An hour later the tea was exhausted, but Mrs. Ruggles yet sat at her
lonely table, as still as the sleepers around her. The clock struck ten:
she nervously drew a soiled paper from her bosom. Eleven: she rose with
hesitation and set the tallow candle behind the door. Then she softly
entered the bed-room and stood before the window where Alice lay. The sky
was clear again. The moon shone on the face and form of the sleeping girl,
making softer their graceful lines, richer the shadows in the golden hair,
tenderer the tint of cheek and lip.

She stepped again into the shade and stole to the colonel's bedside. His
disturbed mind had turned backward over the path of life from the sudden
death escaped, and, sleeping or waking, his memory had been busy with the
people and events of other days.

"John Miller!" she said, in a suppressed tone. He started. "John Miller, I
know ye. Common name--I wa'n't sure afore to-day. When you pulled that
money out o' yer pocket I see that in yer face that satisfied me. It's fer
the good name o' the dead I've come. Elseways I never'd ha' troubled ye."
The astonished colonel shifted his position painfully, prepared to speak
or to listen. "There yer girl lies in the light o' heaven. Nex' room my
boy lies in the shadder an' dark. He don't know, an' he never will. John
Miller, I married as honest an' as good a man as ever you see. Folks has
come to me in sickness an' trouble, an' gone behin' my back to talk. Some
said I done right to take him--'twas Christian in me. Some said I must ha'
been a fool. Some said we wa'n't married a-tall. Wasn't I a Peables?
Didn't I know 'twould be flung up to my face? Wasn't I prouder'n any on
'em?"

A moment's confusion and doubting of senses: then, as the suppressed voice