"I ain't Richard Alger; I am Barney Thayer," repeated Barney, in a loud, distinct voice. Sylvia's straining, questioning eyes did not leave his face. "You made a mistake," said Barney.

Sylvia turned her eyes away; she laid her head down on the arm of the hair-cloth sofa, and gasped faintly. Barney bent over her. "Now don't feel bad, Miss Crane," said he; "I sha'n't ever say a word about this to anybody."

Sylvia made no reply; she lay there half gasping for breath, and her face looked deathly to Barney.

"Miss Crane, are you sick?" he cried out in alarm. When she did not answer, he even laid hold of her shoulder, and shook her gently, and repeated the question. He did not know if she were faint or dying; he had never seen anybody faint or die. He wished instinctively that his mother were there; he thought for a second of running for her in spite of everything.

"I'll go and get some water for you, Miss Crane," he said, desperately, and seized the candle, and went with it, flaring and leaving a wake of smoke, out into the kitchen. He presently came back with a dipper of water, and held it dripping over Sylvia. "Hadn't you better drink a little?" he urged. But Sylvia suddenly motioned him away and sat up. "No, I don't want any water; I don't want anything after this," she said, in a quick, desperate tone. "I can never look anybody in the face again. I can never go to meetin' again."

"Don't you feel so about it, Miss Crane," Barney pleaded, his own voice uncertain and embarrassed. "The room ain't very light, and it's dark outside; maybe I do look like him a little. It ain't any wonder you made the mistake."

"It wa'n't that," returned Sylvia. "I dunno what the reason was; it don't make any difference. I can't never go to meetin' again."

"I sha'n't tell anybody," said Barney; "I sha'n't ever speak of it to any human being."

Sylvia turned on him with sudden fierceness. "You had better not,"

said she, "when you're doin' jest the same as Richard Alger yourself, an' you're makin' Charlotte sit an' watch an' suffer for nothin' at all, jest as he makes me. You had better not tell of it, Barney Thayer, when it was all due to your awful will that won't let you give in to anybody, in the first place, an' when you are so much like Richard Alger yourself that it's no wonder that anybody that knows him body and soul, as I do, took you for him. You had better not tell."

Again Barney seemed to see before his eyes that image of himself as Richard Alger, and he could no more change it than he could change his own image in the looking-glass. He said not another word, but carried the dipper of water back to the kitchen, returned with the candle, setting it gingerly on the white mantel-shelf between a vase of dried flowers and a mottle-backed shell, and went out of the house. Sylvia did not speak again; but he heard her moan as he closed the door, and it seemed to him that he heard her as he went down the road, although he knew that he could not.

It was quite dark now; all the light came from a pale wild sky. The moon was young, and feebly intermittent with the clouds.

Barney, hastening along, was all trembling and unnerved. He tried to persuade himself that the woman whom he had just left was ill, and laboring under some sudden aberration of mind; yet, in spite of himself, he realized a terrible rationality in it. Little as he had been among the village people of late, and little as he had heard of the village gossip, he knew the story of Richard Alger's desertion of Sylvia Crane. Was he not like Richard Alger in his own desertion of Charlotte Barnard? and had not Sylvia been as little at fault in taking one for the other as if they had been twin brothers?

Might there not be a closer likeness between characters than features--perhaps by a repetition of sins and deformities? and might not one now and then be able to see it?

Then the question came, was Charlotte like Sylvia? Was Charlotte even now sitting watching for him with that awful eagerness which comes from a hunger of the heart? He had seen one woman's wounded heart, and, like most men, was disposed to generalize, and think he had seen the wounded hearts of all women.

When he had reached the turn of the road, and had come out on the main one where his house was, and where Charlotte lived, he stood still, looking in her direction. He seemed to see her, a quarter of a mile away in the darkness, sitting in her window watching for him, as Sylvia had watched for Richard.

