"I'm afraid he's failed," said Field, as he put his arm about his wife and led her to the sleigh.

The ride home was made mainly in silence. "Oh, the splendid stillness!"

the woman kept saying in her heart. "Oh, the splendid moonlight, the marvellous radiance!" Everywhere a heavenly serenity--not a footstep, not a bell, not a cry, not a cracking tree--nothing but vivid light, white snow dappled and lined with shadows, and trees etched against a starlit sky. Unutterable splendor of light and sheen and shadow. Wide wastes of snow so white the stumps stood like columns of charcoal. A night of Nature's making, when she is tired of noise and blare of color.

And in the midst of it stood the camp, with its reek of obscenity, foul odors, and tobacco smoke, to which a tortured soul must return.

IV

The following Sat.u.r.day afternoon, as Ridgeley and Field entered the office, Williams rose to meet them. He looked different--finer some way, Field imagined. At any rate, he was perfectly sober. He was freshly shaven, and though his clothes were rough, he appeared the man of education he really was. His manner was cold and distant.

"I'd like to be paid off, Mr. Ridgeley," he said. "I guess what's left of my pay will take me out of this."

"Where do you propose to go?" Ridgeley asked, with kindly interest.

Williams must have perceived his kindliness, for he answered: "I'm going home to my wife, to my violin. I am going to try living once more."

After he had gone out, Field said, "I wonder if he'll do it?"

"Oh, I shouldn't wonder. I've seen men brace up just as mysteriously as that and stay right by their resolutions. I thought he didn't look like a common lumber Jack when he came in."

"Ed, your playing did it!" Mrs. Field cried, when she heard of Williams'

resolution. "Oh, how happy his wife will be! She'll save him yet!"

"Well, I don't know; depends on what kind of a woman she is."

BEFORE THE LOW GREEN DOOR

Matilda Bent was dying; there was no doubt of that now, if there had been before. The gruff old physician--one of the many overworked and underpaid country doctors--shook his head and pushed by Joe Bent, her husband, as he pa.s.sed through the room which served as dining-room, sitting-room, and parlor. The poor fellow slouched back to his chair by the stove as if dazed, and before he could speak again the doctor was gone.

Mrs. Ridings was just coming up the walk as the doctor stepped out of the door.

"Oh, doctor, how is she?"

"She is a dying woman, madam."

"Oh, don't say that, doctor! What's the matter?"

"Cancer."

"Then the news was true--"

"I don't know anything of the news, Mrs. Ridings, but Mrs. Bent is dying from the effects of a cancer primarily, which she has had for years--since her last child, which died in infancy, you remember."

"But, doctor, she never told me--"

"Neither did she tell me. But no matter now. I have done all I can for her. If you can make death any easier for her, go and do it. You will find some opiate powders there with directions. Keep the pain down at all hazards. Don't let her suffer; that is useless. She is likely to last a day or two; but if any change comes to-night, send for me."

When the good matron entered the dowdy, suffocating little room where Matilda Bent lay gasping for breath, she was sick for a moment with sympathetic pain. There the dying woman lay, her world narrowed to four close walls, propped up on the pillows near the one little window. Her eyes seemed very large and bright, and the brow, made prominent by the sinking away of the cheeks, gave evidence that it was an uncommon woman who lay there quietly waiting the death angel.

She smiled, and lifted her eyebrows in a ghastly way.

"Oh, Marthy!" she breathed.

"Matildy, I didn't know you was so bad or I'd 'a' come before. Why didn't you let me know?" said Mrs. Ridings, kneeling by the bed and taking the ghostly hands of the sufferer in her own warm and soft palms.

She shuddered as she kissed the thin lips.

"I think you'll soon be around ag'in," she added, in the customary mockery of an attempt at cheer. The other woman started slightly, turned her head, and gazed on her old friend long and intently. The hollowness of her neighbor's words stung her.

"I hope not, Marthy--I'm ready to go. I want to go. I don't care to live."

The two women communed by looking for a long time in each other's eyes, as if to get at the very secretest desires and hopes of the heart. Tears fell from Martha's eyes upon the cold and nerveless hands of her friend--poor, faithful hands, hacked and knotted and worn by thirty years of ceaseless daily toil. They lay there motionless upon the coverlet, pathetic protest for all the world to see.

"Oh, Matildy, I wish I could do something for you! I want to help you so! I feel so bad that I didn't come before! Ain't they somethin'?"

"Yes, Marthy--jest set there--till I die--it won't be long," whispered the pale lips. The sufferer, as usual, was calmer than her visitor, and her eyes were thoughtful.

"I will! I will! But oh, must you go? Can't somethin' be done? Don't yo'

want the minister to be sent for?"

"No, I'm all ready. I ain't afraid to die. I ain't worth savin' now. Oh, Marthy, I never thought I'd come to this--did you? I never thought I'd die--so early in life--and die--unsatisfied."

She lifted her head a little as she gasped out these words with an intensity of utterance that thrilled her hearer--a powerful, penetrating earnestness that burned like fire.

"Are you satisfied?" pursued the steady lips. "My life's a failure, Marthy--I've known it all along--all but my children. Oh, Marthy, what'll become o' them? This is a hard world."

The amazed Martha could only chafe the hands, and note sorrowfully the frightful changes in the face of her friend. The weirdly calm, slow voice began to shake a little.

"I'm dyin', Marthy, without ever gittin' to the sunny place we girls--used to think--we'd git to, by-an'-by. I've been a-gittin' deeper 'n' deeper--in the shade--till it's most dark. They ain't been no rest--n'r hope f'r me, Marthy--none. I ain't--"

"There, there, Tillie, don't talk so--don't, dear! Try to think how bright it'll be over there--"

"I don't know nawthin' about over there; I'm talkin' about here. I ain't had no chance here, Marthy."

"He will heal all your care--"

"He can't wipe out my sufferin's here."

"Yes, He can, and He will. He can wipe away every tear and heal every wound."

"No--he--can't. G.o.d Himself can't wipe out what has been. Oh, Mattie, if I was only there!--in the past--if I was only young and purty ag'in! You know how tall I was! How we used to run--oh, Mattie, if I was only there! The world was all bright then--wasn't it? We didn't expect--to work all our days. Life looked like a meadow, full of daisies and pinks, and the nicest ones and the sweetest birds were just a little ways on--where the sun was--it didn't look--wasn't we happy?"

"Yes, yes, dear. But you mustn't talk so much." The good woman thought Matilda's mind was wandering. "Don't you want some med'cine? Is your fever risin'?"