been a sufficiently devoted lover. That he was "near," and grudged parting with money, she soon ascertained; but this one defect apart, he was a faithful husband, a conscientious man, and a useful deacon in the church. The farm was not wholly clear at first; they saved to pay for it, then Elbert coveted more land, and it was bought. He did not withhold money when it was needed to buy stock, or farm implements, or to build barns and outhouses. But for the clothing of wife and children, for extras of any kind, for what he considered superfluities, no money was forthcoming. Mrs. Ansel soon found that her friends received a very cold welcome. Company caused extra expense. The children went to an uncle's or an aunt's for Thanksgiving, by their mother's management.

The elder girl, Marion, married early and happily, and went a few miles away to live in her own home. That house became her mother's refuge, and a place where Julia could meet her friends, as she bloomed into youthful womanhood.

On the evening of our story, Elbert went to bed. His wife and daughter sat up late. Elbert Ansel was aware of nothing different from the ordinary routine the rest of the week. He was called to the court-house on business, a drive of several miles, and, to his own disgust, was soon summoned to serve on a jury.

Mrs. Ansel calmly went on with her work, cooking a great store of pies which she laid away on the buttery shelves, making generous brown loaves, and boiling a ham. It was an obvious provisioning for an emergency.

When Marion heard her mother's decision to go away, she gasped; then sat down and laughed until she cried. Finally, she said, earnestly: "Oh, if you only, only had done it sooner."

"I never could have done it sooner, dear. Never, until this fall, when your uncle in Colorado sent me a letter with a hundred-dollar bill in it, about which I have kept my own

counsel, and I had money enough that I could get at to do any little independent thing with. I am sure I am doing right. Only, Marion, keep watch, and if your father is ill, let me know. We may have to stay all winter."

Mr. Ansel's jury duty ended one cold afternoon late in November. He drove into his barnyard, about dusk, unharnessed, and went into the house. The lamp was lighted on the table. Supper was set for one. Beside his plate lay a note from his wife, saying briefly, "Julia and I have gone to New York, to spend Thanksgiving with my sister Bertha. I have left everything very comfortable for you. Be sure to put on your thickest flannels the first cold spell. Alice Pearsall will do your washing. We have decided to stay until you come for us."

The clock had never ticked so loudly. The house was as silent as the grave. But the obstinate old man set his jaw with a grimness like death.

"Stay till I go after ye, hey?" he said to himself. "Then ye'll stay some time."

At Sister Bertha's, Mary Ansel entered a world from which she had been so long excluded that she had almost forgotten its passwords. Her boys came tearing up to see her; two brought their wives; her old friends clustered about her, and she was carried about to the big shops, with their bewildering variety of beautiful things; to museums, and picture-galleries, and parks, and every day was a gala day. She bought a new gown, and had it prettily made, and a new bonnet that took ten years off her face.

It would have given her a turn if she could have peeped into her home, and seen Elbert's housekeeping. The shining neatness was gone. The old man did not shave. He and the house looked unkempt together.

"If she don't want to come home, she may stay where she is," he said stubbornly, over and over in the silent house. "If Julia had not acted so hatefully, her mother wouldn't have thought of going away on a fool's errand." Seeing

Julia's photograph smiling at him from her mother's bureau, he thrust it resentfully into the bottom drawer. He even seized his wife's picture with the same intention, but, on second thoughts, he put it back.

Somehow the little picture of his wife began to appeal to him. He had not shaved in a week, but on Sunday, when he did, Mary's eyes kept gazing at him, Mary's mouth smiled.

Thanksgiving was very near now.

A sleigh jingled merrily past one morning, then stopping, turned. It was Marion, who ran in, saying:

"I thought you'd like to know, daddy, that mother's having the time of her life. Aunt Bert writes that she looks perfectly fine. They are all well."

"Humph," said old Ansel.

"I brought you some bread," said Marion, laying down a loaf.

He walked down the village street that day, and it seemed to him that everybody looked at him askance. At last Cy Hilton, the storekeeper, a man Elbert Ansel much disliked, remarked casually:

"Heard tell your wife had left you. Be she getting a divorce?"

Ansel stalked out of the store without ceremony. But he had not stepped into his sleigh when Lawyer Ames, a foxy little man, put out a limp hand.

"Ansel, if you need my assistance, come to me. Mrs. Ansel's not coming back, they say."

The minister passed him, bowing stiffly. Ansel got into his sleigh and drove home.

But very early next morning, a passenger, muffled up to the eyes, stepped into the city-going train. And late next afternoon a man, gray, grim, embarrassed, but on the whole penitent, rang the door-bell of a house on an uptown street.

Light seemed to flow out from the open door in a great golden flood. The house was full of children, darting hither

and thither with joyous shouts. They were playing merry games in the far end of a brilliant drawing-room. Julia, in a white gown, was flitting to and fro. Seated in a low chair by an open fire, with a baby in her arms, was Mary, her face so radiant, her eyes so calm that the old man stood tongue-tied and amazed on the threshold. Mary and this baby! Was it a grandchild, Jim's or Jack's son, maybe? The old man had so forgotten his flesh and blood in his absorbing passion that he had not cared whether or not the boys were married. But this child looked as little Jim used to, and Mary had once held her own babies in that same close way-the mother-way.

The man suddenly felt old and cold and desolate. The tidy maid stared at him, bewildered. Was this some lunatic?

"Whom did you say, sir?" she asked. But just then some impulse made Mary Ansel turn. She gave Jim's boy to his mother. She ran to her old husband and put both arms around his neck. "Come in, dear," she said. "Dinner's over, but you shall have some. We are all here. Bertha, Julia, come quick! Here is Elbert, and our Thanksgiving is now complete."

THE HOMECOMING OF NANCY

NAN

ANCY BEALES looked at herself in the glass. The little mirrow showed her a young face, round and rosy, with dancing lights in the brown eyes and dimples in the cheeks. Nancy was twenty and had the beauty of her years. "How I wish," she said to herself, "that anywhere in this house we had a long glass, one that would let me see how my dress hangs. Never mind, I am going to the city and there I shall have a chance to see the fashions." She glanced with satisfaction at her trunk, already locked and strapped, and packed with the results of her summer's sewing. Nancy had lived in the country all her life. She was going to town to take a business position. The money she would earn as a clerk in a department store seemed very large to her, and she had visions of delight as she thought of the change that would presently come to her fortunes. Her father called from the foot of the stairs that he was going over to the village with a load from the mill, and said he might as well carry the trunk over then, buy her ticket and get her check, as to wait until the afternoon train, which Nancy was to take.

"All right, daddy," she answered him. "The trunk is waiting for you, and I'll help you carry it down."

Mr. Beales was a man in middle life, a little bent with toil, a little gray, but with keen eyes and a firm mouth, a man of even temper and strong will. It was not his wish that his only daughter should leave her home to stand behind a counter and sell goods to strangers. He would have preferred her staying with her mother, helping in the daily round, going about with the young people in the village, and after a while settling down and marrying, as