Transcriber’s Note:

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.

“So they marched away to the tune of ‘The Girl I Left Behind Me’”

HEIMWEH
THE SIREN ✳ ✳ ✳ THE
LOADED GUN ✳ ✳ LIEBEREICH.
✳ “IUPITER
TONANS” ✳ ✳ ✳ ✳ “SIS”.
THOR’S EMERALD ✳ ✳
GUILE ✳ ✳ ✳ ✳ ✳ ✳ ✳ ✳ ✳

By

JOHN LUTHER LONG

Author of “Madame Butterfly” “Naughty Nan” “Miss Cherry Blossom” “The Fox Woman” Etc.

ILLUSTRATED

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK      MCMV

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.

Copyright, 1905,

By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published August, 1905.

Norwood Press

J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

WHETHER YOU BE SICK WITH

LONGING FOR THESE SQUALID

HOMES ON EARTH WHERE LOVE

IS NEVER SURE—OR FOR THOSE

SPLENDID MANSIONS IN OUR

FATHER’S HOUSE WHERE IT

WAITS ALWAYS—THESE ARE FOR

YOU ❈ ❈ ❈ ❈ ❈ ❈ ❈ ❈ ❈ ❈ ❈

THE CONTENTS

HEIMWEH

THE SIREN

THE LOADED GUN

LIEBEREICH

“IUPITER TONANS”

“SIS”

THOR’S EMERALD

GUILE

ILLUSTRATIONS

HEIMWEH[^[1]]

I  LIFE HAS NO FUTURE AT TWENTY-ONE

The neighbors called them “Betsy and John”—her name first, always. Perhaps because she was short and aggressive, he tall and inclined to “lazy.” Only inclined to lazy, understand. For, no one had ever caught him at it. Indeed, with a certain rustic intuition and much experience of his kind, they knew it was “in him”—that he had been “born to it”—and they liked him better for his constant vanquishment of the infirmity. They would have liked him anyhow—he was a very likable fellow. But Betsy they loved. Once in a while some zealous friend of John would contend that he was the very incarnation of industry. John, when he came to know of that sort of thing, always discouraged it—and did it firmly. He would point to the nimble fingers of his wife—a thing he was always glad to do—and say, sighing:

“It is that—she—it—makes me ashamed—to lazy.”

She was twenty, he barely twenty-one, when they were married. She was a basket-maker, he a laborer. They lived in a little town on “the Border.” Differing with the utmost good nature in everything but one—in that they were exactly alike. They had no future—absolutely none! They refused to have one. Strong with the vigor of youth—happy with the unreason of happiness—content with what came—wishing for nothing they had not—ambitious for nothing but a home—they lived but from day to day again—sleeping soundly, working gayly, thinking not. Why should they be vexed about a future—at twenty—twenty-one?

Once in a while they went hungry—and laughed about it. But, usually, there was sufficient demand for her dainty wares; and he was digging trenches in the streets of the adjoining town for the pipes of the new gas company. He made as much as forty cents a day when he worked, while she averaged nearly twice as much. You can see that there was no reason why they should go hungry very often. And, indeed, once, when he felt particularly opulent, John bought Betsy a gold-plated brooch for her birthday. It was in 1835.

But did I say that there was one thing upon which they agreed—in that rejected future? Yes. A home—they wanted a home—a roof over their heads, they called it—that was all. But, even this was forgotten as the happy years went by.

“Home is wherever we are!” laughed Betsy.

Then came the children, and John began to talk and act and think like a very proper father—even though Betsy laughed at him.

“Betsy,” said John, once upon a time, pulling down his face, “we’d ought to begin thinking of the—” Betsy began to smile, but John went on, like a husband and father doing his duty—“er—think of the—er—roof!”

He almost shouted the last word—it seemed so ridiculous when he came to it.

“At twenty-two?” said Betsy.

John was rocking the cradle.

“But when a man gits to be a father—”

“Papa!” laughed Betsy at him, and John blushed and stopped.

But that wasn’t Betsy’s way—to chill John with an argument so irrefutable—and at such a distance! She flung her basket away, snatched the baby from the cradle, and, next, John had his whole family in his lap. His wife was laughing, the baby was blinking, and John was very happy.

“Roof!”—she was talking to the baby “do you know what that is? I don’t. You haven’t any yet—neither have I. I’ve forgotten it. We are going to have one, of course—after a while—if your papa wants one—now—if he can’t wait—a minute—”

John put his hand on her mouth. She bit it and he kissed her. Then they were tangled in an embrace for a moment—the baby getting the worst of it.

