the spell, and she either stood outside the window, or made an
errand to my sitting-room, and told, it might be very commonplace

news of the day, or, as happened one misty summer night, all that
lay deepest in her heart. It was in this way that I came to know

that she had loved one who was far above her.
"No, dear, him I speak of could never think of me," she said.

"When we was young together his mother didn't favor the match, an'
done everything she could to part us; and folks thought we both

married well, but't wa'n't what either one of us wanted most; an'
now we're left alone again, an' might have had each other all the

time. He was above bein' a seafarin' man, an' prospered more
than most; he come of a high family, an' my lot was plain an' hard-

workin'. I ain't seen him for some years; he's forgot our youthful
feelin's, I expect, but a woman's heart is different; them feelin's

comes back when you think you've done with 'em, as sure as spring
comes with the year. An' I've always had ways of hearin' about

him."
She stood in the centre of a braided rug, and its rings of

black and gray seemed to circle about her feet in the dim light.
Her height and massiveness in the low room gave her the look of a

huge sibyl, while the strange fragrance of the mysterious herb blew
in from the little garden.

III
The Schoolhouse

FOR SOME DAYS after this, Mrs. Todd's customers came and went past
my windows, and, haying-time being nearly over, strangers began to

arrive from the inland country, such was her widespread reputation.
Sometimes I saw a pale young creature like a white windflower left

over into midsummer, upon whose face consumption had set its bright
and wistful mark; but oftener two stout, hard-worked women from the

farms came together, and detailed their symptoms to Mrs. Todd in
loud and cheerful voices, combining the satisfactions of a friendly

gossip with the medical opportunity. They seemed to give much from
their own store of therapeutic learning. I became aware of the

school in which my landlady had strengthened her natural gift; but
hers was always the governing mind, and the final command, "Take of

hy'sop one handful" (or whatever herb it was), was received in
respectful silence. One afternoon, when I had listened,--it was

impossible not to listen, with cottonless ears,--and then laughed
and listened again, with an idle pen in my hand, during a

particularly spirited and personal conversation, I reached for my
hat, and, taking blotting-book and all under my arm, I resolutely

fled further temptation, and walked out past the fragrant green
garden and up the dusty road. The way went straight uphill, and

presently I stopped and turned to look back.
The tide was in, the wide harbor was surrounded by its dark

woods, and the small wooden houses stood as near as they could get
to the landing. Mrs. Todd's was the last house on the way

inland. The gray ledges of the rocky shore were well covered with
sod in most places, and the pasture bayberry and wild roses grew

thick among them. I could see the higher inland country and the
scattered farms. On the brink of the hill stood a little white

schoolhouse, much wind-blown and weather-beaten, which was a
landmark to seagoing folk; from its door there was a most beautiful

view of sea and shore. The summer vacation now prevailed, and
after finding the door unfastened, and taking a long look through

one of the seaward windows, and reflecting afterward for some time
in a shady place near by among the bayberry bushes, I returned to

the chief place of business in the village, and, to the amusement
of two of the selectmen, brothers and autocrats of Dunnet Landing,

I hired the schoolhouse for the rest of the vacation for fifty
cents a week.

Selfish as it may appear, the retired situation seemed to
possess great advantages, and I spent many days there quite

undisturbed, with the sea-breeze blowing through the small, high
windows and swaying the heavy outside shutters to and fro. I hung

my hat and luncheon-basket on an entry nail as if I were a small
scholar, but I sat at the teacher's desk as if I were that great

authority, with all the timid empty benches in rows before me. Now
and then an idle sheep came and stood for a long time looking in at

the door. At sundown I went back, feeling most businesslike, down
toward the village again, and usually met the flavor, not of the

herb garden, but of Mrs. Todd's hot supper, halfway up the hill.
On the nights when there were evening meetings or other public

exercises that demanded her presence we had tea very early, and I
was welcomed back as if from a long absence.

Once or twice I feigned excuses for staying at home, while
Mrs. Todd made distant excursions, and came home late, with both

hands full and a heavily laden apron. This was in pennyroyal time,
and when the rare lobelia was in its prime and the elecampane was

coming on. One day she appeared at the schoolhouse itself, partly
out of amused curiosity about my industries; but she explained that

there was no tansy in the neighborhood with such snap to it as some
that grew about the schoolhouse lot. Being scuffed down all the

spring made it grow so much the better, like some folks that had it
hard in their youth, and were bound to make the most of themselves

before they died.
IV

At the Schoolhouse Window
ONE DAY I reached the schoolhouse very late, owing to attendance

upon the funeral of an acquaintance and neighbor, with whose sad
decline in health I had been familiar, and whose last days both the

doctor and Mrs. Todd had tried in vain to ease. The services had
taken place at one o'clock, and now, at quarter past two, I stood

at the schoolhouse window, looking down at the procession as it
went along the lower road close to the shore. It was a walking

funeral, and even at that distance I could recognize most of the
mourners as they went their solemn way. Mrs. Begg had been very

much respected, and there was a large company of friends following
to her grave. She had been brought up on one of the neighboring

farms, and each of the few times that I had seen her she professed
great dissatisfaction with town life. The people lived too close

together for her liking, at the Landing, and she could not get used
to the constant sound of the sea. She had lived to lament three

seafaring husbands, and her house was decorated with West Indian
curiosities, specimens of conch shells and fine coral which they

had brought home from their voyages in lumber-laden ships. Mrs.
Todd had told me all our neighbor's history. They had been girls

together, and, to use her own phrase, had "both seen trouble till
they knew the best and worst on 't." I could see the sorrowful,

large figure of Mrs. Todd as I stood at the window. She made a
break in the procession by walking slowly and keeping the after-

part of it back. She held a handkerchief to her eyes, and I knew,
with a pang of sympathy, that hers was not affected grief.

Beside her, after much difficulty, I recognized the one
strange and unrelated person in all the company, an old man who had

always been mysterious to me. I could see his thin, bending
figure. He wore a narrow, long-tailed coat and walked with a

stick, and had the same "cant to leeward" as the wind-bent trees on
the height above.

This was Captain Littlepage, whom I had seen only once or
twice before, sitting pale and old behind a closed window; never

out of doors until now. Mrs. Todd always shook her head gravely
when I asked a question, and said that he wasn't what he had been

once, and seemed to class him with her other secrets. He might
have belonged with a simple which grew in a certain slug-haunted