"No matter about me, Hannah, don't mention anything I did; it was hard at the time, but one gets used to almost everything," cried the old man, wiping the tears from his eyes with a cotton handkerchief that Salina handed to him, her own eyes flushing redder and redder from sympathy.
"I need not speak of him," commenced aunt Hannah, with one look at her brother's face. "He did his duty; if I had done mine as well, this hour of shame would not have brought me where I am.
"The child grew up into a beautiful girl—so beautiful and with such sweet ways, that it did one good only to look at her, but she was willful too, and loved play; wild as a kitten she was, but as harmless too.
"She would go out to work; we tried to stop it, but the child would go; Salina there, kept house for old Mrs. Farnham; they wanted help to spin up the wool and Anna went. She came back engaged to Mr. Farnham. I forgave her, God is my judge; I did not hate the child for supplanting me in the only love I ever hoped to know. It was a hard trial, but I bore it without a single bitter thought toward either of them. It nearly killed me, but I did my duty by the child.
"He went to the city, for he had gone into business there, and was getting rich. Time went fast with him and slow with us. In the end he married that woman. Anna went wild when she knew it, and like a wounded bird fled to the first open heart for shelter. She married too, and in a single year died here in this room."
"I remember it, oh! how well I remember it," sobbed Salina, while uncle Nat covered his face with both hands and wept aloud.
"It was an awful night. Thunder shook the Old Homestead, and the winds rocked it as if death were rocking her to sleep; across them windows came the lightning, flash after flash, as if the angels of heaven were shooting fiery arrows over her as she breathed her last. Salina was there, but no doctor. He was at Mrs. Farnham's mansion up yonder, for that night her only son was born.
"He came at last, to find her dead body lying there, cold and pale in the lightning flashes that broke against the windows. He found me alone with my dead sister, numb with sorrow, dead at the heart.
"After this Salina brought Anna's baby and laid it in my lap. The doctor had ordered her home. The rich man's wife could not be neglected."
"But I wouldn't have gone, you know I wouldn't for anything he could say," cried Salina, firing up amid her tears. "If you hadn't said go, all the doctors on arth couldn't have made me stir a foot!"