"0

DEACON PALMER'S FAMILY.

A TALE OF THE REVOLUTION.

BY VIRGINIA F. TOWNSEND.

(CONCLUDED.)

DEAR, I wonder what that was!" and the child lifted her wooden bucket out of the little brook, whose waters were broken and tangled into white skeins by the large stones, and stared all around her. It was a wild picture of hill, and forest, and uncultivated lands over which her eyes wandered. The grass had faded, and the leaves burned under the sharp frosts, and these latter were like the color of the little English girl's cheeks, whose life had bloomed bravely for the last two years in the land of her father's adoption.

There was a stirring in the underbrush, for the little stream purled its waters just on the skirt of the thick woods, and then a young man came out of the forest and approached the girl.

He walked slow and wearily, leaning upon a stout oak staff; his face was so ghastly white it seemed he must fall with every painful step, and he wore the blue uniform of the “continentals.".

"My child," he gasped, "will you give me a drink of water?" and then he sank down at the little girl's feet, and his head fell upon the earth in a sudden faintness.

She must have been a tender-hearted little creature, for the tears sprang to her eyes as she murmured, "Dear me, now, he's a rebel, I jest know by his dress, but I can't help feelin' sorry for him, though I do n't know what father 'd say," and she dipped her little brown hands in the brook and bathed the soldier's temples, and in a few minutes he opened his eyes and smiled the faint "thank you" in her face which his white lips could not speak.

And the little girl plucked a mullein leaf from a stalk near by and curled it into a cup, and filling it with water, held it to the young man's lips, and the draught refreshed him.

"Where do you come from?" she inquired. "From the wars; I have a terrible wound in my right shoulder, and they left me a week ago on the battle-field for dead. I have walked and crawled ten miles since day before yesterday." "If aunt Nabby could see you she'd do something for your shoulder."

"Where do you live?"

Canada to hunt for bear-skins. If you can get as far as the house I know aunt Nabby 'll let you come in."

It was with difficulty the soldier could rise, even with the little girl's assistance, but he leaned his left arm on her shoulder, for his right one hung powerless at his side, and with slow, feeble steps they made their way to the little onestory red house just on the edge of the panshaped hollow.

'Wall, Amy, I did n't know what had taken you. Here it is nigh on to sundown, and I want you should card this fleece as soon as you get the water on bilin'."

She was an old, old woman, with her snowy hairs folded over her wrinkled forehead, and she wore a white linen short gown and blue linseywoolsey skirt, as was the fashion for young and old at that period.

The old woman was "hatcheling" flax, and the silvery heaps lay at her feet, and as she spoke she caught up the last handful in her withered fingers and drew it over the spikes of the board she held in her lap.

"Aunt Nabby, do n't you see here's a man that's sick and been wounded in the wars, and I've brought him home for you to cure him?"

แ

Mercy sakes!" the old woman put down her hatchel and looked with her dim eyes on the stranger.

"You won't turn me away from your door," he said appealingly as he sank into a low, rushbottomed chair, "because I'm a sick and almost dying man, even if you do call me a rebel, and because I've got a mother nigh upon two hundred miles from here, whose heart will be broken if her eyes never look upon her boy again!"

The old woman rose up and peered into the young man's face, and the tears lay still on her withered cheeks.

"I had a boy once," she murmured, "and he was jest about your hight and age, too, I reckon, when they brought me word he was drowned at sea, and I can never see a young man in sickness or trouble without pityin' him, be he friend or foe, for the sake of the mother at home, whose heart's nigh to burstin' with care and anxiety over him."

"I don't want you to go if you are a rebel; I do n't want you to go one single bit," and the rosy-cheeked little English girl put up her round brown arms around the stranger's neck as he sat

the stranger.

VOL. XX.-22

sick man's health and appearance. His wounded arm rested in a white linen sling, the deadly pallor had left his face, and, though it was still worn and wasted, you felt that beneath it throbbed the springs of returning health. The old woman had been a faithful and judicious nurse, strengthening the young man with decoctions whose preparations she had learned in the dear old mother country, and healing his wound with a balsam which had been given her by a grateful Indian to whom she had rendered some slight service, and in a little while the old woman and the little girl had quite forgotten the fact that their guest was a rebel, who, according to Richard Mason's views, "deserved nothin' better than hangin' or scalpin'."

"You'll have to foot it for at least thirty miles afore you come to a turnpike," said old Mrs. Green as she busied herself in placing a cold chicken, a pewter cup of "blackberry jam," and a card of gingerbread in a small willow basket. "I can't stand the thought o' your goin' off to-day, only I'm a little afeard Richard may be home to-night or to-morrow, and, though there never was a better man walked, he's sot on his notions as the hills, and it would n't pertickerler please him to find a rebel in his house."

"Yes, aunty, it's high time I was startin', for news travels fast by stages, and if they've got word at home that I'm shot I won't answer for consequences." He looked very serious a moment, and then he took the child who was hanging on his chair arm and set her down on his knee and run up the fingers of his left hand through her short brown hair.

