Amanda pitied him, and flung him a surreptitious handful of corn from her apron pocket when she met him walking dejectedly in the road halfway between the two houses. So encouraged he extended his rambles, and one afternoon Amanda, looking out of her window, saw him stop at her gate and hold a tete-a-tete with one of her Plymouth Rock hens. The interview was brief but effective. In a twinkling he had told her of his miserable life and his abject need of sympathy. "There are times," he said, "when, I give you my word, I would rather be stewed for dinner than lead my present existence! It is weak for me to trouble you with my difficulties, but you have always understood me from the first." "Say no more," she replied. "I am a woman and pity is akin to love. The fowls of Amanda Dalton's flock do not need me as you do. Eleven eggs a day are laid here regularly, and I will go where my egg will be a daily source of pleasure and profit." "The coop is draughty and the corn scarce," confessed the rooster, doing his best to be noble. "I am of the sex created especially to supply companionship," returned the hen, "therefore I will accompany you, regardless of personal inconvenience." Amanda saw the departure of the eloping couple and pursued them not. "Land sakes!" she exclaimed, "if any male thing hereabouts has sprawl enough to go courtin' I'm willin' to encourage 'em. She'll miss her clean house and good food, I guess, but I ain't sure. She's 'women-folks' after all, and I shouldn't wonder a mite but she'd take real comfort in makin' things pleasanter up there for that pindlin', God-forsaken old rooster! She'll have her hands full, but there, I know what 'tis to get along with empty ones!" There were not many such romances or comedies as these to enliven Amanda's mornings. Then afternoon would slip into twilight, darkness would creep over the landscape, and Amanda's light--clear, steady, bright, serene--would gleam from its place on the sink shelf through the kitchen window, over the meadow, "up to Kimball's." It was such a light as would stream from a well-trimmed lamp with a crystal clean chimney, but it met with small response from its neighbor's light during many months of the year. In late autumn and winter there would be a fugitive candle gleam upstairs in the Kimball house, and on stormy evenings a dull, smoky light in the living-room.