disdainfully, when our visitor was gone, 'Yon woman surely owes us a
little grudge, that 'twas our house and not hers which entertained so
rare a monster as a wandering Quaker; she asked me twenty questions
about him the day after, I remember it well; but we hardly had heart to
laugh, though we were sure enough she had given no such warnings as she
spake of. Althea only sighed and said, ''twas an evil day for her when
she first saw that man;' and as she told me, his two appearances to us
haunted her as she went to rest, and mingled themselves with her dreams.
She woke at last sharply and suddenly, thinking she heard the hail
rattling against the windows as it did when Mr. Truelocke preached his
last sermon in our church; but it was not hail that rattled, it was some
one throwing sand and pebbles up at her window to wake her, and then a
voice calling on her name. She sprang up, and, hurrying on some clothes,
she ran down-stairs; for, as she told me, she had no more doubt of its
being Andrew who called, than if it had been broad daylight, and she
could see him standing below the window; and, being too impatient to
unlock any door, she undid the hasp of the nearest casement and climbed
out; and at the same moment hearing a voice again calling softly,
'Althea,' she ran in the direction of the sound, and came upon a man
whom in the starlight she saw to be Andrew indeed; she spoke his name,
holding out both her hands, and he turning at once grasped them in both
his, and so they stood gazing at each other awhile. Then she said, half
sobbing,--

'You come strangely, Andrew--but you come to your own house, and I am
glad that it falls to me to welcome you to it; it lacks a master sadly;'
and she tried to draw him towards the door, telling him she would set
it open if he would tarry a few minutes while she herself climbed in to
do it.