Produced by Roger Frank, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. OR, LOVE AND PRIDE. By MARY J. HOLMES 1878 ———— CONTENTS CHAPTER I.—THE INMATES OF THE FARM-HOUSE. CHAPTER II.—MR. GRAHAM AND JESSIE. CHAPTER III.—EIGHT YEARS LATER. CHAPTER IV.—JESSIE AND ELLEN. CHAPTER V.—WALTER AND JESSIE. CHAPTER VI.—OLD MRS. BARTOW. CHAPTER VII.—HUMAN NATURE. CHAPTER VIII.—A RETROSPECT. CHAPTER IX.—NELLIE. CHAPTER X.—A DISCLOSURE. CHAPTER XI.—THE NIGHT AFTER THE BURIAL. CHAPTER XII.—A CRISIS. CHAPTER XIII.—EXPLANATIONS. CHAPTER XIV.—THE STRANGER NURSE. CHAPTER XV.—GLORIOUS NEWS. CHAPTER XVI.—THANKSGIVING DAY AT DEERWOOD. CHAPTER XVII.—CONCLUSION. ———— CHAPTER I.—THE INMATES OF THE FARM-HOUSE. Old Deacon Marshall sat smoking beneath the maple tree which he had planted many years before, when he was scarcely older than the little girl sitting on the broad doorstep and watching the sun as it went down behind the western hills. The tree was a sapling then, and himself a mere boy. The sapling now was a mighty tree, and its huge branches swept the gable roof of the time-worn building, while the boy was a gray-haired man, sitting there in the glorious sunset of that bright October day, and thinking of all which had come to him since the morning long ago, when, from the woods near by, he brought the little twig, and with his mother’s help secured it in its place, watching anxiously for the first indications of its future growth. Across the fields and on a shady hillside, there were white headstones gleaming in the fading sunlight. He could count them all from where he sat,—could tell which was his mother’s, which his father’s, and which his fair-haired sister’s. Then there came a blur before his eyes, and great tears rolled down his furrowed cheek, as he remembered that in that yard there were more graves of his loved ones than there were chairs around his fireside, even though he counted the one which for years had not been used, but stood in the dark corner of the kitchen, just where it had been left that dreadful night when his only son was taken from him. On the hillside there was no headstone for that boy, but there were two graves, which had been made just as many years as the arm-chair of oak had stood in the dark corner, and on the handsome monument which a stranger’s hand had reared, was cut the name of the deacon’s wife and the deacon’s daughter-in-law.