Mrs. Yocomb looked as if she understood me, but Miss Warren remarked, with a mischievous glance: "Personals are generally read." "Editors gossip about others, not themselves." "You admit they gossip." "That one did little else seems your impression." "News and gossip are different things; but I'm glad your conscience so troubles you that you exaggerate my words." "Emily Warren, thee can squabble with Richard Morton all day to-morrow after thy amiable fashion, but I'm hankering after some of thy music." "I will keep you waiting no longer, sir, and would have come before, but I did not wish you to see Mr. Morton while he was in a very lamentable condition." "Why, what was the matter with him?" asked Adah, who had just joined us in the lighted hall; "he seems to have very queer complaints." "He admits that he was intoxicated, and he certainly talked very strangely." "Miss Adah, did I talk strangely or wildly this afternoon?" "No, indeed, I think you talked very nicely; and I told Silas Jones that I never met a gentleman before who looked at things so exactly as I did." This was dreadful. I saw that Miss Warren was full of suppressed merriment, and was glad that Mrs. Yocomb was in the parlor lighting the lamps. "I suppose Mr. Jones was glad to hear what you said," I remarked, feeling that I must say something. "He may have been, but he did not look so." "Mr. Yocomb, you have your daughter's testimony that I was sober this afternoon, and since that time I have enjoyed nothing stronger than milk and the odor of your old-fashioned roses. If I was in a lamentable condition in the garden, Miss Warren was the cause, and so is wholly to blame." "Emily Warren, does thee know that thy mother Eve made trouble in a garden?" "I've not the least intention of taking Mr. Morton out of the garden. He may go back at once, and I have already suggested that you would give him plenty of hoeing and weeding there." "I'm not so sure about that; I fear he'd make the same havoc in my garden that I'd make in his newspaper." "Then you think an editor has no chance for Eden?" "Thee had better talk to mother about that. If there's any chance for thee at all she'll give thee hope. Now, Emily Warren, we are all ready. Sing some hymns that will give us all hope--no, sing hymns of faith." Adah took a seat on the sofa, and glanced encouragingly at me, but I found a solitary chair by an open window, where I could look out across the valley to the burning mountain, and watch the stars come out in the darkening sky. Within I faced Miss Warren's profile and the family group.