into the 
 alders that fringed the roadside. There was an 
 other sound beside the pounding of his heart, and 
 he stopped to listen. From behind rose the deep, 
 trembling vibrations of the cascade ; from the 
 roadside by the carryall came the resonant mur 
 mur of a voice. He stepped out on to the road. 
 
 Aye, she was there. She sat on the carriage 
 seat, leaning forward, poking at the ground with 
 the tip of her sunshade ; and sitting beside her, 
 his right arm resting on the back of the seat so 
 that it must have touched her, his dark, eager 
 face turned as if in hope to catch her eyes at 
 some word of that which he was rapidly saying, 
 was Bruce D. Collins. 
 
 Poor John Sonderby ! For a few long seconds 
 he stood quiet, so helpless did that great surprise 
 make him. Then he coughed awkwardly and came 
 up the road, his eyes riveted on Collins. The lat- 
 ter s right hand changed position quick as light 
 ning ; then he rose deliberately with a cool 
 " Hullo/ 
 
 " Hullo ! " Sonderby responded, and paused in 
 embarrassment. 
 
286 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 Mrs. Floyd said nothing, and seemed to be 
 looking at the ground, as before. 
 
 " Did you get sick of fishing, so soon ? " inquired 
 Collins. 
 
 " I forgot my line and bait, and had to come 
 back for them." 
 
 " Oh, well, you always need a line for fishing, 
 Sonderby. You ll learn after a while." But the 
 school-teacher did not smile at the mild sarcasm ; 
 he stood planted firmly before Collins, with an 
 ugly look in his blue eyes. 
 
 " The mosquitoes drove me out of the swamp," 
 continued Collins, stretching himself carelessly, 
 " and I ve come back for a pair of gloves." He 
 sauntered over to the carryall, and after some 
 fumbling under the remaining seat, returned with 
 the gloves in his hand. He did it very well, but 
 unfortunately for the impression which he sought 
 to produce, Sonderby had seen him place the 
 gloves in a pocket of his fishing-jacket w^hen he 
 started into the swamp a half-hour before. Collins 
 had lied. He drew on the gloves and buttoned 
 them. 
 
 " Well ? " said he. He felt that Sonderby s eye 
 was measuring him, as a boxer measures for a 
 blow. 
 
 " Where is your line ? " Collins continued, rather 
 more hastily. 
 
 "I guess your things are here," spoke up Mrs. 
 Floyd for the first time. She held out the coat, 
 
THE BROUGHTOX HOUSE. 287 
 
 and Sonderby forgot his impulse to knock Collins 
 down, and turning to Tiyphena took it from 
 her hand. With bungling fingers he got the 
 desired articles from the side-pocket and dropped 
 the coat upon the seat again. 
 
 "I m real sorry you had the walk all for nothing," 
 said Mrs. Floyd, compassionately. " Is it dreadful 
 hot in the woods ? " 
 
 " Rather," answered Sonderby, drily. Another 
 awkward silence followed. 
 
 " I guess likely we ll have a shower by and by," 
 hazarded Mrs. Floyd, still poking the* black earth 
 with the tip of her sunshade, and not glancing at 
 Sonderby as she spoke. 
 
 " I shouldn t wonder." 
 
 "Well, here goes for the mosquitoes again," inter 
 rupted Collins, moving awa}*. He made an upward 
 motion of his hand, a sort of parting gesture, 
 toward Mrs. Floyd ; and she waved the sunshade 
 slightly, in dumb rejoinder. That was enough for 
 John Sonderby. It was no place for him. 
 
 " I m off, too," he said huskily, and turning 
 sharply, crushed his way through the bushes, and 
 plunged down through the woods. Poor fellow ! 
 he had idealized her. 
 
 Down the gorge he stumbled, heedless of his 
 footing, till he stood again at the bottom of the 
 upper cascade. He had scarcely been gone a 
 quarter of an hour. All was unchanged there; 
 the water was beginning to ooze through into the 
 
288 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 hollow his knee had pressed in the sand ; the water- 
 spiders were skimming over the margin of the 
 pool, just as he had left them. But in himself 
 something was broken. The fantastic devotion, 
 the reckless desire to let her know what was in his 
 heart and to let her do with him as she would, 
 was gone. She was not worthy of the devotion, 
 and the desire had perished utterly at the sight of 
 Collins s face. If she wished to have Collins near 
 her, as near her as that, very well. Sonderby s 
 pride in himself, in his power of influence over her, 
 his belief in his own analysis of her character, was 
 swept away. A dull shame had taken its place 
 shame at the unacknowledged amorous longing 
 that had mixed itself with his unselfish pity for 
 her, shame at her weakness and folly in allowing 
 Collins s attentions. A crowd of black suspicions 
 jostled against each other : he remembered Floyd s 
 innuendoes against the manufacturer in the barber s 
 shop ; the start for the Sunday afternoon drive ; 
 the feigned tone of Collins when Floyd was boozily 
 confidential on the academy porch ; this very fishing 
 excursion itself, so carefully planned. It all seemed 
 drearily clear : Collins had been playing with his 
 friends of the Broughton House as if they were 
 pieces on a chessboard. But to honest John Son- 
 derby, the worst of it was that Tryphena Floyd 
 seemed light weight ; not wicked indeed, but simply 
 light weight. 
 
 Minute after minute he stood there, with the 
 
THE BROUGHTOS HOUSE. 289 
 
 deep silence of the woods all around him, the fine 
 spray from the waterfall wetting his shoulders. 
 Then he turned and kept on his way down stream, 
 moving like a man who has risen from a sick-bed. 
 The lust of the eye and the pride of life had left 
 him. It was over ; all that had so strongly stirred 
 him, during these bygone weeks. It would not 
 have been worth while, if he had known. 
 
 On getting down to the foot of the lower cas 
 cade he found his rod, and adjusted his line and 
 reel. Why not ? One might as well fish as do 
 anything else. One thing was as good as another. 
 The trout ran up into the woods that July in 
 unusual numbers, and they leaped at the worms 
 on Sonderby s hook more eagerly than they would 
 have done at the most skilfully thrown fly. But 
 he took no pains to fish carefully, nor did the sport 
 rouse any zest in him. If he hooked them, well 
 and good ; if he failed, it was just as well. In vain 
 did the strong-backed, orange-bellied trout dart out 
 from along the sunken logs, snapping at his hook : 
 no sparkle of enthusiasm came into the dull eyes 
 of the school-teacher. He fished on heedlessly, 
 standing half knee-deep in the foaming water, and 
 letting part of the time the eddies play with his 
 bait and suck it down into their white depths, for 
 getting even that he was fishing. The farther he 
 went down stream, the quieter grew the water, 
 until it lay mostly in long shallow pools shut in 
 bv underbrush. At the head of each one he 
 
290 THE BBOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 would usually take a trout, and dropping it into 
 the basket would splash on without caring to try 
 for another, and then he would repeat the process 
 at the next pool below. An hour thus passed. He 
 did not notice that the woods were darkened by 
 an increasing shadow, until he looked up on reach 
 ing a tiny clearing, and observed that the north, 
 grown full of blue-black thunder clouds, was top 
 pling them over upon the west, so that there came 
 no longer any direct sunlight, but simply a daz- 
 zlingly bright reflection from the livid edge of the 
 northern clouds. He saw that there would be a 
 thunder storm, and then the fact went out of his 
 mind under the benumbing pressure of that greater 
 fact, and he strode wearily on into the woods. By 
 and by it grew almost as dark as evening there in 
 the shadow of the thick underbrush, along the 
 sleeping water, but the trout leaped faster and 
 faster, and Sonderby s basket was growing half 
 full. As he climbed over the stump fence into 
 the meadow, the first crash of thunder pealed from 
 the northwest. Overhead there was only a patch 
 of blue, and on this the round-edged clouds were 
 mounting and closing in. A strong wind rose and 
 sank, leaving a calm more oppressive than before. 
 The others would probably get wet, Sonderby 
 thought, putting on a fresh worm for the first of 
 the meadow reaches. 
 
 " The others ! " two hours ago it would have 
 been " she will probably get wet " now it 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 291 
 
 was " the others " : she was one of the rest : 
 they went naturally together. Sonclerby scarcely 
 glanced away from his hook as the first drops of 
 rain fell, and the wind began to stir again. He 
 turned up the collar of his flannel shirt around his 
 throat, remembering obscurely, as he did so, that 
 he had flung his coat down on the carriage seat, up 
 there at the top of the gorge, and wondering what 
 had become of it now. Thicker and heavier came 
 the thunder crashes, and the rain-drifts began to 
 march like swift-sweeping upright files of spear 
 men across the wide Johnson meadows. Then all 
 grew gray ; the farm buildings were lost to sight, 
 great sheets of water streamed through the gloomy 
 air, and a gale blew that whitened the willow-trees 
 along the brook, flattened the blue iris flowers, and 
 strewed the air with broken, flying leaves from the 
 woodland. Sonderby could no longer see his line ; 
 he could scarcely keep his balance against the 
 furious pushings of the wind, and the gusts of 
 driving rain. He unjointed his rod deliberately, 
 put the reel on top of his trout in the basket, 
 tossed the contents of his bait-box into the brook, 
 and tramped across the meadow in the direction of 
 Calvin Johnson s. He was wet to the skin already, 
 and the hail was beginning to sting his cheeks and 
 forehead. But he was thinking of the idle sum 
 mer ; the vague, self-deceptive dreams ; the useless 
 and unwished sacrifice. 
 
 Rufus Johnson, standing in the wagon-shed to 
 
292 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 watch the storm, caught sight of the stooping fig 
 ure of the school-teacher, as it struggled forward 
 toward the shelter, and recognized it. 
 
 " Hullo, Mr. Sonderby ! " he shouted. " What, 
 the land sakes ! Did ye git ketched in the rain? " 
 
 " Hullo, Rufus ! " was the quiet reply, as the 
 school-teacher entered and put his wet hand into 
 the calloused grip of the young farmer. 
 
 " Yes, I m some wet, but it s no matter. Have 
 you any hay out ? " 
 
 Rufus was leaning on a pitchfork. " No, by 
 Johnny ! " he exclaimed, gratefully. " I pitched 
 the last forkful over the great-beam just as that 
 first clap came. Twas a big one, wa n t it ? Must 
 a struck dost." 
 
 "I don t remember," answered Sonderby, squeez 
 ing the water out of his clothes. " Have they 
 come yet? " 
 
 "Who?" said Rufus. 
 
 " Mr. Collins. At the hotel, you know. They 
 were going to drive around here and fish up 
 through the meadow." 
 
 " Were, eh ? No, we ain t seen nothin of em 
 here. Won t ye come into the kitchen, n git dry? 
 Twon t hold up yet awhile, t ain t likely." 
 
 But just as Sonderby had been given a seat by 
 the kitchen fire, where the boarders supper was 
 preparing, there was a noise of wheels outside, and 
 Collins called out, " Whoa ! " 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 293 
 
 " Drive right under the shed,* shouted Rufus, 
 running to the door. 4i Right in there ! " 
 
 Sonderby stood in the kitchen doorway, and saw 
 Floyd s tall form squirm out of the back seat of the 
 carryall, followed by Tryphena, who was laughing 
 vociferously. Collins was tying the horse. In a 
 moment the three started for the kitchen, at the 
 invitation of Rufus, who addressed Mrs. Floyd as 
 " Phenie." She was the first to enter the kitchen, 
 and paused in mock dismay, when scarcely over 
 the threshold, to see the puddle that was already 
 running from her clothes. Her thin dress clung 
 to her. She was shivering, but was in the gayest 
 spirits, and joked incessantly as they all crowded 
 up to the stove. Mrs. Calvin Johnson emerged 
 from the pantry, where she had been making- 
 pies, and bustled around with a shower of hos 
 pitable ejaculations : 4 * Land sakes ! Glad to see 
 you. Don t say! Wet? Of course you be. 
 Draw right up to the fire, sir. Make yourself to 
 home." Then, in motherly solicitude at Try- 
 phena s drenched clothing, she carried her off 
 into her own bedroom, which opened out of the 
 kitchen. A few minutes later Tryphena reap 
 peared, attired in an old calico gown of the 
 farmer s wife. Mrs. Johnson was a woman far 
 from slender, and Tryphena had been obliged to 
 gather the gown in at the waist and to turn it up 
 at the sleeves. She looked like a mischievous child 
 masquerading. She talked with everybody at once, 
 
294 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 danced around the stove, pretended to quarrel 
 with Collins for the best place by the oven, and 
 even won Mrs. Johnson, who had never quite 
 liked her, into avowing mentally that " Phenie 
 was getting to be quite like folks." Mrs. John 
 son relished the free way in which the young 
 woman ordered around her masculine associates. 
 When down Mrs. Floyd s flushed cheeks the rain 
 drops kept trickling from her wet hair, she put her 
 hands to her head in pretty vexatiousness, and 
 after a hesitating glance at the men, shook her 
 hair loose. It uncoiled in dark, shining masses, 
 and slid down over her shoulders, and wringing 
 it dry, she twisted it into a low knot behind. The 
 sleeves of the calico gown were still too long, 
 bothering her as she tried to warm her hands over 
 the fire, so she pushed them up above her elbows, 
 and stretched out her bare, white arms eagerly to 
 the warmth. Opposite her stood John Soiiderby 
 and Rufus Johnson. 
 
