When Rebecca revived under a sprinkle of water, out in the vestibule, she said impatiently to the other women bending their grave, concerned faces over her, "She's been miserable for some time. I ain't surprised at this at all myself."

Deborah watched over Rebecca with a fierce, pecking tenderness like a bird. She brewed great bowls of domestic medicines from nuts and herbs, and made her drink whether she would or not. She sent her to bed early, and debarred her from the night air. She never had a suspicion of the figure slipping softly as a shadow across the north parlor and out the front door night after night.

She never exchanged a word with Rebecca about William Berry. She tried to persuade herself that Rebecca no longer thought much about him; she drove from her mind the fear lest Rebecca's illness might be due to grief at parting from him. She looked at Thomas Payne with a speculative eye; she thought that he would make a good husband for Rebecca; she dreamed of him, and built bridal castles for him and her daughter, as she knitted those yards of lace at night, when Rebecca had gone to bed in her little room off the north parlor. When Thomas Payne went west a month after Charlotte Barnard had refused him, she transferred her dreams to some fine stranger who should come to the village and at once be smitten with Rebecca. She never thought it possible that Rebecca could be persisting in her engagement to William Berry against her express command. Her own obstinacy was incredible to her in her daughter; she had not the slightest suspicion of it, and Rebecca had less to guard against.

As the fall advanced Rebecca showed less and less inclination to go in the village society. Her mother fairly drove her out at times.

Once Rebecca, utterly overcome, sank down in a chair and wept when her mother urged her to go to a husking-party in the neighborhood.

"You've got to spunk up an' go, if you don't feel like it," said her mother. "You'll feel better for it afterwards. There ain't no use in givin' up so. I'm goin' to get you a new crimson woollen dress, an'

I'm goin' to have you go out more'n you've done lately."

"I--don't want a new dress," returned Rebecca, with wild sobs.

"Well, I'm goin' to get you one to-morrow," said her mother. "Now go an' wash your face an' do up your hair, an' get ready. You can wear your brown dress, with the cherry ribbon in your hair, to-night."

"I don't--feel fit to, mother," moaned Rebecca, piteously.

But Deborah would not listen to her. She made her get ready for the husking-party, and looked at her with pride when she stood all dressed to go, in the kitchen.

"You look better than you've done for some time," said she, "an' that brown dress don't look bad, either, if you have had it three winters.

I'm goin' to get you a nice new crimson woollen this winter. I've had my mind made up to for some time."

After Rebecca had gone and Ephraim had said his catechism and gone to bed, Deborah sat and knitted, and planned to get the crimson dress for Rebecca the next day.

She looked over at Caleb, who sat dozing by the fire. "I'll go to-morrow, if he ain't got to spend all that last interest-money for the parish taxes an' cuttin' that wood," said she. "I dunno how much that wood-cuttin' come to, an' he won't know to-night if I wake him up. I can't get it through his head. But I'll buy it to-morrow if there's money enough left."

But Deborah was forced to wait a few weeks, since it took all the interest-money for the parish taxes and to pay for the wood-cutting.

She had to wait until Caleb had sold some of the wood, and that took some time, since seller and purchasers were slow-motioned.

At last, one afternoon, she drove herself over to Bolton in the chaise to buy the dress. She went to Bolton, because she would not go herself to Silas Berry's store and trade with William. She could send Caleb there for household goods, but this dress she would trust no one but herself to purchase.

She had planned that Rebecca should go with her, but the girl looked so utterly wan and despairing that day that she forbore to insist upon it. Caleb would have accompanied her, but she would not let him.

"I never did think much of men-folks standin' round in stores gawpin'

while women-folks was tradin'," said she. She would not allow Ephraim to go, although he pleaded hard. It was quite a cold day, and she was afraid of the sharp air for his laboring breath.

A little after noon she set forth, all alone in the chaise, slapping the reins energetically over the white horse's back, a thick green veil tied over her bonnet under her chin, and the thin, sharp wedge of face visible between the folds crimsoning in the frosty wind.

While she was gone Rebecca sat beside the window and sewed, Caleb shelled corn in the chimney-corner, and Ephraim made a pretence of helping him. "You set down an' help your father shell corn while I am gone," his mother had sternly ordered.

Occasionally Ephraim addressed whining remonstrances to his father, and begged to be allowed to go out-of-doors, and Caleb would quiet him with one effectual rejoinder: "You know she won't like it if you do, sonny. You know what she said."

