You who read this may be in some uneasiness as to Mamie. I confess that I am not. I cannot forget the angels of grace that do undoubtedly attend on such. If you will simply review what I have told you, I think you will see that we need not be too anxious. One who can set aside social customs and laws which the less privileged of us do not dare to ignore; who can be married without clerk or benefit of clergy—rather, after the manner of the owl and the pussy-cat, by the mere procuring of a ring; who can protect her child from drowning by a canton-flannel charm; improve health and digestion by a diet of burned bread-crusts; rise above all fact and experience as successfully as if she were a witch on a broomstick; and preserve her faith unspoiled, despite the most blasting circumstances; who hob-nobs on such easy terms with the Deity, and who can speak of her whom the poets prefer to name "Star of the Deep," and the devout, "Queen of Heaven," as the Deity's "Maw-ma"; one who can, like a prestidigitateur, by a mere turn of the hand, make your conscientious resolves vanish—and draw pity out of the place where solemn indignation should have been, as magicians rabbits out of a silk hat; who can carry off your much needed linen, and have it look like a favor.—Need we worry about such a one? Need Pharaoh, having seen the wonders, be anxious, do you think, as to how the departed children of Israel would be maintained in the desert places where he would so easily have perished?

But lest you should, nevertheless, have Mamie's welfare at heart, and should entertain, with some misgivings, thought of what may have become of Anne, there are yet other signs and wonders of which I shall ask to be allowed to speak.

VI
MARGARET

Margaret, Mamie's successor, was a woman in the middle forties. There were little shadowy modelings in her brow which made you think of the smooth hollows of a shell. She gave one the impression of something cast up from the sea and dragged back into it many times. She came of a large family, and although her people had treated her badly (according to her own story), she took pride nevertheless in speaking of them. "Me brother Pat," I may say, was never spoken of without her head going up. She had a taste for distinction, and pride of race was strong in her. She was a born teller of tales. One of the best was of a wake to which she was taken as a child.

"It was a grrrand wake! The folk from all arroond were there! And they'd baked meats such as you'd have only in the rrrichest houses here. I was eight year old. I went with me brother Pat. The dead man had been a mean old man, savin' and hoardin', not spendin', even for the poor. They do say the dead'll come back if ye worry them enough; and it's likely it worried him something terrible to see all that spendin' of his money, and all the neighbor folk he hated so, crowded so close in his room and the dhrrrink goin' round. Anyway, however be it, as I was lookin' at him from my corner, all eyes, for I'd never seen a dead man before, God save us! up he rose from the dead, right among all the candles, upsettin' some of them; and he screamed, yes, screamed, too, like he'd just escaped from hell, with the devil's fingers still hot on him! Some went by the windys, some by the door. Five got broken legs gettin' out, and the priest, God save us! fell down dead, and him a good man, too!"

This was but a small piece of ore from a rich mine. Give her but the chance—she had a story for every occasion.

She went on a tour of inspection when she had been with us a few hours. I felt sure that the beauty and meaning of the old run-down place, of necessity hid from the profane, would never be lost on one of her keen and psychic temperament. She came back glowing, and I thought really reverent.

"Oh, it's a noble place," she said. "You can see plainer nor your eyes, it's been lived in by the gentility! Look at them gables and them chimneys! That house has the air of a grand lady, ma'am, sittin' quiet with her hands folded. And them elms, too, like the grand slow wavin' of a fan. Them parlors with their long windys have got the air of havin' seen folk. Me brother Pat worked for a place like this once." This with her head up and looking all round. "There's a rich squire lived here at the least,"—with her eyes narrowed shrewdly and her head nodding, I can give you no idea how knowingly. "Yes; and belike maybe a lord. And there were ladies (seems I can see them, God save me!) and little childer, I'll give warrant, little childer that knew how to behave themselves in the like of these rooms. Don't it look dreamin' now, ma'am? Wouldn't you say it was thinkin'?" This with her head on one side, listening, it seemed, for the unseen presences to go by. By and by she brightened, and came back to the present:—

"There's but one thing about it all I don't like, ma'am. It's the way ye keep your pig. A sty way off from Christian fellowship is no place to keep a pig. They're the childer of God, the way we are. We kept our own, ma'am, in the old country as clean as your hand, so we could have it friendly in the kitchen with us. I'm fond of animals, ma'am—the puir things that can't talk!"