“The very dog hev gin me up,” his master muttered bitterly. Sorrow at his age is not all bitterness; it had an element of satisfaction to be so very adequate to his sufferings and his wrongs. He mechanically turned his head to glance after the creature, who had paused, gazing back with regret, rent with inward dissension, his poor dog-conscience struggling between his sense of duty and preference. He looked a trifle handsomer than his wont, with the animation of his emotion expressed in his slender, alert head and his bright eyes. Then, with a sudden sharp yelp that seemed to cadence the pang of decision, he betook himself swiftly away from temptation, resolved to persevere in desertion, and was soon lost to view as the turn-row swallowed him amongst the corn. The next moment Andy had forgotten that he existed. The music of the forge was on the air, the clinking of the hand-hammer and the clanking of the sledge. How the distant sound assimilated with the mountain voices, as the echoes came lilting forth to meet it! The ear might hardly distinguish the repetitions of the rock from the vibrations of the metal. Presently he could hear the anvil sing, and then the strokes seemed only marking the rhythm of this fine, tremulous, high-pitched monody. Clem Sanders was there at his work, all unsuspicious of the fate coming with long strides down the road. What strange, untimely thought was this! The muscles below Longwood’s knee were suddenly sensitive to the pressure of the knife in his boot, and he was reminded of a grisly old story of a cruel man whose hand was palsied on his weapon in the moment when he would have taken a fellow-man’s life. An old woman’s story this, told in the dusk at the fireside, to sap away with mystery and weird lights and artful words a man’s courage when he should resent his wrongs like a man; for were they not all afraid of bloodshed, these women, and cowards to their heart’s core? He was dragging his left leg, for all his logic and his scorn of a pusillanimous peace. How the anvil sang,—how it sang! And why need he wonder would it be silent to-morrow,—would it ever again give forth that sonorous melody under the hand of the man who now wielded the hammer? Who talks of to-morrow? Poor fool, let him mind to-day. Was the knife turning around in his boot? Every fibre of the limb was oppressed with its significant presence. His courage, however, did not wait upon his nerves; he saw altogether unmoved that half a dozen idle men were standing about the door of the forge, or loitering within. His pace had grown slower since that fancy about the knife had taken hold upon him, but as he made his way up the slight ascent to the door of the forge he stooped down and boldly drew out the weapon; a man in the doorway fixed a meditative eye upon him, thinking, doubtless, he had only brought the blade to have an edge put on it. Longwood could see through the dusky little place, for the window at the rear was open, and he marveled to