Ezra walked home and sat there alone until evening.  His house-keeper routed him from his armchair for dinner and tea, and at each meal he made a feeble pretence of eating and drinking, and, having been scolded for his poor appetite, went back to his old place.  He sat there till the room was dark, scarcely moving, but wearing no very noticeable sign of pain or trouble.  The story was so old, and the misfortune it related was so long past mending!  He had been gray himself these many years, and the things which surrounded him and touched him had long since shared all his own want of color.

There was no relighting these old ashes.  And yet, in defiance of that avowed impossibility, they seemed now and again to glow.  They warmed him and lighted him back to a perception of lost odor and dead color.  They stung him into some remembrance of the pain of years ago.  And then, again, they were altogether cold and lifeless.

He said vaguely in a half whisper that it was a pity; and the phrase rose to his lips a hundred times-oftener than not an utterance purely mechanical, and expressing neither regret for Rachel nor for himself, nor sorrow for their division.  When he was not thinking of her or of himself, he murmured that this was how it had come to pass, and did not seem to care or feel at all.

When the gloom was deepening in Ezra’s ill-lighted chamber, though the light of the summer evening still lingered outside, the house-keeper came in and drew the blinds, and left behind her a single candle, which left the room as dusky as before.  Shortly after this Reuben came in, and Ezra, nodding, signed him to a chair.  The young man took a seat in silence.

“Well, lad,” said his uncle, when to the young man the continued stillness had grown almost ponderous.  The seconds had seemed to drop one by one upon him from the audible ticking of the old clock in the next room, each with an increasing weight of embarrassed sympathy.

“Well, uncle?” returned Reuben, trying to speak in his ordinary way, and only succeeding in sounding shamefully flippant and unsympathetic to his own ears.

“I’ve a mind to have a talk with you,” said Ezra.  “Is the door shut?”

Reuben rose to see, and murmuring that it was closed, resumed his seat.  He waited a while in expectation that his uncle was about to confide in him.

“When beest going to make up your mind to pluck up a courage and speak to Ruth?” the old man asked.

“To Ruth, sir?” returned Reuben.  The question staggered him a little.

“To Ruth,” said Ezra.

“I have spoken,” answered Reuben.  “We are going to be married.”

“That’s well,” the old man said, mildly.  “But I looked to be told of any such thing happening.  Thee and me, lad, are all as is left o’ th’ old stock i’ this part o’ the world.”

“Don’t think I should have kept you ignorant of it,” said Reuben.  “I only knew this morning.  I have not seen you since till now.”

“Well, lad, well,” said Ezra, “I wish thee happy.  But I’m sure you know that without need of any word o’ mine.  I asked because I meant to give out a bit of a warning agen the danger of delay.  Theer’s not alone the danger of it, but sometimes the cruelty of it.  It’s hard for a young woman as has been encouraged to set her heart upon a man, to be kept waitin’ on the young man’s pleasure.  You see, lad, they’m tongue-tied.  Perhaps”-he offered this supposition with perfect gravity-“perhaps it’s the having been tongue-tied afore marriage as makes some on ’em so lively and onruled in speech when marriage has set ’em free.”

There was a definite sense in Reuben’s mind that the old man was not saying what he wished to say, and this sense was strengthened when Ezra, after moving once or twice in his seat, cleared his throat and began to walk up and down the room.

“Had you read that letter as you brought to me this morning, lad?” he asked, coughing behind his hand, and trying to speak as if the thing were a commonplace trifle.

“I read it because I thought that it must be addressed to me,” said Reuben.  “I had written to Ruth, and she told me to look in Manzini for her answer.  I found nothing but that letter in the book.”

“Why, how was that?” asked Ezra, without turning towards him.

“Her own note had been taken away before I got the book.”  Reuben felt himself on dangerous ground.  It was unpleasant to have to talk of these things, and it looked impossible to reveal Rachel’s eccentricity to Ezra, knowing what he knew.

“Ah!” said Ezra, absent-mindedly.  “You read the letter then!” He went on pacing up and down.  “You understood it?”

“I-seemed to understand it,” said Reuben.  Ezra came back to his chair and seated himself with a look of half resolve.