He set his mouth hard and crossed the road. He had just reached his own yard when there was the pale flutter of a skirt out of the darkness before him, and a little shadowy figure met him with a soft shock. The was a smothered nervous titter from the figure. Barney did not know who it was; he muttered an apology, and was about to pass into his yard when Rose Berry's voice arrested him. It was quite trembling and uncertain; all the laughter had gone out of it.

"Oh, it's you," said she; "you frightened me. I didn't know who it was."

Barney felt suddenly annoyed without knowing why. "Oh, is it you, Rose?" he returned, stiffly. "It's a pleasant evening;" then he turned.

"Barney!" Rose said, and her voice sounded as if she were weeping.

Barney stopped and waited.

"I want to know if--you're mad with me, Barney."

"No, of course I ain't; why?"

"I thought you'd acted kind of queer to me lately."

Barney stood still, frowning in the darkness. "I don't know what you mean," he said at length. "I don't know how I've treated you any different from any of the girls."

"You haven't been to see me, and--you've hardly spoken to me since the cherry party."

"I haven't been to see anybody," said Barney, shortly; and he turned away again, but Rose caught his arm. "Then you are sure you aren't mad with me?" she whispered.

"Of course I'm sure," Barney returned, impatiently.

"It would kill me if you were," Rose whispered. She pressed close to him; he could feel her softly panting against his side, her head sunk on his shoulder. "I've been worrying about it all these months," she said in his ear. Her soft curly hair brushed his cheek, but her little transient influence over him was all gone. He felt angry and ashamed.

"I haven't thought anything about it," he said, brusquely.

Rose sobbed faintly, but she did not move away from him. Suddenly that cruel repulsion which seizes mankind towards reptiles and unsought love seized Barney. He unclasped her clinging hands, and fairly pushed her away from him. "Good-night, Rose," he said, shortly, and turned, and went up the path to his own door with determined strides.

"Barney!" Rose called after him; but he paid no attention. She even ran up the path after him; but the door shut, and she turned back.

She was trembling from head to foot, there was a great rushing in her ears; but she heard a quick light step behind her when she got out on the road, and she hurried on before it with a vague dread.

She almost ran at length; but the footsteps gained on her. A dark skirt brushed her light-colored one, and Charlotte's voice, full of contempt and indignation, said in her ear: "Oh, I thought it was you."

"I--was coming up--to your--house," Rose faltered; she could hardly get her breath to speak.

"Why didn't you come, then?" demanded Charlotte. "What made you go to Barney Thayer's?"

"I didn't," said Rose, in feeble self-defence. "He was out in the road--I--just stopped to--speak to him--"

"You were coming out of his yard," Charlotte said, pitilessly. "You followed him in there--I saw you. Shame on you!"

"Oh, Charlotte, I haven't done anything out of the way," pleaded Rose, weakly.

"You have tried your best to get Barney Thayer all the time you have been pretending to be such a good friend to me. I don't know what you call out of the way."

"Charlotte, don't--I haven't."

"Yes, you have. I am going to tell you, once for all, what I think of you. You've been a false friend to me; and now when Barney don't notice you, you follow him up as no girl that thought anything of herself would. And you don't even care anything for him; you haven't even that for an excuse."

"You don't know but what I do!" Rose cried out, desperately.

"Yes, I do know. If anybody else came along, you'd care for him just the same."

"I shouldn't--Charlotte, I should never have thought of Barney if he--hadn't left you, you know I shouldn't."

"That's no excuse," said Charlotte, sternly.

"You said yourself he would never come back to you," said Rose.

"Would you have liked me to have done so by you, if you had been in my place?"

Rose twitched herself about. "You can't expect him never to marry anybody because he isn't going to marry you," she said, defiantly.

"I don't--I am not quite so selfish as that. But he won't ever marry anybody he don't like because she follows him up, and I don't see how that alters what you've done."

Rose began to walk away. Charlotte stood still, but she raised her voice. "I am not very happy," said she, "and I sha'n't be happy my whole life, but I wouldn't change places with you. You've lowered yourself, and that's worse than any unhappiness."

Rose fled away in the darkness without another word, and Charlotte crossed the road to go to her Aunt Sylvia's.