"She's a widow," explained Matilda. "Husband died 'fore she come back
here to live. Guess he didn't amount to much; she never mentions his
name."

"There was one thing I meant to tell her," mused the minister,
hesitating on the threshold. "I meant to tell her not to attempt any
cleaning up at the parsonage to-night. To-morrow will do just as well."

"Heavens to Betsy!" sniffed the "hired help," speaking from the depths
of personal conviction, "nobody but a born fool would clean house in the
night, 'specially after the cleanin' she's been doin' at her own place.
I guess you needn't worry."

So Mr. Ellery did not worry. And yet, until three o'clock of the
following morning, the dull light of a whale-oil lantern illuminated the
rooms of the parsonage as Keziah scrubbed and swept and washed, giving
to the musty place the "lick and promise" she had prophesied. If the
spiders had prepared those ascension robes, they could have used them
that night.

After breakfast the wagons belonging to the Wellmouth furniture dealer
drove in at the gate of the little house opposite Captain Elkanah's, and
Keziah saw, with a feeling of homesickness which she hid beneath smiles
and a rattle of conversation, the worn household treasures which had
been hers, and her brother's before her, carried away out of her life.
Then her trunks were loaded on the tailboards of the wagons, to be left
at the parsonage, and with a sigh and a quick brush of her hand across
her eyes, she locked the door for the last time and walked briskly down
the road. Soon afterwards John Ellery, under the eminently respectable
escort of Captain Elkanah and Miss Annabel, emerged from the Daniels's