en I was a boy. Well, I ain't
surprised Robinson has shet down on the shoes. What ye goin' to do?"

"Dun'no'," replied Jerome; then he gave a weak, childish gesture, and
caught his breath in a sob. He was scarcely more than a child, after
all, and his uncle Ozias was the only remaining natural tower to his
helplessness.

"O Lord, don't ye go to whimperin', big man like you!" responded
Ozias Lamb, quickly. "Look at here--" Ozias paused a moment,
pondering. Jerome waited, trying to keep the sobs back.

"Tell you what 'tis," said Ozias. "It's one of the cases where the
sarpents and the doves come in. We've got to do a little manoeuvrin'.
Don't you fret, J'rome, an' don't you go to frettin' of your mother.
I'll take an extra lot of shoes from Cy Robinson; he can think
Belinda's goin' to bind--she never has--or he can think what he wants
to; I ain't goin' to regulate his thinkin'; an' you come to me for
shoes in future. Only you keep dark about it. Don't you let on to
nobody, except your mother, an' she needn't know the whys an'
wherefores. I've let out shoes before now. I'll pay a leetle more
than Robinson. Tell her your uncle Ozias has taken all the shoes
Robinson has got, and you're to come to him for 'em, an' to keep dark
about it, an' let her think what she's a mind to. Women folks can't
know everything."

"Yes, sir," said Jerome.

"You can come fer the shoes and bring 'em home after dark, so's
nobody will see you," said Ozias Lamb, further.

So it befell that Jerome went for the work that brought him daily
bread, like a thief, by night, oftentimes slipping his package of
shoes under the wayside bushes at the sound of approaching footsteps.
He was deceitfully reticent also with his mother, whom he let follow
her own conclusion, that Cyrus Robinson had been dissatisfied with
their work. "Guess he won't see as much difference with this work as
he think he does," she would often say, with a bitter laugh. Jerome
was silent, but the inborn straightforwardness of the boy made him
secretly rebellious at such a course.

"It's lyin', anyhow," he said, sulkily, once, when he loaded the
shoes on his shoulder, like a mason's hod, and was starting forth
from his uncle's shop.

Ozias Lamb laughed the laugh of one who perverts humor, and makes a
jest of the bitter instead of the merry things of life.

"It's got so that lies are the only salvation of the righteous," said
Ozias Lamb, with that hard laugh of his. Then, with