ferred from what she said that you and she have had a little misunderstanding, over which she feels very badly. I was sorry to hear that there was any ill feeling between you, for, as I said a moment ago, I have always thought your friendship beautiful. I am convinced, Miss Dorcas, that your love for your friend and your charity will prevent you long cherishing ill will towards her; and I can assure you of this, that any little advances on your part will be most cordially met by her."

Miss Dorcas said nothing. There was a long pause. The clergyman's troubled eyes traveled from the old woman's set face to a long, zigzag crack across the ceiling, which they followed intently until it lost itself in the purple bordering of the old-fashioned paper. Then he dropped them to the carpet, their perplexity deepened. Miss Dorcas, with the faintest perceptible quiver of triumph on her lips, rejoiced in the discomfiture of the shepherd of her soul. The pastoral crook had been flourished too boldly to drive the stray sheep into the fold. She resented Mr. Allen's interference, and her resentment was sharpened by the suspicion that he had come, full of sympathy for Lucinda, to bring her, Dorcas Day, the injured one, to repentance.

"Mr. Allen," she said, squaring her narrow shoulders against the high, carved back of her chair and holding her head proudly erect, "since you have been paying compliments to Miss White and me, it's no more than fair that I should give you one in return. You have always been a good minister, and I have never had one word to say against your sermons; they are good orthodox doctrine, and it has always been a pleasure to listen to them on Sundays. But, though I suppose it is wrong of me to say such a thing, I would rather you would keep them for Sundays. For nobody, be he ten times a minister, can settle a quarrel by hearing one side of the story and then

going and telling the other woman how wrong she is. As for me, I hope I know my Christian duty better than to speak ill of my neighbors. What Lu-Miss White has told you, she has told you, but I am not going to give you or anybody else a chance to tell her that Dorcas Day said such and such things about her."

Miss Dorcas and the minister both rose, he, surprised, embarrassed, hurt; she, flushed, triumphant, yet a little frightened withal at having spoken so plainly to her pastor.

"I had no intention of offending you," he began. "I did not come here to preach to you. And really, Miss Dorcas, if you think that Miss Lucinda spoke unkindly of you, you do her great injustice."

The lace frill of the white kerchief crossed so neatly on her breast quivered, as the heart beneath it gave an indignant protest against the imputation of injustice to her who had suffered from it. She had led the way into the hall and was standing with her hand on the bronze doorknob before she could trust her voice.

"She told you all about it, didn't she?" she asked.

The minister hesitated. "She told me some things," he admitted,"nothing unkind, I assure

"All about the General and the north chamber?" she pursued.

The minister was wicked enough to wish to escape from his difficulty by a lie which should shield himself and save Miss Lucinda. He trembled on the verge of falsehood with the name of the immortal, truthful George on his lips.

"Washington?" he said. "I hardly think-" Poor Mr. Allen! How stumble, with that bright example of veracity before your mind? "Yes, yes, I believe she did mention him."

"I thought so," said Miss Dorcas, dryly. "And she sent you over here to get me to say I was sorry. Don't deny it," as the minister opened his

lips to reply. "I know she did. Well, if you stop there on your way home you can tell her that I thought this morning that maybe I would forgive her for what she said about my ancestress, Mistress Elizabeth Day," -she interrupted herself bitterly,"but she has told you all that. you can tell her that Dorcas Day will never forgive her now, never."

Well,

The brilliant red spots on Miss Dorcas's cheeks burned deeply, and she felt the smart of tears as they rushed to her eyes-tears that must not fall until the minister was safely outside. To accelerate his departure, she gave him a thin, feverish hand.

"I don't know as you'll ever forgive me," she said, in a softened voice. "I hope you will, sometime. I suppose I have said what I oughtn't to say to a minister; but if you could only know how Lucinda hurt me, I think you would understand. If she had only come herself instead of sending you, I'd have forgiven her, I really think I would."

The minister was on the doorstone now, very ill at ease and eager to get

away.

"Give my love to Mrs. Allen," Miss Dorcas said in response to his formal "Good afternoon," a pitiful smile breaking over her lips, "and tell her to bring the children to see me, for I get kind of lonely sometimes."

