The old woman did not seem to hear him, but lowering her face over her work sewed on rapidly, but the whiteness of her face still continued, and you could see by the unequal motion of the cotton kerchief folded over her bosom, that she was suppressing some powerful emotion. Uncle Nathan was not a man to press any unpleasant subject upon another; but he seemed a good deal hurt by his sister's strange manner; and sat nervously grasping and ungrasping the arm of his chair, looking alternately at her and Salina, while the silence continued. "Well," said Salina, who had no delicate scruples of this kind to struggle with, "you do beat all, aunt Hannah; I hadn't the least idea that there was so much vinegar in you. Now Mr. Farnham was a kind of father to me, and I'm bound to keep any body from raking up his ashes in the grave." "Let them rest there--let them rest there!" exclaimed aunt Hannah, slowly folding up her work. "I did not mean to speak his name, but it is said, and I will not take anything back." "Well, nobody wants you to, that I know of; it's a kind of duty to defend one's friends, especially when they can't do it for themselves; but after all Mr. Farnham up and married that critter, I don't know as it's any business of mine, what you call him." "I remember his mother," said uncle Nathan, striving to shake off the heavy feeling that his sister had created. "I remember her well, for she took me for sort of company," said Salina. "I was a little gal then; Farnham hadn't made all his money, and he was glad enough for me to settle down and do his work. But it was awful lonesome, I can tell you, after she was gone; and I used to go down into the grave-yard and set down by her head-stone for company, day after day. But it was afore this then your sister came to help spin up the wool--wasn't she a harnsome critter?--your sister Anne." Aunt Hannah seemed turning into marble, her face and hands grew so deathly white; but she neither moved nor spoke. Uncle Nathan did not speak either, but he pressed both hands down on the arms of his chair, and half rose; but he fell back as if the effort were too much, and with one faint struggle sat still, with the tears of a long-buried grief stealing down his cheeks. "Well, what have I done wrong now?" asked Salina, looking from the old man to the pallid sister, and shaking her head till the horn comb rose like a crest among her fiery tresses. "We haven't mentioned Anne's name between us in more than fifteen years; and it comes hard to hear it now," answered uncle Nathan, drawing first one plump hand and then another across his eyes. "I didn't mean any harm by it," answered the housekeeper, penitently, "she was a sweet, purty crittur as ever lived; and no one felt worse than I did when she died in that strange way." "Hush!" said aunt Hannah, standing up, pale even to ghastliness. "It is you that rake up the ashes of the dead--ashes--ashes"--