“Look here,” said Betsy, then, “don’t you think you’ve got enough with us? Roof!”

“Yes,” confessed John, shamefacedly, “I don’t want you to bother no more about it.”

“I won’t,” said Betsy.

“We’ll have it—some day!” declared John, in his lazy way, “without any bothering!”

II
HAPPINESS IS BETTER THAN CHURCH

Four more were born—boys all—goodly and ruddy—like their little mother. But, one and all, they surprised and delighted her by growing tall like their father.

“You see, John,” said Betsy, “they are going to be big like you, and good like me.”

Well, one by one, they went out into the world—but never very far from the romping comrade-mother. Away from her the world was neither so gay nor so tender. They never found another woman so altogether lovely.

There was no work for any of them on Sunday, so they would all come home. Indeed, in the country of the Germans of Pennsylvania, no one ever worked on Sunday in that day and generation. And such Sundays as they were! No going to church, I fear—a heinous omission perhaps. But how could they? There was gentle revelry in the little house from the first moment—not a soul of them would have missed that for any church on earth—and no church on earth would have done them so much good—then a feast. Sometimes—when all had work and wages were good—a stewed turkey! And, after it all, kisses and hugs and good-nights—till one thought it would never end.

And, after they were gone, Betsy would cry—and John would take her in his lap and say never a word—leaving her to fall asleep there.

But once, instead of sleeping, she sat up and took John by the throat.

“John! I’m glad they’re not girls—any of them.” For this used to be a complaint of Betsy’s—that none of them were girls.

“Yes,” said John, meekly.

She gripped his throat a little tighter and shook him.

“They’d git married if they were. Girls always do. But boys often have better sense. Ours have, anyhow.”

“We got married,” ventured John.

“Well—of course!” said Betsy, choking him.

But the thing was in her mind all the week. There seemed danger. The next Sunday, at the table, she said:

“Look here! Why don’t some of yous git—git—married?”

Her hand shook as she dealt out the gravy and waited for their answer.

They looked from one to the other. No one knew.

“Funny,” laughed Ben, “but I never thought of it.”

“Nor I,” said Bart.

“Hanged if I know,” piped Fred. “Don’t see no girls like you—”

“Can I marry you, mammy?” laughed Tom, putting his arm around her as she came over to him. It was Tom she was most afraid of. For he was the youngest—and to her he was little short of a god. He had rebellious yellow hair and blue eyes—and little patches of whiskers were beginning to grow on his face.

“Yes,” said his mother, sweeping his girlish lips with a kiss.

“Me, too,” said “old” Ben—and he got it.

And so on all around while John smiled in ecstasy.

“Boys,” said the little mother, “there ain’t no girl I ever saw that’s fit for any of yous—ain’t so, John?”

John, of course, said yes.

Tom got up, and, after turning her back to the rest wiped the tears from his mother’s eyes.

“Boys,” announced the mother, “next Sunday there will be a turkey—and oyster stuffing!”

As she said it she went over and let her arms glide gently around the neck of Will, who had not spoken on the subject of marriage. He caught her hands and drew her arms closer while he smiled up at her—a little sadly. She kissed him on the great forehead, and he understood. There had been a brief love affair for him, but it was over. Simply a successful rival. He never spoke of it—nor did any one else. But at least two—understood.

III
OPEN THE DOOR TO JOY—ALWAYS

But Betsy had caught John surreptitiously saving—to buy the roof, he explained!

“We—we’re gitting old, you know,” he excused.

“Old!—”

Betsy caught up her dainty skirts—very high—and pirouetted before him.

“Ein’, tswei, drei’, un’ fier. Dass macht sivve’—”

She stopped a moment.

“John! Don’t you remember Eisenkrantz’s husking—where I first saw you? Oh, John, what a gawk you were! And yit—and yit—John, do you remember how you danced that night? Come!”

She pulled him about with her in a very clumsy attempt at waltzing. Then she pushed him off.

“Oh, you are gitting old. But me—”

A few more mad whirls and she flung herself into his arms.

“Say, John, that’s better than any roof.”

“Er—what?” asked John, whose wits were often left behind by his wife’s.

She came close and shouted in his ear:

“Joy!”

“Oh!” said John, patting her pretty hair.

She slipped her arm about him. And then her voice was very soft and loving.

“And our five boys! Such boys! Where is there another such five! If we should get old—if we should need a roof—why, John—there are our five handsome boys!”

She cried a little, and John asked her for the thousandth time why she did it.

