ness
regarding the sale of the woodland to arrange.

Curiously enough, Ann was docile as one could wish about that.
Whether her previous struggle had exhausted her or whether she began
to feel some confidence in her advisers, they could not tell. She
made no difficulty, but after all was adjusted she looked at the
lawyer with a shrewd, sharp gleam in her eyes.

"Doctor Prescott can't get his claws on it now, anyhow," she said;
"and he always wanted it, 'cause it joined his."

The Squire and the lawyer looked at each other. The Squire with
humorous amazement, the lawyer with a wink and glance of wise
reminder, as much as to say: "You know what I have always said about
women. Here is a woman."

Jerome was digging out in his garden-patch, and Elmira, in her blue
sunbonnet, was standing, full of scared questioning, before him, when
the Squire came lounging up the slope and reported as before said, to
the convincing of the boy in innocent credulity.

When he had finished, he laid hold on Elmira's little cotton sleeve
and pulled her up to her brother, and stood before them with a kindly
hand on a shoulder of each, smiling down at them with infinite
good-humor and protection.

"Don't you worry now, children," he said. "Be good and mind your
mother, and you'll get along all right. We'll manage about the
interest money, and there'll be meal in the barrel and a roof over
your heads as long as you want it, according to the Scriptures, I'll
guarantee."

With that Squire Eben gave each a shake, to conceal, maybe, the
tenderness of pity in him, which he might, in his hearty and merry
manhood, have accounted somewhat of a shame to reveal, as well as
tears in his blue eyes, and was gone down the hill with a great
laugh.

Elmira looked after him. "Ain't he good?" she whispered. But as for
Jerome, he stood trembling and quivering and looking down at a print
the Squire's great boot had made in the soft mould. When Elmira had
gone, he went down on his knees and kissed it passionately.

Chapter XII

Now the warfare of life had fairly begun for little Jerome Edwards.
Up to this time, although in sorry plight enough as far as material
needs went--scantily clad, scantily fed, and worked hard--he had as
yet only followed at an easy pace, or skirted with merry play the
march of the toilers of the world. Now he was in the rank and file,
enlisted thereto by a stern Providence, and must lose his life for
the sake of living, l