“Reuben,” he began, in a voice pathetically ill-disguised, “it was something of a cruelty as that letter should ha’ been found at all after such a lapse o’ time.  The rights of the case was these:  As a younger man than now-I was six-an’-thirty at the time-I wrote to-I wrote an offer of myself in marriage to a person as was then resident i’ this parish.  The day but one after I wrote I had to go up to London to see to some affairs as was in the lawyer’s hands relating to thy grandfather’s property.  He’d been dead a year or more, and the thing was only just got straight.  While theer, I heard Paganini, and I’ve told you, more than once, I never cared to touch a bow theerafter.  I found Manzini on the music-stand and closed the pages.  He was open theer as I had left him, for I was a bit particular about my things, and mother used to pretend as her dursn’t lay a hand upon ’em.  I waited and waited for th’ answer.  I met the person as I had wrote to once, and bowed to her.  I’ve remembered often and often the start her gave, as if I’d done her some sort of insult.  I could never understand how or why.  I did not know as I had gi’en her any right to treat me thus contemptuous.  I thought her set a value upon herself beyond my deservin’s, and I abode to bear it.  In the course of a two-three weeks she left the parish, and I made up my mind as her’d left despising me.  I won’t pretend as I might not ha’ found her letter if her had been less prideful and disdainous, for in the course of a little while I might ha’ gone back to the music if things had gone happier with me.  But it would ha’ been kinder not to know the truth at all than find it out so late.”

He had spoken throughout in what was meant for his customary tone of dry gravity, but it failed him often, though for a word only.  At such times he would pause and cough behind his wasted hand, and these frequent breaks in the narrative made its quiet tones more touching to the hearer than any declamation or any profession of profound regret, however eloquently expressed, could possibly have been.

“Have you explained to her since you received the letter?” asked Reuben.  “Don’t you think, uncle, that she ought to know?”

Ezra looked at him in a faint surprise.  He supposed he had guarded himself from any suspicion of betraying his old sweetheart’s personality.

“Yes,” he said, still bent upon this reservation.  “It happens as the person I speak of came back to Heydon Hay some time ago, and was within the parish this very day.  I went to make a call upon her, and to show how Providence had seen fit to deal with both of us, but her refused to exchange speech with me.  You see, Reuben,” he went on, coughing with a dry mildness of demeanor, “it’s doubtless been upon her mind for a many years as I was making a sort of cruel and unmanly game of her.  Seeing her that offstanding, it seemed to me her valued me so lowly as to take my letter for a kind of offence.  It seems now as it was me, and not her, as was too prideful.”

They were both silent for a time, but Reuben was the first to speak again.

“She ought to know, uncle.  She should be told.  Perhaps Ruth could tell her.”

“My lad, my lad!” said Ezra, mournfully reproving him.  “How could I tell another of a thing like this?”

“Well, sir,” Reuben answered, “I know now how the idea came into her mind, though I was puzzled at first.  But she is strongly opposed to my being engaged to Ruth, and came down to tell Mr. Fuller this morning that I was a villain.  I am thinking of her own lonely life, and I am sure that if Ruth and I are married she will never speak again to the only relatives she has unless this is explained.  For her own sake, uncle, as well as yours, I think she ought to know the truth.”

He was looking downward as he spoke, and did not see the questioning air with which Ezra regarded him.

“You know who it was, then, as wrote this letter?”

“Yes,” said Reuben, looking up at him.  “Ruth knew the handwriting.”

“Reuben!” cried the old man, sternly.  He rose with more open signs of agitation than Reuben had yet seen in him, and walked hurriedly to and fro.  “Reuben!  Reuben!” he repeated, in a voice of keen reproach.  “Ah! when was ever youth and folly separate?  I never thought thee wast the lad to cry thine uncle’s trouble i’ the market-place!”

“No, uncle, no!  Don’t think that of me,” cried his nephew.  “I did not know what to do.  I asked Ruth’s advice.  I could not be certain that the note was meant for you.  And-guessing what I thought I guessed-I was afraid to bring it.”

“Well, well!  Well, well!” said Ezra.  “It’s been too sad an’ mournful all along for me to go about to make a new quarrel on it.  Let it pass.  I make no doubt you acted for the best.  Art too good a lad to tek pleasure in prying into the pain of an old man-as-loves thee.  Leave it alone, lad.  Let’s think a while, and turn it over and see what may be done.”