“Why does a woman cry? For joy and sorrow—life and death—good and evil!”

“Oh!” said John, once more.

“John!” His wife woke up and gripped his throat again. “Ben needs a new horse,”—Ben was a huckster,—“Tom wants a drill,”—Tom was a farmer,—“and Fred must have a new Sunday suit. How much money have you saved, you rascal?”

John told her. And Ben got his horse, Tom got his drill, and Fred got his Sunday suit—and John saved no more.

But it was so—they were brave and loving fellows—all. And every Sunday—when they were gone—it was a game of hide-and-seek for Betsy and John—to find the money and presents they had left. Of course, they were all at places where she might easily discover them. But she always went shy of the most likely places at first—thus prolonging the search—sometimes until she was quite tired. In the pocket of her second-best dress (she always wore her best on Sunday)—in the frame of her warped toilet mirror—in the drawers of her scratched dressing bureau—in the loaves of her new bread!

Finally, when the boys all became prosperous, they made her stop weaving baskets, and him stop laboring in the streets; all of them dressed well, and they became quite a company of ladies and gentlemen. Neither John nor Betsy was precisely happy afterward. Sunday was longer in coming. But they sighed for their idleness, laughed for their happiness—and did as the boys told them to do: sat still and looked pretty.

But there is such a thing as getting used even to idleness, and joy comes whether we work or not—if we are wise enough to let it come. And no one in that little cheap house ever shut the door on joy. So Betsy, after a while, learned to wear her Sunday clothes all the week, and John to shave every morning. And the door was kept open always to joy.

IV
WAR IS GLORIOUS AT THE BEGINNING BUT NOT AT THE END

Then, one day, in ’61, they formed in the town a “soldier company” to go to the “front.” No one knew much about it—nor where the front was. No one doubted that it was to be a great frolic—no one but Betsy. And there, in the front rank, all together, as brothers should be, stood Betsy’s five boys. And, as if this were not enough, there was John, too! With yellow chevrons on his sleeves—and a sword at his side—brave as a lion and proud as a major-general. Company corporal! Alas! perhaps the privates, too, might have carried swords had there been enough to go around.

John stood it as long as he could. For more than a week he swore that he would stay at home and take care of Betsy. He was too old to frolic. But he went to the drill ground every day. Once or twice he drilled with them when some one was absent. He finally developed such a genius for military affairs that the captain went to Betsy and voiced John’s yearnings—it was for his country that he wanted to fight—it was his duty to fight—it was a privilege to fight—it was a wife’s duty to let him fight.

She let John go, too. For, after all, it was only a great frolic—they told her!

So they marched away to the tune of “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” and the little mother went home to wait. It was very lonely from the first hour, and she willingly took up her work again. They scolded her when she wept, so she tried not to weep. They told her she ought not only to be willing to let them go, but be glad. She tried to think that she was glad. But in her heart she rebelled dismally. “We are coming, Father Abraham!” had been the cry—and her boys, too, had said, with a new light in their faces, which she, a woman, did not, could not, would not, understand, that they were going to fight for their country! Go and fight for their country when they might work for her—when they might have those Sunday feasts—when she could darn their stockings—mend their clothes—have her arms about them—theirs about her—give them warm beds—plenty of food—while the country would give them poor food—poor clothes—the ground to sleep on—and no Sundays at home! She could not understand it. No woman who is a mother can. She thought of possible wounds on their splendid bodies—of them lying stark in the night upon some shot-torn battle-field—of burial unknown in some vast trench—of fever—and terrors—of hospitals—and even of the coming home—no more her boys—no more! Soldiers, then, soldiers with rough beards and rough voices. She never once thought of them coming home dead.

Alas! her country was bounded by the Rhine. This was their country!

But still, as they went, she prayed blindly:

“God bless you and keep you, my boys, and send you back to me as you go—good boys. Father Abraham, they are my all—everything on earth I love. Send them back as you receive them.”

V
WE GO OUT TO FIGHT UNDER THE FLAG; WE RETURN—UNDER IT

It seemed cruel—it was cruel—that her prayer should be so utterly denied her—that they should all be killed. But so it fell out.

One by one they came home to her and were laid away in the churchyard of Saint Michael’s, in their pine coffins and faded uniforms, with the honors of war. It was heart-breaking to have to follow them, one by one, to their graves—to the same Dead March in Saul—to the same muffled drums—to the cadenced tramp of soldiers—with the Stars and Stripes for shroud—with all the solemn pomp of war.

