"But I can do it," Lizzie said to herself, and set her lips hard together. The gate clicked shut, and Mrs. Butterfield came in, running almost. "Look here, Lizzie Graham,--oh my! wait till I get my breath;--_Lizzie, you can't do it._ Because--" And then, panting, she explained. "So, you see, you just can't," she repeated. Lizzie said something under her breath, and stared with blank bewilderment at her informant. "Maybe Josh don't know?" "Maybe he does know," retorted Mrs. Butterfield. "Goodness! makes me tremble to think if he hadn't told me to-night! Supposin' he hadn't let on about it till this time to-morrow?" Lizzie put her hands over her face with an exclamation of dismay. "Oh, well, there!" Mrs. Butterfield said, comfortably; "I don't believe Nat'll mind after he's been at the Farm a bit. Honest, I don't, Lizzie. How comes it you didn't know yourself?" "I'm sure I don't know; it ain't on my certificate, anyhow. Maybe it's on the voucher; but I ain't read that since I first went to sign it. I just go every three months and draw my money, and think no more about it. Maybe--if they knew at Washington--" "Sho! they couldn't make a difference for one; and it's just what Josh says--they ain't goin' to pay you for havin' a dead husband if you got a live one. Well, it wouldn't be sense, Lizzie." Lizzie shook her head. "Wait till I look at my paper--" Mrs. Butterfield followed her into the house, and waited while she lighted a lamp and lifted a blue china vase off the shelf above the stove. "I keep it in here," Lizzie said, shaking the paper out. Then, unfolding it on the kitchen table, the two women, the lamplight shining upon their excited faces, read the certificate together, aloud, with agitated voices: "BUREAU OF PENSIONS "It is hereby certified that in conformity with the laws of the United States--" and on through to the end. "It don't say a word about not marryin' again," Lizzie declared. "Well, all the same, it's the law. Josh knows." Lizzie blew out the lamp, and they went back to the door-step. Mrs. Butterfield's hard feelings were all gone; her heart warmed to Nathaniel; warmed even to the mangy dog that limped out from the barn and curled up on Lizzie's skirt. But when she went away, "comfortable in her mind," as she told her husband, Lizzie Graham still sat in the dark under her elm, trying to get her wits together. "I know Josh is right," she told herself; "he's a careful talker. I can't do it!" But she winced, and drew in her breath; poor Nathaniel! She had seen him that afternoon, and had told him, this time with no embarrassment (for he was as simple as a child about it), that she had arranged with Mr. Niles to marry them. "An' you fetch your bag along, Nathaniel, and we'll put the machine together, evenin's," she said. "Yes, kind woman," he answered, joyously. "Oh, what a weight you have taken from my soul!"