"Yes, I was; he was a man about your build, only when I saw him last he was in trouble, and pale and thin."
"What trouble?"
"Trouble," she replied wiping the tears away with her apron. Then coming near me inquired quizzically, "What is your name?"
I saw she was on the point of detecting me, and looking straight in her eye I answered, "James Hall."
Again she hesitated and then said, "You do look so much like James Burroughs, who is dead, that I thought the dead had been raised." She then told me all about father's execution, Fanny's death and mine, after which I walked over to Deacon Felker's.
When I arrived, there was no one in but the deacon, so I struck him up for a job. Soon I saw a lady coming up the walk who I at once recognized as Cousin Phoebe, whom I had not seen for fifteen years. Beside her ran a little boy. The deacon introduced me, and in shaking hands I squeezed hers so hard that she looked up quickly, then presuming me to be very rough, she spoke pleasantly. Then I picked up my own little boy and as in some phantom mirror, Fanny seemed to look me right in the face.
While waiting for tea, Winnie Richardson came in and adroitly introduced herself by saying, "I presume our town looks tame to you, especially if you've been living in the city, but to us who have never traveled Stafford is the center of the world."
At the conclusion of Jim's story the sweet Winnie softly caressed the troubled man with her arm around his neck, and here we leave Winnie and Jim, to whirl and swirl in their frail barques of life, on the restless waves of time, until they mysteriously cross the bar out into the unknown ocean of Eternity, from whence, if they return to guide our thoughts, we do not comprehend it.