She thought only of the beautiful thing in the coffin to which she had given life. And each time she prayed dizzily—iterating it—so that God might perhaps the better hear:

“Our Father, who art in heaven—keep the rest—keep the rest—keep John.”

The last of them died at Gettysburg—in the first day’s fight.

It was only a few miles away, and on the third of July he came home. On the fourth, while cannons were bursting for joy, she was following once more the soldiers to the tune of the Dead March. It was the last. She had grown afraid to pray. But once more, at the open grave, she raised her hands:

“Our Father, who art in heaven—keep John,” she begged, in whispers.

When she got home there was a letter for her. It spoke of the devotion of her dead boys. It was almost as if the writer knew them—as she did. This letter was signed “A. Lincoln,” and read:

“Dear Madam:

“I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Pennsylvania that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.”

“But they are dead!” cried Betsy to the letter. She cared nothing for the “cause” or for “freedom.” They were dead.

VI
GROWING OLD IS ONLY AN IDEA—UNTIL WE KNOW

And then, when the war was quite over, that last pitiful prayer was answered, and John came marching home—from the grand review—with a captain’s straps on his shoulders—a minié ball in his thigh—and a perfectly proper sword—the gift of the United States of America! It is quite certain that John was very proud of the sword—and perhaps even of his limp.

And Betsy was as proud as he—quite. But not of the sword and limp. These, in secret, she hated as much as she could hate. Perhaps I had better say that she was only glad. You may be sure that his glory did not keep her off.

“I don’t care if you were in twenty-one battles. You are only my dear old John.”

“Only your old John,” said the soldier.

“Dear, I said! And—and—you’ve got to make up for all the rest—one multiplied by five, you know—that dear.”

She suddenly sobbed.

“Eh?” said John. Then—“Oh!”

He sobbed, too.

“And, as for that limp—I will cure that, or my name is not Betsy.”

And more sobs.

But for all her trying, he limped the more.

So that long afterward she said:

“John—I haven’t done it, and my name’s still Betsy.”

But there was no more sobbing about it.

“It’s better,” prevaricated John.

“No,” said Betsy, “it ain’t. Something is gone. I can’t do things any more.”

John thought a moment.

“Like when you reach out in the dark for something you know is there and it ain’t and you shiver,” he said then. “I used to do that at night on the ground—reach out for—you!”

“John!” cried Betsy, in her old manner, “I never heard you say so much at one time before—nor so nice. What’s the matter?”

“You don’t say so much,” said John. “I’m evening up now.”

“Yes—yes—yes—dear John!” said Betsy, with a tear, she did not know for what—quite. “I must talk more.”

“We’ve lost something and we’ve gained something—at another place,” John went on. “I don’t know what it is—but it’s something.”

“John, I know, and I’ll tell you.”

She came and knelt at his side and tried to reach his neck with her short arms.

“We’re falling in love again!”

John suddenly held her off and stared.

“By jiminy!”

“Yes. It was so long to wait—and there is nobody but you and me now—and we have got to begin all over again. Don’t you see?” And the tears fell again.

“No! I was always in love with you. No!”

And he was quite stubborn about it.

“Yes!” she cried.

“Yes,” John agreed.

“No!” she laughed.

“No,” laughed John.

After a moment she released herself, and, taking John by the throat in the old fashion, said:

“And, John, we will begin all over again. We’re not old! So there!”

She spread her skirts and whirled around on her toes.

“Not a day older than in ’35,” said John, with glistening eyes.

She flew upon him and took him again by the throat.

“John!” she cried, “that’s a little too much!”

But John was not convinced—though she lifted her yellow hair and showed him where the gray was creeping in.

“But it’s mighty sweet,” she conceded.

They did exactly as they had planned—began all over again. John was as tender with her as he had been after that night of the husking. And Betsy was as devoted to John as she had been in that halcyon time.

“Growing old is just an idea,” said the happy John, one day.

“Oh, of course,” agreed Betsy, busily plaiting withes, “until you know!”

“Why, everything is just as it was thirty years ago—ain’t it, Betsy?”

“John,” laughed Betsy, trying to plunge upon him from her work, “did it ever occur to you that your love-making nowadays consists largely of recalling those other love-makings—in ’35, you know?”

John thought a moment.

“Why, so it is, Betsy—so it is.”

“All imagination.”

“That’s just as good—just as good,” said John, stubbornly. “It’s always new.”

“Just as good,” laughed his wife, “when you don’t know no better—and we don’t, John, do we?”