He went back to his arm-chair, and Reuben watched him in sympathetic silence.

“I know her to be bitter hard upon me in her thoughts,” said Ezra, after a time.  “The kind of scorn her bears for me is good for nobody, not even if it happens to be grounded i’ the right.  It might be a blow to her at first, but it ’ud be a blow as ‘ud carry healing with it i’ the long run.  Let the wench tek the letter.  It’ll be easier for her to get it at a woman’s hands.”

He drew the cracked and faded letter from his waistcoat-pocket, and held it out towards Reuben without looking at him.

“I think that will be the best and kindest course, sir,” said Reuben, accepting the letter and placing it in his pocket-book.  “It may not be easy for Ruth to speak to her just at first, for she is very angry with her for having engaged herself to me.”

“I have heard word of her opposing it,” answered Ezra.  “Theer are them in Heydon Hay as elsewheer-folks, without being aythur coarse-hearted or hard-minded, as talk of their neighbors’ affairs, and love to tell you whatever there is to be heard as is unpleasing.  I have been told as her describes me as a villin, and speaks in the same terms of you, Reuben.  And that’s why I advised you to speak out before there should be time to make mischief, if by any chance mischief might be made.  And I’ve seen enough to know as theer’s no staple so easy to mannyfacture as ill-will, even betwixt them as thinks well of each other.  But, Reuben, even the best of women are talkers, and I look for it to be made a point on between Ruth and you, that no word of this is breathed except between your two selves.”

“You may trust Ruth as much as you trust me, uncle,” said Reuben.

“Like enough,” answered Ezra.  “And I’ve a warm liking for her.  But there’ll be no unkind-ness in naming my particular wish i’ this affair.”

“No, no,” answered Reuben.  “I will tell her what you say.  You may trust us both.”

“Let me know how things go,” said the old man.  “And good-night, Reuben.”

A tender twilight still reigned outside, and Reuben, walking along the village street, could see the softened mass of roofs and chimneys and the dark green bulk of trees outlined clearly against the sky.  The air was soft and still, and something in the quiet and the dimness of the hour seemed to bear a hint of memory or continuation of the scene which had just closed.  He was going to see Ruth at once, and she was naturally in his mind, and presented herself as vividly there as if he had been in her presence.  The old man’s trouble was so much more real to a lover than it could have been to another man!  If it were he and Ruth who were thus parted!  There lay a whole heartache.  He loved Ezra, and yet it did not seem possible to feel his grief half so well save by seeing it as his own.  Such a lonely terror lay in the thought of parting from Ruth and living forever without her, that it awoke in him an actual pang of pain for his uncle’s trouble.

“But,” said Reuben, as he strode along, “that is what was.  He felt it, no doubt, and felt it for many a dreary month.  But it’s over now, for the most part.  I could have cried for him this morning, and again to-night, but it was more pity for the past than for the present.”

Ezra had been a sad man always, since Reuben could remember him, and yet not altogether an unhappy one.  The sunshine of his life had seemed veiled, but not extinguished.  And could love do so little at its most unfortunate and hapless ending?  For some, maybe, but surely not for Reuben!  For him, if love should die, what could there be but clouds and darkness forever and always?  But the old take things tranquilly, and to the young it seems that they must always have been tranquil.  Uncle Ezra a lover?  A possible fancy.  But Ezra loving as he loved?  An impossible fancy.  And even six-and-thirty looked old to Reuben’s eyes, for he stood a whole decade under it.

“I will go at once,” said Ruth, so soon as she knew what was required of her.  “I’ll just tell father, and then I’ll put on my hat and be ready in a minute.  Will you “-with an exquisite demureness and simplicity-“will you go with me, Reuben?”

“Go and see Aunt Rachel?” cried old Fuller, when the girl had told him her intention.  “Well, why not?” Ruth ran up-stairs, and Fuller waddled into the room where Reuben waited.  “Ruth talks about bringin’ th’ ode wench back to rayson,” he said, with a fat chuckle, “but that’s a road Miss Blythe ’ll niver travel again, I reckon.  Her said good-by to rayson, and shook hands a many hears ago.  It’s a bit too late i’ life to patch up the quarrel betwigst ’em now.”

