“Yes, Tempy aged all of a sudden. I remember I asked her if she felt as well as common, one day, and she laughed at me good. There, when Mr. Crowe begun to look old, I couldn’t help feeling as if somethin’ ailed him, and like as not ’twas somethin’ he was goin’ to git right over, and I dosed him for it stiddy, half of one summer.” “How many things we shall be wanting to ask Tempy!” exclaimed Sarah Ann Binson, after a long pause. “I can’t make up my mind to doin’ without her. I wish folks could come back just once, and tell us how ’tis where they’ve gone. Seems then we could do without ’em better.” The brook hurried on, the wind blew about the house now and then; the house itself was a silent place, and the supper, the warm fire, and an absence of any new topics for conversation made the watchers drowsy. Sister Binson closed her eyes first, to rest them for a minute; and Mrs. Crowe glanced at her compassionately, with a new sympathy for the hard-worked little woman. She made up her mind to let Sarah Ann have a good rest, while she kept watch alone; but in a few minutes her own knitting was dropped, and she, too, fell asleep. Overhead, the pale shape of Tempy Dent, the outworn body of that generous, loving-hearted, simple soul, slept on also in its white raiment. Perhaps Tempy herself stood near, and saw her own life and its surroundings with new understanding. Perhaps she herself was the only watcher. Later, by some hours, Sarah Ann Binson woke with a start. There was a pale light of dawn outside the small windows. Inside the kitchen, the lamp burned dim. Mrs. Crowe awoke, too. “I think Tempy’d be the first to say ’twas just as well we both had some rest,” she said, not without a guilty feeling. Her companion went to the outer door, and opened it wide. The fresh air was none too cold, and the brook’s voice was not nearly so loud as it had been in the midnight darkness. She could see the shapes of the hills, and the great shadows that lay across the lower country. The east was fast growing bright. “’Twill be a beautiful day for the funeral,” she said, and turned again, with a sigh, to follow Mrs. Crowe up the stairs. MARTHA’S LADY. I. One day, many years ago, the old Judge Pyne house wore an unwonted look of gayety and youthfulness. The high-fenced green garden was bright with June flowers. Under the elms in the large shady front yard you might see some chairs placed near together, as they often used to be when the family were all at home and life was going on gayly with eager talk and pleasure-making; when the elder judge, the grandfather, used to quote that great author, Dr. Johnson, and say to his girls, “Be brisk, be splendid, and be public.”