hard as New England granite, but I think she wears it like a
mask. Sometimes, one sees through. She scolds me very often,
about anything that occurs to her, but I never pay any attention
to it. She says I shouldn't live here all alone, and that I
deserve to have something dreadful happen to me, but she had all
the trees cut down that stood on the hill between her window and
mine, and had a key made to my lower door, and made me promise
that if I was ill at any time, I would put a signal in my
window--a red shawl in the daytime and a light at night. I hadn't
any red shawl and she gave me hers.

"One night--I shall never forget it--I had a terrible attack of
neuralgia, during the worst storm I have ever known. I didn't
even know that I put the light in the window--I was so beside
myself with pain--but she came, at two o'clock in the morning,
and stayed with me until I was all right again. She was so gentle
and so tender-- I shall always love her for that."

The sweet voice vibrated with feeling, and Ruth's thoughts flew
to the light in the attic window, but, no--it could not be seen
from Miss Ainslie's. "What does Aunt Jane look like?" she asked,
after a pause.

"I haven't a picture, except one that was taken a long time ago,
but I'll get that." She went upstairs and returned, presently,
putting an old-fashioned ambrotype into Ruth's hand.

The velvet-lined case enshrined Aunt Jane in the bloom of her
youth. It was a young woman of twenty or twenty-five, seated in a
straight-backed chair, with her hands encased in black lace mitts