 Mrs. Johnson went off into renewed explosions 
 of appreciative laughter over these evidences that 
 Phenie was " making herself to home." The stout 
 farmer s wife had had nothing but the vagaries of 
 3ier summer boarders with which to amuse herself 
 for several months past. More and more irrepres 
 sible grew Tryphena s hysterical exuberance, while 
 Floyd growled at the weather, and Collins turned 
 over Sonderby s basket of trout, surprised that 
 there were so many there. As for John Sonderby, 
 
THE BHOUGHTON HOUSE. 295 
 
 he gazed stupidly at the group around him, finding 
 himself for the first time afraid of Mrs. Floyd, 
 and shrinking from her merriment as from some 
 thing unnatural. The whole noisy whirl there 
 was meaningless to him, an indifferent matter. 
 Rufus Johnson, standing by the school-teacher s 
 side, watched Tryphena with e}~es as undemonstra 
 tive as those of his own oxen, but he was thinking 
 of the gay outbursts Phenie Morton used to break 
 into, on a straw ride or at a husking frolic, long 
 before she ever went to Brooklyn, and how like 
 her girlish self she was now, yet somehow differ 
 ent, "sort o different/ 
 
 After a quarter of an hour, when the heat of 
 the split hickoiy which Mrs. Johnson had crammed 
 into the stove had, in some measure, dried the ap 
 parel of the visitors, there was talk of driving 
 home. The rain had broken away. Xo one pro 
 posed anj- more fishing that evening. Mrs. Floyd s 
 spirits were ebbing now, moment by moment. She 
 was shivering again, and her fit of laughter left a 
 sort of moodiness behind it. She said she did not 
 want to go home ; she would rather stay all night, 
 just as Mrs. Johnson had hospitably proposed. 
 Floyd gave vent to an impatient exclamation, and 
 she yielded. While Collins and Rufus Johnson 
 backed the horse out from the shed, and sopped 
 up the water standing in the bottom of the carry 
 all, Calvin Johnson himself, a fine-looking man of 
 sixty, drove into the yard, behind the iron-gray 
 
296 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 horses. He had been under some trees in the 
 worst of the storm, and thought lightly of the 
 wetting he had received. He told Collins that 
 the roads would be badly washed, and tried, as his 
 wife had done, to get the party to spend the night 
 at the farmhouse. Mrs. Johnson, thus supported, 
 began her urgings once more, and the whole dis 
 cussion recommenced. But Tryphena cut it short 
 by climbing into the carryall. 
 
 " Ain t ye rather hasty, Phenie ? " Calvin John 
 son asked, good-naturedly. Unlike his wife, he 
 had always fancied Phenie Morton. 
 
 " No, I guess not," she answered. " You know 
 I belong in town now, along with the hotel folks. 
 Don t you see that this is the Broughton House 
 carriage ? " 
 
 Calvin Johnson and his wife laughed more than 
 this remark in itself would warrant, for they felt 
 she had meant to be jocose. Floyd was the only 
 one who noticed the mockery in her tone, and it 
 displeased him. He climbed into the carryall, too. 
 
 " Come on, Collins ! " he cried. " We ve got to 
 get home before dark. Come on, Sonderby ! " 
 
 Mrs. Floyd s teeth were chattering when she 
 said " Good by," and as the horse turned, Rufus 
 Johnson called out, " Hold on ! " He went under 
 the shed and returned with an old buffalo robe. 
 
 " I m afraid you ve ketched your death o cold, 
 Phenie," he said gravely, and wrapped the buffalo 
 robe closely around her. 
 
XIV. 
 
 THE three members of the strikers committee, 
 who were left unceremoniously upon the Brough- 
 ton House piazza to await the pleasure of Mr. Col 
 lins, had no reason to complain of the treatment 
 they received during the manufacturer s absence. 
 They were clothed in their Sunday best, and Evans 
 deemed them respectable enough to take the places 
 of his " regulars " at the end of the first dining- 
 table. After a much better dinner than they were 
 in the habit of getting at Collins Mills Junction, 
 they drifted into the office, and were there cor 
 dially entertained by Bill Trumbull. Bill had heard 
 some particulars about the strike, early in the sea 
 son, from the lips of Collins, and from time to time 
 since then he had noticed a few lines about the 
 situation at the Collins Mills on the local page of 
 the Republican. He easily guessed, therefore, the 
 nature of the committee s errand, and the answers 
 of the men to his adroit indirect questions satisfied 
 him that he was correct. Little inclined as they 
 were to talk business with a stranger, there had 
 been so much talking at Collins Mills Junction 
 that summer that they all had caught the infection 
 of the habit, and not one of them even George, 
 
 297 
 
298 THE EEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 the clearest-headed but least open of the three 
 could keep a quiet tongue in his head under the 
 irresistible attraction of Bill Trumbull s willing 
 ness to hear. But Bill was by no means in a hurry- 
 to make sure of the facts relating to the great 
 strike ; on the contrary, his manner was that of a 
 person who had the whole afternoon at his disposal 
 and was confident of securing his game whenever 
 he wished. He told them his best stories, cross- 
 examined them about the livery stable in the Cen 
 ter where they had hired their horse, exalted Col- 
 lins s prowess as a fisherman. From a discussion 
 of Collins as a sportsman it was not difficult to 
 pass to the more practical subject of Collins as an 
 employer of labor, and finally, in a private and 
 more confidential fashion, though there was no 
 one in the Broughton House office to overhear 
 them, to the interesting and ultimate question 
 of Collins s character " as a feller." Upon this 
 point the members of the committee were not 
 entirely agreed, but there was sufficient consensus 
 of opinion to make Bill Trumbull open his vague 
 blue eyes very wide indeed, and to set him uneasily 
 wondering whether he had really found out so 
 much about the world during the period when he 
 had served in the Legislature as he had always 
 thought he did. 
 
 Though the members of the committee were per 
 sonally attracted to Bill, else had they scarcely 
 been so free in talk with him, they were not 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 299 
 
 entirely impressed with a sense of his important 
 function in the community, until their discussion 
 of Collins was interrupted by an urgent demand 
 for Bill s presence in the back yard of Samuel 
 Parkinson. The worthy storekeeper s Durham 
 cow had been taken unaccountably sick that after 
 noon, and Parkinson himself appeared at the hotel, 
 his anxiety breaking huskily through his smooth 
 salesman voice, to see if Mr. Trumbull would not 
 come to look at her. Bill rose instantly from his 
 chair. He was prouder of his skill as a cow doc 
 tor than of anything else, and his judgment in 
 veterinary matters was accepted as final by every 
 one in the place. The deferential manner in which 
 the bland but excited Parkinson requested Trum- 
 bull s expert opinion convinced the men from Col 
 lins Mills Junction that their after-dinner friend 
 was something more than an ordinary hotel chair- 
 warmer, and they accompanied him in his hasty 
 march across the Floyd back yard to the store 
 keeper s premises. The cow lay there under a 
 plum-tree, her legs disconsolately and awkwardly 
 stretched out. her head flat on the ground. She 
 had been in her usual high spirits when Parkin 
 son s hopeful heir had tethered her by the plum- 
 tree after dinner, and the sickness was alarmingly 
 sudden. The women-folks had noticed that she 
 was not chewing her cud ; then they saw her fall 
 to the ground, and they ran for Mr. Parkinson. 
 Those were all the particulars Bill had to guide 
 
300 THE BEOUGIITON HOUSE. 
 
 him in his diagnosis. But genius follows its own 
 course. Without wasting a word upon the onlook 
 ers, who formed an interested ring around the 
 prostrate Durham, Bill tried the temperature of 
 her horns, passed his hand reflectively over her 
 spine, and then held her tail in both hands, moving 
 them up and down slowly, while one of the by 
 standers whispered approvingly that a cow s tail 
 was her thermometer, every time. Taking out his 
 jack-knife, Bill solemnly made an insertion at the 
 tip of the aforesaid tail, and watched the thin 
 trickling of bright red blood down upon the grass. 
 The Durham flapped her ears in a discouraged 
 manner. Then Bill turned to Samuel Parkinson, 
 and announced oracularly : 
 
 " She s a pretty sick cow." 
 
 A great doctor of medicine was lost in William 
 Trumbull. 
 
 " Pretty sick cow," he repeated. " Git some 
 soft-soap." 
 
 He took off his coat and rolled up his shirt 
 sleeves, while they brought from the back kitchen 
 a bucket of soap, curiously enough, the soaps 
 whose wondrous efficacy was advertised at the 
 store did not find their way to the storekeeper s 
 kitchen, and with it a wide-mouthed quart bot 
 tle, which Trumbull straightway filled. Prying the 
 cow s reluctant jaws apart, and cramming in the 
 bottle, he lifted her head and poured the liquid 
 soap into her innermost parts. Then everybody 
 
THE BEOUGHTOS HOUSE. 301 
 
 waited in respectful silence, two minutes five 
 ten. But the Durham did not even flap her ears 
 now. The case was evidently most serious. 
 
 " Pretty sick cow," reaffirmed Bill, poking her 
 inquisitively in the region of the stomach. " Git 
 some linseed oil." 
 
 Parkinson s boy started on a dead run toward 
 the store, and the crowd, seeing that Bill s rem 
 edies had thus far proved unavailing, began to 
 interchange theories and suggestions, and to em 
 phasize in an ominous, post-mortem sort of way 
 what an "awful good cow" she "had ben." Bill 
 maintained a professional silence ; but even he 
 betrayed some agitation as he filled the quart- 
 bottle with oil, and poured it down the Durham s 
 unresisting throat. Her tail swung from side to 
 side a little, in the grass. At this Bill filled the 
 bottle a second time, and repeated the dose. 
 After half a minute the cow shook her ears and 
 pushed her nose into the grass ; then she trem 
 bled, and gave two or three queer, hollow coughs, 
 followed by a convulsive gulp, and behold, some 
 thing seemed to slide up her throat. Then lifting 
 her head and drawing in her legs decorously, she 
 began to chew her cud as if nothing had happened, 
 while from the circle of onlookers burst a whole 
 volley of excited and commendatory ejaculations. 
 Bill Trumbull, in a befitting calm, put on his coat, 
 and then patting the cow gently he made her stand 
 up, and felt once more of the temperature of her 
 
302 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 tail. He relinquished his hold, apparently satisfied, 
 when Mr. Parkinson stepped briskly forward, and 
 took the tail into his own fingers, pinching and 
 pulling it as if to see that it was full measure. 
 
 " She ll git along," remarked Bill, in encourag 
 ing assurance. " She s ben a pretty sick cow, 
 but" 
 
 Just then the Durham lifted her horny, sprawl 
 ing right hoof, and drove it viciously against Sam 
 uel Parkinson s irreproachable shin. There was a 
 rapturous howl from the bystanders. 
 
 " But " -- Bill concluded, the mildest twinkle in 
 his eye, as he looked at the spot on Parkinson s 
 linen trousers where the reddening storekeeper 
 was frantically rubbing "I guess she s all right 
 now." 
 
 Thereupon, amid the renewed uproarious laugh 
 ter and the sly appreciative nudges in the ribs with 
 which the older neighbors conveyed to one another 
 their secret delight at Parkinson s mishap, Bill 
 Trumbull and his three companions walked back 
 to the hotel. The trio were proud of the acquaint 
 anceship, and as for Bill, he was happy to have 
 such a retinue of the unemployed about him, and 
 his only regret at the interruption was that it had 
 interfered with some further questions he had 
 intended to ask his new friends, as to the sort of 
 man Mr. Collins was reputed to be at Collins 
 Mills Junction. But unfortunately for the prose 
 cution of his inquiries, in which he felt a some- 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 303 
 
 what uneasy interest, his daughter Miranda was 
 shaking her apron at him from the other side of 
 the street, and he was obliged to go over and help 
 her take in the clothes from the line before the ap 
 proaching thunder shower. 
 
 When he got back to the hotel after supper he 
 found to his disappointment that Collins had 
 returned and was closeted with the committee. 
 Bill waited a long time for John Sonderby to show 
 himself, and failing to get sight of him, learned 
 from Evans that the school-teacher had gone to his 
 room. Early the next morning the strikers com 
 mittee drove away, having without much difficulty 
 accomplished their errand, and Bill did not see 
 them again. When he went over to the Brough- 
 ton House after breakfast, though he went more 
 promptly than usual, he found that Sonderby, too, 
 was gone. 
 
 An hour before Bill made his appearance, Cal 
 vin Johnson drove up to the hotel, and entering 
 the office, asked for the school-teacher. Sonderby 
 was finishing his breakfast, and, as it happened, 
 alone ; for Collins had taken an early repast with 
 his re-instated operatives, and the Floyds had not 
 yet come over. He came out of the dining-room 
 at the stately old farmer s message, and found 
 him in a heated dispute with Evans about some 
 boarders who the Welshman claimed had been 
 induced to leave the Broughton House and take 
 up their quarters at Johnson s, through misrepresen- 
 
304 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 tations of the latter. Calvin Johnson, owner of 
 the best farm in town and of another one in Ohio, 
 selectman of the town, deacon of the church, was 
 not the man to be browbeaten by the little Welsh 
 man, and Evans was already beginning to regret 
 that he had opened the discussion, when Son- 
 derby s appearance put an end to the quarrel. 
 
 " How d ye do ! How d ye do ! " Johnson cried, 
 heartily, forgetting his valiant wrath at the hotel- 
 keeper, who took advantage of the opportunity to 
 slip away. " It ain t so very long sence I ve seen 
 ye ; no. I suppose ye got home all right ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Sonderby. 
 
 " Well, Mr. Sonderby, Kufus thought I d better 
 come up to see if ye didn t want to come down 
 and help us for a couple of days with the tail-end 
 of the hay in . I ll tell ye how it is. Rufe was 
 shuttin the big door of the barn last night bout 
 an hour after you d got away when the wind 
 was blowin , and I guess he must a pushed too 
 hard or somethin anyway he seems to have 
 kind o sprained his shoulder. Can t move it this 
 mornin without hollerin . Mother s been rubbin 
 him down a little with St. Jacob s oil, and I dunno 
 but that will help it some, and I dunno as it will." 
 
 " I m sorry to hear it." 
 
 " Yes, yes ! Oh, well, that ain t anythin that s 
 going to bother Rufe very long, only just now it 
 don t seem very providential. Ye see we let our 
 help go yesterday, last day of July, calculatin 
 
THE BROUGHTOX HOUSE. 305 
 
 that Rufe and I and the boys could finish every- 
 thin up. There ain t much but the orchard, and 
 that medder swamp, ye know, where you and Rufe 
 was last summer." 
 
