any cost.

6

it punctually. It had not been hard to raise, but the manner of raising it cost her great anxiety. Still, it was done. Then the old life began again. She had little difficulty in letting her rooms, but she took no more boarders. She worked hard at plain sewing and tailoring, and sold the produce of her garden to any one who was willing to buy it. No one was sorry for her, or condoled with her. Her own relatives thought her foolish and imprudent, and to most of the village people she appeared a ridiculous old maid, who had wanted to rush into matrimony at

Her Uncle Sennacherib said biting things on the subject at the country store, and amused all the loungers who frequented it, thus giving a cue to the tone to be taken in regard to her. But it is doubtful if the village people would, in any case, have acted otherwise than as they did. The facts were laughable, and it is not very often that the general public looks beyond bare facts. When Sennacherib said, Wal, Hepsy wanted to have the hull thing complete. She wanted to show off kinder, that she was a wife an' a widder, an' so she brought the body along to do things up fair and square,' people laughed, and did not think of her possible suffering. She did suffer a good deal ; her heart was full of pain, and her hands emptied of their service of love, though, fortunately for her, she had still to toil for her daily bread. It was a bitter disappointment to her, too, not to be condoled with. 'I guess I feel about 's bad as anybody could feel, ef I aint be'n married but an hour !' she sobbed sometimes, when she was alone. On Sundays she invariably went to the cemetery with a wreath for the grave.

Her garden was unusually flourishing that year, and she sold, not only vegetables and fruit, but flowers and plants. She added to her work also. Formerly she had worked only at tailoring and plain sewing; now she took quilts to piece and made rag carpets. 'She'll be goin' out cleanin' next,' Mrs. Burrill said mournfully. But, with all her toil, Hepzibah could save very little, and her heart sank when she counted her little hoard and saw how slowly it increased.

One June morning, when she had been two years a widow, she went into her garden at three o'clock, and began to dig up plants with feverish energy. Although she was a very quick worker, the sun had risen before she had finished the task she had assigned to herself, had put away her gardening implements, and had placed her baskets outside of the gate. As she stood waiting, a

wagon came in sight. A man in his shirt sleeves was driving it. He was a farmer, who lived on the outskirts of the village.

'No hurry, no hurry, Mis' Mason,' he said affably, as he stopped his wagon, and Hepzibah began to put in her baskets with nervous haste.

'You're awful fore handed,' he continued. But it's jest ez well, I guess. When we git to the cemetery, I'll help you with them plants. It'l be a tug, gittin' on 'em up the hill.'

'I'll be real obliged,' said Hepzibah, as she took her seat beside him. 'You're sure you'll be back from Ware by eight o'clock, Mr. Wiggin?'

'Course I'm sure. Ef you leave them baskits behind the fence thar, I'll stop an' git 'em, an' leave 'em to our house 'fore I come for you. Mother, she's cleared out the room, and cleaned it nice, and I guess your things will fit in real well. Here we be; I'll come fur you by eight o'clock, sure.'

When Mr. Wiggin left her, Hepzibah went to work energetically in her lot. By half-past seven she had finished planting, had piled the empty baskets behind the fence, and was walking rapidly home.

Mrs. Bates, the woman who rented the upstairs rooms, was looking out for her, and came down immediately to help, but there was nothing to be done.

'Why! you must have worked all night!' she exclaimed, looking round the room.

'Yes, I did. It's real good of you, Mis' Bates, but there aint nothin' to be done. I've spoke to Mr. Lawson, an' he says you can stay on till Thursday, when your half-year's up. I'll bid you good-bye now; I guess I hear the wagon a-comin'.'

Mrs. Bates hesitated, but Hepzibah held the door so resolutely, that she was conquered, and went upstairs without telling her, as she had intended, how sorry she was for her trouble.

At eight o'clock Mr. Wiggin came, and, with his help, Hepzibah's household goods were packed into the wagon. Her face was so sharp, and hard and white, and she worked in such stony silence, that the kindly man did not venture to speak to her. As she turned the key in the door, he stepped aside for a

moment.

My Land!' he exclaimed, as they drove off. 'You've took the hull lot of your plants up to the cemetery !'

'If I did, I had a right to, I guess,' answered Hepzibah.

'Thar wa'nt no mortgage on them flowers.'

The mortgage was to be foreclosed on Tuesday: this was Monday. Hepzibah worked hard all day putting her room in order. Every now and then she started and looked round nervously. At five o'clock her Aunt Elmira and her Uncle Sennacherib stepped in, and sat down without waiting to be asked.

'Ah! dear, dear me! dear, dear me!' began Mrs. Burrill mournfully.