“No, thank God,” said John, “and I don’t want to.”

“So don’t I,” said his wife, laughing.

“Betsy,” asked John, “do you ever think of that roof any more?”

“Yes,” answered Betsy, trying to be serious, “and we’ll have it some of these days—never fear.”

VII
MAKING BELIEVE BRINGS THINGS

For the next twenty years Betsy made baskets and John went in and out with his pick and shovel. But they earned less and less. And then the owner of their house died and left them to the tender mercy of his heirs. These promptly began to inquire about the arrears of rent.

“I don’t know how much we are back, but I guess it’s a good deal,” smiled Betsy.

John was troubled. “If we’d only kep’ on saving, we might own the house by now, and—”

Betsy put her hand on his mouth—and some of the fingers into it.

“We made better use of it, John, ten thousand times better use of it! John—we bought happiness with it! And they are all dead, now, back there at Saint Michael’s. And there is not a thing to regret—not one. Oh, thank God—thank God! If we had saved that money, there would be something to regret. We would have to remember that one was denied this—the other—that. But we’ll have the roof yet.”

John sniffled and let his arm go gently around her.

“Betsy—forgive me. I didn’t mean—”

“Why, John, dear,” said Betsy, smiling again, “in a little while we will not need a house. John! ‘In my Father’s house are many mansions’!”

“Yes,” answered John, with a caress, awed by the light in his wife’s pretty face. “Yes—yes.”

“Who would we leave it to when we die?”

“Just so!” cried John.

“And in the mansions our boys will be! And it will be Sunday always.”

When fall came the new owners turned them out—and Betsy’s dainty house-things were given to the new tenant. They went to live in the abandoned out-kitchen of a neighbor, and Betsy made John believe that she had never been quite so happy. And, from making believe, it after a while came to be true. She cried once or twice when John was away—the little place was so bare and ugly. There did not seem any way to make a home of it. But Betsy set to work to try—with only her small hands—and occasionally John’s big ones—and almost no money—and surprised herself. When it was done, she found that she had, somehow, sewn and woven her own happiness into the curtains and carpets and furniture.

It took years to do it. Yet she was happy every hour of the time.

Betsy determined, one day, to celebrate the completion of her work. So when John came home he was met by a glare of light from several borrowed lamps, the smell of flowers gathered by Betsy herself in the fields, and a “dinner!”—as Betsy proudly announced—instead of their usual supper.

John took off his old hat in the midst of it and gazed speechlessly. Then he went back—outside—and wiped again the soles of his boots on the door-mat Betsy had woven. Betsy laughed like a girl and pulled him inside.

“Come! You have got to dance!”

Well—John never could dance. But she managed to make him whirl with her dizzily through the two tiny rooms she had made.

“John! It’s beginning all over again! Going to housekeeping! I’m the little bride. You can be the groom—if you like?”

“Yes,” mused John, very happily, “beginning all over again—going to housekeeping—again. But something—is not—”

The cradle was there—they had always kept it—and John looked at that and laughed guiltily.

“Not that, John—not that, John,” cried Betsy, plunging into his arms with sobs. “Not that—not that—talk about the roof—if you like—anything—but—not—that!”

VIII
THE END OF LIFE IS AS ITS BEGINNING—SIMPLE

Afterward life was again to them much the same. Only they learned to go more and more to the churchyard on Sundays with homely garden flowers in their hands. But, again, they were very happy. John still maintained that they were renewing their youth. Betsy retorted that it was second childhood. For there was now a quaver in John’s voice which Betsy heard but never spoke of, and a tremor in Betsy’s hands which John saw and never mentioned.

The next winter Betsy slipped on the ice and fell. To her surprise she could not get up again. John carried her in and went for the doctor. She had broken her thigh.

She smiled up at the physician very placidly when he shook his head.

“Doctor, you must—must patch me up. John needs me.”

“John!” The doctor turned upon him where he slunk into a corner. John hung his head. Betsy laughed almost joyously.

It was she who answered the doctor’s look.

“He couldn’t git along without me.”

She smiled at John, and John smiled back. The doctor caught them at this.

“In the army?” he asked John.

“Yes,” came from the corner.

“Private?”

“Captain.”

“Oh!—”

He remembered him then. He turned and looked at him.

“You fought!”

John was silent. But Betsy’s face glowed. It was she who answered for him. All about him and the five. It made John blush.

“Hum—wounded?”

“Yes.”

“Often?”

“Three times.”

“Where?”

“Leg—thigh—arm.”

“That what makes you limp?”

