Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 9.djvu/113

 The Doctor's GranddaugJiter.

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��seph, who is ill ? " — " O Susanna, no one is ill: he is past that!" said the doctor. "Who is past that?" cried Susanna in a shrill, unnatural voice. " What letter have you ? O Joseph ! who is killed? Is John?" Both the men were silent. The doctor's eyes grew misty behind his glasses, and Joseph had his handkerchief bound to his face, Susanna took the letter, and read it calmly through ; slowly the color left her face, and her eyes seemed to fill with a suffering look. " Grandfather," she said, " is this the last ? Have I reached the bottom of misery?" With one wringing clasp of her hands, she said, " John, I wish I were with you ; " and she walked out of the room in a blind way, and left the two men sitting there, helpless to comfort her. Every thing was so still that they heard her uncer- tain steps through the long hall, heard the rattle of Bluft's nails as he followed her at a little distance; and the hall- clock ticked slow and loud as its long pendulum swung back and forth.

The doctor got up, went out, and looked after the girl as she walked on in the footpath towards the pasture. Bluff followed, with his tail dropped ; and he kept behind her all the way. Joseph came out, and said, " I must go : doctor, as true as you live, I should have rather had Alex's arm, than brought that letter to you." — "I don't doubt it, Joseph," said the doctor. " You pitied us both ; and you knew what such a message meant to Susanna. I feel as if my prop was gone. I in- tended for John to come here and live : I couldn't let Susanna go. But it is all over now : the poor child and I will plod on till we get through with affairs of this life." — "I know, doctor. I do feel awfully about John ; " and Joseph went out in a sideling manner over the

��oaken threshold, and walked down the wide path much as one goes from the house of the dead.

Susanna walked along through the tall, waving grass. Long shadows were chasing each other over the fields, and the pearl and blue sky was calm over her. When she reached the tall pines in the pasture beyond the field, she threw herself down on the warm ground, and tried to realize what this news meant. "Was John dead? Had he gone to the echoless shore ; and was she left a wreck on the shores of time ? "

" The Lord loveth whom he chasten- eth," went through her mind ; but she felt rebellious, and thought, " No : grandfather wouldn't have made me suffer like this, because he loved me." Then she thought of John and his mother : Would they meet his father ? or had they all got to sleep until the resurrection? Oh, what a muddle ! Was there a heaven ? She almost shud- dered at this last thought. She had never been so wicked in all her life. Had she come out here to be tempt- ed, and was she going to lose her faith? Not a tear had come to her relief: her head seemed to be bursting, and her eye-balls felt too large for their sockets. She thought of her last talk with John, of his last caress ; and she pressed the tiny gold ring to her lips, and remembered that he said, " Wear it till I come." " Now I must wear it till I can go to him." When she looked at the ring, the tears burst forth, and she buried her face in her hands among the sweet pine-spills. The birds twittered above her head, and the cattle stood off chewing their cuds, and seemed to wonder at the strange figure.

At once she felt a cold, damp nose nuzzling her hair; and, looking up,

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