uess you'd better take 'em home
to your wife. I've got a good deal cooked up."

Elmira made a little expressive sound; she could not help it. She
gave one horrified, wondering look at her mother. Not a morsel of
cooked food was there on the bare pantry shelves. By-and-by a little
Indian meal and water would be boiled for supper. There were some
vegetables in the cellar, otherwise no food in the house. Ann lied.

Squire Eben Merritt then displayed what would have been tact in a
keenly calculating and analytic nature. "Oh, throw them out for the
dogs, if you don't want them, Mrs. Edwards," he returned, gayly.
"I've got more than my wife can use here. We are getting rather tired
of partridges, we have had so many. I stopped at Lawyer Means's on my
way here and left a pair for him."

A sudden change came over Ann's face. She beamed with a return of her
fine company manners. She even smiled. "Thank ye," said she; "then I
will take them, if you are sure you ain't robbing yourself."

"Not at all," said the Squire--"not at all, Mrs. Edwards. You'd
better baste them well when you cook them." Then he took his leave,
with many exchanges of courtesies, and went his way, wondering what
had worked this change; for a simple, benevolent soul can seldom
gauge its own wisdom of diplomacy.

Squire Eben did not dream that his gift to one who was not needy had
enabled him to give to one who was, by establishing a sort of
equality among the recipients, which had overcome her proud scruples.
On the way home he met Jerome, scudding along in the early dusk,
having finished his task early. "Hurry home, boy," he called out, in
that great kind voice which Jerome so loved--"hurry home; you've got
something good for supper!" and he gave the boy, ducking low before
him with the love and gratitude which had overcome largely the fierce
and callous pride in his young heart, a hearty slap on the shoulder
as he went past.

Chapter XIII

There was a good district school in the village, and Jerome, before
his father's disappearance, had attended it all the year round; now
he went only in winter. Jerome rose at four o'clock in the dark
winter mornings, and went to bed at ten, getting six hours' sleep. It
was fortunate that he was a hardy boy, with a wirily pliant frame,
adapting itself, with no lesions, to extremes of temperature and
toil, even to extremes of mental states. In spite of all his
hardships, in spite of scanty food, Jerome thri