 " I know, * interrupted Sonderby. " And Rufus 
 wants me to come down and help you through ? " 
 
 Why, yes, that s the how of it," and his kindly 
 face broke into a smile. i; I told Rufe, says I, Mr. 
 Sonderby is up there among those city folks, and 
 he won t want to come down here hayin , the 
 way he did last summer. But Rufe, he would 
 have it that you wan t naturally inclined to train 
 with the city folks, no more than he is, and says 
 he, I shouldn t wonder, now. if the school-teacher 
 would be glad to come. Thinks I, there ain t any 
 harm in hitchin* up and drivin in to the street and 
 askin him, I had to git some skunk s oil at 
 Parkinson s for Rufe s shoulder, anyhow, and if 
 he don t want to come, he can just say so. So 
 here I be." 
 
 " Certainly," said Sonderby, slowly. " I can go 
 just as well as not. Perhaps better. There s noth 
 ing for me to do here." 
 
 He took his hat from a peg in the hall, stepped 
 into the wagon, and drove off behind the iron-grays. 
 He stayed down at Calvin Johnson s two days. 
 Most of the time he was mowing under the long 
 rows of apple-trees in the hillside orchard, or out 
 in the sunny swale. He no longer worked fu- 
 riouslv, as in those two dav$ on the farm of Bill 
 
306 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 TrumbulTs son-in-law, when he had tried to tire 
 out and crush down something within him. There 
 was no need of that now. That was all over. But 
 he mowed steadily and quietly, up and down the 
 peaceful orchard rows, or in the wet bottoms where 
 the Johnson brook streamed noiselessly through 
 the sedges ; and the familiar employment, and the 
 homely life, and nature s midsummer restfulness 
 were all ministering to him. Hour after hour 
 Ruf us Johnson, his arm in a sling and right shoul 
 der bandaged, walked along beside the school 
 teacher, for the mere sake of having his company ; 
 and though neither of the young fellows said much, 
 Sonderby was glad to have him there. Unsus 
 pected by himself, these two uneventful days were 
 the turning-point of John Sonderby s life. 
 
 Late on Thursday afternoon, Calvin Johnson, 
 who had driven up to the street to get the mail for 
 his boarders, came down into the meadow with a 
 couple of letters in his hand. Sonderby was in the 
 middle of the swale, throwing the green hay with 
 a fork out toward the firm ground, for curing. 
 Rufus sat near by on a willow stump, nursing his 
 lame arm in his left hand. 
 
 " Here y are, Mr. Sonderby ! " called old John 
 son, cheerily. " Well, it does beat all how you git 
 along. Never mind cockin this up to-night; we 
 shan t git any more rain right away." 
 
 He handed over the letters, and picking up Son- 
 derby s rake, began to pull the grass into windrows 
 
THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 307 
 
 along the edge of the swale. Sonclerby broke open 
 the notes. The first one was from Mrs. Ellerton, 
 dated the day before. 
 
 " DEAR MR. SOXDERBY : I can scarcely tell you 
 how delighted we are to learn that you expect to 
 remain in Broughton another winter. It is a great 
 pleasure to us personally to know that you are to 
 be here," and certainly every one who is acquainted 
 with the academy would have regretted that you 
 saw fit to relinquish your work there. 
 
 " For some time I have been thinking how we 
 might make some of the evenings in the coming- 
 winter more attractive and helpful to the young- 
 people, and some photographs which have just been 
 sent to us have made me wonder if we could not 
 arrange a course of 4 travel evenings, or something 
 of that sort, at the academy, or in the lecture-room 
 of the church. What do you think of the plan ? 
 Would you be willing to help ? Won t you, at any 
 rate, come to take tea with us to-morrow evening, 
 at six, and talk it over ? 
 
 " Very sincerely, 
 
 "RUTH ELLERTON. 
 
 " BROUGHTOX, Wednesday, August 1, 188-." 
 
 He ran his eye twice over the strong, almost 
 masculine handwriting, and then pushed the note 
 back into the square envelope, glancing at the 
 sun meantime. It was almost six then. To accept 
 
308 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 Mrs. Ellerton s invitation was an impossibility. The 
 second note was brief, and was scrawled stiffly in 
 lead-pencil on a half-sheet of Broughton House 
 paper. 
 
 " JOHN SONDERBY, Esq. : 
 
 " Respected Sir, I want to see you particular. 
 "Y rs, WILLIAM TBUMBULL." 
 
 There was no date, but the envelope had been 
 stamped at the village post-office that afternoon. 
 
 " Mr. Johnson," called out the school-teacher, 
 " do you suppose one of the boys could drive me 
 up to the street ? " 
 
 " To be sure " and noticing* the seriousness of 
 
 O 
 
 Sonderby s tone, he added, " There ain t any bad 
 news, is there ? " 
 
 " Oh, no," replied Sonderby, " I m invited to tea, 
 for one thing." 
 
 "Ain t that bad news for you?" put in Rufus, 
 who dared to twit the schoolmaster on his reputa 
 tion for social shortcomings. 
 
 " Well, we won t settle it," Sonderby answered. 
 " It s too late to go, anyway. But I think I shall 
 have to drive up to the village." 
 
 " Let one of the boys take ye in the buckboard," 
 said Rufus. " Hitch on the old horse ; he ll get 
 ye there now as quick as the span. I allers tell 
 father so, but he hates to drive single." 
 
 " How will it be about to-morrow ? " asked Son 
 derby, hesitatingly. 
 
THE BROUGHT OS HOUSE. 309 
 
 " Jest as ye like," answered old Johnson. "The 
 boys and I can turn this over and cock it up, easy 
 enough. And I guess we can git it in without ye 
 if you d rather do anythin else. Rufe, here, can 
 ride a horse-rake by day after to-morrow, it s likely. 
 
 " No, there ain t any use in your coming down 
 again, unless ye want to," chimed in Rufus. "But 
 ye know we re awful glad to have ye here, Mr. 
 Sonclerby, whether there s any hayin or not." 
 
 " I guess we be ! " affirmed the elder man. 
 
 " Well, we ll leave it this way, then," Sonderby 
 decided. " I won t come to-morrow, for you don t 
 need me, and when you drive up for the mail to 
 morrow afternoon, we can see how it will be for 
 Saturday." 
 
 " All right, all right ! You ve helped us out of 
 quite a hole, in these two days. Tell the boys to 
 hitch right up. I ll finish this little spell of work 
 here." Johnson went back to his rake, and Son 
 derby and Rufus crossed the meadow to the farm 
 house. 
 
 It was nearly seven o clock, in spite of the ac 
 tivity of the old horse, when the buekboard de 
 posited Sonderby in front of the Broughton House. 
 The piazza was gay with people, just from the 
 dining-room ; but Sonderby knew scarcely any of 
 them, even by sight. He went up to his room and 
 put on his black suit, meaning to call at the par 
 sonage after he had seen Bill Trumbull, and ex 
 plain why he had failed to accept Mrs. Ellerton s 
 
310 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 invitation. Calvin Johnson s wife had made him 
 eat some supper while the horse was being har 
 nessed, and he did not therefore stop at the hotel 
 dining-room when he came down stairs. The par 
 lor was full of newly arrived guests, and some 
 young ladies were trying merrily to waltz to the 
 discordant strains of the melodeon. At the office 
 door Sonderby found Bill Trumbull waiting for 
 him. The ex-hotel-keeper looked very much re 
 lieved when he caught sight of the stocky figure 
 of the young fellow coming toward him, and he 
 drew Sonderby s arm into his an entirely un 
 usual proceeding and walked him across the 
 office to the most retired corner. They sat down 
 there, underneath the mouldy lithograph of Dan 
 iel Webster. Bill Trumbull was nervous ; his 
 straw-colored eyebrows were crumpled toward 
 each other, and his smooth-shaven upper lip was 
 twitching just perceptibly. 
 
 "I m glad to see you," he said, in a husky 
 whisper. " I m gosh darned glad to see you." 
 
 " I got your letter this afternoon," said Son 
 derby, wondering what was coming. 
 
 " Yes. You ain t heard nothin ? " 
 
 " Why, no." 
 
 " Well, I dunno s you would. Come to think 
 on t, I dunno s there s anythin to hear. But I m 
 mistrustful, Mr. Sonderby. I don t exactly know 
 what to think, and I wanted to see you. You 
 always seemed a square kind of a feller, and I 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 311 
 
 dunno but you know more about young folks than 
 I do. Say/ 
 
 The stable-boy was lighting a kerosene lamp 
 above the fireplace, and Bill lowered his voice still 
 more, so as not to be heard. Sonderby drew his 
 chair a trifle closer. 
 
 "It s about Collins. You know those fellers 
 that were up here the other day to see him?" 
 
 "From the mills?" 
 
 "Yes. Pretty likely kind of fellers, too. I 
 talked with em a good while. And by and by we 
 got to talkin about Collins himself. Say, they 
 know more about him down there than we do up 
 here." 
 
 " I shouldn t wonder," was the dry rejoinder. 
 
 " There ain t no doubt of it. He s one of the 
 pleasantest fellers that ever came up here fishin , 
 but in some ways, they told me, he ain t a nice 
 man, not at all. I didn t ask them all I wanted to, 
 but there wan t no doubt about what they had in 
 mind." 
 
 Sonderby was silent. 
 
 " NOAV that s all right for you and me," Bill went 
 on, his innocent old heart making an awkward 
 pretence of worldliness ; c * it don t make much 
 difference to us whether he s just the right sort of 
 man or not ; he don t trouble us any. But it s a 
 different thing, when you come to the women 
 folks when you come, for instance, to Trypheny." 
 
 Sonderby s eyes were on the floor. The stable- 
 
312 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 boy looked curiously at the two men whispering 
 in the corner, and then went reluctantly out of the 
 office. 
 
 u Now she don t know anythin about him. If 
 she knew what kind of a feller he was, she wouldn t 
 have nothin to do with him. And that s what I 
 want to see you about. It looks kind of queer to 
 have me pokin myself into other folks s business, 
 but I set a big store by that little girl she ain t 
 nothin more than a girl, you know and it would 
 be a darned shame if folks got to talkin about her. 
 They do a ready, though, Mirandy says. Now 
 I shouldn t dast say anythin to Trypheny. I d be 
 too ashamed, you know old as I am but I 
 didn t know but perhaps you, bein more round 
 with her and bein the school-teacher could 
 kind o drop a word sort o - Bill stopped 
 helplessly. 
 
 " But she is a married woman, Trumbull," said 
 Sonderby, slowly, as if he were patiently explaining 
 an intricate matter to a child. " It is the place 
 of her husband 
 
 "Exactly," broke in Bill. "That s jest the 
 trouble. If Floyd was here, I dunno as there 
 would have been any need of my writin to you. 
 But now he s gone 
 
 "Gone?" cried Sonderby, starting up in his 
 chair. Then he sank back. What less could he 
 have expected? 
 
 " Yes, gone to New York didn t I tell you ? 
 
THE BROUGHTOS HOUSE. 313 
 
 Why, when you was all off fishin", it was that 
 same afternoon I had the talk with these fellers, 
 a telegram come to Floyd from Chicago, and an 
 other one yesterday morning from Xew York. 
 I heard tell he had to meet somebody in New 
 York ; guess likely it was that feller he was paintin 
 the picture for, for he had the picture all boxed up 
 to take away with him. He told Evans here, that 
 he might have to be away a couple of weeks." 
 
 " A couple of weeks," repeated Sonderby, in a 
 tone that Trumbull did not understand. 
 
 " Yes ; Trypheny s goiiv to keep house by herself 
 while he s gone. She ain t comin over to the 
 hotel. And now I ll tell you what I don t like." 
 
 Just then a couple of the young ladies who had 
 been all this time waltzing in the parlor whirled 
 out of the door and across the hall into the office, 
 where they made the circuit of the room once 
 with delighted little cries at the new-found space. 
 Their flying skirts brushed against the knees of 
 Bill Trumbull and Sonderby, as they circled past, 
 and then they danced out of the office again, as 
 gaily and suddenly as they had entered. 
 
 " I ll tell you what I don t like,* repeated Bill. 
 " Collins was over there yesterday afternoon, after 
 Floyd went off. And last night he took her to 
 drive I guess out towards East Part. Now she 
 probably don t know any better, not suspectin any 
 thing against Collins. But it ain t the right thing, 
 Mr. Sonderby. It ain t the right thing." 
 
314 THE BROUGIITON HOUSE. 
 
 Bill drew a long breath, having at last relieved 
 his mind of what he wanted to say. 
 
 " Where is Collins ? " demanded Sonderby, in a 
 hard voice. 
 
 "Well, that s somethin else that p raps I d 
 ought to have said. He went away this mornin , 
 to see about the startin up of the mills, and he 
 told Evans that he was comin back to-morrow 
 afternoon yes, Friday, to-morrow to get his 
 things. Now if that s all there is to it, if he s 
 really goin away, I dunno but I ve made a great 
 bark over a little woodchuck. But if he s goin 
 to stay along here at the hotel, and Trypheny not 
 knowin anything about him more n he s a good- 
 lookin feller and a rich feller, and in good society, 
 knows the minister s folks, you see, why, it 
 ain t the right thing." 
 
 Sonderby got up and paced the floor once or 
 twice. He was more touched by what the pure- 
 hearted old gossip had said than he cared to show. 
 
 "Bill," said he, coming back and laying his 
 hand on Trumbull s shoulder, "you re quite right, 
 sir. I m glad we ve had the talk. I don t know 
 that there s anything for you or for me to do in 
 the matter," and his words seemed to the older 
 man thick and strange, " but if there is, we ll 
 do it." 
 
 Bill rose too. There were two or three other 
 persons in the office now, by the fireplace, Evans 
 among them. 
 
THE BEOUGHTOS HOUSE. 315 
 
 " Good night, sir, if I don t see you again. said 
 Sonderby. " I m going up to the parsonage for a 
 while." 
 
