In Mr. Sprague’s house on the opposite side of the road, Squire Fisher was relating some old tales of bygone Portchester days.  “I knew Agatha when she was a girl,” he avowed.  “She had the grandest manners and the most enchanting smile of any rich or poor man’s daughter between the coast and Springfield.  She did not dress in calico then.  She wore the gayest clothes her father could buy. her, and old Jacob was not without means to make his daughter the leading figure in town.  How we young fellows did adore her, and what lengths we went to win one of her glorious smiles!  Two of us, John and James Zabel, have lived bachelors for her sake to this very day; but I hadn’t courage enough for that; I married and”—­ something between a sigh and a chuckle filled out the sentence.

“What made Philemon carry off the prize?  His good looks?”

“Yes, or his good luck.  It wasn’t his snap; of that you may be sure.  James Zabel had the snap, and he was her first choice, too, but he got into some difficulty—­I never knew just what it was, but it was regarded as serious at the time—­and that match was broken off.  Afterwards she married Philemon.  You see, I was out of it altogether; had never been in it, perhaps; but there were three good years of my life in which I thought of little else than Agatha.  I admired her spirit, you see.  There was something more taking in her ways than in her beauty, wonderful as that was.  She ruled us with a rod of iron, and yet we worshipped her.  I have wondered to see her so meek of late.  I never thought she would be satisfied with a brick-floored cottage and a husband of failing wits.  But no one, to my knowledge, has ever heard a complaint from her lips; and the dignity of her afflicted wife-hood has far transcended the haughtiness of those days when she had but to smile to have all the youth of Portchester at her feet.”

“I suppose it was the loss of so many children that reconciled her to a quiet life.  A woman cannot close the eyes of six children, one after the other, without some modification taking place in her character.”

“Yes, she and Philemon have been unfortunate; but she was a splendid looking girl, boys.  I never see such grand-looking women now.”

In a little one-storied cottage on the hillside a woman was nursing a baby and talking at the same time of Agatha Webb.

“I shall never forget the night my first baby fell sick,” she faltered; “I was just out of bed myself, and having no nearer neighbours then than now, I was all alone on the hillside, Alec being away at sea.  I was too young to know much about sickness, but something told me that I must have help before morning or my baby would die.  Though I could just walk across the floor, I threw a shawl around me, took my baby in my arms, and opened the door.  A blinding gust of rain blew in.  A terrible storm was raging and I had not noticed it, I was so taken up with the child.

“I could not face that gale.  Indeed, I was so weak I fell on my knees as it struck me and became dripping wet before I could drag myself inside.  The baby began to moan and everything was turning dark before me, when I heard a strong, sweet voice cry out in the roadway: