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At last the unendurably long meal, served with ostentatious profusion, was at an end. Miss Meadowcroft rose with her ghostly solemnity, and granted me my dismissal in these words:

“We are early people at the farm, Mr. Lefrank. I wish you good-night.”

She laid her bony hands on the back of Mr. Meadowcroft’s invalid-chair, cut him short in his farewell salutation to me, and wheeled him out to his bed as if she were wheeling him out to his grave.

“Do you go to your room immediately, sir? If not, may I offer you a cigar–provided the young gentlemen will permit it?”

So, picking his words with painful deliberation, and pointing his reference to “the young gentlemen” with one sardonic side-look at them, Mr. John Jago performed the duties of hospitality on his side. I excused myself from accepting the cigar. With studied politeness, the man of the glittering brown eyes wished me a goodnight’s rest, and left the room.

Ambrose and Silas both approached me hospitably, with their open cigar-cases in their hands.

“You were quite right to say ‘No,'” Ambrose began. “Never smoke with John Jago. His cigars will poison you.”

“And never believe a word John Jago says to you,” added Silas. “He is the greatest liar in America, let the other be whom he may.”

Naomi shook her forefinger reproachfully at them, as if the two sturdy young farmers had been two children.

“What will Mr. Lefrank think,” she said, “if you talk in that way of a person whom your father respects and trusts? Go and smoke. I am ashamed of both of you.”

Silas slunk away without a word of protest. Ambrose stood his ground, evidently bent on making his peace with Naomi before he left her.

Seeing that I was in the way, I walked aside toward a glass door at the lower end of the room. The door opened on the trim little farm-garden, bathed at that moment in lovely moonlight. I stepped out to enjoy the scene, and found my way to a seat under an elm-tree. The grand repose of nature had never looked so unutterably solemn and beautiful as it now appeared, after what I had seen and heard inside the house. I understood, or thought I understood, the sad despair of humanity which led men into monasteries in the old times. The misanthropical side of my nature (where is the sick man who is not conscious of that side of him?) was fast getting the upper hand of me when I felt a light touch laid on my shoulder, and found myself reconciled to my species once more by Naomi Colebrook.

CHAPTER III. THE MOONLIGHT MEETING.

“I WANT to speak to you,” Naomi began “You don’t think ill of me for following you out here? We are not accustomed to stand much on ceremony in America.”

“You are quite right in America. Pray sit down.”

She seated herself by my side, looking at me frankly and fearlessly by the light of the moon.

“You are related to the family here,” she resumed, “and I am related too. I guess I may say to you what I couldn’t say to a stranger. I am right glad you have come here, Mr. Lefrank; and for a reason, sir, which you don’t suspect.”

“Thank you for the compliment you pay me, Miss Colebrook, whatever the reason may be.”

She took no notice of my reply; she steadily pursued her own train of thought.

“I guess you may do some good, sir, in this wretched house,” the girl went on, with her eyes still earnestly fixed on my face. “There is no love, no trust, no peace, at Morwick Farm. They want somebody here, except Ambrose. Don’t think ill of Ambrose; he is only thoughtless. I say, the rest of them want somebody here to make them ashamed of their hard hearts, and their horrid, false, envious ways. You are a gentleman; you know more than they know; they can’t help themselves; they must look up to you. Try, Mr. Lefrank, when you have the opportunity–pray try, sir, to make peace among them. You heard what went on at supper-time; and you were disgusted with it. Oh yes, you were! I saw you frown to yourself; and I know what that means in you Englishmen.”