The old man’s paces were so leisurely and heavy and Ruth’s so quick and light that she was in the room before he had formulated this opinion, and stood at the looking-glass regarding Reuben’s reflection in its dimly illumined depths as she patted and smoothed the ribbons beneath her chin.

“Let us hope not, father,” she said; and then turning upon Reuben, “I am ready.”

He offered her his arm and she took it.  It was the simple fashion of the time and place.  No engaged lovers took an airing of a dozen yards without that outward sign of the tie between them.  They walked along in the soft summer evening, pitying Ezra and Rachel in gentle whispers.

“I was thinking just now if you and I should part, dear-if their case were ours!”

“Oh, Reuben!”

And so the grief of the old was a part of the joy of the young, tender-hearted as they were.  They played round the mournful old history.

“But you would speak, Reuben?  You would never let me go without a word?”

“And if I didn’t speak, dear?  If something held me back from speaking?”

“But you wouldn’t let it hold you back.”

“Not now, darling.  But I might have done yesterday-before I knew.”

Before he knew!  He must have always known!  But of that she would say nothing.

In front of the one village shop in which the pair of window candles still glimmered, they paused, while Reuben searched his pocket-book for the note, and then went on again, in perfumed darkness, until they reached the gate of Rachel’s cottage.

“Be brave, darling,” Reuben whispered here.  “Don’t let her repulse you easily.”

Ruth entered at the gate, stole on tiptoe along the gravelled path, knocked and listened.  The whole front of the little house was in darkness, but by-and-by even Reuben from his post behind the hedge heard the faint noise made by slippered feet in the oil-clothed hall.  “Who’s there?” said’ a voice from within.

“Dear aunt,” Ruth answered, “let me in.  Do, please, let me in.  I want to speak to you.”

Reuben, listening, heard the sound of the jarring chain, and the door was opened.  He peeped through the interstices of the hedge, and saw Miss Blythe smiling in the light of the candle she carried in her left hand.

“Dear niece,” said Rachel, with an unusually fine and finicking accent.  “Enter, you are welcome.”

Ruth entered, the door was closed, and Reuben sat down on the bank outside to await his sweetheart’s return.

“I understand,” said Rachel.  “You are welcome, my child.  I detest rancor in families.  I can forgive and forget.”  As she spoke thus she led the way into her small sitting-room.  To Ruth the poor creature’s unconsciousness seemed terrible.  She laid her arms about Aunt Rachel’s withered figure, and cried a little as she leaned upon her shoulder.  “There, there,” said Aunt Rachel, with a note of patronage in her voice, “compose yourself, dear child, compose yourself.  I am glad to see you.  Take your own time, dear child, your own time.”

At this Ruth cried afresh.  It was evident that Aunt Rachel supposed her here to perform an office of penitence; and it was all so pitiful to the girl’s heart, which, tender enough by nature, had been made soft and more tender still by her recent talk with Reuben in the lane.

“Don’t talk so.  Don’t speak so,” she said, brokingly.  “Dear aunt, read this, and then you will know why I am here.”

“Ah!” sighed Aunt Rachel, with a world of meaning.  “What did I tell you, my dear?” She took the letter from her niece’s hand, kissed the charming bearer of it casually, as if in certainty that she would soon be comforted, and began to search for her glasses.

Ruth, understanding the old lady’s error, was moved still more by it, but emotion and tender interest were at war, and she sat in a half frightened silence, piteously wondering what would happen.  Rachel had found her glasses, had set the letter upon the table before her, and now drawing the candle nearer, placed the spectacles deliberately astride upon her fine little nose, snuffed the candle, and took up the cracking old bit of paper with an air of triumph and hope fulfilled which cut Ruth to the heart.

The younger woman hid her face in her hands, and furtively watched the elder through her fingers.

Rachel read but a line, and then dropping the letter stared across the candle at Ruth, and passed a hand across her forehead, brushing her glasses away in the act.  She groped for them, polished them with an automatic look, and began again.  Ruth, too frightened even to sob, still looked at her, and save for the rustle of the withered paper in the withered fingers the silence was complete.

