have explained; but so it was. On the
day that he first went to school, his shy, frightened face marked him as
fair game for the rougher and stronger boys, and they subjected him to
all those exquisite refinements of torture which boys seem to get by
the direct inspiration of the Devil. There was no form of their bullying
meanness or the cowardice of their brutal strength which he did not
experience. He was born under a fading or falling star,--the inheritor
of some anxious or unhappy mood of his parents, which gave its fast
color to the threads out of which his innocent being was woven.

Even the good people of the neighborhood, never accustomed to look below
the externals of appearance and manner, saw in his shrinking face and
awkward motions only the signs of a cringing, abject soul.

"You'll be no more of a man than Jake Flint!" was the reproach which
many a farmer addressed to his dilatory boy; and thus the parents, one
and all, came to repeat the sins of the children.

If, therefore, at school and "before folks," Jacob's position was always
uncomfortable and depressing, it was little more cheering at home. His
parents, as all the neighbors believed, had been unhappily married, and,
though the mother died in his early childhood, his father remained a
moody, unsocial man, who rarely left his farm except on the 1st of April
every year, when he went to the county town for the purpose of paying
the interest upon a mortgage. The farm lay in a hollow between two
hills, separated from the road by a thick wood, and the chimneys of the
lonely old house looked in vain for a neighbor-smoke when they began to
grow warm of a morning.

Beyond the barn and under the northern hill there was a log
tenant-house, in which dwelt a negro couple, who, in the course of years
had become fixtures on the place and almost partners in it. Harry,
the man, was the medium by which Samuel Flint kept up his necessary
intercourse with the world beyond the valley; he took the horses to the
blacksmith, the grain to the mill, the turkeys to market, and through
his hands passed all the incomings and outgoings of the farm, except
the annual interest on the mortgage. Sally, his wife, took care of the
household, which, indeed, was a light and comfortable task, since the
table was well supplied for her own sake, and there was no sharp eye
to criticise her sweeping, dusting, and bed-making. The place had a
forlorn, tumble-down aspect, quite in keeping w