 " Good night, good night ! I tell you, I m much 
 obliged to you;" and Bill shuffled over towards 
 his accustomed seat with a lighter heart than he 
 had had for twenty-four hours. 
 
 Sonderby went out at the side door, to avoid 
 brushing his way through the crowd of people in 
 the hall. Bill s anxiety for the motherless and 
 solitary Tryphena had affected him profoundly. 
 There were other elements in the problem, how 
 ever, of which Bill was apparently ignorant ; but 
 the school-teacher did not have it in his heart to 
 reveal them, even had he thought it wise. His 
 disappointment in Tryphena herself had been so 
 personal and so bitter, that there was something 
 sacred to him about it. It was not something to 
 be spoken of. Yet he did speak of it in less than 
 ten minutes, and to Mrs. Floyd herself. 
 
 As he walked up the driveway to\vards the end 
 of the hotel piazza, his eyes bent on the ground, 
 he heard some one on the left call his name. He 
 turned, and saw her advancing from the lilacs, the 
 same thin red shawl around her shoulders that she 
 had worn when posing for the picture. Sonderby 
 halted, making rather an awkward bow. She 
 came right up to him and put out her hand. He 
 held it a moment, and remembered afterward how 
 very small it seemed, and cold. Indeed, she was 
 
316 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 shivering a little, for there was a heavy dew on the 
 grass, and it always grew cool in Broughton after 
 sundown. 
 
 " I ve been waiting for yon," she said, glancing 
 at him with that shy frankness which had charmed 
 him with her at first. " I saw Johnson s team stop 
 at the hotel, and guessed likely you had come ; 
 but I dursn t go over alone for you among all those 
 folks." 
 
 He stood looking at her, not knowing what to say. 
 
 "I can t stay here," she added. "It s awful 
 damp," and she stretched out one foot and looked 
 ruefully at the thin wet shoe. 
 
 "Yes," he blurted out, "you ll catch cold. 
 Rufus was afraid you had the other night." It 
 was the first word he had spoken to her since the 
 fishing-party. 
 
 " Oh, Rufus," she replied. " He was always 
 worrying about me." She took a step or two back 
 toward the cottage, and then turned her head as if 
 she were not sure that Sonderby was following her. 
 " Come on in," she cried, tightening the folds of 
 the shawl across her narrow little shoulders, and 
 seeing he had not started, she added in a lower 
 voice, "Do you mind, Mr. Sonderby? Were you 
 going anywhere else ? " 
 
 He shook his head and strode after her, as she 
 stepped daintily and swiftly over the long tangled 
 grass. In the sitting-room one of the lamps was 
 already lighted. Tryphena threw off her shawl, 
 
THE BROUGHTOy HOUSE. 317 
 
 and sat down in the low rocking-chair by the 
 window. It was getting dark outside. The young 
 ladies at the Broughton House were still dancing 
 to the sound of the old melodeon, and Mrs. Floyd 
 shut the window. " I get kind o sick of one sort 
 of tune after a while, don t you ? " she asked. 
 
 " I don t notice them much," he said, absently. 
 " One tune is a good deal like another to me, most 
 of the time. You know I wasn t any great help 
 in our quartette." He was thinking that she and 
 Collins had done most of the singing. 
 
 ki Oh, the quartette ! " she cried. u Well, it wasn t 
 much of a quartette, was it? No great shakes. 
 But it was as good as anything else to make the 
 time go." 
 
 " The time is gone, at any rate," said Sonderby. 
 He did not know what he could say to her, nor 
 why she had called him in. What could Mrs. 
 Floyd want of him ? 
 
 " Yes," she replied, shrugging her shoulders. 
 
 There was a long pause. 
 
 "Did Bill Trumbull tell you anything?" she 
 suddenly asked. 
 
 "Bill Trumbull?" he repeated, startled into 
 feigning ignorance of the drift of her question. 
 But John Sonderby made unskilful work of any 
 such artifices, and she offered no reply except to 
 look him in the eyes. 
 
 " What do you mean ? " he said, resolved to make 
 her speak first. 
 
318 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 " About my bus about Mr. Floyd." 
 
 " Bill said he had gone to New York, to be away 
 two or three weeks." 
 
 " Oh, yes," she exclaimed, hastily. " Then he 
 did tell you ! " She seemed relieved. 
 
 " But I know better," said blunt John Sonderby. 
 
 " You know better ? " she repeated, with a 
 long, slow breath, as if each word hurt her. " What 
 do you know ? " 
 
 She thought there were but three persons in 
 the world who knew her husband s plans, her 
 husband and Collins and herself. 
 
 " What do you know ? " she demanded, pitifully. 
 " Tell me." 
 
 He flung himself out of his chair and paced the 
 room twice, as if it were his own. How could he 
 tell her the bare truth overheard by him in all its 
 ugliness? Yet of course she knew it, had known 
 it all the time, had known it when she made that 
 gesture with her parasol at Collins, up in the 
 woods above the cascade. 
 
 "Mrs. Floyd," he said, hoarsely, stopping in 
 front of her. " I knew that he was going away to 
 be gone a good while. I have known it since 
 last Sunday night I overheard him say so." 
 
 " You overheard him ? " She lifted her face, 
 and it hardened into scornful lines, but she was 
 not thinking of Son derby s eavesdropping. 
 
 " I could not help it," he said, simply, believing 
 that it was he whom she despised so. " I could 
 
THE BROUGHTOy HOUSE. 319 
 
 not help listening, for I thought I might do you a 
 service. * 
 
 " Oh, don t I don t mean that," she cried, 
 wistfully ; " I waii t blaming you. Then some 
 thing in his attitude, as he stood looking down at 
 her, seemed to remind her of that other time when 
 they two had been in that same room together. 
 Do me a service ? " she repeated the words almost 
 tenderly. " Don t you remember I told you once, 
 right here, that you couldn t help me, that no 
 body could help me ? " 
 
 He stood staring at her, struggling within him 
 self. Hers seemed like an honest woman s voice : 
 if he could only believe it was ! She made a 
 strong effort, apparently, to control herself, and 
 motioned to him to sit down. 
 
 " Perhaps I oughtn t to have said that, Mr. 
 Sonderby, but I was kind of desperate. I knew 
 this was coming. I knew it pretty near a month 
 ago and sometimes I haven t known just what 
 I was saying or doing." She spoke quietly, only 
 with a sort of girlish pleading. 
 
 "Ah, yes," he said, "I may have misunderstood 
 you. May God forgive me if I have ; but I have 
 thought I have had to think that there was 
 no help for matters ; that you did not care, any 
 longer " 
 
 He stopped entirely, not knowing how he could 
 put delicately to her the words that were on his 
 lips. 
 
320 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 She waited for him, and then said, gently as 
 his mother might have done, " Hadn t you better 
 say it right out all of it ? It ll make us both 
 feel better." 
 
 That last sentence conquered his heart, although 
 his brain was still confused in the tangle of the 
 evidence against her. 
 
 " Mrs. Floyd," he cried, " I can t understand it. 
 It is too much for me. What have you meant, 
 when you let Collins go on so ? Tuesday - 
 when he was talking with you on the carriage 
 seat ? You drive with him Great Heavens, what 
 a botch I make of it ! But can t you see ? Don t 
 you care ? " 
 
 " Oh," she said, without lifting her eyes from 
 the carpet. " I guess I understand, Mr. Sonderby. 
 I suppose you think I haven t let my moderation 
 be known, as Aunt Tryphena used to tell me 
 to do whenever we went on straw-rides. 4 Let 
 your moderation be known, Phenie. And I don t 
 know as I have." Her tone was very girlish. It 
 made him think of having one of his pupils at the 
 academy on the front seat, and lecturing her for 
 some slight misdemeanor. 
 
 " No," she continued, seeing that he was not in 
 clined to speak, "I don t know but I have given 
 you some chance to think I didn t mind much what 
 people said. I guess I ve acted sort of queer. Men 
 don t understand those things very well ; none of 
 them do. They think some little thing means too 
 
THE BROUGHTOX HOUSE. 321 
 
 much ; or else that it doesn t mean enough. And 
 I didn t want to make Mr. Collins mad. Tin sort 
 of afraid of him. 
 
 " But " broke in Sonclerby, hesitatingly. 
 
 " Yes, I know. You re particular. You re more 
 particular than Broughton folks are, even if you 
 don t say anything. You didn t like to see him 
 sit there with his arm on the back of the seat. 
 You didn t like to have me go off to drive with 
 him. I knew you didn t, all the time. Neither 
 would Aunt Tryphena. She would have had con 
 niptions over it. But I was only fooling. I was 
 kind of desperate, and had to do something." She 
 looked up in his face as she finished, as if waiting 
 for the decision of a moral judgment superior to 
 her own. She met his scrutiny without wavering- 
 she seemed to be blushing a little, but that was all. 
 John Sonderby gazed into her shadowy eyes, so 
 fully open to him now, and he believed her. She 
 was only a girl, an ignorant country girl, who 
 had had, perhaps, some excuse for "fooling," as 
 she certainly had had cause for feeling " desper 
 ate." Poor girl ! The old pity for her came back ; 
 but it brought nothing else with it now, for in those 
 terrible two hours in the woods on Tuesday, and 
 in the quiet two days in orchard and swale, John 
 Sonderby had, worked his way, irretraceably, through 
 a certain part of the experience allotted to him. 
 
 " Yes," he said softly. " God knows you have 
 had a hard time. And I have misjudged you." 
 
322 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 She dropped her eyes, and trembled slightly ; 
 then reached for her shawl, and drew it around 
 her, as if she were cold. 
 
 "Shan t I build a fire for you, Mrs. Floyd?" 
 asked the school-teacher. 
 
 "No, it isn t worth while," she answered. 
 "Thank you." 
 
 The words " Mrs. Floyd " seemed to recall him 
 to the real situation, and the sense of her girlish- 
 ness passed away. He felt that in some way he 
 must offer to help her, to let her know, too, that 
 Trumbull had been caring about her. But it was 
 she who spoke first. 
 
 " It s all right now. There won t be any more 
 trouble, Mr. Sonderby. You won t have to worry 
 any more." 
 
 He looked at her inquiringly. 
 
 " Don t you see ? " she said. " It s all over, 
 now. Billy has gone away ; he wasn t happy up 
 here in Broughton. It wasn t anybody s fault ; he 
 was made different from other people. He ll come 
 back by and by ; he won t be contented over there 
 either, always." This defence of her husband was 
 delivered in a rapid, even voice. 
 
 " And you ? " said John Sonderby, simply. 
 
 " Oh, I? I shall stay here, right here in Brough 
 ton, where I was brought up and where I belong. 
 And what other place is there for me ? " 
 
 He was silent. 
 
 " I own this house. Didn t you know it? " She 
 
THE PROUGHTON HOUSE. 828 
 
 was trying hard to make light of the matter, as if 
 it were only an ordinary domestic expedient that 
 was occupying her mind. "You needn t trouble. 
 It will be all right." 
 
 He still sat looking at her. 
 
 k - Don t you miss me at the hotel ? " persisted 
 Mrs. Floyd. " Oh, I forgot ; you have been down 
 at Calvin Johnson s. Bill is the only one of us 
 left at the Broughton House, now, isn t he ? " She 
 laughed, but rather nervously. 
 
 " Collins s things are there," he said. 
 
 Her manner changed. ; * I know. He is coming 
 back for them to-morrow." 
 
 " Bill Trumbull said that Collins might stay a 
 while longer." 
 
 " Oh, no," she cried, excitedly. " He won t. He 
 told me so." 
 
 " You are sure ? " 
 
 She nodded at him with a curious look in her 
 eyes, for answer. He could not understand the 
 expression, but he believed her implicitly, and the 
 worst of the weight that had been on his mind 
 rolled off. There was nothing between her and 
 Collins, after all. She had been wrong and foolish, 
 but there was nothing back of that, and there 
 would be no chance for further mischief. 
 
 "And you are going too, Mr. Sonderby," she 
 said reflectively. 
 
 "I?" 
 
 "Why, yes! To Boston. They all told me 
 
324 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 you were going to be with the electric com 
 pany." 
 
 " I did think of it," he remarked. There was no 
 use in telling her that he had abandoned all that 
 for her sake. 
 
 " You did think of it ? Don t you think of it 
 now? Why, they told me it was a splendid place, 
 just what you wanted." 
 
 "I have reason to think that they have given 
 that position to some one else." 
 
 " But there must be plenty more," she cried, 
 with an agitation that puzzled him. "Aren t there 
 a great many electric companies nowadays ? There 
 must be ever so many places in Boston where they 
 would be glad to have you. You know so much 
 about those things, you are so strong and faith 
 fulso " 
 
 " Thank you," he broke in clumsily, with a sort 
 of embarrassed bow, and a half pretence of taking 
 her words as a compliment merely. 
 
 " Oh, but I mean it ! " exclaimed Mrs. Floyd, 
 " I mean it ! You ought not to stay here in 
 Broughton any longer. You can do so much more 
 for yourself in Boston. I know it. I have heard 
 the others talking about it weeks ago. It is a 
 pity to have you stay here way up here kind 
 of out of the world, when you want to be in a big 
 laboratory, and to have books and to invent 
 things." 
 
 She spoke eagerly, firmly, and he felt a sort of 
 
THE BROUGHTOX HOUSE. 325 
 
 conviction that she was right. There was a strange 
 sensation within him, as if the oscillations of pur 
 pose that had carried him back and forth all sum 
 mer were ceasing now, and his will was coming to 
 rest at a fixed point. A few days before he had 
 resolved to give up all this new life which she had 
 just marked out for him, to give it up that he 
 might stay in Broughton and be near her. But 
 now it was she who was telling him to go. 
 
 "You seem to want to have me go," he said, 
 trying to smile. 
 
 " Yes," she replied, straightening up in her rock 
 ing-chair and leaning forward toward him, with 
 clasped hands and eyes dilated : he had never 
 seen them so deep. "Yes, I do. I wish you 
 would, Mr. Sonderby. I should feel easier." 
 She sunk back, at these last words, as if finishing 
 a confession. 
 
