"Anna, how queer you are growing! What made you think of such a thing?" "I don't think my thoughts, Sophie." But I did watch the church-yard that day. No one came near it, and my knitting-work grew, and my mystery in the tower was as dark as ever, when at set of sun Aaron came home. "There is a sorry time up there," he said. "The old lady died in the night, and Miss Lettie is quite beside herself. Doctor Eaton was there when I came away, and says she will have brain-fever." "Oh, I hope not!" said Sophie. "Who is there?" I asked. "No one but Abraham. I offered to let Sophie come, but he said no." "That will never do, Aaron: one dead, and one sick in the house, and only one other." "Of course it will not, Sophie,--I will go and stay to-night," said I. "You, Anna? What do you know of taking care of sick people?" "I? Why, here, let me take this,"--and I picked up Miss Nightingale's new thoughts thereon. "Thus armed and fortified, do you think they'll ask other reference of their nurse?" "It's better for her than going up to stay in the tower; and they _are_ in need, though they won't say it. Let it be, Sophie." And so my second night in March came on. A neighbor's boy walked the way with me, and left me at the door. "I guess you'll repent your job," he said, as I bade him good-night. "Mr. Axtell will not send me back alone," I thought; and I waited just a little, that my escort might get beyond call before I knocked. It was a solemn, great house under whose entrance-porch I stood. Generation after generation might have come, stayed, and gone, like the last soul: here last night,--to-night, oh! where? I looked up at the sombre roof, dropping a little way earthward from the sides. Mosses hung from the eaves. Not one sound of life came to me as I stood until the neighbor's boy was out of sight. I knocked then, a timid, tremulous knock,--for last night's fear was creeping over me. The noise startled a dog; he came bounding around the corner with a sharp, quick bark. I am afraid of dogs, as well as of several other things. Before he reached me the door opened. A little maid stood within it. Fear of the dog, scarce a yard away, impelled me in. "Away, Kino! Away, I say! Leave the lady alone!" Kino went back to his own abode, and I was closed into the hall of this large, melancholy house. The little maid waited for some words from me. Before I found any to bestow, the second door along the hall opened, and the voice that had been so uncivil to me in the morning said,-- "What aroused Kino, Kate?" "This lady, Sir." The little Kate held a candle in her hand, but Mr. Axtell had not seen me. Strange that I should take a wicked pleasure in making this man ache!--but I know that I did, and that I would have owned it then, as now, if I had been accused of it. "What does the lady want?" "It is I, who have come to stay with your sister. Mr. Wilton says she's sick." "She's sick, that's true; but I can take care of her."