ith its lonely situation;
but perhaps this very circumstance flattered the mood of its silent,
melancholy owner and his unhappy son.

In all the neighborhood there was but one person with whom Jacob felt
completely at ease--but one who never joined in the general habit of
making his name the butt of ridicule or contempt. This was Mrs. Ann
Pardon, the hearty, active wife of Farmer Robert Pardon, who lived
nearly a mile farther down the brook. Jacob had won her good-will
by some neighborly services, something so trifling, indeed, that the
thought of a favor conferred never entered his mind. Ann Pardon saw that
it did not; she detected a streak of most unconscious goodness under his
uncouth, embarrassed ways, and she determined to cultivate it. No little
tact was required, however, to coax the wild, forlorn creature into
so much confidence as she desired to establish; but tact is a native
quality of the heart no less than a social acquirement, and so she did
the very thing necessary without thinking much about it.

Robert Pardon discovered by and by that Jacob was a steady, faithful
hand in the harvest-field at husking-time, or whenever any extra labor
was required, and Jacob's father made no objection to his earning
a penny in this way; and so he fell into the habit of spending his
Saturday evenings at the Pardon farm-house, at first to talk over
matters of work, and finally because it had become a welcome relief from
his dreary life at home.

Now it happened that on a Saturday in the beginning of haying-time, the
village tailor sent home by Harry a new suit of light summer clothes,
for which Jacob had been measured a month before. After supper he tried
them on, the day's work being over, and Sally's admiration was so loud
and emphatic that he felt himself growing red even to the small of his
back.

"Now, don't go for to take 'em off, Mr. Jake," said she. "I spec' you're
gwine down to Pardon's, and so you jist keep 'em on to show 'em all how
nice you KIN look."

The same thought had already entered Jacob's mind. Poor fellow! It was
the highest form of pleasure of which he had ever allowed himself to
conceive. If he had been called upon to pass through the village on
first assuming the new clothes, every stitch would have pricked him as
if the needle remained in it; but a quiet walk down the brookside, by
the pleasant path through the thickets and over the fragrant meadows,
with a consciousness of his own neatness an