"Amy, my little girl, I shall miss you very much; I shall think of you a great many times every day, and want to see you."

She nestled up her soft cheek to his. "And there won't be any body to comb your hair when your head aches."

"No, my child, not till I get home to sister Becky. O, but won't her eyes sparkle when she sees me!" He sat still, his own hazel ones growing dark with sweet thoughts and anticipations of returning to his family.

At last he took up the child's face from his shoulder and looked at it earnestly-at the laughing mouth, the rosy cheeks, the bright

eyes.

"It will be a handsome face one of these days, Amy," he said, and she blushed for pleased shame. She was just twelve years old.

Then the young soldier took a small gold locket from his pocket hung with a black cord. Inside were a couple of locks of hair, one bright gold, the other dark brown.

said, as he slipped the cord around Amy's neck. "I put it in there with hers last night. You will keep it always for my sake, Amy." "Always."

Come, be a brave little girl now and wish me a quick journey." He stood in the door of the little red-brown house and looked out on the white landscape, for there had been a heavy frost the night before, and the earth was folded away in it.

"Well, I'll try. Good-by." She gave him her hand, and brushed away with the other the tears which stained her cheeks.

"You must manage to get under shelter, young man, if there should be a squall. Them heaps o' white clouds look rather threatenin' in the west; but they seem for all the world like the hawthorn hedges which the winds used to strike up into great white billows every May in the dear old mother country," and the old woman wiped her eyes with the corner of her striped apron. "It an't likely I shall ever look into your face again; but may the Lord bring you safely to the mother whose heart's sore for you from sunrise to sunset!"

"Amen!" said the young man solemnly shaking the old woman's hand. He turned to Amy, but the words died in his throat; he kissed her forehead two or three times and hurried away.

He opened the back gate softly and gazed all about him—at the wood pile in one corner of the great yard near the sunflower stalks, and the small quince-trees which grew on one side of the old brown homestead of Deacon Palmer.

Suddenly the kitchen door opened, and Rebecca Palmer came out of the door with a tin basin in her hand, and the man's heart leaped as he heard her say, in her quick way,

"Never mind sprinklin' them clothes, mother, I'll attend to it as soon as I've hunted up a few o' them winter pears to stew for supper," and he saw the light, rapid figure hasten round the corner of the house to the old pear-tree just in the edge of the pasture, which he remembered climbing so many times in his boyhood, and amid whose branches he had gathered the faded bird's nests every fall. He followed the quick figure stealthily, and stood still a moment just outside the bars, and she did not see him, for her back was turned, and she had dropped down on the yellow grass and was searching amid it for the fruit which the wind had shaken off.

"Becky, Becky, I say!"

"Why, Becky, do look up here! Now, have n't you got a better welcome than this for your brother when he 's come back from the dead like?"

But she cowered closer down in the grass and moaned and shivered like the leaves in the old pear-tree.

"See here, now, what on airth ails you? If you take me for a spirit, jest look up and I'll be able to convince you I'm honest flesh and blood yet."

He lifted her up by one arm, for she was too weak betwixt fright and wonder to resist; but the old, familiar, hearty tones half reassured

her.

She lifted her face from her hands and looked at her brother a moment with a strained, wild glance, then the glad truth broke into her heart, for the hazel eyes had their old roguish glance, though they were set in a pale, wasted face.

"O, Reuben, Reuben, I thought it was a ghost!" and she fell upon his neck with a wild sob of joy.

It was long before he could get her to talk rationally. She would throw her arms around his neck, and, hugging him tightly, murmur such tender words over him betwixt sobs and laughter as Reuben Palmer had not heard since he lay a babe in his mother's crib.

"You precious, darlin' fellow, have you really come back to us alive? Bless your heart, how white and changed you are! O, Reuben, darlin', is it really you, or am I dreamin'!"

And at last the girl grew calmer, and was able to tell her brother of that terrible night when the awful tidings came home of his death, and how they had n't one of them smiled since, and how, though his mother tried to "bear up," every one who looked in her face could see that her heart was broken.

And then both the young man and the maiden sat down on the grass and wept as though they were little children.

At last Rebecca rose up. "O, what will mother say! You must come right into the house, Reuben, only p'raps I'd better break it to her slow like, for she's weakly now, and the sudden joy might kill her. O, there's father!"

And they saw the old Deacon come slowly into the yard and alight from his horse just before the barn door, and remove the heavy bags of flour from the animal's back, for the old man had just returned from the mill.

"We'll go and tell him first. You jest keep around the corner of the barn and I'll break the news," cried Rebecca.

"O, say, father, I want to tell you-something's happened!"

The old man turned and looked in the eager face of his daughter, and his son standing a little way off could see the change which the last two weeks had wrought in his face.

"Well, what is it, my child?"

"You'll be so glad, father, and yet I can't tell it. O, Reuben, do come here!" And he came out. "Father!"

The vague superstitions which almost all country people held at that period of ghosts who haunted their old homes, and visits made by the dead to the living, at once suggested even to the well-balanced mind of the Deacon the possibility of his son's spirit returning to him.

