The parson looked at her with amazement. She seemed on fire. All the smouldering embers of a life denied had blazed at last. She put on her glasses and walked over to the chest.
"Here!" she continued; "let's uncover the dead. I've tried to do it ever since she died, so the other things could be burned; but my courage failed me. Could you turn these screws, if I should get you a knife? They're in tight. I put 'em in myself, and she stood by."
The little lid of the till had been screwed fast. The two middle-aged people bent over it together, trying first the scissors and then the broken blade of the parson's old knife. The screws came slowly. When they were all out, he stood back a pace and gazed at her. Mary Ellen looked no longer alert and vivified. Her face was haggard.
"I shut it," she said, in a whisper. "You lift it up."
The parson lifted the lid. There they lay, her poor little relics,—a folded manuscript, an old-fashioned daguerreotype, and a tiny locket. The parson could not see. His hand shook as he took them solemnly out and gave them to her. She bent over the picture, and looked at it, as we search the faces of the dead. He followed her to the light, and, wiping his glasses, looked also.
"That was my picture," he said musingly. "I never've had one since. And that was mother's locket. It had"—He paused and looked at her.
"Yes," said Mary Ellen softly; "it's got it now." She opened the little trinket; a warm, thick lock of hair lay within, and she touched it gently with her finger. "Should you like the locket, because 't was your mother's?"
She hesitated; and though the parson's tone halted also, he answered at once:—
"No, Mary Ellen, not if you'll keep it. I should rather think 'twas with you."
She put her two treasures in her pocket, and gave him the other.