When the spring came, and the birds twittered, and the
stream ran proud and full, little sister Lizzie, bold and thought-
less, flushed with the passion of youth, bestowed herself on
the tempter, and brought home a nameless child. Josie shiv-
ered and worked on, with the vision of schooldays all fled,
with a face wan and tired,--worked until, on a summer's
day, some one married another; then Josie crept to her mother
like a hurt child, and slept--and sleeps.
I paused to scent the breeze as I entered the valley. The
Lawrences have gone,--father and son forever,--and the
other son lazily digs in the earth to live. A new young widow
rents out their cabin to fat Reuben. Reuben is a Baptist
preacher now, but I fear as lazy as ever, though his cabin has
three rooms; and little Ella has grown into a bouncing woman,
and is ploughing corn on the hot hillside. There are babies
a-plenty, and one half-witted girl. Across the valley is a
house I did not know before, and there I found, rocking one
baby and expecting another, one of my schoolgirls, a daugh-
ter of Uncle Bird Dowell. She looked somewhat worried with
her new duties, but soon bristled into pride over her neat
cabin and the tale of her thrifty husband, and the horse and
cow, and the farm they were planning to buy.
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