“Mebbe, marm, you are over-worrited ternight,” said the stranger softly; “wimmen is all feelin', God bless 'em! an' how yer son loved ye, a tellin' of yer bright eyes an' red cheeks----” She turned to him with fierce eagerness. “He couldn't keer fur me, I wan't the kind. I don't mind me of hardly ever kissin' him. I worked him hard; I was cross an' stingy. He sed to me, 'There's houses that is never homes, mother.' I sneered an' blamed him for his little present.” She ran and brought the vase. “I've kept that, Mr. Brown, over twenty years, but when he give it to me, bought outer his poor little savin's, I scolded him. I never let him hev the boys here to pop corn or make candy; it was waste and litter. Oh, I know what he meant; this was never a home.” “But he only spoke kind of ye alius.” “Did you know Jim? Been gone this ten year, an' never a word.” Silas, a queer shadow on his face, looked eagerly at Brown. “I did know him,” slowly and cautiously--“he was a cowboy in Texas, as brave as the best.” “He could ride,” cried Maria, “as part of a horse, an' Tige was the dead image of that Washington horse in the pictur, an' Jim used to say thet girl there in the blue gown was his girl--the one with the bouquet; an' I used to call him silly. I chilled all the fun he hed outer him, an' broken-speerited an' white-faced he drifted away from us, as far away as them in the graveyard, with the same weary look as they hed in goin'.” “An' he took keer of much as a hundred cattle,” said Silas; “they has thet meny I've heerd, in Texas?” “They has thousands; they loses hundreds by drought----” “Wanter know?” cried Silas, his imagination refusing to grasp such awful loss. “Wal, I knowed Jim, an' he got mer-ried----” “Merried!” from both the old parents. “He did. He says, 'I wunt write the home-folks till I'm well off, for mother will worrit an' blame me, an' I hain't money, but Minnie an' I love each other, an' are satisfied with little.'” “Minnie,” the mother repeated. “Was she pretty?” “Woman all over you be, to ask thet, an' she was,” said Brown, sadly; “with dark eyes, sorter wistful, an' hair like crinkled sunshine, an' a laugh like a merry child, fur trouble slipped off her shoulders like water off a duck's back.” “An' they got prosperous?” asked Silas uneasily. “They was happy,” said Brown with gentle dignity; “they was alius happy, but they lived under a mortgage, an' it was drift from pillar to post, an' ups an' downs. “An' they're poor now,” muttered Silas, visions of Jim and his family to support coming to him. “Hush!” cried Maria. “Tell me, sir, was there children? Oh, the heart hunger I've had for the sound of a child's voice, the touch of baby hands. You an' me grandpa and grandma, Sile! an', my God! you think of money now.” “Set calm,” pleaded Brown, “for I must hev courage to tell ye all.” “An' they sent ye to tell us they was comin'?” asked Silas, judging of their prosperity from the shabby herald.