to go and nurse him; but she, too, was stunned, and in the whirl of that great grief even Aunt ’Viny’s demands were no more to her than a dull mechanic routine that she could hardly force her trembling steps to carry through.  So she stayed at home, sewing all day and crying all night, and looking generally miserable, though she said nothing; for whom could she speak to?  Aunt ’Viny had resolutely kept her suspicions about Ned Parker to herself, though well she knew who had walked home from meeting with ’Tenty in those pleasant autumn Sundays now gone, pleasure and all.  But Miss ’Viny believed in silence on such matters, and had held her peace; now it was too late to break it.  Nor was ’Tenty disposed to tell her anything; for it occurred for the first time to her innocent soul that she had nothing to tell.  So they both went on their way, with secret pity and still endurance.

After a brief illness of three days, poor old Doctor Parker’s weary soul and body gave out; he died on a Thursday afternoon, and, in country-fashion, it was proposed to bury him on Sunday, from the church.  Sunday came, cold and raw and blustering.  ’Tenty took her usual seat in the gallery, but took it early, that she might see the “mourners” come in and fill the front pews kept for them.  She wiped away the tears from her eyes, and looked on with a feeling of half envy, thinking of the son to whom no funeral honors should ever now be paid, slumbering in the cruel seas that break and roar about the Horn.  She counted the bearers, all known faces; she watched Parson Goodyear into the pulpit; she saw Mrs. Parker on her brother’s arm.  But there was one other veiled female figure, shrouded also in black, whose presence she could no way account for; and when Parson Goodyear made his first long prayer, and sent up an earnest petition for the doubly bereaved woman before him, what did he mean by adding,—­“And Thine other handmaid, in the bloom of her years bereaved of hope and promise,—­her whom Thou hast afflicted from afar off, and made a widow before Thee”?  What did it mean?  ’Tenty’s breath fluttered, and she turned cold.  Just at that moment, one of her neighbors murmured under her bonnet,—­“That’s Hanner-Ann, next to Miss Parker; only to think how sly she’s kep’ it a hull year!  And she engaged to Ed’ard all that time!  I wouldn’t never ha’ believed it, ef she hadn’t had his letters to show for’t, an’ a gold watch he gin her; an’ Miss Parker says she’s knowed it all the time.”

Little more did ’Tenty know of psalm or sermon; some whirling sounds passed her, and then a rush of people.  She was last to leave the church; and when she got home, and went to make Miss ’Viny’s tea, as she tilted the long well-sweep down and up to draw her pail of water, she looked earnestly down the depths of crystal, as if to see what lay below, then quietly opened her left hand above it;—­something bright fell, dashed the clear drops from a fern that grew half-way down, tinkled against a projecting stone, made a little splash, and was gone.  ’Tenty took up her pail and went into the shed; and Ned Parker’s locket lies at the bottom of the well, for all I know, to this day.  Thenceforth ’Tenty cried no more; though for many weeks she was grave, wretched, pining.