refused any remuneration for our stay; but none the less did we promise ourselves to send some dresses and even ornaments from C----, to feed that poor, starving love of finery. As we rode away in the ox-cart, the Roarer looked wistfully after us through the bars; but his melancholy mood was upon him again, and he had not the heart even to wag his tail. As we were sitting in the hotel parlor, in front of our soft-coal fire in the evening of the following day, and discussing whether or no we should return to the city within the week, the old landlord entered without his broad-brimmed hat,--an unusual attention, since he was a trustee and a man of note in the Community, and removed his hat for no one or nothing; we even suspected that he slept in it. 'You know Zolomon Barngs,' he said, slowly. 'Yes,' we answered. 'Well, he's dead. Kilt in de mine.' And putting on the hat, removed, we now saw, in respect for death, he left the room suddenly as he had entered it. As it happened, we had been discussing the couple, I, as usual, contending for the wife, and Ermine, as usual, advocating the cause of the husband. 'Let us go out there immediately to see her, poor woman!' I said, rising. 'Yes, poor man, we will go to him!' said Ermine. 'But the man is dead, cousin.' 'Then he shall at least have one kind friendly glance before he is carried to his grave,' answered Ermine quietly. In a short time we set out in the darkness, and dearly did we have to pay for the night-ride; no one could understand the motive of our going, but money was money, and we could pay for all peculiarities. It was a dark night, and the ride seemed endless as the oxen moved slowly on through the red-clay mire. At last we reached the turn and saw the little lonely house with its upper room brightly lighted. 'He is in the studio,' said Ermine; and so it proved. He was not dead, but dying; not maimed but poisoned by the gas of the mine, and rescued too late for recovery. They had placed him upon the floor on a couch of blankets and the dull-eyed Community doctor stood at his side. 'No good, no good,' he said; 'he must die.' And then, hearing of the returning cart, he left us, and we could hear the tramp of the oxen over the little bridge, on their way back to the village. The dying man's head lay upon his wife's breast, and her arms supported him; she did not speak, but gazed at us with a dumb agony in her large eyes. Ermine knelt down and took the lifeless hand streaked with coal-dust in both her own. 'Solomon,' she said, in her soft, clear voice, 'do you know me?' The closed eyes opened slowly, and fixed themselves upon her face a moment: then they turned towards the window, as if seeking something. 'It's the picter he means,' said the wife. 'He sat up most all last night a doing it.'