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“See here!” he called. “Tell me I can’t get up to-morrow? Why, I could walk!”

They had a very merry time while he ate. Mary remembered that afterwards, with a bruised wonder that laughter comes so cheap. Johnnie talked incessantly, not any more of the wonders of the deep, but what he meant to do when he got into the world again.

“How’d I come here in your house, any way?” he asked. “Mattie and Adam put me here to get rid of me? Tell me all over again.”

“I take care of folks, you know,” answered Mary briefly. “I have, for more ‘n two years. It’s my business.”

Johnnie looked at her a moment, crimsoning as he tried to speak.

“What you goin’ to ask?”

Mary started. Then she answered steadily–

“That’s all right. I don’t ask much, anyway; but when folks don’t have ready money, I never ask anything. There, you mustn’t talk no more, even if you are well. I’ve got to wash these dishes.”

She left him to his meditations, and only once more that evening did they speak together. When she came to the door, to say good-night, he was flat among his pillows, listening for her.

“Say!” he called, “you come in. No, you needn’t unless you want to; but if ever I earn another cent of money, you’ll see. And I ain’t the only friend you’ve got. There’s a girl down in Southport would do anything in the world for you, if she only knew.”

Next morning, Johnnie walked weakly out of doors, despite his nurse’s cautions; for, not knowing what had happened to him, she was in a wearying dark as to whether it might not happen again. After his breakfast, he got a ride with Jacob Pease, who was going down Sudleigh way, and Jacob came back without him. He bore a message, full of gratitude, to Mary. At Sudleigh, Johnnie had telegraphed, to find out whether the ship Firewing was still in port; and he had heard that he must lose no time in joining her. He should never forget what Mary had done for him. So Jacob said; but he was a man of tepid words, and perhaps he remembered the message too coldly.

When Mattie came over, that afternoon, to make her call, she found the house closed. Mary had gone on foot down into Tiverton, where old Mrs. Lamson, who was sick with a fever, lay still in need. It was many weeks before she came home again to Horn o’ the Moon; and then Grandfather Sinclair had broken his leg, so that interest in her miracle became temporarily inactive.

Two years had gone when there came to her a little package, through the Tiverton mail. It was tied with the greatest caution, and directed in a straggling hand. Mary opened it just as she struck into the Gully Road, on her way home. Inside was a little purse, and three gold pieces. She paused there, under the branches, the purse in one hand, and the gold lying within her other palm. For a long time she stood looking at them, her face set in that patient sadness seen in those whose only holding is the past. It was all over and done, and yet it had never been at all. She thought a little about herself, and that was very rare, for Mary. She was not the poorer for what her soul desired; she was infinitely the richer, and she remembered the girl at Southport, not with the pang that once afflicted her heart, but with a warm, outrushing sense of womanly sympathy. If he had money, perhaps he could marry. Perhaps he was married now. Coming out of the Gully Road, she opened the purse again, and the sun struck richly upon the gold within. Mary smiled a little, wanly, but still with a sense of the good, human kinship in life.

“I won’t ever spend ’em,” she said to herself. “I’ll keep ’em to bury me.”