 He hesitated. " There s the academy ; I told 
 Mr. Ellerton I would stay another year." It was 
 only an attempt to gain time for a moment s more 
 thought. 
 
 " There are a dozen others who want the place," 
 she said, quickly ; " there always are. You can 
 resign if you wish to." She lay back in her 
 chair, her breath coming quickly, her eyes fastened 
 on his honest, troubled face. 
 
 " I will," he said, rising slowly to his feet. " I 
 will go to-morrow. I have been all summer mak 
 ing up my mind, Mrs. Floyd, but I could never 
 
326 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 know quite what to do. It was first one thing 
 and then another. I am going now, because you 
 tell me to. If anything comes of it down there 
 oh, I shall work hard and I can make a place for 
 myself ! I shall thank you for sending me." 
 
 " To-morrow ? " she cried, with a curious eager 
 ness. " You will really go to-morrow ? Oh, I am 
 so glad ! " She rose too, but she rested one hand 
 on the table, and she was shivering again. His 
 03^6 swept over the barely furnished and low-ceiled 
 room, with its rag carpet, battered soapstone stove, 
 rickety furniture, and its oval-framed pictures of 
 Aunt Tryphena and Aunt Tryphosa on the wall. 
 
 "Ought you to try to stay here, Mrs. Floyd?" 
 he asked, in a low voice. " It will be very lonety. 
 Wouldn t you better go to your aunt ? " 
 
 " My aunt ? Oh ! Aunt Tryphosa ? " she asked. 
 " No ; I don t like Brooklyn. I shall get along. It 
 will be all right." 
 
 John Sonderby put out his hand, admiring her 
 bravery. " You have lots of pluck," he exclaimed. 
 " I don t understand it." 
 
 She took his brown hand in both her trembling 
 ones, but she did not look him in the face. 
 
 " Oh," he cried, " I go out so much happier 
 than when I came in ! It is all clear to me now - 
 what I ought to do, I mean ; and how brave you 
 are ! " 
 
 " Oh, don t, don t ! " she said. " I haven t done 
 right. But I was kind of desperate." 
 
THE BROVGHTOS HOUSE. 327 
 
 " I know," he murmured. " It has been too bad ; 
 I know how hard it has been." 
 
 She stopped him with a convulsive pressure of 
 her hands and a great effort of self-control. 
 % * Never mind. That s all past now, Mr. Sonderby. 
 You would have done anything for me I knew 
 it all the time. But it just couldn t be helped. 
 Good night. And you will surely go to-morrow ? " 
 
 44 To-morrow ; yes. Good night. Mrs. Floyd. 
 We won t say good by now." 
 
 44 No, not good by. Oh, no ! Good night." 
 And woman-like she had strength enough to stand 
 there and smile gently at him till he had closed 
 the door and gone out. 
 
 But John Sonderby strode back over the wet 
 grass of the cottage yard, and through the noisy, 
 bustling hall of the Broughton House, and up 
 to his room, with a great happiness in his heart. 
 The world seemed sane and sweet to him. She 
 was a brave woman and a true woman, and if she 
 had given him cause for misjudging her, there was 
 plenty of excuse for her. But all that was past, as 
 she had said. The lono- weeks of uncertainty, of 
 
 O v 
 
 temptation, of idling, of crazy dreams, of irresolu 
 tion, the days of black suspicion and self-shame ; 
 those terrible minutes when his life had seemed to 
 stop and then slowly start again ; it was all be 
 hind him now. He had pulled through. There 
 was clear water ahead of him. What had done it ? 
 Was it his own staying-power? He felt too much 
 
328 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 shame at himself to think that. Was it then simply 
 a happening, a kind of luck ? Down in his secret 
 soul he knew better than that ; and there in his 
 dimly lighted room, while people were waltzing 
 underneath, and Bill Trumbull sat wondering why 
 he did not come down, John Sonderby dropped 
 upon his knees, for the first time in many a year, 
 and what was left of his pride and selfishness went 
 out of his heart, and a peace, deeper than any he 
 had guessed at in orchard and swale, flowed into 
 it. It was a long time before he rose, and the 
 dancing had ceased underneath ; Bill Trumbull 
 had gone home, and the lights were out in the 
 office. The divine peace was in the young fellow s 
 breast, and it lay all about and around his human 
 purpose, enfolding it. To make a man of himself, 
 to go where human life was thick and the push 
 was keen and strong, to earn a place there by using 
 the talent that had been given him, to work with 
 hope and courage and belief, with a heart open to 
 his humankind, that was Avhat John Sonderby 
 with God s help meant to do. 
 
 While he lay awake that night, for things so 
 new and beautiful and far-reaching were in his 
 mind that he could not easily fall to sleep, he 
 remembered that he had not carried out his inten 
 tion of calling at the parsonage, and he began 
 to think about Mrs. Ellerton, and what she said 
 to him one rainy evening. He believed she must 
 have meant the same things that were now in his 
 
THE BROUGHTOX HOUSE. 329 
 
 own will to do, and he wondered if she had been 
 thinking about him sometimes in all this interval, 
 and if, when he went to say good by to her on the 
 morrow, he would dare tell her in what new spirit 
 he was going away. 
 
 When the morrow came, the bright, clear mor 
 row, and John Sonderby had packed his books and 
 his scanty wardrobe, and paid his bill at the 
 Broughton House, and had bidden his friends in the 
 village good by. there were far more of them than 
 he had ever realized, he went up to the parson 
 age and found Ruth Ellerton there alone. He left 
 his resignation as academy teacher, to be given to 
 her husband, and he told her, albeit a little shyly 
 -he, the stout, brown-bearded fellow that he 
 hoped his days of purposeless work were over. 
 
 It was easier than he thought it would be ; for 
 she seemed to understand him almost before he 
 spoke, and the beautiful gray eyes were soft and 
 bright as she bade him good by, and she said noth 
 ing of her own and her husband s disappointment 
 in not having him longer in Broughton, for she 
 saw clearly enough that it would be better for him 
 to go. 
 
 There was one more farewell for the school 
 teacher to leave ; but when he stopped at the cot 
 tage, the door was locked, and he found that Mrs. 
 Floyd had persuaded Bill Trumbull to go berrying 
 with her. He did not perceive that she had done 
 it to avoid saying good by, and persisted in waiting 
 
330 THE &ROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 till the last minute in hope of their return. But 
 the berry-pickers were very deliberate that day, 
 and finally Sonderby had to get into the wagon, 
 in front of his box of books and his old hair trunk, 
 and drive off for the Center, without waiting 
 longer for them. On the way he met Collins, 
 who was driving up to Broughton, and Sonderby 
 had to stop and explain briefly that he was going 
 to Boston, after all, though probably he would not 
 be with the A. S. & F. people. Collins expressed 
 gratification at the decision, and sincerely, for he 
 drove on smiling, after Sonderby had disappeared. 
 This delay was a brief one, but it was enough to 
 make Sonderby miss the express, and he was 
 obliged to stay over night in the Center. 
 
XV. 
 
 " THEEE will be another month," Floyd had 
 muttered on that hot July morning when the 
 sparrow was twittering in the lilacs outside the 
 cottage window, and the artist and his wife were 
 looking at each other over old Watson s letter, as 
 it lay between them on the floor. It was August 
 now. The month had slipped away, as all months 
 will. The crisis in the married life of Mr. and 
 Mrs. Floyd had passed, and its ending was a mean 
 and pitiful one: Floyd had slunk away without 
 facing her at the last, though he had thus spared 
 himself and her the ignominy of making and listen 
 ing to excuses. Yet the fact itself was enough. 
 Their experiment, as Mrs. Floyd had surmised in 
 those mornings when she posed for him by the 
 w^ell-curb, their three years experiment, was indeed 
 over. Other things, too, had those serene and 
 silent July days seen change. The reticent, brown- 
 bearded schoolmaster, with his irresolute eyes, had 
 learned a harder lesson than ever he had set, and 
 had turned his back on Broughton forever, but 
 with no bitterness of heart ; rather with the joyous 
 power of one who has just come to his own. 
 
 Collins, that triumphant fisherman and idler. 
 
 331 
 
332 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 had finished his summer s fishing and his summer s 
 amusement almost. As for the other people 
 whom chance had thrown in the way of the four 
 persons above mentioned, there Avas no particular 
 reason why the first days of August should find 
 them very different from what they were in the 
 first days of July. Human nature, like the great 
 Mother Nature herself, is averse to violent change. 
 Mother Nature deceives us, to be sure, by crooning 
 us to sleep and bandaging our eyes ; and we open 
 them again to find that she has tricked us and 
 made very sudden changes indeed while we were 
 not watching. If we are vexed at it, and press 
 her for the secret, all she whispers to us is that 
 what seems so sudden has been long preparing, if 
 we could but have known it. Perhaps human 
 nature may have caught this trick from the old 
 Mother, and might answer, if pressed close, that 
 everything which showed itself during that month, 
 in the four "regulars" at the Broughton House, 
 had been long preparing ; that the real causes were 
 far back of those idle weeks of summer. 
 
 But Mr. and Mrs. Ellerton, for instance, seemed 
 to be just what they were when John Sonderby 
 went there to tea. They had been busy all the 
 time with a hundred solicitudes and responsibil 
 ities whose extent the Broughton people never 
 guessed, and of which the minister and his wife 
 did not often talk, except to each other. They 
 had been happy, too, as well as busy, but that was 
 
THE 13ROUGHTOS HOUSE. 333 
 
 their own affair. They did not know much more 
 at the end of the month about John Sonderby and 
 their other acquaintances in the Broughton House 
 group than the}* did at the beginning, to tell 
 the truth, though Sonderby s brief parting call 
 at the parsonage left Ruth Ellerton mystically 
 happy. She tried to communicate her happiness 
 to Arthur, but his vexation at the man s leaving 
 the academy in the lurch made him for the moment 
 sympathize less warmly than he ought with her 
 rapturous announcement that Mr. Sonderby had 
 gone to Boston, with a " real purpose the best 
 purpose, Arthur." Yes, the atmosphere of the par 
 sonage remained much what it was when Arthur 
 Ellerton joked his enthusiastic wife about the 
 "germ" that she professed to discover in the 
 school-teacher. 
 
 As for Bill Trumbull, he had had one of the 
 pleasantest summers in his long list, long actually, 
 for Bill was nearer sixty than fifty but marvel 
 lously extended if any one undertook to compute 
 the length of time necessary for the occurrence of 
 those manifold events of which Bill preserved 
 such a remarkable recollection. There had been 
 but two drawbacks to his enjoyment of the past 
 month : Evans had been increasingly disrespect 
 ful ; and secondly, what the committee from 
 Collins Mills Junction had told him about the 
 sport-loving manufacturer had given Trumbull s 
 tolerant faith in human nature a decided jar. But 
 
334 THE BROUGIITON HOUSE. 
 
 he kept his chair in the Broughton House office, 
 nevertheless, smoking his pipe and stroking reflec 
 tively his yellow beard, and by dint of turning his 
 benevolent blue eyes invitingly upon all recent 
 arrivals at the hotel, he succeeded in making many 
 a new acquaintance wherewith to solace himself 
 for the absence or deterioration of the old ones. 
 
 It was the best month s business that Evans had 
 ever seen, and for the first time since he had 
 bought out " Trum bull s," he was sure of his ven 
 ture. The Broughton House justified itself. 
 The little Welshman could thrust his hands deep 
 into the trousers pockets of his new suit and jingle 
 the loose change there, while he paced his new 
 piazza. He no longer had any lingering doubt as to 
 the paint, nor the plumbing, nor the piazza chairs, 
 nor the name of the hotel. The smoking-room had 
 been well patronized, and Harpers Weekly had 
 often grown quite tattered with use, before the 
 next week s number came. Best of all, the pros 
 perous month seemed likely to merge into one of 
 still greater prosperity ; for August ought by rights 
 to bring even more guests to Broughton than July 
 had done. Evans looked at Parkinson and 
 Meyer, his sole rivals in the business world of 
 Broughton, with that friendly pity which is born 
 of conscious superiority. Ah, there was money in 
 a hotel, with the right man to run it ! 
 
 Meyer and Parkinson contemplated the Welsh 
 man s success from different standpoints. Meyer 
 
THE BEOUGHTOy HOUSE. 335 
 
 had known Evans in the Center, and found in 
 the rapid rise of the fellow to an important posi 
 tion in the Brought on community an inherent 
 injustice, which he did not fail to point out to his 
 customers, in the course of those socialistic dia 
 tribes with which the barber was in the habit of 
 astounding the persons who sat in his chair. 
 Samuel Parkinson considered the prosperity of 
 the Broughton House in a more philosophic light. 
 Had he not seen k * Trumbuirs " go under, in his 
 time? "Let the Welshman have his turn," 
 reflected the astute Samuel, as he looked across 
 the street, in those July afternoons, and saw the 
 stage unloading passengers at the hotel. The 
 next season might not be so successful. Never 
 theless in the meantime Mr. Parkinson added a 
 new candy counter to the attractions of his store, 
 or his Emporium, as the advertising-boards on 
 barns and fences for a radius of ten miles around 
 called it Parkinson s Emporium, and the more 
 children and young people there were at the hotel, 
 the more did the treasurer of the parish rejoice 
 in the good fortune of his neighbor. 
 
 But the people of the village, excepting that 
 small faction of them who believed in the future 
 of Broughton as a summer resort, and wanted to 
 purchase a public watering-cart and to have the 
 houses numbered, the plain people of Broughton 
 village did not trouble themselves very much about 
 the hotel nor the summer visitors who came there. 
 
