“What’s looks?” said he, philosophically.  “You look jest the same to me, wife, as ever you did!”

“Do I?” said the pleased wife.  “Well, I’m glad I do.  I couldn’t bear to seem different to you, Henry!”

Henry took his pipe from his mouth, and then looked at his wife with a steady and somewhat critical gaze.

“I don’t think anything about it, wife; but if I want to think on ‘t,—­why, I can, by jes’ shettin’ my eyes,—­and there you are! as handsome as a picter!  Little Dorcas is the very image of you, at her age; and you look exactly like her,—­only older, of course.—­Everything ready for Thanksgiving?  We’ll give Day a good dinner, anyhow!”

“Yes, all’s ready,” answered Dorcas, with her eyes fixed on the fire.

“I knew it!  There’s no fail to you, wife!—­never has been!—­never will be!”

Dorcas rose and went behind her husband, took his head in her two faithful hands, kissed his forehead, and went upstairs.

“Little Dorcas” was fastening her hair in countless papillotes.  She smiled bashfully, as her mother entered the room, and showed her white, even teeth, between her rosy lips.

“I wonder if I ever did look so pretty as that child does!” said the mother to herself.

But she said to Dorcas only this:—­

“Here’s your great-aunt’s pin and ring.  They used to be mine, when I was young and foolish.  Take care of ’em, and don’t you be foolish, child!”

“I wonder what mother meant!” soliloquized the daughter, when her mother had kissed her and said good-night; “she certainly had tears in her eyes!”

In the gray dawn of the next morning, Swan Day rode out of Walton in the same stage-coach and with the same “spike-team” of gray horses which had brought him thither thirty-six hours before.  When the coach reached Troy, and the bright sun broke over the picturesque scenery of the erratic Ashuelot, he drew his breath deeply, as if relieved of a burden.  Presently the coach stopped, the door opened, and the coachman held out his hand in silence.

“Fare, is it?”

“Fare.”

Opening his pocket-book, he saw the note which he had written to Dorcas, appointing an interview, and which he had forgotten to send to her.

As he rode on, he tore the letter into a thousand minute fragments, scattering them for a mile in the coach’s path, and watching the wheels grind them down in the dust.

“’T isn’t the only thing I haven’t done that I meant to!” said he, with a sad smile over his sallow face.

He buttoned his coat closely to his chin, raised the collar to his ears, and shut his eyes.

The coachman peeped back at his only passenger, touched the nigh leader with the most delicate hint of a whipcord, and said confidentially to the off wheel,—­

“What a sleepy old porpus that is in there!”

* * * * *

THE LAST CRUISE OF THE MONITOR.