Connecticut western news., 1884-01-09
THE BALL OF WORSTED.

nanR O1 Dlu6 yarn tum Dldd OH the line, under which black Deb ducked her woolly head to grope in a corner of a certain recess in the attic for bits for the ragman's bag, and fell directly into her great apron.
 "Dumb things speak sometimes muttered Deb. "Now I might a forgot how soon marster's socks'll be worn out only for that. I'll sot up pair to-mor- row; no, arter tea"
 Then she pocketed the yarn, bundled up the rags and descended earthward.
 A woman and child sat in the kitchen, old Hirap Hough's niece and her baby. A year or more had passed since news came to that woman of her husbands death in Libby Prison; and the horror which had come with it was in her eyes now. No wonder, for in the depth of the red embers on which her eyes were fixed, she saw that awful picture of n skeleton crossing the ''dead line," and dropping across it at the flash of senti- nels musket. A picture that haunted Miriam Eldreth sleeping or waking, night and day.
 "The ways of Providence is strange" said Deb, shaking her woolIy head and poking the fire; and the woman turned with start, thinking of the things that had been meted out to her in her very eirlhood, for she was not yet twenty.
 Awful strange" continued Deb. Its so curus this yarn should pitch itself at me when I'd orter been thinkin' ont and wasn't"
 And a ghost of a smile crept over Miriam's face, and the smile set the baby growing, and the baby's growing awak- ened brighter smiles on the mcther's faceI and Deb seeing them playing to- gether at last-"two babies, poor things, ? as she said to herself, laughing aloud in her glee, "thank the Lord, she's got some life in her yet, when she's reused up" she said to herself, and set the table singing all the while; and then, her mas- ter not being at home yet, went out to hunt In his room for what she always called 'scrabbled paper" to wind her ball of yarn upon. She found piece which suited her at last, stiff. yellowish and cracking, and lying in an otherwise empty desk-drawer, and took it back, crumpled into proper shape, and began to wind her worsted. She had wound ten yards or so, when a furious knocking at the door made her start and break it snort oil, and there was no moro thought of the knitting that night, for at the door she found group of men who pore sort of litter among them, on which, crushed and maimed and dying lay old Hiram Tough.
 A boiler in his factory had burst, and he, with dozen poor workmen, had been hurrie i into eternity. He had but few moments to live, but in them he called his niece Miriam to him.
 Don't cry, my child,' he said; "I shall be better off than if lived longer Three score and ten years are enough for man. The Bible says so. And you are safe. l knew I could not trust to John. You are comfortable. This house and enough to keep you in it are yours. Don't part with Deb: let her live and die here. You'll find the deed of gift"
 But there the old mans voice failed, and he said no more, and in an hour was dead.
 Miriam, now that her last friend was gone, could only weep and sit beholdinp her babe upon her knee, and wishing that they lay together in the silent peace of death, as the good old man who had been so kind to her lay. But Deb. half broken-hearted as she was, went about the house, putting it into that shadowed order in which the home death has visited must be found; and, coming at last to the kitchen, where the un- tasted meal was spread, and on the hearth of which the fire had smoldered low. ,.picked up her ball of worsted from the floor, and sobbing, "Twon't knit marsta's socks, now," finished winding it; for any disorder seemed to her an in- suit to the dead.
 After that there came for both women only hushed watching beside the dead until the day of the funeral
 That day brought John Hough, a grim, hard listed, middle-aged man, who had not had time to visit his father for fifteen years.
 He behaved decorously enorgh, anc was crisp and shiny in new mourning but, as soon as decency permitted, ht