336 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 Broughton folks were occupied enough, that July, 
 in looking out for their own interests and the af 
 fairs of their next-door neighbors. Quietly had 
 the days of the month gone by in the white houses 
 up and down Main Street, under the shadow of 
 the elms. Sleepily had the little village drawn its 
 breath, waking each afternoon at mail-time to a 
 weak pretence of life, only to relapse into somno 
 lence. Out upon the farms, scattered over the 
 surrounding hills, there was the unchanged, une 
 ventful existence, the same round of tranquil days, 
 which left when the month was over only the gen 
 eral impression that the season was, on the whole, 
 late and rather cold. Over hotel and village, 
 farms and hills, had swept each day the steady 
 sun, careless whether its rays warmed to life or 
 parched to death, or whether they were chilled 
 and hidden altogether in the storms of rain. Oh, 
 the impartial sun and the unknowing rain, that 
 poured down upon this upland country when there 
 was nothing but primeval forest there and no hu 
 man cheeks to be warmed or wet, that will ages 
 hence pour down, impartial and unknowing, when 
 mayhap every trace of human life shall have van 
 ished and all is savagery again, how much do they 
 survive ! 
 
 The month was over, and Tryphena Morton 
 Floyd had endured to the end. It had been a 
 hard time, and lonely. In the innermost chambers 
 of her heart, where the struggle had taken place, 
 
THE BROUGHTOS HOUSE. 337 
 
 there was no one by to help her. She had made 
 no effort to retain her husband, nor had she ever 
 referred, in talking with him, to the possible event 
 of his going away. She had taken it for granted 
 that he would leave her when the time came. 
 Reasoning from his standpoint, as she had once 
 or twice tried to do, she could find no very great 
 obstacle to his going, since it was obvious that it 
 did not lie within her power to make him happy. 
 Obligations which she felt were binding upon her 
 self, she knew instinctively were not recognized 
 by her artist husband. Billy was different from 
 other folks. He had to be satisfied, or to think 
 he was satisfied, with his surroundings, before he 
 could do any work. She had failed to satisfy him. 
 It was humiliating, for the country girl was in her 
 own way proud. It was heart-breaking, for she 
 had loved him. She was too clear-headed to un 
 derestimate her own loss, or to make herself be 
 lieve that there was anything left for her when she 
 felt well enough that there was nothing. Never 
 theless, to the very last, she had tried to do her 
 duty by him. Was not her own figure, in the 
 picture Floyd had painted to earn his deliverance, 
 the seal of her wifely obedience ? 
 
 There had been, indeed, especially in the closing 
 days of her probation, certain times when an inner 
 revolt against what seemed her fate would mani 
 fest itself, and carry her actions almost beyond her 
 control. For instance, there was John Sonderbv. 
 
338 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 She had liked him from the very first ; by and by, 
 after the morning they had spent in her cottage, 
 she began to suspect that he cared for her, and she 
 pitied him. She did not mean to lay her hand on 
 his arm, the day of the runaway ; she cried over it 
 afterward, but she could not help it at the time. 
 Afterwards she grew to think she had been mis 
 taken in imagining he had cared for her at all, and 
 it made her ashamed and angry with herself to re 
 flect what her thoughts had been, and perhaps, too, 
 it made her a little out of temper with the school 
 teacher. It was just at this time that Collins 
 began to pay her increased attention, and she had 
 permitted it, partly out of ignorance, partly out of 
 desperation, and perhaps out of a strange defiance 
 of what she felt to be Sonderby s yearning respect 
 for her. But she had never meant to let matters 
 go so far. Collins had treated her with a kindness 
 and politeness such as she was unused to ; he was 
 much older than the rest of them, and had his own 
 way ; he treated her half like a child and half like 
 a great lady. She had felt, on that Sunday when 
 he asked her to drive, as if she must do something 
 or she would die, and so she had gone with him, 
 though she knew perfectly well that neither Trum- 
 bull nor Sonderby would exactly approve of it. 
 Then had come that day of the fishing excursion, 
 when Mr. Collins had come back unexpectedly from 
 the swamp, seated himself beside her, and had talked 
 so strangely that he had frightened her a little. 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 339 
 
 She had felt his arm on the back of the seat behind 
 her; she had been afraid to speak out, she had 
 thought of a dozen excuses to make in order to 
 get up; and then John Sonderby had marched up 
 the lonely road with his eyes on them, and she was 
 mortified and provoked, and had waved her para 
 sol to Mr. Collins on purpose, to show John Son- 
 derby that she should do as she liked. 
 
 The very next day Billy had gone. He had not 
 even said good by to her. Oh, the terrible day ! 
 Yet she had not shed a tear, she said no word to 
 herself; she had no thoughts, no mind at all. It 
 was as if she had been under an enchantment, 
 where all things about her moved, and she only 
 was without motion, without will. It was so piti 
 ful to have it all end that way, all her dreams, 
 her hopes, her brief happiness. Yet there was 
 nothing to be done. She had borne her burden, 
 and at last the end had come. In the evening Mr. 
 Collins had taken her to drive. She did not re 
 member his asking her to go, nor why she went. 
 She seemed to have no voice in the matter. It was 
 the enchanted country again. But she was awak 
 ened rudely. Somewhere, out on the moonlit road, 
 she became conscious of what he was saying, of the 
 shameful plan he was rapidly rehearsing, with his 
 face turned toward her. Her mind came back at 
 the shock ; she saw his whole plot in an instant, 
 and with the cunning instinct of helplessness she 
 had wits enough for deception : she whispered a 
 
340 THE BROUGHT ON HOUSE. 
 
 shuddering assent; and she got him to take her 
 back to the cottage and promise not to see her 
 again until the time came. He went away, believ 
 ing she would keep her whispered word; and Mrs. 
 Floyd, her mind beginning to lose its hold again, 
 and her body worn out by sleepless nights, flung 
 herself upon the bed in what had become once 
 more Aunt Tryphena s chamber, and slept like an 
 exhausted child. 
 
 When she woke the next morning, Thursday, 
 there was the least touch of autumn in the air, 
 though it was only early August. A spray of 
 golden-rod, in the back yard of the cottage, by the 
 fence, was beginning to turn yellow. Tryphena 
 noticed it when she went out to the well to draw 
 water with which to prepare her solitary breakfast, 
 for she was not able any longer to go to the hotel 
 for meals. She might meet Collins. She was afraid 
 to go alone, knowing what had become of her hus 
 band, and then, she had no money. " Autumn 
 is coming," she thought, as the golden-rod caught 
 her eye. Autumn already! Why not? It was 
 just as well. Mrs. Floyd was entirely composed 
 that morning, and looked upon her life as if it lay 
 behind her like a clear, gray, autumnal landscape. 
 She was no longer a part of it. She had travelled 
 over it indeed, but had now passed beyond it. She 
 had walked faithfully to the very end, as faithfully 
 as she could. But she was tired now ; she had no 
 desire to enter upon any new road, to cross any 
 
THE BROUGHT ON HOUSE. 341 
 
 novel tract of country. She did not feel strong- 
 enough to go on, nor could she see any use in try 
 ing. She remembered perfectly well, now, what 
 Collins had said the night before. Words whose 
 utterance had seemed to make no impression upon 
 her senses at the time, recalled themselves exactly. 
 How quietly and skilfully the sportsman had drawn 
 the network of his plans ! He was in possession 
 of her promise. But was life worth having upon 
 those terms ? Tryphena shuddered ; not with the 
 insane terror she had felt the night before, but with 
 the shame of an honest woman, bred in the moral 
 traditions of a Xew England ancestry. As girl 
 and woman, she had always been scrupulous of her 
 name, until in the desperation of these last weeks 
 she had possibly compromised herself. There was 
 one person more than any other by whom she 
 dreaded to be misunderstood, and her strongest 
 desire, throughout that slow-dragging day, was to 
 see John Sonderby, to make herself right in his 
 eyes while there was yet time. 
 
 When evening came and she spied Calvin John 
 son s buckboard bringing the school-teacher back 
 to the Broughton House, she summoned up all her 
 resolution, as one gathers and blows upon embers 
 that have already served too long, and went out 
 to watch for him. It was a hard thing to do, to 
 call him into the cottage and tell him what she did, 
 but it was an expiation of all her folly. She saw 
 too that Sonderby believed in her, that he was still 
 
342 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 ready to be influenced by her, and this gave her 
 audacity to try to accomplish that for which she 
 had scarcely dared to hope. She had longed all 
 day to have the school-teacher leave Broughton, as 
 soon as she had seen him and made that pitiful in 
 tercession for herself. She had always read him 
 well, and knew that his future would be richer if 
 he went to his own proper work ; but it was not 
 for that simply that she now wished to have him 
 go. It was for something else, for her own sake 
 and for his. When she watched him hesitate, and 
 pushed her entreaty, and finally saw him yield and 
 heard him say that he would go, and that upon 
 the morrow, her heart, which had never claimed 
 very much as its own portion in the world, was 
 satisfied. It was too late for anything to bring her 
 happiness, but John Sonderby s belief in her and 
 obedience to her wishes brought her a kind of 
 peace. 
 
 Strong as she was in many ways, she could not 
 bid him good by, and partly for that reason she 
 persuaded Bill Trumbull to go berrying with her, 
 Friday morning, an hour before the time when she 
 knew Mr. Sonderby would be starting for the 
 Center. Trumbull never needed much persuasion 
 to accompany Tryphena, and they wandered 
 through the pastures above the Hollow for two or 
 three hours, picking some early blackberries, and 
 a few late raspberries. Bill kept putting the 
 largest ones into her pail, just as he had done often 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 343 
 
 when she was a girl. She smiled her thanks to 
 him each time, though she was so silent during the 
 whole ramble that Bill decided that she was miss 
 ing her husband more than he had u callated," and 
 he tried in his fatherly fashion to impress upon her 
 that two weeks would go quickly. Trumbull 
 could not imagine what should keep the artist so 
 long in New York, but he regretfully abstained 
 from making any inquisitive remarks. The old 
 hotel-keeper s kindly, simple chatter was soothing 
 to her ; it reminded her of such far-away things, of 
 the time when he used to bring her home from 
 berrying, upon his shoulder, while her chubby 
 fingers were twisting his yellow beard. The air 
 was sweet and cool, and the pastures were still, 
 solitary. The year, in the full burden of its bear 
 ing season, seemed to drowse, in prevision of its 
 time of rest. Yet if anything could have won Mrs. 
 Floyd back, it would seem that the gentleness of 
 that bright day, and the companionship of her 
 sympathetic, garrulous old friend, might have done 
 so. Bill Trumbull was so human, so much a part 
 of the world that now is ! 
 
 It was an hour after noon when they returned. 
 Mrs. Floyd yielded to Bill s invitation, and went 
 over with him to Mirandy s for dinner. The 
 presence of Mrs. Floyd saved Bill from the scold 
 ing his punctual daughter had in store for him, 
 and Mirandy thought that Tryphena seemed very 
 friendly and natural, and that perhaps she herself 
 
344 THE BEOUGHTON HOUtiE. 
 
 had been too sharp-tongue d in criticising the way 
 Mrs. Floyd had " gone on with that Collins man." 
 Trypheny Morton always had her queer streaks, 
 but she wan t any worse than other folks, after all. 
 Such was the considerate conclusion of Mirandy. 
 After dinner Mrs. Floyd went back to the cottage, 
 and locking the front door behind her, sat down 
 in her rocking-chair by the window. She was 
 strong, though not strong enough for life ; brave, 
 though not brave enough for life. Yet once, in 
 that long, lonely afternoon, her heart almost failed 
 her. But just then there was the grating of wheels 
 on the hotel driveway; she peered out and saw 
 Collins s dark, smiling face, and strength and bra 
 very came back to her, sufficiently. 
 
 Mr. Bruce D. Collins, having had the satisfaction 
 of seeing the spindles start again at the Collins 
 Mills, had come back to Broughton to get -what 
 belonged to him. He spent an hour or so in his 
 room, packing, and elaborating a brief explanation 
 which he proposed to make to Evans. This latter 
 task had given him some trouble for a couple of 
 days; but Collins felt that something of the sort 
 was, on the whole, necessary, and that Evans 
 would feel it was his own interest to believe what 
 was told him. The plan was a trifle daring, but 
 perhaps none the less likely to succeed on that 
 account. 
 
 " Evans," said Collins, gravely, when the chamber 
 maid had summoned the Welshman to Collins s 
 
THE BROrKHTOX HOUSE. 345 
 
 room, I want the buggy hitched up at ten-thirty, 
 to-night." 
 
 The hotel proprietor bowed. 
 
 "I ve got a telegram from Mr. Floyd," the 
 manufacturer continued. - - He is obliged to sail 
 for Hamburg for Europe to-morrow, at nine 
 o clock. It s a sudden matter, you perceive, and 
 he wants to have Mrs. Floyd get there to see him 
 off. If she can hit the twelve-three express to-night, 
 she can make it, and I m going to drive her to the 
 Center, and shall go down with her to Xew York. 
 It wouldn t do to have her start off like that alone." 
 
 The Welshman nodded. " Is Mr. Floyd to be 
 gone long ? " he asked, respectfully. 
 
 " Yes ; he may be. It s important business - 
 some painting to be done, or something of that 
 sort." 
 
 " There is a little matter of a board bill. Thirteen 
 days board excuse my " 
 
 " Oh, put it in with mine," interrupted Collins, 
 tersely. " I ll settle with him. He went off in a 
 hurry." 
 
 -Very well, Mr. Collins," said Evans, smoothly. 
 %< At ten-thirty, you said? I ll speak to Johnny." 
 
 " All right Say ! " Evans closed the door 
 
 O \f 
 
 again, and waited. Collins had not finished his 
 speech. It was more awkward than he had antici 
 pated. There was no other way, though; the 
 bolder he was, the better the chances. 
 
 " If Mr. Floyd doesn t come back pretty soon, 
 
346 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 she may have to do something for a living in the 
 meantime. I shouldn t wonder if she would go 
 into my mills, as a typewriter, or book-keeper." 
 
 The little black eyes of the Welshman were 
 cocked astutely, but he made no reply. 
 
