“No, you shall be free. Forget that I dared to speak, that I dared for a moment to think—What? Why—why, Mildred, you are laughing!” “Oh,” said Mildred in a different tone, “I—that is, I was only thinking of _love in a cottage_. I am not afraid of being poor; I can work too.” “Ah, yes; but being poor in Boston, where you have the largest public library in the world, and the free Lowell lectures, and a glorious symphony concert now and then for only fifty cents, is one thing; and to be poor here, to stand at the washtub, and to scrub and clean and bake and mend, is quite another. There would be little call here for the work which you love and can do so well. These rough, hard-working men have little time or inclination to hear of Goethe or Dante. “It would be cruel for me to let these soft, white hands grow hard and rough, to let your life which elsewhere could be so rich run to waste here.” “Would it not be far more cruel,” asked Mildred tenderly, “to keep me from the man I love?” “Mildred dear, I am awake,” I tried to say, for through my bewildered brain the meaning of all this had begun to penetrate, and I realized for the first time that I had been hearing what was too sacred for any other ears than those of Mildred and her lover, Ralph Everett. But the words choked in my throat, there was only an inarticulate murmur, and the voices ceased. CHAPTER XIV. “And a voice said in mastery while I strove, Guess now who holds thee?— ‘Death,’ I said; But there the silver answer rang, ‘Not Death, but Love.’” SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE. Some time elapsed ere I divined where we were, and then I discovered that we had been carried to Mr. Everett’s house and were all lying in the attic over the store. Mildred had been placed on his cot-bed by the book-shelves, and he lay on a lounge a few feet distant. After a time my straw bed, which had been borrowed from a neighbor, was turned about so that I could see them. I was too weak to talk, but I loved to lie and look at them when the terrible pain gave me a moment’s respite to think of anything beside my own woes. The little town was crowded; not a spare room but had been gladly given up to the sufferers. Little by little I learned all that had happened. A tree had been uprooted in the wild storm and had fallen across the track. The engine, the baggage car, and the first car had been derailed. The loss of life had not been great. Poor Hélène, the little German woman and her baby were the only ones who had not been rescued. But in all the cottages around lay the helpless, wounded people, who had come so far over land and sea only to meet this terrible fate.