butter in the back porch, she said to me: "You mustn't mind Samanthy,
she isn't quite right in her head: a good many years ago she had a sad
blow." She hesitated; I disliked to ask her what it was, so I said "Poor
woman!" "Yes," said her mother, "she is a poor soul. She was expecting
to be married to Eben Johnson, a young man who worked on our new barn.
She got acquainted with him then, and after a year or so they were
promised. Eben was a good fellow, a j'iner by trade. He lived in the
village. In the fall before they would have been married, in the spring,
he had typhoid fever, and they sent for Samanthy. She went and took care
of him three weeks, and then he died. She came home, and seemed like one
in a maze. After a little while she was took with the fever, and liked
to died, and my two girls, Margaret and Frances, both had it and died
with it. Samanthy has never been the same since she got well. Her health
has been good, but her mind is weak." I had noticed that Mrs. Wetherell
seemed very much broken in health and spirits, and after hearing this
story I did not wonder that the blows of Providence had weakened her
hold on life.

Samanthy was very shy of me at first, but after a few days she would
talk in her disjointed way with me.

One morning I was out in the well-house. The well was very deep, and by
leaning over the curb, and by putting one's arms around one's head, one
could see the stars mirrored in the bottom of the dark old well.
Samanthy came out for some water, while I was star-gazing in this way.
She said: "What you lost?"

"O, nothing. I am only looking at the stars."

Samanthy looked as if she thought I might be more profitably engaged. I