moment the morbid fancy hurt her.

The red glow was healthier, suited her temperament better. She
chose to fancy the house as it had been once,--should be again,
please God. She chose to see the old comfort and the old beauty
which the poor school-master had gathered about their home. Gone
now. But it should return. It was well, perhaps, that he was
blind, he knew so little of what had come on them. There, where
the black marks were on the wall, there had hung two pictures.
Margret and her father religiously believed them to be a Tintoret
and Copley. Well, they were gone now. He had been used to dust
them with a light brush every morning, himself, but now he said
always,--

"You can clean the pictures to-day, Margret. Be careful, my
child."

And Margret would remember the greasy Irishman who had tucked
them under his arm, and flung them into a cart, her blood growing
hotter in her veins.

It was the same through all the house; there was not a niche in
the bare rooms that did not recall a something gone,--something
that should return. She willed that, that evening, standing by
the dim fire. What women will, whose eyes are slow, attentive,
still, as this Margret's, usually comes to pass.

The red fire-glow suited her; another glow, warming her floating
fancy, mingled with it, giving her every-day purpose the trait of
heroism. The old spirit of the dead chivalry, of succour to the