Five years being gone, Martha Yarrow, sitting by her fire to-night, could only repeat the words of her letter.  She had taken out a daguerreotype of her husband, and was looking at it.  He was a small man; young; dressed in a suit of rusty black, with a certain subdued, credulous, incomplete air about him, like a man forced at birth into some iron mould of circumstance, and whose own proper muscles and soul had never had a chance of air to grow.  A homely, saddened, uncouthly shaped face,—­one that would be sure to go snubbed and unread through the world, to find at last some woman who would know its latent meaning, and worship it with the heat of passion which this country-girl had given.  Withal, a cheerful, quizzical smile on the lips.  Poor Martha’s eyes filled, the moment she looked at that; and so she went back to her first years of married life, full of keen, relishing enjoyment, all coming from him, quiet, silent as he was,—­remembering how her maddest freaks were indulged with that same odd, dry laugh.  She stood alone now.

“And in these years I have grown used to being alone,”—­standing up, stretching her arms suddenly above her head, and letting them fall again.

It was a lie:  she knew that the tired sinking within her of body and soul was harder to bear now than the day he went away, and she weaker to bear it.  If she could but lean her head on his breast for one moment, and feel him pat her hair with the old “Tut! tut! why, what ails my girl?” it would give her more strength than all her prayers.  She couldn’t think of herself as anything but a girl, when she remembered her husband:  these years were nothing.

Her mouth grew drier and hotter, as she sat there looking into the face, polishing the glass with her hand, kissing it.  “I’m so tired, Stephen!” she would whisper now and then.  Only those who know the unuttered mysterious bond in the soul of a true wife and husband can comprehend what Martha Yarrow bore, when it was torn apart, and by no fault of hers.  “God meant him for me,” she sometimes said, savagely; “no man had a right to part us.”  She looked at the picture, feeling that he was purer than any baby she had nursed at her breast, nearer God.  “It was his religion was to blame.  That was the ruin of us all.  I believe he never knew who the good God was; how could he?” thinking of his father, who used to sit in the chimney-corner,—­one of those acrid doctrine-professors who sour the water of life into gall and vinegar before they dole it out to their children.  She was glad she had told him her mind before they parted,—­to what his teaching had brought his son.  “I cut deep that day, and I thank God for it,” she said, her face white.