“I couldn’t help it,” was all she said to the tea-pot.  Whether she referred to the tornado, or her kindness to the sufferers, or to the manner of rendering the kindness, no one knows.  That was all she said to the tea-pot, but to her son, who sat for a while beside her, she spoke in a low tone:  “Markis-dee, you could never c’verse with her.  You’re better’n she is.  Put her out o’ yer head.  She laughed at ye.”

“But she kissed me wi’ tears in ’er eyes afterward,” was his answer as he turned toward his bed on the floor.

An hour later the tea was exhausted, but Mrs. Ruggles yet sat at her lonely table, as still as the sleepers around her.  The clock struck ten:  she nervously drew a soiled paper from her bosom.  Eleven:  she rose with hesitation and set the tallow candle behind the door.  Then she softly entered the bed-room and stood before the window where Alice lay.  The sky was clear again.  The moon shone on the face and form of the sleeping girl, making softer their graceful lines, richer the shadows in the golden hair, tenderer the tint of cheek and lip.

She stepped again into the shade and stole to the colonel’s bedside.  His disturbed mind had turned backward over the path of life from the sudden death escaped, and, sleeping or waking, his memory had been busy with the people and events of other days.

“John Miller!” she said, in a suppressed tone.  He started.  “John Miller, I know ye.  Common name—­I wa’n’t sure afore to-day.  When you pulled that money out o’ yer pocket I see that in yer face that satisfied me.  It’s fer the good name o’ the dead I’ve come.  Elseways I never’d ha’ troubled ye.”  The astonished colonel shifted his position painfully, prepared to speak or to listen.  “There yer girl lies in the light o’ heaven.  Nex’ room my boy lies in the shadder an’ dark.  He don’t know, an’ he never will.  John Miller, I married as honest an’ as good a man as ever you see.  Folks has come to me in sickness an’ trouble, an’ gone behin’ my back to talk.  Some said I done right to take him—­’twas Christian in me.  Some said I must ha’ been a fool.  Some said we wa’n’t married a-tall.  Wasn’t I a Peables?  Didn’t I know ’twould be flung up to my face?  Wasn’t I prouder’n any on ’em?”

A moment’s confusion and doubting of senses:  then, as the suppressed voice went on, the colonel remembered.  A dozen years ago; before he had meddled with railroads; back in the old town; soon after taking his father’s shop; he was plaintiff; Ruggles worked in the first room; Porter’s testimony; Becky Peables the sweetheart of both; burglary; loss trifling; George Ruggles, for one year; came back and married when released; went West.  The old case had scarce crossed his mind for years.