The Man From Nod

The shock-headed boy threw another stone at the bntcher'u dog, and then íalling back on his base of supplies by the oíd well-curb, fonnd himself close upon tho man in the hammock, under Miss Denny's apple-tree. "See here, said the man as the urchin canio to a strategie halt, "I wonder if your niother would sell you to me, and would she haggle over the price. How does it strike you ?" "That depend. Wot would you do with mo?" "Really, I don't know. Ton admit you aro íftt, and I might want to ship you to the Cannibal islands as a speculafion. Or I might want to niake a choir boy of you, if a littlo of that hoarsness could be taken out of your toíco, and your hair persuaded to stay auywhere. There are lots of ways of using boys in the place where I carne f rom." "Say," said the boy, with a new show of interest, "do you know wot my mother saya ?" "I must confess that I do not. Tha versaíile female tongue - " "Sho says that she guesses you don't live nowhcre. She says that you may bo a pirate and you may be a preacher for all any one knows. She cava that you do nothin' but rat und sleep, and that 'fore you come here they must have kept you awake all night with nothin' to eat. Say mister," and the wheedling tone of the mother ■was unconsciously adopted by the boy, "where did you come from, anyway?" The man in the hammock dropped back with asmile, and, shading his eyes f rom a ray of sunshine that feil down among the apple blossoms, said lazily: "I have been told that your interesting mother is a sort of missionary of personal intelligence for the neighborhood. I liko to encourage home industries ; and just to help her along, you may teil her that Miss Denny's lazy boarder, who ertainlr does eat and sleep a great deal, is just out of the Land of Nod." The boy was true to his mother's esample. Comprehending the ono phrase that could be of service to her, he shot homewai'd like an arrow, that it might be safely delivered before being jostled out of his heedless little head. And beforo tho cows were well asleep in their beds or dew-besprinkle.l grass that night the people of Farmdale, from the red honRe on the hill to the tannery in tho hollow, were in full possession of the first admission as to himself yet made by the mysterious stranger who had fed the fires of their cunosity through four long weeks of the budding spring. The moon that looked into the eyes of the peaceful kine that night found time also to touch the white shawl that hung about little Miss Denny as she eat on the steps of the old far.nhouse, around which the village had grown. Thq hammock hucg empty near by, while back under the honeysuckle vines, sat the man from Nod, not asleep and not eating, but as indolent in attitude and speech as when negotiating for tho purehase of sixtyodd ponnds of shock-headed boy. The woman was puiling a spray of green to pieces with a vehemence that showed her protest against the thought to which his hps were giving form. "Believe me, Miss Denny, that you are giving yourself a courage and faith you don't possoss - that one woman in ten thousaud cannot possess. You see that when ltebekah of Mesopotamia followed the chosen servant to Abraham into a strange land it was no great venture on her part. Ho had told her of the home to which she was to go, of tl) e man she was to wed. It was a family uffair, you see, and her father was a relative of the father-in-law which was to be. Now, do you really mean to say to me that even though you love a man with all the love that such women as yon can give, you would take him on pprfect trust - would give him your future on a chance, and, placing your hands in his, walk fearlessly with him out into the dark?" "I would. Andwhynot?" "It is against nature - against woman 's nature." "Butifllovedhin? If I loved him as a woman shonld love before she weds. J cuultl trust iuui all with cljat it was I should not know, and go with him into bonds of exile." "I believe that. I know it. Bnt martyrdom, my child, is nothing beside a right to knowledge that goes unsatisfied. You would meet a lion unmoved, but let this mysterious and undiscribed lover refuse to teil you of himself, his profession, his mother, his past and his income, and you would lay a bar before him bevond which he could not advance. You would eay to him : 'You wiil net trust me, and I dare not trust you.' The marriage license would never be put to use." " 1 ou dei not understand me, sir, she said siniply. "I could not give the love until ï had given the trust - such trust as the child gives to its father in the dark. I could then close my eyes and bo led. Perhaps this sounds foolish to you, but you asked me a question, and I have given you an answer." If Farrndalo know little of this man, there was less of Miss Denny that it did not know. lts knowledge of him could be bnefly snrnmed up: That he had ridden into it one night on the down stage-coach, and asked at the postoffice to be shown a quiet place where board could be had for a week or so; that the morning found him at the cozy table of Miss Denny, beside the cleik of tho village store, flanked right and left by the manager of tho tannery and the schoolmaster, and opposita the misfci-oss of the house, who sat entrenchcd behind the dantiest of her Vonschold gods; that he had slept, lounged and eaten with th air of one who, at thirty-eight, had thrown "11' some great mental or business Btraia that had already grown streaks of gray in kis hair; that he pent money os freely as need be in the narrow ways and close economies of tliia small, Ohio town ; that his tliief delight and one known vicewas to ; tiro Kood humored tirades at tho urohins oí the neigliborhood, in words far teyonil thoir comprehension ; that Le had given to no man and to no woman one hint to his past or home, and that the hravest of them had not cared to question him. Lnid besido theso mysteries, the lifo af Miss Denny was an oppn book that even the children could rcad. lts lesBon was pure and simple. Even that missionary of personal intelligence, who had taken upon herself tho responsibility of being mother to the shock-headed boy ,could lind no broken letter in it that venom would He ipon. "Know Janet Donny ? she would have answered you. "Well, I should sfty so. She was tliirty-ono last December. lOth I believe - periiaps the 9th - it was a Tuesday, anyway. Her father gavo up and died ten eara ago - didn't amount to much with his readin' in the haymow, and a sermonizin' at the woodpile. Her mothpr has been gone, too, goin'on five years. Smarfgal. ïakes boarders, and her folks didn't even leave her the houso sho lives in. She taught school onco, ia tlie semmary at Mayfíeld, but gave it up to nnrso her mother. licads poetry - not that I see tho good of it, but 'spects sno does, or elso she wouldn't do it. She always says what she means, does her own work like tho rest of us, and makes hor cr.vn bonnets. Heard she liad the chance to marry a jabbering Dutchman, one of them professors over at Mayfield, but don't beliove it. 