spoke. There was no indignation in her voice; only deep regret.

you

"Godfrey, if had but told me this six years ago, we could have done some of our duty by the child. 5 Do you think I'd have refused to take her in, if I'd known she was yours?"

At that moment Godfrey felt all the bitterness of an error that was not simply futile, but had defeated its own end. He had not measured this wife with 10 whom he had lived so long. But she spoke again, with more agitation.

"And-oh, Godfrey-if we'd had her from the first, if you'd taken to her as you ought, she'd have loved me for her mother—and you'd have been happier with 15 me; I could better have bore my little baby dying, and our life might have been more like what we used to think it 'ud be."

The tears fell, and Nancy ceased to speak.

But you wouldn't have married me then, Nancy, 20 if I'd told you," said Godfrey, urged, in the bitterness of his self-reproach, to prove to himself that his conduct had not been utter folly. "You may think you would now, but you wouldn't then. With your pride and your father's, you'd have hated having any25 thing to do with me after the talk there'd have been."

"I can't say what I should have done about that, Godfrey. I should never have married anybody else. But I wasn't worth doing wrong for; nothing is in this world. Nothing is so good as it seems before30 hand; not even our marrying wasn't, you see." There was a faint, sad smile on Nancy's face as she said the last words.

"I'm a worse man than you thought I was, Nancy," said Godfrey rather tremulously. "Can you forgive

me ever?"

"The wrong to me is but little, Godfrey.

You've

made it up to me; you've been good to me for fifteen 5 years. It's another you did the wrong to; and I doubt it can never be all made up for."

66

But we can take Eppie now," said Godfrey. "I won't mind the world knowing at last. I'll be plain and open for the rest o' my life."

"It'll be different coming to us, now she's grown up," said Nancy, shaking her head sadly. "But it's your duty to acknowledge her and provide for her; and I'll do my part by her, and pray to God Almighty to make her love me."

"Then we'll go together to Silas Marner's this very night, as soon as everything's quiet at the Stone Pits."

2 Fear.

ΙΟ

15

8. Matbaniel hawthorne.

Born 1804. Died 1864.

The Ambitious Guest.1

[The following tale-in point of structure one of the best stories ever written-is an excellent illustration of pure idealism. Unlike the characters of the foregoing selection, the figures stand for types of human life. As individuals they have no value; it is not to be conceived that particular human beings ever acted and talked as do the characters of the story. The interest of the tale, then, lies in the power with which certain typical moods are portrayed the odd wish of childhood, the fiery ambition of masculine youth and the gentler passion of girlishness, the prosaic whims of middle life, and the strange conceits of old age; and the leveling of these aims in the final fact of existence. The symbolism is characteristic of the author: without the perhaps obtrusive moral of such stories as The Great Carbuncle, or Dr. Heidegger's Experiment, or, again, the excessive subtlety of The Prophetic Pictures, it has much of the delicate beauty of The Scarlet Letter and The Marble Faun.]

ONE September night, a family had gathered round. their hearth, and piled it high with the drift-wood of mountain streams, the dry cones of the pine, and the splintered ruins of great trees, that had come crashing down the precipice. Up the chimney roared the fire, and brightened the room with its broad blaze.

1 From Twice Told Tales. Printed by permission of, and by arrangement with, Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., publishers of Hawthorne's works.

The faces of the father and mother had a sober gladness; the children laughed; the eldest daughter was the image of happiness at seventeen; and the aged grandmother, who sat knitting in the warmest place, was the image of happiness grown old. They had 5 found the "herb, heart's-ease," in the bleakest spot of all New England. This family were situated in the Notch of the White Hills, where the wind was sharp throughout the year, and pitilessly cold in the winter,giving their cottage all its fresh inclemency, before it 10 descended on the valley of the Saco. They dwelt in a cold spot and a dangerous one; for a mountain towered above their heads, so steep, that the stones would often rumble down its sides, and startle them at midnight.

15

The daughter had just uttered some simple jest, that filled them all with mirth, when the wind came through the Notch and seemed to pause before their cottage,— rattling the door, with a sound of wailing and lamentation, before it passed into the valley. For a moment, 20 it saddened them, though there was nothing unusual in the tones. But the family were glad again, when they perceived that the latch was lifted by some traveller, whose footsteps had been unheard amid the dreary blast, which heralded his approach, and wailed 25 as he was entering, and went moaning away from the door.

Though they dwelt in such a solitude, these people held daily converse with the world. The romantic pass of the Notch is a great artery, through which the 30 life-blood of internal commerce is continually throbbing, between Maine on one side and the Green

Mountains and the shores of the St. Lawrence on the other. The stage-coach always drew up before the door of the cottage. The wayfarer, with no companion but his staff, paused here to exchange a word, 5 that the sense of loneliness might not utterly overcome him, ere he could pass through the cleft of the mountain, or reach the first house in the valley. And here the teamster, on his way to Portland market, would put up for the night; and, if a bachelor, might Io sit an hour beyond the usual bedtime, and steal a kiss from the mountain-maid, at parting. It was one of those primitive taverns, where the traveller pays only for food and lodging, but meets with a homely kindness, beyond all price. When the footsteps were 15 heard, therefore, between the outer door and the inner one, the whole family rose up, grandmother, children, and all, as if about to welcome some one who belonged to them, and whose fate was linked with theirs."

The door was opened by a young man. His face 20 at first wore the melancholy expression, almost despondency, of one who travels a wild and bleak road, at nightfall and alone, but soon brightened up, when he saw the kindly warmth of his reception. He felt his heart spring forward to meet them all, from the 25 old woman, who wiped a chair with her apron, to the

little child that held out its arms to him. One glance and smile placed the stranger on a footing of innocent familiarity with the eldest daughter.

2 It is the accumulation of such slight and seemingly unimportant effects as this, as well as the reiterated acts of nature, which prepare the way for the final catastrophe.