A fierce contempt for her pink-and-white, and tears and eyelashes and attitudes, came upon her; then a sudden sickening jealousy that turned her faint where she sat.

What did God mean,—­Asenath believed in God, having so little else to believe in,—­what did he mean, when he had blessed the girl all her happy life with such wealth of beauty, by filling her careless hands with this one best, last gift?  Why, the child could not hold such golden love!  She would throw it away by and by.  What a waste it was!

Not that she had these words for her thought, but she had the thought distinctly through her dizzy pain.

“So there’s nothing to do about it,” said Del, pinning her shawl.  “We can’t have anything to say to each other,—­unless anybody should die, or anything; and of course I’m not wicked enough to think of that.—­Sene!  Sene! what are you doing?”

Sene had risen slowly, stood upon the log, caught at an aspen-top, and swung out with it its whole length above the water.  The slight tree writhed and quivered about the roots.  Sene looked down and moved her marred lips without sound.

Del screamed and wrung her hands.  It was an ugly sight!

“O don’t, Sene, don’t! You’ll drown yourself! you will be drowned! you will be—­O, what a start you gave me!  What were you doing, Senath Martyn?”

Sene swung slowly back, and sat down.

“Amusing myself a little;—­well, unless somebody died, you said?  But I believe I won’t talk any more to-night.  My head aches.  Go home, Del.”

Del muttered a weak protest at leaving her there alone; but, with her bright face clouded and uncomfortable, went.

Asenath turned her head to listen for the last rustle of her dress, then folded her arms, and, with her eyes upon the sluggish current, sat still.

An hour and a half later, an Andover farmer, driving home across the bridge, observed on the river’s edge—­a shadow cut within a shadow—­the outline of a woman’s figure, sitting perfectly still with folded arms.  He reined up and looked down; but it sat quite still.

“Hallo there!” he called; “you’ll fall in if you don’t look out!” for the wind was strong, and it blew against the figure; but it did not move nor make reply.  The Andover farmer looked over his shoulder with the sudden recollection of a ghost-story which he had charged his grandchildren not to believe last week, cracked his whip, and rumbled on.

Asenath began to understand by and by that she was cold, so climbed the bank, made her way over the windy flats, the railroad, and the western bridge confusedly with an idea of going home.  She turned aside by the toll-gate.  The keeper came out to see what she was doing, but she kept out of his sight behind the great willow and his little blue house,—­the blue house with the green blinds and red moulding.  The dam thundered that night, the wind and the water being high.  She made her way up above it, and looked in.  She had never seen it so black and smooth there.  As she listened to the roar, she remembered something that she had read—­was it in the Bible or the Ledger?—­about seven thunders uttering their voices.