Caleb, as he shelled the corn with the pottering patience of old age and constitutional slowness, glanced now and then at his daughter in the window. He thought she looked very badly, and he had all the time lately the bewildered feeling of a child who sees in a familiar face the marks of emotions unknown to it.

"Don't you feel as well as common to-day, Rebecca?" he asked once, and cleared his throat.

"I don't feel sick, as I know of, any day," replied Rebecca, shortly, and her face reddened.

As she sewed she looked out now and then at the wild December day, the trees reeling in the wind, and the sky driving with the leaden clouds. It was too cold and too windy to snow all the afternoon, but towards night it moderated, and the wind died down. When Mrs. Thayer came home it was snowing quite hard, and her green veil was white when she entered the kitchen. She took it off and shook it, sputtering moisture in the fireplace.

"There's goin' to be a hard storm; it's lucky I went to-day," said she. "I kept the dress under the buffalo-robe, an' that ain't hurt any."

Deborah waxed quite angry, when she proudly shook out the soft gleaming crimson lengths of thibet, because Rebecca showed so little interest in it. "You don't deserve to have a new dress; you act like a stick of wood," she said.

Rebecca made no reply. Presently, when she had gone out of the room for something, Caleb said, anxiously, "I guess she don't feel quite so well as common to-night."

"I'm gettin' most out of patience; I dunno what ails her. I'm goin'

to have the doctor if this keeps on," returned Deborah.

Ephraim, sucking a stick of candy brought to him from Bolton, cast a strange glance at his mother--a glance compounded of shrewdness and terror; but she did not see it.

It snowed hard all night; in the morning the snow was quite deep, and there was no appearance of clearing. As soon as the breakfast dishes were put away, Deborah got out the crimson thibet. She had learned the tailoring and dressmaking trade in her youth, and she always cut and fitted the garments for the family.

She worked assiduously; by the middle of the forenoon the dress was ready to be tried on. Ephraim and his father were out in the barn, she and Rebecca were alone in the house.

She made Rebecca stand up in the middle of the kitchen floor, and she began fitting the crimson gown to her. Rebecca stood drooping heavily, her eyes cast down. Suddenly her mother gave a great start, pushed the girl violently from her, and stood aloof. She did not speak for a few minutes; the clock ticked in the dreadful silence.

Rebecca cast one glance at her mother, whose eyes seemed to light the innermost recesses of her being to her own vision; then she would have looked away, but her mother's voice arrested her.

"Look at me," said Deborah. And Rebecca looked; it was like uncovering a disfigurement or a sore.

"What--ails you?" said her mother, in a terrible voice.

Then Rebecca turned her head; her mother's eyes could not hold her any longer. It was as if her very soul shrank.

"Go out of this house," said her mother, after a minute.

Rebecca did not make a sound. She went, bending as if there were a wind at her back impelling her, across the kitchen in her quilted petticoat and her crimson thibet waist, her white arms hanging bare.

She opened the door that led towards her own bedroom, and passed out.

Presently Deborah, still standing where Rebecca had left her, heard the front door of the house shut. After a few minutes she took the broom from its peg in the corner, went through the icy north parlor, past Rebecca's room, to the front door. The snow heaped on the outer threshold had fallen in when Rebecca opened it, and there was a quantity on the entry floor.

Deborah opened the door again, and swept out the snow carefully; she even swept the snow off the steps outside, but she never cast a glance up or down the road. Then she beat the snow off the broom, and went in and locked the door behind her.

On her way back to the kitchen she paused at Rebecca's little bedroom. The waist of the new gown lay on the bad. She took it out into the kitchen, and folded it carefully with the skirt and the pieces; then she carried it up to the garret and laid it away in a chest.

When Caleb and Ephraim came in from the barn they found Deborah sitting at the window knitting a stocking. She did not look up when they entered.

The corn was not yet shelled, and Caleb arranged his baskets in the chimney-corner, and fell to again. Ephraim began teasing his mother to let him crack some nuts, but she silenced him peremptorily. "Set down an' help your father shell that corn," said she. And Ephraim pulled a grating chair up to his father, muttering cautiously.

Caleb kept looking at Deborah anxiously. He glanced at the door frequently.

"Where's Rebecca?" he asked at last.

"I dunno," replied Deborah.

"Has she laid down?"

"No, she ain't."

"She ain't gone out in the snow, has she?" Caleb said, with deploring anxiety.