style="font-size:15px;"> "What sort of person is he?"
"The strangest man in all my parish. I cannot make him out. Have you seen him?"
"No. Is there any harm in my making his acquaintance?"
"What an absurd question!" said Sophie.
"You are quite at liberty to get as many words out of him as he will give, which I warn you will be very few," said the sexton's friendly pastor.
"Is he in need of the small salary your church must give its sexton?" I asked.
"The strangest part of the whole is that he won't take anything for his services; and the motive that induces him to fight the spiders away is past my comprehension. He avoids Sophie and me."
So much for my thread of discovery: a very small fibre, it is true,–a church-sexton performing the office without any reward of gold,–but I twisted it and twirled it round in all the ideal contortions plausible in idealic regions, and fell asleep, with the tower-key under my pillow, and the rising moon shining into my room.
I awoke with my secret safely mine,–quite an achievement for one in no wise heroic; but I do delight in sole possessions.
There is the sun, a great round bulb of liquid electricity, open to all the eyes that look into the sky; but do you fancy any one owns that sun but I? Not a bit of it! There is no record of deed that matches mine, no words that can describe what conferences sun and I do hold. The cloudy tent-door was closed, the sun was not "at home" to me, as I went down to life on the second day of March, 1860.
Sophie seemed stupid and commonplace that morning. Aaron had a headache, (that theologic thorn, I know,) and Sophie must go and sit beside him, and hold the thread of his Sunday's discourse to paper, whilst with wrapped brow and vision-seeing eyes he told her what his people ought to do.
Good Sophie! I forgave her, when she put sermons away, and came down to talk a little to me. It is easy to forgive people for goodness to others, when they are good to one's self just afterwards.
"Do you know any Herbert in Redleaf?" I ventured to ask, with as careless a tone as I knew.
"No, Anna;–let me think;–I thought I knew,–but no, it is not here. Why?"
"It doesn't matter. I thought there might be a person with that name.–Don't you get very tired of this hum-drum life?"
"But it isn't hum-drum in the least, except in bee-time, and on General-Training days."
"Oh, Sophie! you know what I mean."
"Well, I confess to liking a higher development of intellectual nature than I find in Redleaf, but I feel that I belong to it, I ought to be here; and feeling atones for much lack of mind,–it gets up higher, nearer into the soul. You know, Anna, we ought to love Redleaf. Look across that maple-grove."
"What is there?"
"Chimneys."
"Well, what of them?"
"There was smoke in them once,–smoke rising from our father's fires, you know, Anna."
"But so long ago, one scarcely feels it."
"Only sixteen years; we remember, you and I, the day the fires were put out."
"Yes, I remember."
"Don't you think we ought to love the place where our lives began, because our father lived here too?"
"It's a sorry sort of obligation, to ought to love anything."
"Even the graves, out there, in the church-yard?"
"Yes, even them. I would rather love them through knowing something that some one tenant of them loved and suffered and achieved than to love them merely because they hold the mortal temples that once were columns in 'our family.' The world says we ought to love so much, and our hearts tell us we ought to love foolishly sometimes, and I say one oughtn't to love at all."
"Anna! Anna!"
"I haven't got any Aaron, Sophie, to teach me the 'ought-tos.'"
There was a morsel of pity outgleaming from Sophie's eyes, as she went to obey a somewhat peremptory call. She needn't have bestowed it on me; I learned not to need it, yesterday.
Satisfied that the tower wouldn't give me any more information, and that the visit of "the two" was the last for some time to come, I closed down my horizon of curiosity over the church-steeple, a little round, shingly spire with a vane,–too vain to tell which way the wind might chance to go.
Ere Sophie came back to me, there was a bell-stroke from the belfry. She hurried down at the sound of it.
"Will you come with me, Anna? Aaron wants to know who is dead."
"Who rings the bell?"
"The sexton, of course."
We were within the vestibule before he had begun to toll the years.
A little timidly, Sophie spoke,–
"Mr. Wilton wishes to know who has died."
The uncivil fellow never turned an inch; he only started, when Sophie began to speak. I couldn't see his face.
"Tell Mr. Wilton that my mother is dead, if he wishes to know."
Sophie pulled my sleeve, and whispered, "Come away!"–and the man, standing there, began to toll the years of his mother's life.
"Don't go," I said, outside; "don't leave him without saying, 'I am sorry': you didn't even ask a question."
"You wouldn't, if you knew the man."
"Which I mean to do. You go on. I'll wait upon the step till he is done, and then I'll talk to him."
"I wouldn't, Anna. But I must hurry. Aaron will go up at once."
Dutiful little wife! She went to send her headaching husband half a mile away, to offer consolation, unto whom?
I sat upon the step until he had done. The years were not many,–half a score less than the appointed lot.
Would he come out? He did. I heard him coming; but I would not move. I knew that I was in his way, and wanted him to have to speak to me. I sat just where he must stand to lock the door.
"Are you waiting to see me?" he asked. "Is there anything for the sexton to do?"
I arose, and turned my face toward him.
"I am waiting to see if I can do anything for you. I am your minister's wife's sister."
What could have made him shake so? And such a queer, incongruous answer he gave!
"Isn't it enough to have a voice, without a face's coming to torment me too?"
It was not the voice that spoke in the tower yesterday. It was of the kind that has a lining of sentiment that it never was meant by the Good Spirit should be turned out for the world to breathe against, making life with mortals a mental pleurisy.
"I hope I don't torment
