He looked up at the lofty crown of the pine-tree, through which shone one or two of the brightest stars, and felt a new comradeship with it.  It was a great tree, he thought, and they had grown up together.  He laid his hardened palm on it, and fancied that he caught a throb of the silent vitality under the bark.  How many kinds of life there were!  Under its white shroud, how all the valley lived.  The tree stretching up its head to the stars, the river preparing to throw off the icy armor which compressed its heart—­they were all awakening in their own way.  The river had been restless, like himself, the tree had been tranquil, but they passed together through the resurrection into quiet life.

When he went into the house, he found that he was almost fainting with fatigue.  He sat down by the desk, and his head fell forward on the pile of pamphlets he had left there.  For the first time in his life he thought of them without a sore heart.  “I suppose Natty’ll go to every one of them places,” he murmured as he dropped to sleep.

He dreamed strange, troubled dreams that melted away before he could seize on them, and finally he thought his sister stood before him and called.  The impression was so vivid that he started up, staring at the empty room.  For an instant he still thought he heard a voice, and then he knew it was the old clock striking the hour.  It was ten o’clock.

“Natty’s just a-crossin’ the State line,” he said aloud The text-ornament caught his eye.  Still half asleep, with his sister’s long-forgotten voice ringing in his ears, he remembered vaguely that he had meant to bring the second text to light.  For a moment he hesitated, and then, “Well, it’s come true for Natty, anyhow,” he thought.

And clumsily using his heavy jackknife, he began to cut the tiny stitches which had so long hidden from his eyes the joyous exultation of the escaped prisoner.

THE BEDQUILT

Of all the Elwell family Aunt Mehetabel was certainly the most unimportant member.  It was in the New England days, when an unmarried woman was an old maid at twenty, at forty was everyone’s servant, and at sixty had gone through so much discipline that she could need no more in the next world.  Aunt Mehetabel was sixty-eight.

She had never for a moment known the pleasure of being important to anyone.  Not that she was useless in her Brother’s family; she was expected, as a matter of course, to take upon herself the most tedious and uninteresting part of the household labors.  On Mondays she accepted as her share the washing of the men’s shirts, heavy with sweat and stiff with dirt from the fields and from their own hard-working bodies.  Tuesdays she never dreamed of being allowed to iron anything pretty or even interesting, like the baby’s white dresses or the fancy aprons of her young lady nieces.  She stood all day pressing out a tiresome monotonous succession of dish-cloths and towels and sheets.