OLD HEIR-LOOMS.

When Mrs. Holt heard her husband's footsteps on the stairs she gave a sudden start and went after him eager to look upon his very shadow as it passed away from her. Then she went back into the room, sat down in the great easy-chair, and leaning her cheek against its cushions, closed her eyes with a sensation of heavenly thankfulness that beamed over her whole face.

"He loves me yet—he loves me yet; he does—he does! I am not so very old, if it were not for this pining. Great heavens! how beautiful life can be for us away from every one—away from the evils that tempt him here, with the fresh, bright things of God all around us. Had this been given me from the first, how different it might have been; but while there is life there is hope. Let me think—let me dream; and, above all, let me thank the good God who forgives so much, and blesses us, in spite of our ingratitude."

She sighed heavily, casting off a load of pain with each breath; then a smile dawned on her lips, and her hands clasped each other gently, as young birds creep together in one nest. She was not asleep; but a full hour passed before she moved from that chair, the feeling of rest was so complete.

After a time the thought of what she had to do broke into her repose. She sat up, smiling and thoughtful, her intellect all alert, as if a stone had been rolled away from her brain, and a mountain of ice from her heart.

How should she get this money? Not from her son, that source had been taxed too heavily already. She could not again appeal to his generosity, knowing, as she did, how hard it was for him to earn, with his own hands, the honorable independence which it was his pride to maintain.

Of late she remembered, with some anxiety, that the young man had been straitened in his means, and that he came less frequently to her assistance; he grew pale and careworn, too, like a man who was preparing himself for some inevitable burden. No, let what would come, she must not go to her first husband's son, William Sterling, for help, not even to secure that home in the far West, in which Mason Holt was to become himself again.

This conclusion once arrived at, Mrs. Holt began to search about for some other means of obtaining money. There was one resource by which she might realize the sum she wanted.

Through all her poverty, and against every pressure, she had retained two or three valuable heir-looms, which had descended to her from the proud house in England, to which she undoubtedly belonged. For years she had not dared to look at these things, the very sight of them was so full of regretful pain. Sometimes the clamor of immediate need had been so loud and strong, that she had dragged them forth as men commit murders and burglaries, determined to sell them, and free herself from the cry of money, money, which pursued her like the baying of blood-hounds; but something had always held her back. It seemed like tearing up that proud, ancestral tree by the roots, when she thought of parting with the articles that had been owned and worn by her mother.

Now a new motive, and a more holy purpose swept many of these feelings aside. She was about to begin a new life, to throw up a hopeless struggle, and the bitter experience of years, for the freedom of primitive existence. What had she in common with the pride and ambition, the pomp and splendor of which these fragmentary treasures were a part? Had she not long ago given up her own lofty birth-right, and held her son back from the privileges of his class because she wished to be forgotten by those who had known her in the glory of her youth, and the pride of a position now divided from her by so many years, that it seemed like a mocking dream? Now she was going away farther still, to the very centre of the new world, through which iron roads were already cleaving a passage from ocean to ocean. Why should she keep these relics? Who would appreciate them in the far-off home to which her best hopes turned? For once she would tear up her pride by the roots; the man she had married was a son of the new world—she had made sacrifices for him, why not add this one, the greatest and the last?

From under her bed, Mrs. Holt dragged a small camphor-wood trunk, clamped with brass, and fastened with a curious lock. From her work-table she took a key which fitted this lock, and opened the trunk with it. A strong aromatic smell of camphor, cedar-chips, and sandal-wood came up from the chest, almost stifling her. She turned white and struggled for breath, but did not close the lid, though it shook under her hands, and at first almost fell.

Layer after layer of paper and fine linen was unfolded; then the rich tints and heavy fabric of an India shawl gleamed up from the waves of tissue-paper that enfolded it. She took the shawl up with desperate courage, as if it had been the shroud of some dear friend, and flung it across her arm. Then she drew forth a web of old cardinal point-lace, the spoil from some monastic altar, into which a whole convent of nuns had worked all the bloom of their lives, and offered it back to God in a wonderful mechanism.

This lace had descended in her mother's family, from lady to lady, many a hundred years; and now she was about to sell it for so much gold. The thought made her faint. It seemed a terrible sacrilege, even in the state of generous exaltation to which she had lifted herself. She held up the marvelous web, yellow and rich with the golden hue which time leaves on all whiteness, and looked at the delicate pattern with longing, wistful eyes. The rich tracery gleamed like hoary frost-work between her and the window. It fell from her arm, yard after yard, a miraculous web, which nothing could replace. This lace had gleamed on her mother's bridal-dress and on her own. How could she sell it?

A hundred dollars! Surely the India shawl would bring more than that if she only knew where to sell it. She would put back the lace, at least for the present; it seemed impossible for her to part with that. Was it not woven into the very woof of her birth-right, with its rich yellow threads stretching back for centuries? The proud women of her house would stir in their graves if she sold that.

One thing more she had on which her trembling hand fell with reverence. It was a jewel-case of crimson morocco, worn and faded, which fell open in her clasp—for the spring was broken—and the beautiful eyes of a woman looked up to her, as if haughtily asking why she had been intruded upon. Then Mrs. Holt's mouth began to quiver, and her eyes grew so dim that she could not see how those lovely eyes seemed to soften and look into hers, and how wonderfully beautiful the face was.

"Oh! mother, mother!" she cried out, "had you but lived, had you but lived!"

She turned the picture over in her hands. It was set in pure, heavy gold; and in the back was an oval-shaped crystal, in which two rich locks of hair lay in one silken coil, held together by a band of large diamonds. At first she had intended to remove these diamonds and sell them, but her hand faltered in its task. She literally could not so despoil her mother's picture. She clasped the case in her hand, thrust the miniature back to its place in the box, hurried the lace in, wave after wave, pressed it down with both her hands, and closed the lid. The shawl she might part with; but the dead in their coffins were not more sacred to her than the picture and the lace, which had been a portion of her mother's wedding-dress.

Other things of value were in that camphor-wood box; a huge Bible, every page of which was an illuminated manuscript, and noble orders, from which the jewels had been taken; but these the woman never touched. To unlock that box at all, was like opening a tomb; she was in haste to close it, and held her breath till the bolt was turned. Then she took up the shawl, and moving like a ghost toward that easy-chair, sat down with all its mingled colors gleaming in her lap. But she was cold and white, as if the thing she had taken were a shroud, and the place she had despoiled, a grave.