begun to practise, returned to take his place, but never paid practical
attention to the farming any more than to his profession. He gave the
land in charge to a bailiff, and at once settled down, Martha told me,
into what we now saw him. She seemed to imply that grief at my father's
death was the cause of his depression, but I soon came to the conclusion
that it lasted too long to be so accounted for. Gradually I grew
aware--so gradually that at length I seemed to have known it from the
first--that the soul of my uncle was harassed with an undying trouble,
that some worm lay among the very roots of his life. What change could
ever dispel such a sadness as I often saw in that chair! Now and then he
would sit there for hours, an open book in his hand perhaps, at which he
cast never a glance, all unaware of the eyes of the small maiden fixed
upon him, with a whole world of sympathy behind them. I suspect, however,
as I believe I have said, that Martha Moon, in her silence, had pierced
the heart of the mystery, though she _knew_ nothing.

One practical lesson given me now and then in varying form by my uncle, I
at length, one day, suddenly and involuntarily associated with the
darkness that haunted him. In substance it was this: "Never, my little
one, hide anything from those that love you. Never let anything that
makes itself a nest in your heart, grow into a secret, for then at once
it will begin to eat a hole in it." He would so often say the kind of
thing, that I seemed to know when it was coming. But I had heard it as a
thing of course, never realizing its truth, and listening to it only
because he whom I loved said it.

I see with my mind's eye the fine small head and large eyes so far above
me, as we sit beside each other at the deal table. He looked down on me
like a bird of prey. His hair--gray, Martha told me, before he was
thirty--was tufted out a little, like ruffled feathers, on each side. But