“What is this?” cried Aunt Rachel, suddenly.  “Why do you bring me this?” She was standing bolt upright, with both hands clasped downward on the letter.

“It was only found last night,” said Ruth, rising and making a single step towards her.  “From the hour you wrote it until then it was never seen.  Reuben found it and brought it to me.”

The old maid’s face went white, and but that the chair she had thrust away from her in rising rested against the mantle-piece, she would have fallen.  Ruth ran towards her and set a protecting arm about her waist.  Her own tears were falling fast, and her voice was altogether broken.  “It was in Manzini, the book you took Reuben’s letter from.  He found it there, and thought it came from me, until he saw that the paper was old, and that it did not quite answer his own letter.  He took it to his uncle Ezra, and the poor old man’s heart is broken.  Oh, aunt, his heart is broken!  He had never seen it.  He had waited, waited-”

She could say no more, she was so agitated by her own words, and so stricken by the stony face before her.

Suddenly the old maid melted into tears.  Reuben, sitting and waiting on the bank of the hedge without, had heard Ruth’s broken voice, and now he could hear Rachel weeping.  The night was without a sound, and he could hear nothing but the murmurs and sobbings from the little sitting-room.  Rachel cried unrestrainedly and long, and Reuben waited with exemplary patience.  At last Ruth came out and whispered to him,

“Tell father I am going to stay with Aunt Rachel to-night.”

Reuben, naturally enough, would have kept her there and questioned her, but she ran back into the cottage before he could detain her, and after lingering a while bareheaded before the casket which held her, he took his way back to Fuller and gave him his daughter’s message.

“Ah!” said Fuller.  “At that rate it ’ud seem to be pretty well straightened out betwigst ’em.  I’m glad to think it, for theer’s nothin’ like, harmony among them as is tied together.  But hows’ever her an’ the wench may mek it up, Reuben, thee’lt be a villin till the end o’ the chapter.”  The villany attributed to Reuben and Ezra tickled the old man greatly, and his fat body was so agitated by his mirth that his legs became unequal to their burden.  He had to drop into his great cushioned arm-chair to have his laugh out.  “That villany o’ thine ’ll be the death o’ me,” he said, as he wiped his eyes.

Rachel and Ruth sat far into the night, and the old maid told over and over again the story of the courtship and the misunderstanding between herself and Ezra.

“Even when he was young,” she told her listener often, “he was shy and proud.  And he would think I had treated him as though he had been the dirt beneath my feet.  I did.  I did.  He will never forgive me.  Never, never.”

She always cried afresh tempestuously at this, but when the first passion of her grief had worn itself out she came back to her story and lauded Ezra without stint.  He was proud, oh yes, he was proud, but then it was not in a way to hurt anybody.  He joined in the sports of the other young men when she was quite a girl, a mere chit of a thing, my dear, and he was master of them all.  Then Ruth chimed in.  And so was Reuben now.  Reuben was not like the rest of them.  He was their master in everything, and everybody who was old enough to remember said that he was more like his uncle than like his father even.  The duet of praise, accompanied by the old maid’s tears, murmured along for an hour.

“You will meet him now?” Ruth suggested, rather timidly.  “You will be friends again?”

“We could never bear to meet each other,” cried Rachel.  “How could I come before him?” Then, “I must go away.”

“No, no,” Ruth pleaded, “you must not go away.  You must stay here.  You must be friends again.  What shall we tell him, dear?  He has found the letter at last, and he sends to you.  Can you let him think that you are still against him?”

“No,” said Rachel, almost wildly.  “You will tell him I went away because I could not bear to see him.  I ought to have known him too well to have thought so basely of him.”

“It was his duty to speak to you.  It was less your fault than his.  It was nobody’s fault.  It was a disaster.”  Ruth thought poorly of Ezra’s tactics as a lover, but she was not bent on expressing her own opinions.  Reuben would never have acted in such a way.  He would have known at least whether his letter had been received or no.  Would any man take silent contempt as a final answer from the woman he loved?  It was the man’s real business to come conquering, whatever airs of gentleness he might wear.  And animated by these reflections the girl became filled with impatience at the old maid’s self-upbraidings.  She was sorry, sorry with all her heart, for both, but if there were fault at all it lay on Ezra’s side.  “I shall see him in the morning,” she said, finally, thinking of Reuben.  “He will go to his uncle.”

