‘Say yes, darling Amy,’ he wrote, ’and we may yet be very happy.  I will be a good husband to you and a father to your child, who shall share my fortune as if he were my own.  Answer at once, telling me to come, and, before you know it I shall be there to claim you for my wife.’

With a low moan, Mrs. Crawford hid her face in her hands and sobbed aloud, for the Amy who might have been the honored wife of Arthur Tracy lay dead in her coffin; and that day they buried her under the November snow, which was falling in great sheets upon the frozen ground.  What Arthur felt when he heard the news no one ever knew, for he made no sign to any one, but at once gave orders to Colvin that a costly monument should be placed at her grave, with only this inscription upon it: 

  AMY

  Aged 23.

Of course the low-minded people talked, and Mrs. Crawford knew they did; but her heart was too full of sorrow to care what was said.  Her beautiful daughter was dead, and she was alone with the little boy, the child Harold, who had inherited his mother’s beauty, with all her lovely traits of character.  Had Mrs. Crawford consented, Arthur would have supported him entirely; but she was too proud for that.  She would take care of him herself as long as possible, she wrote him, but if, when Harold was older, he chose to educate him, she would offer no objection.

And there the matter dropped, and Mrs. Crawford struggled on as best she could, sometimes going out to do plain sewing, sometimes taking it home, sometimes going to people’s houses to superintend when they had company, and sometimes selling fruit and flowers from the garden attached to the cottage.  But whatever she did, she was always the same quiet, lady-like woman, who commanded the respect of all, and who, poor as she was, was held in high esteem by the better class in Shannondale.  Grace Atherton’s carriage and that of Edith St. Claire stood oftener before her door than that at Tracy Park; and though the ladies came mostly on business, they found themselves lingering after the business was over to talk with one who, in everything save money, was their equal.

Harold was his grandmother’s idol.  For him she toiled and worked, feeling more than repaid for all she did by his love and devotion to her.  And Harold was a noble little fellow, full of manly instincts, and always ready to deny himself for the sake of others.  That he and his grandmother were poor he knew, but he had never felt the effects of their poverty, save when Tom Tracy had jeered at him for it, and called him a pauper.  There had been one square fight between the two boys, in which Harold had been the victor, with only a torn jacket, while Tom’s eye had been black for a week, and Mrs. Tracy had gone to the cottage to complain and insist that Harold should be punished.  But when she heard that Dick St. Claire had assisted in the fray, taking Harold’s part, and himself dealing Tom the blow which blackened his eye, she changed her tactics, for she did not care to quarrel with Mrs. Arthur St. Claire, of Grassy Spring.