to her as gentle and as helpful and as courteous as a knight of old. During her long illness after Dannie, his only grandchild, was born, his devotion to her never ceased. And when he saw the roses begin to come back into her cheeks, he could no more restrain his delight than he could refrain from drawing his breath. But one night she grew suddenly ill again. And while Charlie and Aunt Martha did for her all that loving thought could suggest, or tender care accomplish, Abner Pickett flung himself on his brown mare and dashed madly off through the darkness to Port Lenox, ten miles away, to fetch the doctor. He had the doctor there by daylight; but no physician, nor any drug, nor the most loving care, could hold the struggling spirit in the frail body, and two days later Charlie’s wife was dead. People who knew said that Abner Pickett felt the blow as keenly as when his own wife died twenty years before. He would not listen to the suggestion that her body should be taken back to her old home at Port Lenox for interment; and, rather than face his wrath, her parents consented that the burial should be made in the Pickett family graveyard at the mouth of the gap. Their action was fully justified. That graveyard was the pride of Abner Pickett’s heart. It lay in a direct line with the opening into the gap, and barely two hundred feet distant. On the north, it was bordered by the public road, on the south, it was washed by the rippling waters of the brook, and on every side, save the west, the hills rose precipitously as if to guard it. It was a beautiful half-acre. The sward was always fresh and green, and flowers bloomed there from May to October. Abner Pickett’s parents were buried there, and his wife, and his brother and sister, and his own children who had died in infancy, as well as others more distantly related to him. And the sheltering soil also hid the bodies of some without home or friends; bodies that, had it not been for Abner Pickett’s generosity, would have found interment in the potter’s field. When Charlie’s wife was buried there, the old man’s interest in his graveyard increased tenfold. He bought the most beautiful monument that the marble-cutters of Port Lenox could furnish, and had it placed at the head of her grave. It was a fluted column, with pedestal and cap, draped with chiselled flowers. Looked at from the west, it stood out, tall and graceful, outlined in perfect proportion against the dark shadows of the gap or the rich verdure of the hills that stood like sentinels about it. That Abner Pickett’s graveyard was dear to him, and that the memory of Charlie’s wife was one of the tenderest spots in his heart, no one who knew the old man ever had reason to doubt.