“Child,” said Aunt Rachel, with the beginning of a return to her old manner, “do you think I can consent to have my affairs bandied from messenger to messenger in this way?  I will write.”

She said this boldly enough, but her heart shrank from it.  Her mind went blank when she tried to figure what she should say.  She could do nothing but prostrate herself anew before the re-established idol.  She began to realize the fact that whatever disguise of hate and despite her love had taken, she had done nothing but love him all along.

Ruth contented herself with the promise, but, as it happened, Rachel never wrote, or had need to write, upon this question.  For Reuben, strolling early in the morning, and finding his feet wandering in the direction of Rachel’s cottage, encountered his uncle, and their talk rendered the letter unnecessary.  Ezra flushed and coughed behind his hand in more than a commonly deprecatory way when he sighted his nephew.

“Well, lad,” he began.

“Ruth took the letter,” answered Reuben.  “I waited outside for her, and I know Miss Blythe was deeply affected by it, because I heard her crying.  Ruth stayed all night with her,” he continued, “and I suppose”-with a flush and a little hesitation-“I suppose she’s there now.”

“That means as they two are reunited?” said Ezra; and, without saying much more, the old man took his nephew’s arm and they strolled by the cottage together.

Its inmates were early astir despite the lateness of the hour at which they had retired; and hearing voices as they stood together in the bedroom renewing the moving duet of the evening, they peeped through the curtains and saw uncle and nephew go by arm-in-arm.  At this they flew together and embraced, and from that moment the duet became broken and confused.  The little maid who assisted Rachel in her household affairs had not jet arrived; so the old lady herself lit the fire and made tea, while Ruth established herself in ambush in the parlor, and kept a watch upon the road.  When Rachel came in to lay the snowy table-cloth, the china and the spoons made an unusual clatter in her trembling hands, and the two were in such a state of agitation that breakfast was a pure pretence.  While they were seated at table Reuben and Ezra again strolled by; and Ruth divined the fact that not only was Reuben waiting for her, which was to be expected, but Ezra was attending the moment when she should quit the house in order that he might make a call upon Aunt Rachel.  So in such a state of tremulous-ness as she had never experienced before-even when she took Reuben’s note from the pages of Manzini or hid her own there-she arose, and, protesting that her father would never breakfast in her absence, and that she should be roundly scolded for being so late, she put on her hat and gloves, kissed Aunt Rachel’s cold cheek, and ran out into the lane with blushes so charming and becoming that she might have been taken for the very humanized spirit of the dawn, lingering an hour or two beyond her time to make acquaintance with daylight.  If this simile should seem to border on the ridiculous, the responsibility of it may be safely thrown upon Reuben, who not merely met her with it in his mind, but conveyed it to her as they walked homeward together.  Ezra was even more bashful than Ruth, though in him the sentiment wrought less attractive tokens of itself.

“I’ll walk about a little while farther,” he said, awkwardly, when he had bidden Ruth good-morning; and without need to watch him, they knew that he had walked no farther than Rachel’s cottage.  The girl, on leaving it, had neglected to close the door, and the old maid had not dared to rise.  He stood in the open door-way, and it gave him a mute invitation to enter, though he had not courage to accept it.  He knocked faintly once or twice, and by-and-by was aware of a movement in the parlor.  He turned towards the door and saw it open slowly, and Rachel looked out at him, trembling from head to foot, with signs of tears in her face.

“Miss Blythe,” he began, shakily, “I trust all ill-feelin’ is at an end between us.  May an old friend exchange a word with you?”

“Pray come in,” said Miss Blythe, in a frightened whisper; and he entered.  “Will you take a seat?” she asked him.

“Rachel,” he said, “I was to blame, but never as you thought.  But I kept single for your sake, Rachel.”

By what wonderful alchemy of nature the withered heart grew young again at that moment, Heaven knows; but it was out of a heart suddenly impassioned and warm with youth that she answered him,

“And I will keep single for yours.”