 " That s all, Evans," remarked Mr. Collins, with 
 the slightest expression of relief. "And you ve 
 taken pretty good care of me this summer," and 
 he pushed a roll of bills into the fingers of the sur 
 prised Welshman, who kept the money, neverthe 
 less, and backed out of the door, bowing deeply. 
 He ran his thumb through the bills as he crept 
 down stairs. Collins had never feed him before. 
 Why this time ? As he passed noiselessly through 
 the smoking-room, he caught sight of a New York 
 paper, and had a sudden curiosity, which it took 
 but a moment to satisfy. The Hamburg steamer 
 was advertised to sail, not at nine in the morning, 
 but at three in the afternoon. Collins had been 
 lying to him. The knowing little Welshman 
 thrust his hand into his trousers pocket again, 
 and grasped the bills as if to assure himself of the 
 reality of the experience through which he had 
 passed, and then with a shrug of his shoulders and 
 a weasel glance around the empty smoking-room, 
 he gave vent to his opinion in a single sarcastic 
 ejaculation : " Book-keeper ! " 
 
 It was four o clock. In spite of the hot sun 
 shine that now flooded the western end of the 
 hotel piazza, a crowd of guests were huddled 
 
THE BBOUGHTOX HOUSE. 347 
 
 there, watching a tennis match upon the court 
 below them. The playing was spirited, and there 
 was frequent spatting of hands and quick cries of 
 excitement, at the more brilliant strokes. The 
 Broughton House had lost altogether the air of 
 emptiness, of pretence, which it had worn earlier 
 in the season. Everything was going very well 
 there, very well indeed. Even the arrival of the 
 stage this afternoon failed to attract interest away 
 from the game, and the only persons who paid 
 any attention to it were Evans, who assigned Son- 
 derby s room to a newcomer, and Collins, who 
 came down to the piazza to give the driver explicit 
 directions about taking his trunks to the Center 
 in the morning. The driver was repeating these 
 directions to himself so assiduously, as he drove 
 up the sleepy street, that he forgot to take off his 
 hat to Mrs. Ellerton, who had once shaken hands 
 with him after a Young People s Society of Chris 
 tian Endeavor meeting into which he had strayed, 
 and who now bowed so friendly to him from the 
 sidewalk, as almost to make him vow to go to 
 the meeting again. 
 
 Mi s. Ellerton had come out to make a call. 
 Arrayed in her gray Henrietta and her best bonnet, 
 carrying her ivory card-case in one hand and her 
 parasol in the other, she was a very attractive- 
 looking parson s wife, and the stage-driver might 
 well turn to look at her as her tall figure wound in 
 and out among the elm-trees that encroached upon 
 
348 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 the narrow sidewalk. She was very happy and 
 contented that afternoon, albeit her face was 
 graver than usual. She had been reading, since 
 dinner the concluding article of a series upon 
 "Divorce," in one of her favorite Reviews, and 
 the statistics as to the moral life of her beloved 
 New England had shocked her, accustomed even 
 as she was to the consideration of social questions. 
 It was inexpressibly painful to think that there 
 was such selfishness and animalism left in the 
 world, even here in the beautiful old New England 
 towns, where truth had been taught so constantly. 
 But no shadow could rest very long upon Ruth 
 Ellerton s pure, strong face, and more than one 
 thing happened, as she went down the street, to 
 recall her from painful thoughts to her own happy 
 work here in Broughton. There was the sight of 
 the stage-driver, for instance ; how little did the 
 lanky fellow suspect that behind that charming 
 bow there lurked a plot for his moral amelioration ! 
 There was Samuel Parkinson s boy, who ran across 
 the street to speak to her; a precociously pious 
 youth who had been designated by candid Arthur 
 Ellerton in temporary forgetfulness of ministe 
 rial prudence and simply in the presence of his 
 wife as "a thorough little ass," but a boy never 
 theless whose real virtues were appreciated, and 
 whose high lights were being gradually toned 
 down, by this wise and loving woman. Above all, 
 there was the call she expected to make, one re- 
 
THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 349 
 
 quiring all her tact and cheery spirits and sympa 
 thy : for she was going down, to the Floyd cottage. 
 From certain words dropped by Sonderby when 
 he called at the parsonage that morning, she had 
 inferred that Mrs. Floyd was in some kind of 
 trouble and was left much to herself. It seemed 
 that the artist had gone away for a while, and that 
 his wife was living all alone at the cottage. Son- 
 derby had even gone so far as to suggest, bashfully, 
 that if Mrs. Ellerton could get better acquainted 
 with Mrs. Floyd, it would be well worth while it 
 might do a great deal of good. At such negotia 
 tions the inventor of the telephone-switch was 
 particularly inexpert, but Ruth Ellerton needed 
 no urging when her sympathy was touched. Mrs. 
 Floyd had never returned her call ; but the minis 
 ter s wife could not stop for that, if there was a 
 chance of reaching this slender, dark-haired young 
 woman, with black clothes and shy, melancholy 
 eyes. To fancy her living all alone in that old 
 house of her aunt ! Mrs. Ellerton stepped faster as 
 she thought of it : she framed some excuse already 
 " for running in without waiting for formalities." 
 She opened the creaking gate, at the cottage, and 
 walked swiftly up the neglected path to the front 
 door. Upon the left was the bench upon which 
 she had sat when she and Arthur had made their 
 call; but rain-water was standing in the hollow of 
 the seat, and a spider had flung his web across one 
 end. At the door there was neither bell nor 
 
350 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 knocker. Mrs. Ellerton rapped, and then waited. 
 There was no response. She rapped louder, bruis 
 ing her dainty glove against the cracked paint. 
 Still no answer. She looked regretfully at the 
 knuckles of her gloves, and stooping, picked up a 
 little stone that lay by the low, rotting steps, and 
 rapped sharply with that. She was almost ashamed 
 to make so much noise. Yet no one came. She 
 hesitated. Perhaps she had misunderstood Mr. 
 Sonderby, after all ; possibly Mrs. Floyd had gone 
 away too. She tried the door softly ; it was 
 locked. How very unfortunate ! There was no use 
 in waiting longer. She took one of her cards 
 from the ivory case, and slipped it under the door, 
 in the hollow of the worn threshold. Then she 
 looked round her a moment, before she turned 
 away. The lilac leaves had grown thick and 
 leathery, and there seemed to be a dampness in 
 their shade. The last pink-edged petals had long 
 before fallen from the Smith roses, and the green 
 rose-apples were forming there instead. It seemed 
 as if such a long time had elapsed since she and 
 Arthur called upon the Floyds ; and the dooryard 
 had such an abandoned air ! She was not sorry to 
 escape from the shadow of the lilacs into the sun 
 shine again, and yet she was vexed at not having 
 found Mrs. Floyd in, greatly vexed and disap 
 pointed. She had had a sort of intuition that she 
 was needed at the cottage. 
 
 It was true. It was a pity that the door was 
 
THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 351 
 
 locked, and that Mrs. Floyd, who had seen her 
 coming, sat quite still in the rocking-chair, and did 
 not rise to let her in. That gracious presence, 
 with its loving gentleness, its yearning desire to 
 be of help, its strong vitality, might not have come 
 into the lonely sitting-room too late to bring hope, 
 sweet hope and endurance and faith for the things 
 of life. But the heavy door was locked, and 
 Tryphena Floyd sat with fixed and awestruck 
 eyes, hardly hearing Mrs. Ellerton s rapping ; for 
 in her ears was the soft rustle and before her eyes 
 the dusky wings of another hope, the shadowy, 
 all-encompassing hope that broods sooner or later 
 over every mortal soul. . . . 
 
 Evening came. The lamps were lit in the 
 Broughton. House. Collins came downstairs, hav 
 ing at last finished his packing. The sound of the 
 melodeon in the parlor made him think of his 
 music, however, and he went in and gathered that 
 up, taking it to his room and unstrapping a trunk 
 to put it away. There was no use in leaving any 
 thing behind : he might not come up to Broughton 
 again the next summer ; perhaps not for some time. 
 With these reflections still in his head, he de 
 scended to the office, and sat down by the fire 
 place, smoking cigar after cigar. He was rather 
 ill at ease. Perhaps, he thought, it had been fool 
 ish in him to say so much to Evans ; but then the 
 thing w^as bound to get out, in some shape or 
 other, and his own version would stand the best 
 
352 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 chance of being considered authoritative. The 
 whole scheme was pretty bold; somewhat worse 
 than anything he had ever done before ; but then, 
 whose business was it except his own and hers ? 
 Everything, too, had worked to favor him. He 
 was glad Sonderby was out of the way : Sonderby 
 was a good enough fellow, but queer ; there might 
 have been some kind of a row. Yes, she had been 
 right in getting a promise not to see her again 
 until she was all ready, at ten-thirty ; it was a good 
 deal safer and less likely to make talk in the vil 
 lage ; he would hardly have thought that she had 
 so much head as that, with only a minute to think 
 it over in, that night in the buggy. She was deep, 
 though, like all of them ! Well, in two hours they 
 would be off. Not a soul in the village would be 
 awake to see them drive away. It was the sim 
 plest thing in the world. 
 
 Nevertheless, Mr. Collins kept getting more and 
 more restless. He could not sit still by the fire 
 place any longer, and took to pacing the floor of 
 the office, and looking furtively at his watch from 
 time to time. Bill Trumbull tried to start one or 
 two topics of conversation, but in vain. Suddenly 
 Collins s eye fell upon the fish-spear that was hung 
 along one of the huge ceiling beams, and he had 
 an idea. There was but one thing he had planned 
 this summer which had not turned out to suit 
 him : lie had failed to capture the big trout down 
 in the Hollow, lie had half a mind to go down 
 
THE BROUGHTOy HOUSE. 353 
 
 to-night and spear him. There was time enough, 
 and there would be some fun in it. Why not drive 
 away with the trout under the buggy seat under 
 their buggy seat and make a complete thing of 
 the summer? He went to the side door of the 
 office and called to the stable-boy, who was drum 
 ming with his heels on the side piazza, waiting till 
 it was time to hitch up. 
 
 "Johnny, have you got anything to do?" 
 
 k4 Xot yet awhile, sir," said the boy. 
 
 u Well, put some oil into that torch you had in 
 the stable the other day. I want to have you 
 come down to the Hollow with me, to see if we 
 can t get that trout." 
 
 Collins climbed up on a chair, and pulled down 
 the dusty spear from the hooks on which it rested. 
 
 Why, say," interrupted Bill Trumbull, benevo 
 lently, " I thought you said that when you d sunk 
 so low as to spear that trout " 
 
 u ls it any of your damned business, Bill Trum 
 bull, what I do ? " cried Collins, glaring down from 
 his eminence. The astonished Trumbull made no 
 reply, while the stable-boy grinned, and ran off for 
 the torch. The sportsman in Collins had, indeed, 
 degenerated, too. The boy came back in a few 
 moments with his plaything, a tin can swinging 
 on the end of a stick, a relic of the last presiden 
 tial campaign, when Broughton had had the first 
 torchlight parade in her history. Collins got his 
 hat, and they started out, Trumbull looking at 
 
354 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 them wonderingly. Evans had sidled into the 
 office in time to hear Collins s outburst against the 
 ex-proprietor of the hotel. He could not resist 
 the temptation to add to Trumbull s discomfiture 
 by showing that he, Evans, was now the one who 
 enjoyed the manufacturer s intimacy. Then, too, 
 he felt a sly curiosity to see how Trumbull would 
 take the news that Mrs. Floyd was going to New 
 York with the manufacturer. There would be 
 no harm in telling Trumbull ; indeed Evans had 
 rightly suspected that Collins had wished him to 
 repeat the facts in the case, just as they had been 
 presented to him. 
 
 " Mr. Collins is going to New York," said Evans, 
 indifferently. "What do you think of the news 
 from Floyd?" 
 
 " I don t know any," replied Bill, sulkily. 
 
 "Aha? Oh, yes. Mrs. Floyd is going down 
 with Collins to-night to see him off for Europe." 
 
 "With Collins to-night?" gasped Bill, taking 
 his pipe out of his mouth. 
 
 " You didn t know it, eh ? You don t keep up 
 with the times very well. I thought you knew 
 everything that was going on." The Welshman s 
 sneer was lost upon the excited old man. 
 
 " I ve got to see her ! " he exclaimed, rising from 
 his chair, and rapping the tobacco out of his pipe. 
 " I ve kind o got to send a message by her a 
 little matter " and he hurried out of the side 
 door, jumped from the piazza and was gone, leav- 
 
THE BROVGHTOX HOUSE. 355 
 
 ing the Welshman in terror lest Oollins s wrath 
 should descend in turn upon himself, for letting 
 out the plan too soon. Across the back yard of 
 the Floyd cottage, under the Seckel pear-trees, 
 hastened Bill Trumbull, with the activity of a man 
 thirty years younger. He knocked at the back 
 door with agitated fingers, and entered the kitchen 
 without waiting for a reply. Was it possible that 
 Son derby had been deceived, in what he had de 
 clared before leaving town that morning ? Had 
 not Tryphena said that she did not expect to see 
 Collins again ? Half-way across the dark kitchen 
 Trumbull stopped, and lest he should frighten her 
 by bursting in like that, he called out her name 
 
 "Trypheny ! " 
 
 The cottage was still. 
 
 44 Trypheny ! " His voice trembled this time. 
 Then he stumbled forward and flung open the 
 sitting-room door. There was no one there. Upon 
 the rocking-chair by the window lay Mrs. Floyd s 
 shawl. The lamp was lighted, and a whole troop 
 of little moths, entering through the open window, 
 were fluttering about the flame, singeing themselves 
 to death against the chimney ; and the flapping of 
 their tiny, feathered wings was all the sound the 
 alarmed old man could hear, though he strained 
 his ears to listen through a long, anxious minute, 
 before he turned and hurried out. 
 