'You jest shet up, an' let me talk, Mis' Burrill,' interrupted her spouse. Wal, Hepsy Choate, or Hepsy Mason, it don't make much odds which 'tis now, I guess; you've supped sorrer, jest's I told ye. Ef you'd mortgaged that ere house of yourn to me, mebbe I shouldn't ha' foreclosed so soon. Mebbe I shouldn't, I dunno. But you won't never hear to no one.'

Hepzibah stood up rigid and stiff. 'I guess you'd ha' foreclosed sooner, Uncle Sennacherib. Thar aint no use in talkin' about it now.'

'Aint no use. Wal, I guess your Aunt Elmiry an' me's goin' to speak out what we think. You'd ought to come to us an' took advice, fore you went to all them fullish expenses down South'-even Sennacherib hesitated before the fire of Hepzibah's eye. Then he concluded-bravely-'an' bought that lot.'

'I guess advice wouldn't paid my mortgage. I guess I shouldn't got anythin' more but jest advice. It aint never helped folks much, 's fur as I know. I aint never come on my folks for nothin', an' I aint goin' to now. An' I aint goin' to talk no more about it.'

'H'm,' said her uncle rising, 'I guess thar aint nothin' more to talk about, 's fur 's I know. I guess your Aunt Elmiry an' me know that 's well 's you. Your Aunt Jane 's over to Ware today, but she'd say the same if she was here.'

'Come an' see us, Hepsy,' faltered her aunt, as she followed her triumphant husband from the room. 'Your uncle means well. We sha'nt lay up nothin' against you.'

'Well.'

That evening Hepzibah slowly climbed the hill to the cemetery. The flowers she had planted were already blooming and flourishing. Her husband's grave was surrounded by a broad border, composed of three rows of flowers, one of pansies, one of white gillyflowers, one of pinks. A few commoner plants were

disposed, but without much arrangement, on the grassy strip beside Mr. Mason's grave, where her last resting-place would be made one day. The lot was surrounded by a low wooden railing, painted white, and already well draped in ivy. Hepzibah watered the plants carefully, then she took a little feather duster from her basket and dusted the ivy. She did not miss a leaf or a twig. When all was done, she put away her duster, folded her arms, and looked long at the grave.

Sennacherib, returning from the farm with his cart and oxen, saw the gaunt figure on the hill.

'Ef wimmen aint the fools!' he muttered. 'Gee! Haw! G'lang! Massy to me! Thar's Hepsy gone an' lost all the house she hed, for the sake of bein' the minister's widder, an’ mighty glad to be married for an hour or so, to that peak'd, pinin' creetur, an' then luggin' the corpse up here when she might—yis, an' had ought to left it down in Georgy. Wal! . . . Gee! haw, Buck! Git along, ye darned creetur! Wal! thar's one comfort. She knows she's be'n a fool, now she's gone an' lost everythin'!'

While Sennacherib moralised, Hepzibah was whispering softly to herself. "Thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of thy days." It's fixed up nice his grave is, and my place right alongside. Wal, ef I hev lost everythin', I've got a real pretty lot, the best in the hull cemetery !'

M. L. T.

READING A DICTIONARY.

What do you read, my lord ?
Words, words, words!

THERE is much good reading in a dictionary. Even where you find but an alphabetic list of words, with their meaning set over against them, like the terms of an equation, it appeals to the contemplative spirit; it moves imagination; it is like running one's fingers over the keys of a noble instrument, striking a chord here and there, evoking a bar or two of slumbering music.

But when, seeking perhaps for the delicate shades of meaning of some word, you have deposited before you the great armful of a book that ventures upon etymologies, and gives illustrative quotations from authors ancient and modern, the interest grows tenfold ; you are lured pleasantly on from word to word, as a butterfly in a garden from flower to flower. What, then, shall we say of that monumental work, the New English Dictionary, catered for by legions of patient scholars—those myrmidons who have ranged, ant-like, for prey through the length and breadth of the language, and edited by their great Achilles, the indefatigable Murray ? Here, at last, we shall have a dictionary which will be to all other English dictionaries as the British Museum Library to a private collection -& compendious history of English diction; a great organ wherein are marshalled in goodly rows all the stops of the English language. Henceforward an author shall have no excuse for the careless and unscholarly use of his mother tongue. To read a dictionary such as this is indeed a liberal education.

Yet, for the butterfly reader whose aim is imaginative pleasure, who would range in a moment from A to Z, sipping each word daintily like a wine, to taste the delicacy of its bouquet and flavour, the field it opens before him is somewhat too vast. It may, no doubt, present 'a feast of nectar'd sweets, but it can scarcely be said that no crude surfeit reigns' therein. There are whole acres sown with those terms of modern science which appal the cursory reader, to whom his dictionary is, for the nonce, as some Blue or Yellow Fairy Book to a child, the gate of fairyland. For him the pages of old Johnson, so redolent of 'the Sage's' own burly personality, are more to his mind. Nevertheless, an occa