"Goodness knows! Still, I'm glad to hear you say it. And uncle says you are as good a woman as ever lived. He thinks you're misled, of course, but that some day you'll see the error of your ways."

"Humph! I'll have to hurry up if I want to see 'em without spectacles. See my errors! Land sakes! much as I can do to see the heads of these tacks. Takin' up carpets is as hard a test of a body's eyesight as 'tis of their religion."

Her companion put down the tablecloth she was folding and looked earnestly at the other woman. To an undiscerning eye the latter would have looked much as she always did--plump and matronly, with brown hair drawn back from the forehead and parted in the middle; keen brown eyes with a humorous twinkle in them--this was the Keziah Coffin the later generation of Trumet knew so well.

But Grace Van Horne, who called her aunt and came to see her so frequently, while her brother was alive and during the month following his death, could see the changes which the month had wrought. She saw the little wrinkles about the eyes and the lines of care about the mouth, the tired look of the whole plucky, workaday New England figure. She shook her head.

"Religion!" she repeated. "I do believe, Aunt Keziah, that you've got the very best religion of anybody I know. I don't care if you don't belong to our church. When I see how patient you've been and how cheerful through all your troubles, it--"

Mrs. Coffin waved the hammer deprecatingly. "There! there!" she interrupted. "I guess it's a good thing I'm goin' away. Here's you and I praisin' up each other's beliefs, just as if that wasn't a crime here in Trumet. Sometimes when I see how the two societies in this little one-horse place row with each other, I declare if it doesn't look as if they'd crossed out the first word of 'Love your neighbor' and wrote in 'Fight,' instead. Yet I'm a pretty good Regular, too, and when it comes to whoopin' and carryin' on like the Come-Outers, I-- Well! well! never mind; don't begin to bristle up. I won't say another word about religion. Let's pick the new minister to pieces. ANY kind of a Christian can do that."

But the new minister was destined to remain undissected that morning, in that house at least. Grace was serious now and she voiced the matter which had been uppermost in her mind since she left home.

"Aunt Keziah," she said, "why do you go away? What makes you? Is it absolutely necessary?"

"Why do I go? Why, for the same reason that the feller that was hove overboard left the ship--cause I can't stay. You've got to have vittles and clothes, even in Trumet, and a place to put your head in nights. Long's Sol was alive and could do his cobblin' we managed to get along somehow. What I could earn sewin' helped, and we lived simple. But when he was taken down and died, the doctor's bills and the undertaker's used up what little money I had put by, and the sewin' alone wouldn't keep a healthy canary in bird seed. Dear land knows I hate to leave the old house I've lived in for fourteen years and the town I was born in, but I've got to, for all I see. Thank mercy, I can pay Cap'n Elkanah his last month's rent and go with a clear conscience. I won't owe anybody, that's a comfort, and nobody will owe me; though I could stand that, I guess," she added, prying at the carpet edge.

"I don't care!" The girl's dark eyes flashed indignantly. "I think it's too bad of Cap'n Elkanah to turn you out when--"

"Don't talk that way. He ain't turnin' me out. He ain't lettin' houses for his health and he'll need the money to buy his daughter's summer rigs. She ain't had a new dress for a month, pretty near, and here's a young and good-lookin' parson heavin' in sight. Maybe Cap'n Elkanah would think a minister was high-toned enough even for Annabel to marry."

"He's only twenty-three, they say," remarked Grace, a trifle maliciously. "Perhaps she'll adopt him."

Annabel was the only child of Captain Elkanah Daniels, who owned the finest house in town. She was the belle of Trumet, and had been for a good many years.

Keziah laughed.

"Well," she said, "anyhow I've got to go. Maybe I'll like Boston first rate, you can't tell. Or maybe I won't. Ah, hum! 'twouldn't be the first thing I've had to do that I didn't like."

Her friend looked at her.

"Aunt," she said, "I want to make a proposal to you, and you mustn't be cross about it."

"A proposal! Sakes alive! What'll I say? 'This is so sudden!' That's what Becky Ryder, up to the west part of the town, said when Jim Baker, the tin peddler, happened to ask her if she'd ever thought of gettin' married. 'O James! this is so sudden!' says Becky. Jim said afterwards that the suddenest thing about it was the way he cleared out of that house. And he never called there afterwards."

