but she saw that her father and aunt were disturbed, and her imaginings were half eclipsed by a shadow of material things.  Ellen dearly loved this early evening hour when she could stare out into the mystery of the night, herself sheltered under the wing of home, and the fancies which her childish brain wove were as a garment of spirit for the future; but to-night she did not dream so much as she wondered and reflected.  Pretty soon Ellen saw a man’s figure plodding through the fast-gathering snow, and heard her aunt Eva make a soft, heavy rush down the front stairs, and she knew the man was Jim Tenny, and her aunt had been watching for him.  Ellen wondered why she had watched up in her cold room, why she had not sat down-stairs where it was warm, and let Jim ring the door-bell.  Ellen liked Jim Tenny, but there was often that in her aunt’s eyes regarding him which made Ellen look past him and above him to see if there was another man there.  Ellen heard the fire crackling in the parlor-stove, and saw the light shining under the parlor threshold, and heard the soft hum of voices.  Her mother, having finished washing up the supper dishes, came in presently and seated herself beside the lamp with her needle-work.

“You don’t feel any wind comin’ in the window?” she said, anxiously, to Ellen.

“No, ma’am,” replied Ellen.

Andrew looked up quickly.  “You’re sure you don’t?” he said.

“No, sir.”

Ellen watched her mother sewing out in the snowy yard, then a dark shadow came between the reflection and the window, then another.  Two men treading in the snow in even file, one in the other’s foot-tracks, came into the yard.

“Somebody’s comin’,” said Ellen, as a knock, came on the side door.

“Did you see who ’twas?” Fanny asked, starting up.

“Two men.”

“It’s somebody to see you, Andrew,” Fanny said, and Andrew tossed his paper on the table and went to the door.

When the door was opened Ellen heard a man cough.

“I should think anybody was crazy to come out such a night as this, coughin’ that way,” murmured Fanny.  “I do believe it’s Joe Atkins; sounds like his cough.”  Then Andrew entered with the two men stamping and shaking themselves.

“Here’s Joseph Atkins and Nahum Beals,” Andrew said, in his melancholy voice, all unstirred by the usual warmth of greeting.  The two men bowed stiffly.

“Good-evenin’,” Fanny said, and rose and pushed forward the rocking-chair in which she had been seated to Joseph Atkins, who was a consumptive man with an invalid wife, and worked next Andrew in Lloyd’s.

“Keep your settin’, keep your settin’,” he returned in his quick, nervous way, as if his very words were money for dire need, and sat himself down in a straight chair far from the fire.  The other man, Nahum Beals, was very young.  He seated himself next to Joseph, and the two side by side looked with gloomy significance at Andrew and Fanny.  Then Joseph Atkins burst out suddenly in a rattling volley of coughs.