“I don’t know.”

“’Tain’t likely they’ll let the old woman stay in her corner, whoever they’ll be,” said Karen.  “Well —­ ’tain’t fur now to the end, —­ and then I’ll get a better place where they won’t turn me out.  I wish I was there, Governor.”

“‘There’ will be better at the end of your way, Karen, than at any other time.”

“Ay —­ O I know it, dear; but I get so impatient, days, —­ I want to be gone.  It’s better waiting.”

“Perhaps you’ll have something yet to do for us, Karen,” said Winnie.

“Ye’re too fur off,” said the old woman.  “Karen’s done all she can for ye when she’s took care of ye this time.  But I’ll find what I have to do —­ and I’ll do it —­ and then I’ll go!” —­ she said, with a curious modulation of the tones of her voice that came near some of the Methodist airs in which she delighted.  “Governor’ll take care o’ you, Winnie; and the Lord’ll take care o’ him!”

Both brother and sister smiled a little at Karen’s arrangement of things; but neither contradicted her.

“And how do you manage here, Karen, all alone? —­ do you keep comfortable?”

“I’m comfortable, Mr. Winthrop,” she said with half a smile; —­ “I have lived comfortable all my life.  I seem to see Mis’ Landholm round now, times, jus’ like she used to be; and I know we’ll be soon all together again.  I think o’ that when I’m dreary.”

She was a singular old figure, as she sat in the corner there with her head a little on one side, leaning her cheek on her finger, and with the quick change of energetic life and subdued patience in her manner.

“Don’t get any dinner for us, Karen,” said Winthrop as they rose from table.  “We have enough for dinner in our basket.”

“Ye must take it back again to Mannahatta,” said Karen.  “Ye’r dinner’ll be ready —­ roast chickens and new potatoes and huckleberry pie —­ the chickens are just fat, and ye never see nicer potatoes this time o’ year; and Anderese don’t pick very fast, but he’ll have huckleberries enough home for you to eat all the ways ye like.  And milk I know ye like’m with, Governor.”

“Give me the basket then, Karen, and I’ll furnish the huckleberries.”

“He’ll do it —­ Anderese’ll get ’em, Mr. Winthrop, —­ not you.”

“Give me the basket! —­ I would rather do it, Karen.  Anderese has got to dig the potatoes.”

“O yes, and we’ll go out and spend the morning in the woods, won’t we, Governor?” said his sister.

The basket and Winnie were ready together and the brother and sister struck off into the woods to the north of the house.  They had to cross but a little piece of level ground and sunshine and they were under the shade of the evergreens which skirted all the home valley.  The ground as soon became uneven and rocky, broken into little heights and hollows, and strewn all over with a bedding of stones, large and small; except where narrow foot-tracks or cowpaths