zeal for the interests
of his clients. With no more reasoned motives than these he had walked
over the Northwick place, calling himself a fool for supposing that some
virtue should enter into him out of the ground there, and yet finding a
sort of relief, in the mere mechanical exercise, the novelty of
exploring by night the property grown so familiar to him by day, and so
strangely mixed up with the great trial and problem of his own
usefulness.

He listened by turns, with a sinking and a rising heart, as Newton now
dug the particulars of his adventure out of himself. At the end, he
turned to go into the house.

"Well, what do you say, Squire Putney?" Elbridge called softly after
him.

"Say?"

"You know: about what I done."

"Keep your mouth shut about what you 'done.' I should like to see you
sent to jail, though, for what you didn't do."

Elbridge felt a consolatory quality in Putney's resentment, and Putney,
already busy with the potentialities of the future, was buoyed up by the
strong excitement of what had actually happened rather than finally cast
down by what he had missed. He took three cups of the blackest coffee at
breakfast, and he said to the mute, anxious face of his wife, "Well,
Ellen, I seem to be pulling through, somehow."

VIII.

Adeline was in a flutter of voluble foreboding till Elbridge came back.
She asked Suzette whether she believed their father would get away; she
said she knew that Elbridge would miss the train, with that slow, old
mare, and their father would be arrested. Weak as she was from the
sick-bed she had left to welcome him, she dressed herself carefully, so
as to be ready for the worst; she was going to jail with him if they
brought him back; she had made up her mind to that. From time to time
she went out and looked up the road, to see if Elbridge was coming back
alone, or whether the officers were bringing her father; she expected
they would bring him first to his family; she did not know why. Suzette
tried to keep her indoors; to make her lie down. She refused, with wild
upbraidings. She declared that Suzette had never cared anything for her
father; she had wanted to give their mother's property away, to please
the Hilarys; and now that she was going to marry Matt Hilary, she was
perfectly indifferent to everything else. She asked Suzette what had
come over her.

Elbridge drove first to the stable and put up his horse, when he came
back. Then he walked to the