Grace smiled, but quickly grew grave.

"Now, auntie," she said, "please listen. I'm in earnest. It seems to me that you might do quite well at dressmaking here in town, if you had a little--well, ready money to help you at the start. I've got a few hundred dollars in the bank, presents from uncle, and my father's insurance money. I should love to lend it to you, and I know uncle would--"

Mrs. Coffin interrupted her.

"Cat's foot!" she exclaimed. "I hope I haven't got where I need to borrow money yet a while. Thank you just as much, deary, but long's I've got two hands and a mouth, I'll make the two keep t'other reasonably full, I wouldn't wonder. No, I shan't think of it, so don't say another word. NO."

The negative was so decided that Grace was silenced. Her disappointment showed in her face, however, and Keziah hastened to change the subject.

"How do you know," she observed, "but what my goin' to Boston may be the best thing that ever happened to me? You can't tell. No use despairin', Annabel ain't given up hope yet; why should I? Hey? Ain't that somebody comin'?"

Her companion sprang to her feet and ran to the window. Then she broke into a smothered laugh.

"Why, it's Kyan Pepper!" she exclaimed. "He must be coming to see you, Aunt Keziah. And he's got on his very best Sunday clothes. Gracious! I must be going. I didn't know you expected callers."

Keziah dropped the tack hammer and stood up.

"Kyan!" she repeated. "What in the world is that old idiot comin' here for? To talk about the minister, I s'pose. How on earth did Laviny ever come to let him out alone?"

Mr. Pepper, Mr. Abishai Pepper, locally called "Kyan" (Cayenne) Pepper because of his red hair and thin red side whiskers, was one of Trumet's "characters," and in his case the character was weak. He was born in the village and, when a youngster, had, like every other boy of good family in the community, cherished ambitions for a seafaring life. His sister, Lavinia, ten years older than he, who, after the death of their parents, had undertaken the job of "bringing up" her brother, did not sympathize with these ambitions. Consequently, when Kyan ran away she followed him to Boston, stalked aboard the vessel where he had shipped, and collared him, literally and figuratively. One of the mates venturing to offer objection, Lavinia turned upon him and gave him a piece of her mind, to the immense delight of the crew and the loungers on the wharf. Then she returned with the vagrant to Trumet. Old Captain Higgins, who skippered the packet in those days, swore that Lavinia never stopped lecturing her brother from the time they left Boston until they dropped anchor behind the breakwater.

"I give you my word that 'twas pretty nigh a stark calm, but there was such a steady stream of language pourin' out of the Pepper stateroom that the draught kept the sails filled all the way home," asserted Captain Higgins.

That was Kyan's sole venture, so far as sailoring was concerned, but he ran away again when he was twenty-five. This time he returned of his own accord, bringing a wife with him, one Evelyn Gott of Ostable. Evelyn could talk a bit herself, and her first interview with Lavinia ended with the latter's leaving the house in a rage, swearing never to set foot in it again. This oath she broke the day of her sister-in-law's funeral. Then she appeared, after the ceremony, her baggage on the wagon with her. The bereaved one, who was sitting on the front stoop of his dwelling with, so people say, a most resigned expression on his meek countenance, looked up and saw her.

"My land! Laviny," he exclaimed, turning pale. "Where'd you come from?"

"Never mind WHERE I come from," observed his sister promptly. "You just be thankful I've come. If ever a body needed some one to take care of 'em, it's you. You can tote my things right in," she added, turning to her grinning driver, "and you, 'Bishy, go right in with 'em. The idea of your settin' outside takin' it easy when your poor wife ain't been buried more'n an hour!"

"But--but--Laviny," protested poor Kyan, speaking the truth unwittingly, "I couldn't take it easy AFORE she was buried, could I?"

"Go right in," was the answer. "March!"

Abishai marched, and had marched under his sister's orders ever since. She kept house for him, and did it well, but her one fear was that some female might again capture him, and she watched him with an eagle eye. He was the town assessor and tax collector, but when he visited dwellings containing single women or widows, Lavinia always accompanied him, "to help him in his figgerin'," she said.

Consequently, when he appeared, unchaperoned, on the walk leading