everything you've got. When she
got married I guess I knew a little about what the martyrs went through.

"Just after that George's widow got married again and went away to
live. It took a burden off the rest of us, but I had got attached to the
children. The little girl, Ellen, seemed 'most like my own. Then poor
Myrtle came here to live. She did dressmaking and boarded with our
folks, and I begun to see that she was one of the nervous sort of women
who are pretty bad off alone in the world, and I told her about the
other girl, and she said she didn't mind, and we got married. By that
time mother's brother John--he had never got married-died and left her
a little money, so she and my sister Abby could screw along. They bought
the little house they live in and left the farm, for Abby was always
hard to get along with, though she is a good woman. Mother, though
she is a smart woman, is one of the sort who don't feel called upon to
interfere much with men-folks. I guess she didn't interfere any too
much for my good, or father's, either. Father was a set man. I guess if
mother had been a little harsh with me I might not have asked that awful
'why?' I guess I might have taken my bitter pills and held my tongue,
but I won't blame myself on poor mother.

"Myrtle and I get on well enough. She seems contented--she has never
said a word to make me think she wasn't. She isn't one of the kind of
women who want much besides decent treatment and a home. Myrtle is
a good woman. I am sorry for her that she got married to me, for she
deserved somebody who could make her a better husband. All the time,
every waking minute, I've been growing more and more rebellious.

"You see, Mr. Wheaton, never in this world have I had what I wanted,
and more than wanted-needed, and needed far more than happiness. I have
never been able to think of work as anything but a way to get money,
and it wasn't right, not for a man like me, with the feelings I was born
with. And everything has gone wrong even about the work for the money.
I have been hampered and hindered, I don't know whether by Providence
or the Evil One. I have saved just six hundred and forty dollars, and
I have only paid the interest on the mortgage. I knew I ought to have a
little ahead in case Myrtle or I got sick, so I haven't tried to pay
the mortgage, but put a few dollars at a time in the savings-bank, which
will come in handy now."

The minister regarded him uneasily. "What," he