"You need not be afraid; there's nothing to harm one in Redleaf." "Why did you come, to be kind to me, sick and in sorrow?" she suddenly asked, whilst I, unseen by her, was preparing one of the soothing powders that still were left from the night wherein I forgot my duty. I knew not how to reply. The very bit of material which she had hidden underneath a pillow was the cause; and so I answered,-- "Town-life is so different; one becomes so accustomed to a ring of changes in the all-around of life, that, when in the country, one looks for something to remind one of the life that has been left." "Then you did not come from genuine kindness?" "No, I am afraid not." "Do not be afraid to be truthful, ever," she said, and added,--"Once more, will you tell me where you found the fragment you have given me?" "I cannot, Miss Axtell." She did not speak again, but lay looking at the ceiling until long after the moon had risen,--the waning moon, that comes up so weirdly, late in the night, like a spectre of light appointed to haunt the solemn old earth, and punish it with the remembrance of a brighter, better light gone, and a renewed consciousness of its own once unformed, chaotic existence. I saw rays from it coming in through the parted curtains, and distinctly traced tree-branches wavering to and fro out in the night-wind, set astir as the moon came up. At last she said,-- "I wish you would go to sleep. Won't you wake Katie up, and then lie down? She has had a rest." "Poor, tired child," I said; "she had work to do yesterday; I had not." "Abraham, then, if not Katie." "He has been up three nights, Miss Axtell,--I only one." "I did not know it," she said. "I forgot that I had been so long ill." "Will you try and sleep?" once more I asked; "it is near morning." She wished to know the hour, made me give her watch into her own keeping, and then said "she would not talk, no, she would be very quiet, if I would only gratify her by making myself comfortable on the lounge." It did not seem very unreasonable, and I consented. "But you are looking at me," she said. "I hate to be watched; do shut your eyes." I looked away from her. Time went on. I heard the clock strike four times, in the March night. Miss Axtell was very quiet,--better, I was convinced. I arose once to rebuild the fire. Wood-fires burn down so soon. Then I took up my watch, thinking over the strange events, all unconsummated, that had been and still were in being under this roof. Five hours came booming up from the village-clock. The wind must have changed, or I could not have heard the strokes, so roundly full.