She closed the door when he had turned away, and went back into her parlor, tears streaming down her cheeks and moistening the fresh muslin of her kerchief. She sat down in the chair she had occupied during the minister's call and lived over again the anguish of the last half hour, while the good-natured face of the ancestress whose deception had caused so much wretchedness smiled down upon her from its oval gilt frame. Her sensitive heart sank under this last blow to her pride. She had never dreamed that a Day could fall so low as to be called to account by her pastor. Yet not an hour ago she had listened, every

nerve quivering, to Mr. Allen's rebuke and his advice that she humble herself before the woman who had betrayed her weakness to him. She foresaw the ridicule of the townsfolk and the children's jokes over that sacred north chamber. But at the same minute a sharper pang than that of wounded pride assailed her heart, and her resentment spent itself in the bitter cry, "Oh, Lucinda, Lucinda, how could you?" She began to understand that she was hurt not so much by what Lucinda had said and done as by Lucinda's saying and doing it; and she would have given the little she possessed to recall the cruel words she had herself spoken in the first heat of anger-words which had passed, alas! beyond her control, and were ringing now, perhaps, in Lucinda's ears. Up to their utterance she had nursed the hope that Lucinda, although she had been forbidden the house, would disregard the prohibition and come over some morning to be forgiven; but now with her own lips she had destroyed. this hope, for why should Lucinda stoop to ask forgiveness of one who had refused it, not for to-day or for to-morrow, but forever? The tradition that had fed Miss Dorcas's pride all her life became distasteful to her. She would have been willing that the north chamber be torn out of the house if at the moment the last board fell to the ground she could see Lucinda sitting on the other side of the parlor fireplace, in her second-best silk and white apron, an unfinished stocking on her lap, and Solomon purring at her feet.

-

A sharp knock roused her from the contemplation of this vision. She rose slowly and with difficulty, feeling the hand of old age heavy upon her, and went to the door. Little Charlie Evans, a neighbor's child, stood on the stone step, with her Christian Herald, which he had brought from the post office, in his hand. She took the paper mechanically, neglecting to thank the boy, who seemed not a bit

offended, but ran gayly down the walk, flinging a happy good-night over his shoulder.

a

When Miss Dorcas came back to the parlor, she noticed that the fire was getting low, only a stick or two sullenly smoldering underneath blackened log. "Going out all alone, just like me!" she said; and, the fire seeming for the moment almost human by its analogy to her own forlorn condition, she was filled with pity and, having coaxed the dull sticks into a blaze with shavings, piled the fireplace high with wood before she went out into the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea. The Herald had slipped from under her arm as she knelt, laying the sticks one upon the other, and lay unnoticed on the hearth, its fresh, unread leaves scorching and crisping as the fire, catching the log in its embrace, sprang with the shrill whistle of a strong wind up the chimney. Miss Dorcas would find the evening long without her paper.

Meanwhile, as she passed between the china closet and the stove, she paused in front of the dining-room window and looked, through the tears that half blinded her eyes, across the orchard to the King's Tavern. Absorbed in her own misery, she never dreamed that her old friend was as unhappy as she herself, or that at the very moment she was cautiously pulling aside her curtain of snowy muslin the last of the Whites was crying softly with her face buried in the fur coat of the yellow-eyed Solomon.

Miss Lucinda, watching from her parlor, had seen the minister enter the Red Wing and, an hour later, come out, bowing with cold politeness to the figure in the doorway, and walk down the street with the dignified slowness of a man who feels that he has been very badly treated.

"I guess Dorcas said something kind of sharp to him," she had remarke Solomon. "Probably he said

that made her angry.

He talked pretty strong here, though I don't know but what all he said is true. I oughtn't to have spoken as I did to Dorcas anyway, and I'm real sorry I hurt her feelings; but she did try my patience so, always boasting about her north chamber, which isn't a bit better than my west one, even if she does believe George Washington slept there." Poor Miss Lucinda! She had faithfully repeated the ten commandments every Sunday since she was four years old, and to break one of them had always seemed to her an impossible offense. Yet here she was, an old woman of seventy-four, who ought to know better, coveting, yes, actually coveting that north chamber in the Red Wing and its associations. Then she remembered what Mr. Allen had said about Dorcas's sensitiveness, laying stress upon the fact that she had little to take pride in, and touching delicately on her straightened means.

"It would be most kind and charitable," he had said, "to encourage her in the Washington fiction, since she believes the story and it makes her happier."

"And it did-it did," Miss Lucinda cried remorsefully, the dreadful afternoon of the quarrel recurring to her mind. She seemed to hear her voice uttering again those unkind and bitterly repented words: "I don't believe one word of it, and I don't think anybody else does in this town." That sweet old face, with its look of horrified surprise, came up before her, and, breaking down at last, she sobbed out her contrition on Solomon's, neck.

