TO-MORROW
Page: 28

in his arm-chair, with a globe lamp burning by his
side on the table, yelled for her, in a fiendish voice:
"Bessie! Bessie! you Bessie!"

She heard him at last, and, as if overcome by
fate, began to totter silently back toward her stuffy
little inferno of a cottage. It had no lofty portal,
no terrific inscription of forfeited hopes--she did
not understand wherein she had sinned.

Captain Hagberd had gradually worked himself
into a state of noisy happiness up there.

"Go in! Keep quiet!" she turned upon him
tearfully, from the doorstep below.

He rebelled against her authority in his great
joy at having got rid at last of that "something
wrong." It was as if all the hopeful madness of the
world had broken out to bring terror upon her
heart, with the voice of that old man shouting of
his trust in an everlasting to-morrow.