Mrs. Matilda Warren had never been what might be called a popular woman in the neighborhood. She and her husband, the latter dead now for many years, had come from Massachusetts. They were educated people in a sense, and had not mingled easily with their rougher neighbors. The widow Warren had, after her daughter’s escapade, carried this exclusiveness to a point which the neighborhood found disagreeable. Gradually she had grown into the recluse habit, and younger generations on the hillside, eking out the gossip of their elders with fancies of their own, born of stray glimpses of her tall, gaunt figure and pale face, came to regard her with much that same awe which, two centuries before, reputed witches had for children, young and old. Something of this feeling Lemuel himself was conscious of, as he stood before her. The coverlet came up close under her arms. She wore a wrapper-dress of red flannel. As he entered she raised herself, with an evidently cruel effort, upon her elbow, dragging the pillow down to aid in supporting her shoulder. She panted with this exertion as she confronted him. Her scanty white hair was combed tightly back from her forehead, and bound in place with a black-velvet band; a natural parting on the side of the hair gave the withered face a suggestion of juvenile jauntiness, in grotesque, jarring contrast with the pale blue eyes which glittered from caverns of dark wrinkles, and the sunken, distorted mouth. She had changed so vastly since their last meeting that Lemuel stood bewildered and silent, staring at her. She spoke first. “I’m trying to think--it must be twenty year since we’ve met, Lemuel Fairchild.” “Nigh onto that, M’tildy,” he replied, turning his hat in his hands. “I didn’t expect ever to lay eyes on you again, I couldn’t come to you, and wouldn’t if I could, and I didn’t dream you would ever show your face here.” The aged woman said this in a high, sharp voice, speaking rapidly and with an ungracious tone. Lemuel fidgetted with his hat and moved his feet uneasily on the dog-skin rug. “Yeh needn’t be afeered, M’tildy, I wouldn’t hev come naow ef it hadn’t been somethin’ partikler ’baout Annie.” The invalid raised her shoulder from the pillow with a sudden movement, and bent her head forward. “What’s happened to her? Is she hurt? Tell me, quick!” “Oh nao, they ain’t nothin’ th’ matter with her. It’s unly ’baout her ’n’ Seth. I kine o’ thought we ought to talk it over ’n’ see haow the land lay. That’s all.” “Oh that’s it, is it? _Samantha!_” Betrayed out of her shrewdness by the suddenness of the summons the servant girl made her immediate appearance through the hall door.