In the old burying-ground beneath the pines is another grave, and, before the sod had greened upon it, it was Miss Paulina's pious care to order for it a modest headstone, and, mindful of Peter's heart's earnest wish, she had "verses cut on to it."
Resolutely turning her face from her own sad world of graves, Miss Paulina lives unselfishly on, in other lives. Gentle deeds of beneficence and love blossom thickly along her gracious life-road, as roses flower upon their stems, and never dream that through them the world is made more sweet.
Harmy, at seventy, still considers herself quite equal to any domestic exigency. Reuben, "taking heed to his ways," has minded her sage admonitions. He has "jined the church." Mandy Ann and he have become one. This marriage scarce makes a ripple in their tranquil lives, which are still consecrated to the service of the House of Parker.
Timothy Tucker no longer keeps the iron doors of the prison guard-room. Soon after the sudden departure of Warden Flint, and the consequent subtraction of May-blossom from his uncongenial existence, he migrated to California. He has become, in sunny San Francisco, the pleased proprietor of a flourishing bird store. As duly set forth on his sign of blue and gold, "birds, cages, and seed, with bouquets and cut flowers of every description," may be obtained at this mercantile establishment. The ex-turnkey's favourite customer is a little maid, of ten sweet Californian summers. Her eyes are like the sapphire of a noon-day heaven. Her hair is the braided sunshine of her own golden clime.
No one (not even the charming little buyer herself) guesses why the bird and flower dealer invariably gives this fair creature twice her money's worth of violets, pinks, or roses, or why, last winter, he trained, to the utmost of their pretty possibilities, two yellow canaries as a Christmas "gift for his fair." But one day, as this little maiden, bearing in her hand a lavish bunch of Parma violets, turned smiling from his door, the listening parrots heard him thus pensively soliloquize: "Blue eyes, but jes' such hair, an' her step, to a T! An' a wonderful takin' little creetur you air, to be sure. But (sorrowfully shaking his grizzled head), you ain't her. No, no, no! Not by a long shot!"
[ESCAPED.]
