"Don't you feel bad about it any longer, Sarah," Sylvia said, half absently. Her hair blew out wildly from under her hood over her flushed cheeks; she smiled as if at something visible, past her sister, and past everything around her.

"I tell you there ain't nothin' to be killed about!" Hannah called after Sarah; she caught hold of Sylvia's arm. "Sarah always was kind of hystericky," said she. "That spare-rib will be all dried up, an' I wouldn't give a cent for it, if you don't come along."

Richard Alger and Sylvia Crane were married very soon. There was no wedding, and people were disappointed about that. Hannah Berry tried to persuade Sylvia to have one. "I'm willin' to make the cake," said she. "I've jest been through one weddin', but I'll do it. If I'd been goin' with a feller as long as you have with him, I wouldn't get cheated out of a weddin', anyhow. I'd have a weddin' an' I'd have cake, an' I'd ask folks, especially after what's happened. I'd let 'em see I wa'n't quite so far gone, if I had set out for the poor-house once. I'd have a weddin'. Richard's got money enough. I had real good-luck with Rose's cake, an' I ain't afraid to try yours.

I guess I should make it a little mite stiffer than I did hers."

But Sylvia was obdurate. She did not say much, but she went her own way. She had gained a certain quiet decision and dignity which bewildered everybody. Her sisters had dimly realized that there was something about her out of plumb, as it were. Her nature had been warped to one side by one concentrated and unsatisfied desire. "Seems to me, sometimes, as if Sylvy was kind of queer," Hannah Berry often said. "I dunno but she's kinder turned on Richard Alger," Sarah would respond. Now she seemed suddenly to have regained her equilibrium, and no longer slanted doubtfully across her sisters' mental horizons.

She and Richard went to the minister's house early one Sabbath morning, and were married. Then they went to meeting, Sylvia on Richard's arm. They sat side by side in the Alger pew; it was on the opposite side of the meeting-house from Sylvia's old pew. It seemed to her as if she would see her old self sitting there alone, as of old, if she looked across. She fixed her eyes straight ahead, and never glanced at Richard by her side. She held her white-bonneted head up like some gentle flower which had sprung back to itself after a hard wind. She had a new white bridal bonnet, as Richard had wished; it was trimmed with white plumes and ribbons, and she wore a long white-worked veil over her face. The wrought net-work, as delicate as frost, softened all the hard lines and fixed tints, and gave to her face an illusion of girlhood. She wore the two curls over her cheeks. Richard had asked her why she didn't curl her hair as she used to do.

All the people saw Sylvia's white bonnet; it seemed to turn their eyes like a brilliant white spot, which reflected all the light in the meeting-house. But there were a few women who eyed more sharply Sylvia's wedding-gown and mantilla, for she wore the very ones which poor Charlotte Barnard had made ready for her own bridal. Sylvia was just about her niece's height; the gown had needed a little taking in to fit her thinner form, and that was all.

Charlotte's mother had brought them over to Sylvia's one night, all nicely folded in white linen towels.

"Charlotte wants you to have 'em; she says she won't ever need 'em, poor child!" she said, in response to Sylvia's remonstrances. Mrs.

Barnard's eyes were red, as if she had been crying. It had apparently been harder for her to give up the poor slighted wedding-clothes than for her daughter. Charlotte had not shed a tear when she took them out of the chest and shook off the sprigs of lavender which she had laid over them; but it seemed to her that she could smell that faint elusive breath of lavender across the meeting-house when Sylvia came in, and the rustle of her bridal-gown was as loud in her ears as if she herself wore it.

"Somebody might just as well have them, and have some good of them,"

she had told her mother, and she spoke as if they were the garments of some one who was dead.

"Seems to me, as much as they cost, you'd ought to wear 'em yourself," said her mother.

"I never shall," Charlotte said, firmly; "and they might just as well do somebody some good." Charlotte's New England thrift and practical sense stretched her sentiment on the rack, and she never made a sound.

Barney, watching out from his window that Sunday, caught a flash of green and purple from Sylvia's silken skirt as she turned the corner of the old road with Richard. "She's got on Charlotte's wedding-dress. She's--given it to her," he said, with a gasp. He had never forgotten it since the day Charlotte had shown it to him. He had pictured her in it, hundreds of times, to his own delight and torment. He had a fierce impulse to rush out and strip his Charlotte's wedding-clothes from this other bride's back.

"She's gone and given it away, and she hasn't got a good silk dress herself; she's wearing her old cloak to meeting," he half sobbed to himself. He wondered piteously, thinking of his savings and of his property since his father's death, if he might not, at least, buy Charlotte a new silk dress and a mantilla. "I don't believe she'd be mad," he said; "but I'm afraid her father wouldn't let her wear it."

The more he thought of it the more it seemed as if he could not bear it, unless he could buy Charlotte the silk dress. "Her clothes ain't as good as mine," he said, and he thought of his best blue broadcloth suit, and his flowered vest and silk hat. It seemed to him that with all the terrible injury he was doing Charlotte, he also injured her by having better clothes than she, and that that was something which might be set right.

As Barney sat by his window that Sunday afternoon he saw a man coming down the hill. He watched him idly, then his heart leaped and he leaned forward. The man advanced with a careless, stately swing, his head was thrown back, his mulberry-colored coat had a sheen like a leaf in the sun. The man was Thomas Payne. Barney turned white as he watched him. He had not known he was in town, and his jealous heart at once whispered that he had come to see Charlotte. Thomas Payne came opposite the house, then passed out of sight. Barney sat with staring eyes full of miserable questioning upon the road. Had he been to see Charlotte? he speculated. He had come from that direction; but Barney remembered, with a sigh of hope, that Squire Payne had a sister, an old maiden lady, who lived a half-mile beyond Charlotte.

