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“He’s crazy,” she said, “just as crazy as can be. We can’t do anything with him. He needs a strong man to look after him. Ben’s never at home, and he has everything to look after any way, and can’t be broken of his rest, and the old man talks and cries half the night. I’m not able to take care of him–I seem to be breaking down myself, with all I have to endure, and besides it isn’t safe to have him in the house. I think he’s getting worse all the time. He’d be better off, and we all would, if he was in the care of the county.”

The authorities looked into the matter, and found that at least a portion of the lady’s statements were true. It was quite evident that the old man would be better off in the County House than he was in the home of his only son. So he was taken away, and Abby had her freedom at last.

“We are going to take you where you will have medical treatment and care; it is your daughter’s request,” they told him in answer to his trembling queries.

“Oh! yes, yes–Abby thinks I’ll get my sight back, I suppose, if I’m doctored up. Well, maybe so, but I’m pooty old–pooty old for the doctors to patch up. But Abby has a powerful mind to plan things–a powerful mind. ‘Liz’beth never would a’ thought of sending me away–‘Liz’beth was so easy like. Abby ought to a’ been a man, she had. She’d a’ flung things.”

So he babbled on as they carried him to the Poor House.

It was November, and the holidays were close at hand. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year. Abby meant to enjoy them, and invited all her relatives to a time of general feasting and merrymaking.

“I feel as if a great nightmare were lifted off my heart and brain, now the old man has gone,” she said. “He will be so much better off, and get so much more skillful treatment, you know, in a place like that. They are very kind in that institution, and so clean and nice, and he will have plenty of company to keep him from being lonesome. We have been all through it, during the last year, or else we never should have sent him there. It is really an excellent home for him.”

IV.

It was just a year later when a delicate, sweet-faced woman was shown through the wards of that “excellent home” for the poor and unfortunate. She walked with nervous haste, and her eyes glanced from room to room, and from face to face, as if seeking, yet dreading, some object.

Presently the attendant pushed open a partly closed door, which led into a small, close room, ventilated only by one high, narrow window.

“This is the room, I believe,” he said, and the lady stepped in–and paused. The air was close and impure, and almost stifled her.

On the opposite side of the room she saw a large crib with a cover or lid which could be closed and locked when necessary, but which was raised now. In this crib, upon a hard mattress and soiled pillow, lay the emaciated form of an old man. He turned his sightless eyes toward the door as he heard the sound of footsteps.

“What is wanted?” he asked, feebly; “does anybody want me? Has anybody come for me?”

“O father, father!” cried the woman in a voice choked with sobs. “Don’t you know me? It is I–and I have come to take you away–to take you away home with me. Will you go?”

A glow of delight shone over the old man’s wasted face, like the last rays of the sunlight over a winter landscape. He half arose upon his elbow, and leaned forward as if trying to see the speaker.

“Why, it’s Abby, it’s Abby, come at last!” he said. “You called me father, didn’t you–and you was crying, and it made your voice sound kind o’ strange and broken like. But you must be Abby come to take me home. Oh, I thought you’d come at last, Abby. It seems a long, long time since I came away. And you’ve never been to see me; no, nor Ben, either. But you’ve come at last, Abby, you’ve come at last. Let me take your hand, daughter, for I can’t see yet. They don’t seem to help me here as you thought they would. And I’m so hungry, Abby!–do you think you could manage to get the old man a little something to eat before we start home?”