She sprang to meet him, pale with her watching and fear.

“Worried, Annie, were you?  I haven’t been drinking; don’t be frightened,—­no, not the theatre, either, this time.  Some business, dear; business that delayed me.  I’m sorry you were worried, I am, Annie.  I’ve had a long walk.  It is pleasant here.  I believe I’m tired, Annie.”

He faltered, and turned away his face.

“Dear me,” said Annie, “why, you poor fellow, you are all tired out.  Sit right up here by the fire, and I will bring the coffee.  I’ve tried so hard not to let it boil away, you don’t know, Jack, and I was so afraid something had happened to you.”

Her face, her voice, her touch, seemed more than he could bear for a minute, perhaps.  He gulped down his coffee, choking.

“Annie, look here.”  He put down his cup, trying to smile and make a jest of the words.  “Suppose a fellow had it in him to be a rascal, and nobody ever knew it, eh?”

“I should rather not know it, if I were his wife,” said Annie, simply.

“But you couldn’t care anything more for him, you know, Annie?”

“I don’t know,” said Annie, shaking her head with a little perplexed smile, “you would be just Jack, any how.”

Jack coughed, took up his coffee-cup, set it down hard, strode once or twice across the room, kissed the baby in the crib, kissed his wife, and sat down again, winking at the fire.

“I wonder if He had anything to do with sending him,” he said, presently, under his breath.

“Sending whom?” asked puzzled Annie.

“Business, dear, just business.  I was thinking of a boy who did a little job for me to-night, that’s all.”

And that is all that she knows to this day about the man sitting in the corner, with his hat over his eyes, bound for Colorado.

One of the Elect.

“Down, Muff! down!”

Muff obeyed; he took his paws off from his master’s shoulders with an injured look in his great mute eyes, and consoled himself by growling at the cow.  Mr. Ryck put a sudden stop to a series of gymnastic exercises commenced between them, by throwing the creature’s hay down upon her horns; then he watered his horse, fed the sheep, took a look at the hens, and closed all the doors tightly; for the night was cold, so cold that he shivered, even under that great bottle-green coat of his:  he was not a young man.

“Pretty cold night, Muff!” Muff was not blest with a forgiving disposition; he maintained a dignified silence.  But his master did not feel the slight.  Something, perhaps the cold, made him careless of the dog to-night.

The house was warm, at least; the light streamed far out of the kitchen window, down almost to the orchard.  He passed across it, showing his figure a little stooping, and the flutter of gray hair from under his hat; then into the house.  His wife was busied about the room, a pleasant room for a kitchen, with the cleanest of polished floors and whitened tables; the cheeriest of fires, the home-like faces of blue and white china peeping through the closet door; a few books upon a little shelf, with an old Bible among them; the cosey rocking-chair that always stood by the fire, and a plant or two in the south window.  He came in, stamping off the snow; Muff crawled behind the stove, and gave himself up to a fit of metaphysics.