Perhaps Thomas Payne had been to see his aunt.

[Illustration: "Thomas Payne advanced with a careless, stately swing"]

All the rest of the day Barney was in an agony of doubt and unrest over the unsettled question. He had been living lately in a sort of wretched peace of remorse and misery; now it was rudely shaken. He walked the floor; at night he could not sleep. He seemed to be in a very torture-chamber of his own making, and the tortures were worse than any enemies could have devised. Suppose Thomas Payne was sitting up with Charlotte this Sunday night. Once he thought, wildly, of going up the hill to see if there was a light in her parlor, but it seemed to him as if the doubt was more endurable than the certainty might be. Suppose Thomas Payne was sitting up with Charlotte; he called to mind all her sweet ways. Suppose she was looking and speaking to Thomas Payne in this way or that way; his imagination threw out pictures before him upon which he could not close his eyes.

He saw Thomas Payne's face all glowing with triumph, he saw Charlotte's with the old look that she had worn for him. Charlotte's caresses had been few and maidenly; they all came into his mind like stings. He knew just how she would put her tender arm around this other man's neck, how she would lift grave, willing lips to his. He wished that they had never been for him, for all they seemed worth to him now was this bitter knowledge. His fancy led him on and on to his own torment. There was a bridal mist around Charlotte. He followed the old courses of his own dreams, after his memories were passed, and they caused him worse agony.

The next morning Barney went to the store. It was absolutely necessary for him to go, but he shunned everybody. He had a horrible fear lest somebody should say, "Hallo, Barney, know Thomas Payne's goin' to marry your old girl?" He had planned the very words, and the leer of sly exultation that would accompany it.

But he made his purchase and went out, and nobody spoke to him. He had not seen Thomas Payne in the back part of the store behind the stove. Presently Thomas got up and lounged leisurely out through the store, exchanging a word with one and another on his way. When he got out Barney was going down the road quite a way ahead of him. Thomas Payne kept on in his tracks. There was another man coming towards him, and presently he stood aside to let him pass. "Good-day, Royal,"

said Thomas Payne.

"Good-day, Thomas," returned the other. "When d'ye get home?"

"Day before yesterday. How are you this winter, Royal?"

"Well, I'm pretty fair to middlin'." The man's face, sunken in his feeble chest far below the level of Thomas's eyes, looked up at him with a sort of whimsical patience. His back was bent like a bow; he had had curvature of the spine for years, from a fall when a young man.

"Glad to hear that," returned Thomas. The man passed him, walking as if he were vainly trying to straighten himself at every step. He held his knees stiff and threw his elbows back, but his back still curved pitifully, although it seemed as if he were half cheating himself into the belief that he was walking as straight as other men.

Thomas walked on rapidly, lessening the distance between himself and Barney. As he went on he began to have a curious fancy, which he could hardly persuade himself was a fancy. It seemed to him that Barney Thayer was walking like the man whom he had just met, that his back had that same terrible curve.

Thomas Payne stared in strange bewilderment at Barney's back. "It can't be that he has spine disease, that he has got hurt in any way,"

he thought to himself. The purpose with which he had started out rather paled in his mind. He walked more rapidly. It certainly seemed to him that Barney's back was bent. He got within hailing distance and called out.

"Hallo!" cried Thomas Payne.

Barney turned around, and it seemed as if he turned with the feeble, crooked motion of the other man. He saw Thomas Payne, and his face was ghastly white, but he stood still and waited.

"How are you?" Thomas said, gruffly, as he came up.

"How are you, Thomas?" returned Barney. He looked at Thomas with a dogged expectancy. He thought he was going to tell him that he was to marry Charlotte.

But Thomas was surveying him still in that strange bewilderment.

"Look here, Barney," said he, bluntly, "have you been sick? I haven't heard of it."

"No, I haven't," replied Barney, wonderingly.

Thomas's eyes were fixed upon his back. "I didn't know but you had got hurt or something," said he.

Barney shook his head. Thomas thought to himself that his back was certainly curved. "I guess I'll walk along with you a little way,"

said he; "I've got something I wanted to say. For God's sake, Barney, you are sick!"

"No, I ain't sick."

"You are white as death."

"There's nothing the matter with me," Barney half gasped. He turned and walked on, and his back still bent like a bow to Thomas Payne's eyes.

Thomas went on silently until they had passed a house just beyond.

Then he stopped again. "Look here, Barney," said he.

"Well," said Barney. He stopped, but he did not turn or face Thomas.

He only presented to him that curved, or semblance of a curved, back.

"I want to speak to you about Charlotte Barnard," said Thomas Payne, abruptly. Barney waited without a word.

"I suppose you'll think it's none of my business, and in one way it isn't," said Thomas, "but I am going to say it for her sake; I have made up my mind to. It seems to me it's time, if anybody cares anything about her. What are you treating Charlotte Barnard so for, Barnabas Thayer? It's time you gave an account to somebody, and you can give it to me."

Barney did not answer.

"Speak, you miserable coward!" shouted Thomas Payne, with a sudden threatening motion of his right arm.

Then Barney turned, and Thomas started back at the sight of his face.

"I can't help it," he said.

"Can't help it, you--"