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The parson looked at her with amazement. She seemed on fire. All the smouldering embers of a life denied had blazed at last. She put on her glasses and walked over to the chest.

“Here!” she continued; “let’s uncover the dead. I’ve tried to do it ever since she died, so the other things could be burned; but my courage failed me. Could you turn these screws, if I should get you a knife? They’re in tight. I put ’em in myself, and she stood by.”

The little lid of the till had been screwed fast. The two middle-aged people bent over it together, trying first the scissors and then the broken blade of the parson’s old knife. The screws came slowly. When they were all out, he stood back a pace and gazed at her. Mary Ellen looked no longer alert and vivified. Her face was haggard.

“I shut it,” she said, in a whisper. “You lift it up.”

The parson lifted the lid. There they lay, her poor little relics,–a folded manuscript, an old-fashioned daguerreotype, and a tiny locket. The parson could not see. His hand shook as he took them solemnly out and gave them to her. She bent over the picture, and looked at it, as we search the faces of the dead. He followed her to the light, and, wiping his glasses, looked also.

“That was my picture,” he said musingly. “I never’ve had one since. And that was mother’s locket. It had”–He paused and looked at her.

“Yes,” said Mary Ellen softly; “it’s got it now.” She opened the little trinket; a warm, thick lock of hair lay within, and she touched it gently with her finger. “Should you like the locket, because ’twas your mother’s?”

She hesitated; and though the parson’s tone halted also, he answered at once:–

“No, Mary Ellen, not if you’ll keep it. I should rather think ’twas with you.”

She put her two treasures in her pocket, and gave him the other.

“I guess that’s your share,” she said, smiling faintly. “Don’t read it here. Just take it away with you.”

The manuscript had been written in the cramped and awkward hand of his youth, and the ink upon the paper was faded after many years. He turned the pages, a smile coming now and then.

“‘Thou hast doves’ eyes,'” he read,–“‘thou hast doves’ eyes!'” He murmured a sentence here and there. “Mary Ellen,” he said at last, shaking his head over the manuscript in a droll despair, “it isn’t a sermon. Parson Sibley had the rights of it. It’s a love-letter!” And the two old people looked in each other’s wet eyes and smiled.

The woman was the first to turn away.

“There!” said she, closing the lid of the chest; “we’ve said enough. We’ve wiped out old scores. We’ve talked more about ourselves than we ever shall again; for if old age brings anything, it’s thinking of other people–them that have got life before ’em. These your rubbers?”

The parson put them on, with a dazed obedience. His hand shook in buckling them. Mary Ellen passed him his coat, but he noticed that she did not offer to hold it for him. There was suddenly a fine remoteness in her presence, as if a frosty air had come between them. The parson put the sermon in his inner pocket, and buttoned his coat tightly over it. Then he pinned on his shawl. At the door he turned.

“Mary Ellen,” said he pleadingly, “don’t you ever want to see the sermon again? Shouldn’t you like to read it over?”

She hesitated. It seemed for a moment as if she might not answer at all. Then she remembered that they were old folks, and need not veil the truth.

“I guess I know it ‘most all by heart,” she said quietly. “Besides, I took a copy before I put it in there. Good-night!”

“Good-night!” answered the parson joyously. He closed the door behind him and went crunching down the icy path. When he had unfastened the horse and sat tucking the buffalo-robe around him, the front door was opened in haste, and a dark figure came flying, down the walk.

“Mr. Bond!” thrilled a voice.

“Whoa!” called the parson excitedly. He was throwing back the robe to leap from the sleigh when the figure reached him. “Oh!” said he; “Isabel!”

She was breathing hard with excitement and the determination grown up in her mind during that last half hour of her exile in the kitchen.

“Parson,”–forgetting a more formal address, and laying her hand on his knee,–“I’ve got to say it! Won’t you please forgive me? Won’t you, please? I can’t explain it”–

“Bless your heart, child!” answered the parson cordially; “you needn’t try to. I guess I made you nervous.”

“Yes,” agreed Isabel, with a sigh of relief, “I guess you did.” And the parson drove away.

Isabel ran, light of heart and foot, back into the warm sitting-room, where aunt Mary Ellen was standing just where he had left her. She had her glasses off, and she looked at Isabel with a smile so vivid that the girl caught her breath, and wondered within herself how aunt Mary Ellen had looked when she was young.

“Isabel,” said she, “you come here and give me a corner of your apron to wipe my glasses. I guess it’s drier’n my handkerchief.”