He turned white as his child had done, but he did not speak, and Rebecca cried out, “Do n't be afeared, father. It is n't a ghost, but Reuben's old self, and he was n't dead, as we all thought."

One long, greedy glance, and the father knew

his child.

"O, Reuben, my son Reuben, the Lord be praised!"

And the father and the son fell upon each other's necks, like Jacob and Joseph of old, and wept.

"We must break it to mother easy, children, or it'll sartain kill her for joy," said the old man, vigorously wiping his face with his pocket handkerchief.

So it was arranged that Deacon Palmer should go in and break the joyful tidings to his wife according to his best judgment.

The trio went up to the house; Deacon Palmer entered the kitchen, and his children stood just outside the door, where they could hear every word. Mrs. Palmer was slicing some apples into a wooden bowl. She did not look up as her husband entered; all these weeks she had gone on with her household duties careful and assiduons as ever, but with a face which grew more pale and patient every day-more like the faces over which the grasses grow and the winds walk.

"Wall, Becky," she said, "I could n't make out what had kept you. You've been a heap of time huntin' them pears."

All the life had gone out of her voice, it was as full of grief and patience as her face.

"It's me, mother, not Becky. I've jest got home from the mill, and I've heered good news."

"What kind o' news, father?" with scarcely a

'Ahem-wall, this was from the army."

"Wall, not that exactly. It's somethin' that consarns us more nearly-somethin' that'll give you great joy, mother."

Poor old man! He was internally congratulating himself on the tact and discretion with which he had approached his subject; but he could not keep a tone of triumphant gladness out of his voice, and he was not astute enough for a woman's quick intuitions.

"John," she said, turning round and looking him full in the face-a look that fairly staggered him "have you heard any thing about Reuben?"

"Wall, yes, it did consarn him-" He broke down here. "Reuben, come in and let your mother see for herself."

"Mother!"

She gave one long, greedy look as his shadow fell over the threshold. She comprehended it all in that glance, and stretched out her arms as he rushed forward, but they only clutched at the air, for before she could gather him to her heart she had fallen to the floor. Her son that was dead was alive again, but the mother's joy was more than her heart could bear.

"Wall, mother, now you may as well take the gal and try her. You need somebody to help you do up chores, bein' Becky's got married and gone to take care of her own home."

Deacon Palmer thus delivered his opinion in an undertone to his wife one August afternoon in the pantry, whither he had followed her for a private consultation.

"The gal looks peart and bright," said Mrs. Palmer, meditatively passing her forefinger over the rind of a new cheese, "and somehow I can't help takin' a sort of interest in her."

And while the Deacon and his wife were talking his son Reuben entered the kitchen with an ox whip in his hand; his handsome face was sunbrowned with hard labor, and he wore a straw hat and a farmer's suit of blue "home spun."

"Father, can't you help me come and unload the corn?" he exclaimed, and then he started back suddenly, and a faint blush burned in his brown cheek, for there in his mother's armchair by the fireplace sat a young girl with a face it would have done you good to look at, so bright, and fair, and rosy was it, though you knew at the first glance that it had not passed far into its teens. The girl looked at the young man very earnestly a moment, and a quick change went over her face. She rose up.

"Did you wish to see my mother?" asked

"I have just seen her, sir. O, do n't you know me?" she cried out suddenly, and reached both her hands to him.

Another glance full of wonder and curiosity into the blushing face. Then a faint recollection dawned in the young man's soul. Suddenly his eyes cleared up into a great brightness.

"Amy Mason!" and he drew the small, halfchild figure close to his heart just as he had done on the morning in which they parted. "How in the world did you get here, my child?"

"I was all alone," she said, with the tears settling into her eyes, "for aunt Nabby has gone to my father and mother, and father was away so much in his bear hunts that I could n't stand the silence and loneliness of my home away off almost in the wilderness. And when he said he must be gone all winter I coaxed him to let me shut up the house and go to some of the neighbors."

(L "And then-"

"I was n't happy there, you see, and one night when I lay awake lookin' at the stars and feelin' that I had n't a friend in the whole world, I remembered you and all you had told me of your mother and sister Becky. And I made up my mind that I'd set out at once and try and find 'em and see if I could n't hire out with 'em for your sake. Father'd left me jest money enough to pay my fare and stop at the taverns on the way, and so here I am at last."

"Well, you're a brave girl to come all this distance in war times with that pretty face o' yourn."

A blush crept up and deepened the roses which sat in the cheeks of Amy Mason. Then she said in her own childlike, artless way, "I did n't expect to find you here, though, for I s'posed you'd gone back to the wars; but I thought may be your folks would let me stay for your sake."

"My poor country! She needs every soldier she can muster; but I have n't been tough and hearty like these three years since I left the army, and father thinks I an't fit for service, and it would break mother's heart if I should speak o' goin'. So I've felt it my duty to stay at home and oversee the farm, though it chafes me sorely sometimes."

"What does all this mean, Reuben?"

It was the simultaneous inquiry of the Deacon and his wife as they stood in the pantry door and saw Amy Mason at Reuben's side, while his arm was drawn round her waist.