"Oh, dear, I don't see why I said it. I'm sure I didn't mean half. And she isn't silly, if I did tell her she was; and we've always known each other; and it seems too bad that nowhere Miss Lucinda sobbed so that Solomon's courage forsook him and he fled in alarm-"and we've always known each other and had such good times together; and now it's all over. There, I hear that board creaking.

Dorcas has always said it was a sign of something dreadful going to happen. What if she should be going to die? I thought she looked kind of pale yesterday when she was out in the yard. I wonder if I hadn't better run over and see if she's all right. I don't like to let a quarrel run on like this; it's unchristian-and there's no knowing what may come of it. Father used to say, 'Never let the sun set on your anger, Lucy,'-and I guess he was about right. But I do hate to go over there without any excuse, after she told me never to come into her house again. I wish I could think of something."

She sat there a long time and thought, while the sun went down and the darkness began to gather and deepen, until the Red Wing and the gnarled old apple trees beside it were no longer visible. The wind was rising rapidly, and the old sign swung to and fro, grating on its iron arm with a prolonged shriek. The moon rose and sent a flood of pale light through the tavern windows, mingled after a time, with a reddish gleam that danced over the carpet, a flickering, unsteady light, which put to shame the pale moonbeams and drove the eerie shadows out of their lurking places in the corners. It shone more steadily on Miss Lucinda's white hair and thin white hands. What a bright light it was-how strange and beautiful!

Miss Lucinda raised her head with a start. "I know what I'll do," was on her tongue; but but the words were not spoken. The red light in the room confused her; she heard sounds in the street, shouting, and the rattle of wheels. What was the matter? Was it fire? She turned to the window and stood spellbound. Up from the Red Wing, making pale the full moon, rolled columns of fire, preceded by huge puffs of black smoke, thick with sparks. A grand sight it was, the old house writhing

in the grasp of the fire-monster, flames bursting from windows and doors, the charred beams falling amid showers of sparks, and the pale moon looking down upon it all.

Miss Lucinda hurried out. The night was chilly, and she shivered as she made her way through the orchard. Her ears were deaf to the roar of the fire and the shouts of the bystanders; she heard only the horrible shrieking of the warning sign as it rasped and grated on the iron. She put her hands over her ears to shut out the sound. Half running, half walking, she reached a group of men and women, who stood gazing curiously at the lurid spectacle and talking in hushed tones.

"It caught from the fireplace in the parlor, Mr. Hilman told me,—one of those great old-fashioned fireplaces, you know," said one.

"The old building goes like tinder," said another. "Poor Miss Day!" "They say she has lost everything," said a third.

Miss Lucinda pushed herself into the crowd.

"Where is Dorcas?" she cried.

Somebody took her by the arm and led her to where a woman stood, apart from the others, bareheaded, her thin white hair blowing in the wind, her face turned towards the burning house.

"Dorcas," said Lucinda, touching her gently. Then the woman turned.

"I said you were never to come into the house again," she said in a dazed way,-"and now you can't."

The roof fell in then, and the shower of burning wood drove back the crowd. Miss Lucinda took Miss Dorcas by the hand and led her away.

"Dorcas," she said, gently, "you're coming right home to live with me. and Solomon,--and you may call him George Washington, if you want to. It's a great and good name, and you've always had associations with it, you know."

A

Greek friend of the writer, Captain Rizos-Rangabé, has lately purchased an estate near the village of Kapraina, the ancient. Chæronea, at the foot of one of the spurs of Parnassus, and including a considerable part of the famous battlefield where Philip of Macedon and his son Alexander conquered the Thebans and Athenians, in August, 338, B. C. It was this victory which gave Macedonia the control of Greece, and of which Milton spoke in, his sonnet to Lady Margaret Ley, whose father, Sir James Ley, Earl of Marlborough, died in consequence of King Charles's dissolving the Parliament of 1628-29, as Isocrates did at the news from Chæronea:

"Till sad the breaking of that Parliament
Broke him-as that dishonest victory
At Chæronea, fatal to Liberty,
Killed with report that old man eloquent."

As at Pharsalia, where, nearly three centuries later, Cæsar became master of Greece and Rome by the overthrow of Pompey, there are few evidences, in the great plain extending from Chæronea towards Thermopylæ, that ever thousands of men in arms were there slain. All is peaceful now, and the Beotian sheep, with their Wallachian shepherds, roam where Alexander charged and routed the illustrious Sacred Band of Thebans. But the patriotism of Thebes and the magnanimity of the Macedonian princes created and per