with a pitiful significance of loss. Upon the mantel-shelf there was a small marble figure, one of the Dancing Graces: the other two were gone, gone in pledge. This one was left, twirling her foot, and stretching out her hands in a dreary sort of ecstasy, with no one to respond. For a moment, so empty and bitter seemed her home and her life, that she thought the lonely dancer with her flaunting joy mocked her,--taunted them with the slow, gray desolation that had been creeping on them for years. Only for a moment the morbid fancy hurt her. The red glow was healthier, suited her temperament better. She chose to fancy the house as it had been once,--should be again, please God. She chose to see the old comfort and the old beauty which the poor schoolmaster had gathered about their home. Gone now. But it should return. It was well, perhaps, that he was blind, he knew so little of what had come on them. There, where the black marks were on the wall, there had hung two pictures. Margaret and her father religiously believed them to be a Tintoret and Copley. Well, they were gone now. He had been used to dust them with a light brush every morning, himself, but now he said,-- "You can clean the pictures to-day, Margaret. Be careful, my child." And Margaret would remember the greasy Irishman who had tucked them under his arm, and flung them into a cart, her blood growing hotter in her veins. It was the same through all the house; there was not a niche in the bare rooms that did not recall a something gone,--something that should return. She willed that, that evening, standing by the dim fire. What women will, whose eyes are slow, attentive, still, as this Margaret's, usually comes to pass. The red fire-glow suited her; another glow, warming her floating fancy, mingled with it, giving her quiet purpose the trait of heroism. The old spirit of the dead chivalry, of succor to the weak, life-long self-denial,--did it need the sand waste of Palestine or a tournament to call it into life? Down in that trading town, in the thick of its mills and drays, it could live, she thought. That very night, perhaps, in some of those fetid cellars or sunken shanties, there were vigils kept of purpose as unselfish, prayer as heaven-commanding, as that of the old aspirants for knighthood. She, too,--her quiet face stirred with a simple, childish smile, like her father's. "Why, mother!" she said, stroking down the gray hair under the cap, "shall you sleep here all night?" laughing. A cheery, tender laugh, this woman's was,--seldom heard,--not far from tears. Mrs. Howth roused herself. Just then, a broad, high-shouldered man, in a gray flannel shirt, and shoes redolent of the stable, appeared at the door. Margaret looked at him as if he were an accusing spirit,--coming down, as every woman must, from heights of self-renunciation or bold resolve, to an undarned stocking or an uncooked meal.