floor.

"Light the candle, Charlotte," said Cephas, and Charlotte obeyed. She
lighted the candle on the high shelf, then she sat down next
Barnabas. Cephas glanced around at them. He was a small man, with a
thin face in a pale film of white locks and beard, but his black eyes
gleamed out of it with sharp fixedness. Barnabas looked back at him
unflinchingly, and there was a curious likeness between the two pairs
of black eyes. Indeed, there had been years ago a somewhat close
relationship between the Thayers and the Barnards, and it was not
strange if one common note was repeated generations hence.

Cephas had been afraid lest Barnabas should, all unperceived in the
dusk, hold his daughter's hand, or venture upon other loverlike
familiarity. That was the reason why he had ordered the candle
lighted when it was scarcely dark enough to warrant it.

But Barnabas seemed scarcely to glance at his sweetheart as he sat
there beside her, although in some subtle fashion, perhaps by some
finer spiritual vision, not a turn of her head, nor a fleeting
expression on her face, like a wind of the soul, escaped him. He saw
always Charlotte's beloved features high and pure, almost severe, but
softened with youthful bloom, her head with fair hair plaited in a
smooth circle, with one long curl behind each ear. Charlotte would
scarcely have said he had noticed, but he knew well she had on a new
gown of delaine in a mottled purple pattern, her worked-muslin
collar, and her mother's gold beads which she had given her.

Barnabas kept listening anxiously for the crackle of the hearth fire
in the best room; he hoped Charlotte had lighted the fire, and they