roused everybody around, broken in the basement door with an axe, gotten into the kitchen with his savage

dogs and shooting-iron, and seized me by the collar, that he recognized me, and, then, he wanted me to explain it! But what kind of an explanation could I make to him? I told him he would have to wait until my mind was composed, and then I would let him understand the whole matter, fully.

12. But he never would have had particulars from me; for I do not approve of neighbors that shoot at you, break in your door, and treat you, in your own house, as

if you were a jail-bird. He knows all about it, however, - somebody has told him, somebody tells everybody everything in our village. - Frederick S. Cozzens.

XCV. — THE HOUSE IN THE MEADOW.

IT stands in a sunny meadow,

The house, so mossy and brown,
With its cumbrous old stone chimneys,
And the gray roof sloping down.

2. The trees fold their green arms round it,
The trees a century old;

And the winds go chanting through them,
And the sunbeams drop their gold.

3. The cowslips spring in the marshes,
The roses bloom on the hill,

And, beside the brook in the pasture,
The herds go feeding at will.

4. Within, in the wide old kitchen,

The old folk sit in the sun,

That creeps through the sheltering woodbine,
Till the day is almost done.

5. Their children have gone and left them;
They sit in the sun alone!

And the old wife's ears are failing

As she harks to the well-known tone

6. That won her heart in her girlhood,

That has soothed her in many a care,
And praises her now for the brightness
Her old face used to wear.

7. She thinks, again, of her bridal, —
How, dressed in her robe of white,
She stood by her gay young lover
In the morning's rosy light.

8. Oh, the morning's rosy as ever, But the rose from her cheek is fled; And the sunshine, still, is golden,

But it falls on a silvered head.

9. And the girlhood dreams, once vanished, Come back in her winter-time,

Till her feeble pulses tremble

•With the thrill of spring-time's prime.

10. And, looking forth from the window,
She thinks how the trees have grown
Since, clad in her bridal whiteness,
She crossed the old door-stone.

11. Though dimmed her eyes' bright azure,
And dimmed her hair's young gold,
The love in her girlhood plighted
Has never grown dim or old.

12. They sat in peace in the sunshine,
Till the day was almost done;
And, then, at its close, an angel
Stole over the threshold stone.

13. He folded their hands together,

He touched their eyelids with balm, And their last breath floated outward, Like the close of a solemn psalm.

14. Like a bridal pair, they traversed
The unseen mystical road
That leads to the Beautiful City,

Whose "builder and maker is God."

15. Perhaps, in that miracle country,

They will give her lost youth back,
And the flowers of the vanished spring-time
Will bloom in the spirit's track.

16. One draught from the living waters
Shall call back his manhood's prime ;
And eternal years shall measure

The love that outlasted time.

17. But the shapes that they left behind them,
The wrinkles and silver hair,

Made holy to us by the kisses

The angel had printed there,

18. We will hide away 'neath the willows,
When the day is low in the west,
Where the sunbeams cannot find them,
Nor the winds disturb their rest.

19. And we'll suffer no telltale tombstone,
With its age and date, to rise
O'er the two who are old no longer,
In the Father's house in the skies.

WHEN the time of the vintage drew near, everything assumed an aspect of work and life and gayety, which metamorphosed the whole country. The peasants loaded their carts with water, to cleanse the deep winepresses which were to hold the grapes. The bullocks, coupled together and harnessed at dawn, lifted their intelligent heads and velvety eyes under the heavy yoke, or else ate, by the side of the pole, the armfuls of hay which the children gave them.

2. The women, lifting us up in their arms, would help us to scramble up by the axle of the wheels into the vat. This is a large, oval kind of bath, in which the vinedresser goes to the vineyard, and which he there fills with great bunches of cut grapes, to bring them back to the wine-press. Then we were lifted out by the workmen, and our places filled by the contents of their baskets.

3. A quantity of sticky flies and wasps, drunk with the juice of the grape which had already begun to ferment, fell with the fruit into the vat; but either instinct or satiety prevented their stinging us. Thus we went joyfully from one vine to the other, helping to cut the rich bunches, and fill the baskets or bins of one set of reapers after the other.

4. The cleverest and handiest girls from the neighboring villages formed themselves into bands, slept in the barn at Milly, and were hired as cutters by the owners of the vineyards. They used to walk, singing, — their pails on their heads, or their baskets on their arms,— behind the one who served as guide in the narrow paths between the vines, and then placing themselves by twenties or thirties, each at the foot of a vine stock, would quickly clear the whole stem, with careful, skillful hands, of its rich white or blue burden, squeeze, and throw them into the bins, which the boys would then carry off to the

carts.

5. The very vineyards seemed to sing as their rich produce fell under the scissors; the earth, as it were, rejoiced at her spoil. We children used to follow the carts, dripping with their juicy burdens, our little pinafores all stained with the blood of the grape, and meeting with joyous cries each fresh band of workers. The joy ran, like the wine, from hill to hill. Then we helped to empty the grapes from the vat to the wine-press; or gathered