 But meanwhile Collins and the boy had picked 
 their way down through the lane, and had climbed 
 
356 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 over into the meadow. It was barely nine o clock, 
 and the night was not very dark, though the sky 
 was partially overcast and the stars were few and 
 languid. The meadow grass was drenched with 
 dew, and Collins stopped to turn up his trousers. 
 The boy had on his stable boots, and did not mind 
 the wet. He carried his unlighted torch in an 
 eager hand, and was proud to be asked to accom 
 pany Mr. Collins upon such an expedition, though 
 once when a belated sparrow started up in the 
 tangle of golden-rod to the left of their narrow 
 path, the boy jumped, and kept close behind his 
 companion after that. Johnny envied the fearless 
 way in which Collins strode along, cigar in mouth, 
 not seeming to be startled at all by the sparrow. 
 Over the moist meadow, where the rowan was al 
 ready started, fireflies were wandering, gleaming 
 softly for a minute and then going out. It was so 
 quiet there in the meadow : no sound at all except 
 the brushing of the fisherman s feet upon the wet 
 rowan, and the rattle of the oil-can of the torch. 
 They climbed rather noisily over the stone wall, 
 and wound up the path through the pasture, along 
 by the dark, fragrant clumps of sweet-fern, which 
 wet Collins s legs to the knees, as he brushed past 
 them. Up they pressed, panting a little till they 
 reached the level, and saw the pasture bars stand 
 ing out huge against the sky. Here they stopped 
 to rest a moment ; behind them were the straggling 
 lights of the village, on either side the wide sweep 
 
THE BEOUGHTOX HOUSE. 357 
 
 of pasture and meadow, lying indistinct now in the 
 murky light, except where the valleys and the 
 strips of woodland made dark patches. The hori 
 zon was narrowed to a few hundred yards, and the 
 quiet, cloud}* sky hung down close to the earth. 
 From in front, louder than by day, rose the noise 
 of water, and the Hollow broke away at their feet 
 like a black abyss. Across it they could see the 
 hemlocks, dimly towering, and beyond their gloomy 
 branches, at the eastern end of the ledge, there 
 was a yellowish tinge in the clouds, as if the moon 
 were behind them. 
 
 " Well, come on, Johnny ! " cried Collins, start 
 ing down into the Hollow. He had a keen zest 
 for the business : his blood was hot and high : he 
 was bent on having his own will, this silent night. 
 As they descended, the hill kept rising dark behind 
 them, between them and the village, isolating them. 
 The air throbbed with the plunging of the water. 
 When they got within a few yards of the pool, 
 Collins stopped, and scrutinized the length of the 
 torch. It was a very long one. 
 
 "Look here," said Collins, "you stay on this 
 side, close up there, by the stump. I ll get on 
 the other side, just over the ledge, and then if he 
 comes out to look at your light, I ll be right on 
 top of him. Don t light up till I get over there/ 
 
 He went down below the lower end of the pool, 
 and the boy heard him splash through the brook, 
 over the loose stepping-stones. Then his figure, 
 
358 THE BEOUGIITON HOUSE. 
 
 a black shadow, came in sight again, creeping cau 
 tiously along the narrow rock, just above the water. 
 Nearer and nearer he crawled, till he was opposite 
 the stable-boy. 
 
 "All right! " he hissed across the water. "Light 
 up." He half rose to his feet, and the shaft of his 
 spear rattled against the ledge as he got it well in 
 hand and made ready to poise it. The boy struck 
 a match, and touched it to the wick of his torch. 
 There was a red, smoky flame. 
 
 "Now shove it out toward me," whispered 
 Collins. " That s it. Now steady. Farther ! Far 
 ther ! Hold on ! What s that ! " 
 
 But the boy had seen it too, in the same instant. 
 The torch dropped into the pool from his fright 
 ened hands, and he turned and ran up the black 
 pasture-side for the village, screaming, " Help ! 
 Help ! " in a paroxysm of fear, " Help ! Help ! " 
 in his clear, boyish voice, while on the ledge, close 
 by the water, crouched the cowering sensualist, 
 and the moon, peering from under the hemlock 
 boughs like a huge eye, gazed down at him 
 omnisciently. 
 
XVI. 
 
 N at the Center Saturday morning broke 
 clear and sunsliiny, though the night had been 
 cloudy and a little rain had fallen. The pavements 
 were wet and steaming when John Sonderby walked 
 out of the Central Hotel and down the street to 
 the station, whither the hotel hack had just carried 
 his trunk and box of books. He squared his shoul 
 ders, inhaling long draughts of the fresh air. His 
 room at the Central Hotel had been rather close, 
 and the electric light had shone in through the 
 transom enough to keep him awake awhile during 
 the first part of the night. At five o clock the 
 chorus of bells and whistles from the factories had 
 wakened him again, and, as the Boston express 
 left at six, he rose at once, and having succeeded 
 in getting a tolerable breakfast, had ten or fifteen 
 minutes in which to catch his train. The walk to 
 the station cleared his head, and he passed with a 
 springy step through the crowds of workmen on 
 their way to the factories. Erect, vigorous, with 
 enthusiastic new hopes and purposes, John Son 
 derby was a happy man that morning. The world 
 was before him. It made his breath quicken to 
 hear the cry, " Here she conies ! as the heavy ex- 
 
360 THE JiKOUGIITON HOUSE. 
 
 press swung around the curve and rolled into the 
 station. He got aboard, finding a seat in the first 
 car behind the sleepers. There were not many 
 persons there, and most of them looked frowzy 
 and tired from the night s ride. " All aboard I " 
 cried the conductor ; the grimy brakeman slammed 
 the door of Sonderby s car, and the train resumed 
 its scarcely interrupted motion. Away from the 
 smoky Center, from the clattering noises of mill 
 and factory, off down the wooded valley it sped, 
 on its tireless way to Boston. 
 
 But it did not move any too fast for John Son- 
 derby. He was already planning what he would 
 do that afternoon. Perhaps Harry Duffield would 
 meet him at the train ; at any rate, he had tele 
 graphed that he was coming. It was queer that 
 Harry might do him a good turn in Boston, after 
 all, even if it were nothing more than to secure 
 him a place at a boarding-house. He thought it 
 would be best to call upon the A. S. & F. people, 
 just to make their acquaintance, even if the posi 
 tion they had once offered him had now been filled. 
 Very likely there might be an opening there later. 
 But it was no matter if there should be none ; 
 there were plenty of places in the world, and he 
 knew well enough the stuff he had in him. Oh, 
 to get to work again ! And he thought of his 
 books in the baggage car, and wished he had one 
 with him, that he might not waste the time. He 
 tried to work out some equations in physics in his 
 
THE BROVGHTOX HOUSE. 361 
 
 head, and then smiled at himself for being so eager. 
 There would be time enough for all that. He 
 might better look out of the window now and 
 gaze his last at the green hill country ; there was 
 no knowing when he would see it again. 
 
 Through the narrow valley down which the ex 
 press was thundering ran a river, and Sonderby 
 watched a long time the brown, shallow water 
 and the white, up-curving heaps of foam where the 
 rocks protruded. The foam seemed trying to climb 
 up stream ; and though it always slipped back, it 
 never lost patience, and Sonderby amused him 
 self by watching the ever-repeated struggle, as 
 curve after curve of the river brought new rapids 
 into view. It occurred to him suddenly that this 
 was the stream which turned the Center factories, 
 and which took its rise up in Broughton. Sure 
 enough, the very stream ! He retraced, in his 
 fancy, its course, and with his turn for mathematics 
 tried to calculate its velocity, and the length of 
 time required for a given particle of water to be 
 carried, say, from the Hollow behind the village, 
 which was as far up as Sonderby had ever followed 
 the brook, down through the meadows and long 
 pasture slopes to the Center, past the black wheels 
 of the factories, and so on down the river till it 
 was opposite him, and made a part of one of those 
 white spurts of foam. Then he began to think 
 about Broughton, and it seemed as if he had 
 already been away from the village a good while. 
 
362 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 He wondered if he would ever go back, after 
 a time, to see the old acquaintances, made in 
 the course of those three dormant years. Yes, he 
 thought he would. But he did not intend to wait 
 so long as that before he learned news of some 
 people up in the village. He meant to write to 
 her to Mrs. Floyd as soon as he was settled ; 
 she undoubtedly would be willing to answer, just a 
 few words, from time to time, to let him know how 
 it was going with her. There would be no harm 
 in it. Poor little woman ! She was brave, though, 
 and he had cruelly misjudged her. Still, if it had 
 not been for that, he thought with a sort of 
 tremble at the heart, if it had not been for his 
 thinking ill of her, he might not have been cured 
 of his own folly, he might be up there in Brough- 
 ton still, waiting to throw himself away, if she ever 
 had given him the word. Instead of this, it was 
 she who had urged him to go, to win for himself 
 the place in the world that belonged to him, and it 
 was really in obedience to her wish that he was 
 here now, on his way to his life work. Strange 
 that he had not thought of it in that way before ! 
 Ah, how much he owed her ! more than any one 
 could ever know. The brave, silent woman, with 
 her own great trouble. 
 
 The express train rumbled out of the valley, and 
 slowed up again at another town. A few passengers 
 came into the car, among them a fresh-faced girl 
 of twenty, with her mother. They took the seat 
 
THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 363 
 
 in front of Sonclerby ; and when the girl dropped 
 one of her bundles into the aisle, in seating her 
 self, Sonderby handed it to her, and thought she 
 thanked him prettily. He watched the two for a 
 while, wondering where they were going, and ad 
 mired the way in which the girl made her mother 
 comfortable, and the business-like air with which 
 she handed their tickets to the conductor. People 
 seemed wonderfully interesting to him that morn 
 ing ; it was as if he were beginning his human ex 
 perience all over again, and could look at every 
 thing with new eyes. So the train rushed along, 
 in the cool morning hours, crossing fertile valleys 
 and barren scrub-oak ridges, leaving the foaming 
 river far behind as it bore John Sonderby toward 
 Boston, and the fellow was strong in purpose, and 
 had hope and tenderness of heart. 
 
 Over the Broughton uplands, that afternoon, a 
 gentle west wind was blowing. Mr. and Mrs. 
 Ellerton felt it upon their faces, as they drove 
 slowly along a hill road, on their way home from 
 Canuck Corner. They would scarcely have gone 
 on this day, had it not been that a case of extreme 
 poverty and threatening illness had left the pastor 
 no alternative, and Ruth would not let him go 
 alone. The minister and his wife were very silent, 
 and Ellerton was grave. The horror of the last 
 night had scarcely had time to disappear from their 
 faces, and even now, Mrs. Ellerton cried a little, 
 from time to time, as the phaeton carried them 
 
364 THE BEOUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 through the lonely outskirts of their parish. In 
 all the excitement that had wakened the village 
 the night before, in the unavailing efforts, the 
 awful sense of impotency, these two persons had 
 had a share. She had been one of those who in 
 the early morning had rendered that last loving 
 service which only women understand. It was 
 the first time she had ever helped to do it. Arthur 
 had been telegraphing, arranging, driving hastily 
 to the Center, doing whatever was necessary. 
 There was no one else to take the responsibility. 
 Aunt Tryphosa had replied to his message, and 
 expected to reach Broughton that evening; but 
 he could get no trace of Floyd. It had been a 
 strange morning; unlike anything else in the 
 cheery young minister s experience. lie was 
 sobered, haunted with a feeling that he had under 
 rated the terrible forces that were playing all 
 about him. At dinner-time he and his wife had sat 
 for the most part speechless, looking at each other. 
 It was so sudden ! Only the day before Mrs. 
 Ellerton had slipped her correctly engraved card 
 under the locked door of the cottage. But when 
 the afternoon brought the summons to Canuck 
 Corner, Ellerton collected himself, and drove off 
 to do his work. Mrs. Ellerton, too, found that 
 she was needed in the French Canadian hovel, and 
 in the effort to bring cleanliness and comfort and 
 a little heart of grace into the squalid house, both 
 the minister and his wife forgot something of the 
 
THE llllOUGIITON HOUSE. 365 
 
 other the nightmare. As they left the Corner 
 behind them, at last, and made their way home 
 ward over the hill road, walking the horse, and 
 letting the west wind cool their heavy eyelids, 
 something of the accustomed composure came 
 back to them. The tears might creep up, now 
 and then, into Ruth Ellerton s gray eyes, but she 
 could not help that. 
 
 " Oh, Arthur," she cried once, as the horse 
 stopped of his own accord at the summit of a long 
 hill, " we must try harder ! We must not let them 
 slip away." Her voice trembled in its intensity. 
 
 44 Yes, my dear," he answered, seriously, under 
 standing her. Xo other word was needed. Differ 
 ent as these two were, and differently as they had 
 received that day s experience, they had a common 
 aspiration and a common peace. There are shores 
 many ; there is but one inflowing tide. 
 
 Lower sank the sun in the clear August sky. 
 Shadows began to fill the hollows of the pastures, 
 though mile after mile of sunlit lonely hilltops 
 were spread all around. It was a beautiful world 
 they beheld, a beautiful world to live in and to 
 work in. The wind blew cooler, but still they sat 
 there on the hilltop, gazing, wondering. 
 
 Out on the Atlantic the wind blew cooler, too, 
 and the Hamburg steamer quivered slightly as she 
 caught the long rollers of the open sea. The blue 
 waste was roughening, and the horizon, which had 
 appeared so distant when she left Sandy Hook, 
 
366 THE BROUGHTON HOUSE. 
 
 seemed narrowing in on every side. Floyd, leaning 
 contentedly against the rail, cigarette in mouth, 
 noted with an artist s interest the change, and 
 tried to explain it in German to his companion, an 
 affable Jewish wine-merchant from Wiesbaden, who 
 had been informing him about the prospects for that 
 year s vintage. They watched the water a while 
 longer, chatting together, and then as the wind 
 grew chillier, they lounged into the smoking-room, 
 to see if any one was organizing a pool upon the 
 first day s run. 
 
 But on the Broughton hilltop the horizon widened 
 as the sun sank lower and the wind blew keener. 
 Infinitely remote seemed those farthest lines and 
 crests, but clear, and suffused with the same light 
 that turned the bleached grass of the nearest pas 
 tures to a sudden gold. 
 
 Typography by J. S. Cashing & Co., Boston, Mass. 
 Presswork by Berwick & Smith, Boston, Mass.