* * * * * * So Vesty's heart was broken in her, and to me she came, as to a father, or more as to a friendly, favoring ghost. "Take me back to the Basin!" "Yes." She sat in a kind of patient apathy, numb, her heart faithful with the dead. "How little Gurd will call for you when he sees you again!" I spoke; but to waken her was to bring such a torrent of tears, choking, she entreated me not. But, "It is well, I believe," I said to her; "there is life enough! Be sure he does not lack for life. What! do you think we have found the best of it, and all of it, here? I imagine God has enough! It is not because His bread fails Him that any go hungry, or because He lacks for gold that any are poor, but only for His purpose--we must guess--and when the poor, shattered school-house grows dark the light breaks elsewhere." Vesty had not slept for two nights; the sweet face was haggard. Again passing among crowds of restless, hurrying life, faces cold and strange, or often staring curiously, the haunted look of one lost came again into her eyes. "I must go and take care of Gurd," she said, "as well as I can, while I live. O God! I hope he never may get lost, out in the world." "No; how could he, in God's world?" "When we get back to the Basin then you will be tired of staying there in the bleak and cold. You will never wait for me to pay you; you will laugh at me, and you will go back to the world." "Vesty!" Wearily she turned her heavy eyes on me--a ghost; there was the forced, unconscious cry in them of the child, or even of the woman. Sacredly I shielded their glance, and ghostly; it was as though I had not seen. "You mistake my courage. There is no winter," I said, smiling, "strong enough to drive me from the Basin." XXII "NEIGHBORIN'" Vesty never said "Stay!" but that unconscious look in her eyes made a sort of forlorn fireplace of hope to me, desolate, open to all the winds. As God wills. I wait. I went often to Captain Leezur; the nervine lozenges were potent. "We all'as dew neighbor a great deal in winter," said he approvingly, stretching those dear felts before the blaze. "Is that a piece of the log we used to sit on?" I inquired mournfully. "Wal, neow! I r'a'ly believe ye feel a kind o' heart-leanin' to'ds her, don't ye?" "How can I help it?" "Sartin! sartin!" said he, delighted; "we're jest like twin-brothers. But neow don't you werry one mite. She 's done a good werk an' she 's returnin' to Natur's God. I've got another one 't I'm goin' to roll deown, first hint o' spring. I don't calk'late ever to be feound, like them wise an' foolish virgins, without no log to set on."