'Twouïd take a braver man than a little Dutchman with a long name to make love to her. She had a beau once, when she was seventeen or eighteen, but he diod 'foro anything was said, and Janet kept kinder quiet for a few years. No, sho'll live and die an old tnaid. IVe alwjys Raid that. But see here! What did that dodgin" fellow in the speckled suit mean by tellin' my Bill that lie come from the Land of Nod? My man says their aint bo Ruch place in these digging3; and my old man lias traveled." Janet had indeed answered his question with honesty, but sho was too much of the wonian to confess that, when the argement beganto take shape between thern some weeks ago, her position had been assumed for that argument's sake. But by dint of repetition, and the srarching of all the nooks and corners of her heart for pleas in support of her theory, she had unconsciously become her own first and most steadfast convert, and burued witb all the zeal of the martyrs of old. Had she known- had Rho dreamed for a moment - of the love that had sprung up in the heart of strangor who had halted for rest at her gate, and that he was only hiding it until such timo as confession shonld be the most certain to win success, not all the eloquence and all challenges that his lips could utter would have led her to promúlgate or defond tho faith towhichshn bad given her discipleship. She knew it all a week later. For the first time in his life, he called her by the name her mother had given her. And she looked up with a flush in which thero was no touch of anger, he took her hand, and, turning toward the western sky, said gently: "Janet, thero may lo glory and there may be storm behind banks of clouds. Go3 sends his burdons and his gifts as he choosea, and we must tako them as they come. I have had my share of each in the years behind me. I had thought tho way was plain ahead - that I was approachingthe summit of the hill, and iu a few years would begin to go down on the other side, a new, a sudden, a blessed light has shone into my heart, and I bless tho road that led me here. I love you, Janet. Will you be my wife?" It came with the lightning stroke of an absolute, a blinding surprise. Though, in looking once, she might have seen it in his eyes, she might have heard it in his voioe and feit it in his presence, sho had been blind, and dtafand had not understood. I will not chronicle the answer sho gave him. There aro some things so simple in their honesty, and yet so sacred, that they cannot be written. She opened her heart to him, and laid it bare in his preseace ; and as he heard the tale of a swoet and lonely life, the tears stood in his eyes, and he was a better and a nobler man in that hour than he had been in all his life before. She made one condition. It was simple but from it no eloquence no entreaty could move her. "You must loave me for three months. In that time do not see me. If you find you have misread your heart I shall know it and hold you in no blame, and you shall not come back to me. If I see you here when the day of banishment has ended, you will have my answer." When the clerk, the schoolmnster and the superintendent of tanners came to break f ast on the f olio w ing morning, one chair was vacant, and all the answer Miss Denny could give, had no consolation in it - for they had come to like the fellow, and to defend him stoutly against the insiimations of baffled curiosity. "Ho bade me good-bye last nitrht." she said, "And left on the up coach at dawn. He did not teil me where he was going, and he may jiever come back." And then a wave of speculation swept over the village for nine days and was still. The shock headed boy was at tho post-office when the night coach daslied up, and when the man from Nod alighted, it was the boy who took his smallest satohel with the unconscious commandery of old acquaintanc. and it was the boy's sturdy legs that. of their own volition, started the brief procession towards Miss Denny's house. But as the man and the larger satchrl meekly followed, it is to be presumed that on this occasion the juvenile instinct was not in fault. At the gato the guide was fed handsomely and dismissed. The man from Nod was certainly not asleep this time. Dropping his satchel on the grass, he passed tlirough the empty and unlighted parlor, went into the dining-room only to find it deserted, and passed from thence on into the kitchen, where he heard n well-beloved voice singing softly to 'jerself. If, as he afterward told her, his heart "had grown hungry for her," it must have been feasted and fed on the manna of heaven then. Her white arms were . bare to the elbows, a huge aproa ïrnng as ashield between the dishpan and the spotless lawn about her, thero was a blue ribbon at her throat, a flus'n on her cheek - and into her eyes flashed a sudden light, and the dullest "lagganl in love," of all the land could have translated. The China teacup in her hand was in danger, when he closed in upon her. If he had not kissed lier then, or had feit that li is duty was done in kissiug her once, all the dark insinuations of the woman over tho way ought to have been true aguinst him, for the very credit of mankind. "I have done your bidding," he said an hour later, as they stood together under the honeysuckle vines. "I have not written toyon. The road haa been a haf done, but it has been good for my soul, and it has brought me back to you . It bas shown that there is no doubt and no shadow of turning in my love for you." "You missed me, then?" "In every moment of the timo. " "You love me, then ?" "On my soul, I love you. I knew it when you sent mo away. I know it botter now. And you ?" All the answer that she gave, and all the answer that he sought was this ; She laid her hands in his, and with her head upon his breas t, she whispered : "I have privón dít lifo hito your keeping. M.4 faith goos with it. Lead ine wLcre vou will." But cí mu - my home, my Hfe, my past-" "I ask vou notliing. Let tito ínture tell. Wfaera lovo can go, faith mudt have stiengí'i te follow!" The minister who had baptized lier when a babe, stood before tliem in tlie tnorning'a dawn, and pronounced the ] sacred words tliat welded two lives as '■ one. The early coach tliat bronht threo passenger into town, carried five ; away; and tho dear places tliat liad : known Miss Denny for tbeso inanv vears,