“Guess so.”

“Let me look.”

John uncovered.

“Hum—why didn’t you see me long ago?”

“Dunno,” said John.

“Army surgeon. No charge to you.”

John said nothing.

“Ever apply for a pension?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Volunteered.”

“Hell of a reason—hum!” ended the surgeon, turning his back to him and his face to the patient on the bed.

Presently he pulled on his gloves and started for the door. He stopped and looked at John once more.

“Bullet in leg myself. Going to patch you both up. Army surgeon. Entitled to my services. Didn’t apply for pension? You and I are the only two who didn’t. By.”

The doctor did patch them up. But for Betsy there was to be no more work—nor any dancing. The chubby hands could only lie quietly within each other and wither. The agile feet could not lift themselves from the floor unless John helped them.

John put away his pick and shovel.

“I’ll have to learn to make baskets,” said he.

Betsy raised her head from the pillow on her chair to laugh.

“Don’t you think I kin?”

She looked at his hands and laughed again.

“But we’ll have to try—if you’re willing. We got to do something.”

“Oh, I’m willing,” said John, hopefully.

“John!”

Two tears started down her face. John dried them and stroked the soft, withered hands.

“Dear old John—to be my ’prentice!”

IX
GOOD BASKETS MUST KEEP THEIR BOTTOMS

It was true that his wits were dull and his hands clumsy, but there was such pleasure in the learning that John did it very rapidly. And whatever had gone before, and whatever was to come after, they were certain that no part of their lives had been happier than this of John’s apprenticeship at eighty to the trade of basket-making.

But his baskets were certainly clumsy as such hands were likely to make them, and had, besides, a way of losing their handles and bottoms at critical moments, which was, at least, unfortunate.

John discovered, after a while, that every purchase was simply so much charity. And, thus far, they had lived proudly—with the wage-earner’s terror of dependence. One day one of his customers told him, brutally, about the insecurity of the baskets—and John decided at once that he must do something else.

“No, John,” said Betsy, “make baskets. But make them for play—not for use. For the school children. Their baskets do not need strong bottoms.”

John wanted to shout.

“I kin—I kin do that! They like me. The children like me.”

So John entered another phase of his strange life. And none that had preceded it had been more beautiful. The house was always full of children. And he could never be seen on the streets of the town without two or more of them clinging to his hands and the skirts of his old uniform coat. If he happened to meet them coming from school, they would flock after him to his door—one or two—very carefully chosen—to sit on either side of the little invalid’s chair and hear stories the most wonderful outside of story-books. But for the sake of old times Betsy would often have them all in—so that the little rooms were jammed with them—and then they might romp about her as they pleased till John saw that she was tired. Then he would put them all out.

These were the best friends they ever had—the children. But as customers for his wares they were soon supplied and John was idle again. And it was winter—and there was nothing to do and John had never asked for charity and, he had often said, never would.

So there came a day when there was nothing in the house for the white little wife to eat. As for John, he could not have told exactly when he had broken his fast. They said nothing about it to each other—both understood. Betsy even tried to lighten John’s grimness by a pitiful little joke. She thought it would show John how brave she was.

“A drink, John, please. There is plenty of water, is there not?”

“Plenty of water—yes, plenty of water!” said John, in a way that made Betsy tremble. For the first time John was terrible.

She sent him out that afternoon to hunt for work. He came back unsuccessful and with a certain wildness in his eyes.

But there was a supper for them. A stew of meat steamed on the table. John brought it and fed Betsy—wondering without question.

“You, too, John, dearest; you, too.”

Well—John was very hungry and he began to eat. Presently he noticed that Betsy was crying softly. It was a long time before she succumbed to his coaxing. But then she confessed:

“She said I ought to go to the poor-house.”

“Who?” shouted John, rising angrily.

“Mrs. Morrell, who brought the meat.”

John flung the bowl and its contents out of the window. Betsy was awed. She had never seen him like that.

“John!” she coaxed softly.

“That’s what Miller told me. God! Said I wasn’t worth nothing to work no more. I’ll show ’em—I’ll show ’em!”

But he didn’t show them—he could not. Age had come at last, and at last he knew this. He earned nothing—and their hunger went on.

And, one evening, Betsy timidly resumed the hated subject.

“I’ve been thinking about it, John, dear, and she meant it very kind. It is warm there, John, and there is plenty of food. John—”

“My God, Betsy, do you want to go—live on charity—do you at last want to leave me—and live on charity—do you want to separate after sixty years—and live on charity?—Oh, my God!”