ons of the children of her and Hiram's young days--except
those regarded by all worth-while people as "trifling and trashy"--had
something to do with Hiram's gloom. She decided that Arthur's failure and
his lightness of manner in face of it were the chief trouble--this until
Hiram's shoulders began to stoop and hollows to appear in his cheeks and
under his ears, and a waxlike pallor to overspread his face. Then she
knew that he was not well physically; and, being a practical woman, she
dismissed the mental causes of the change. "People talk a lot about their
mental troubles," she said to herself, "but it's usually three-fourths
stomach and liver."

As Hiram and illness, real illness, could not be associated in her mind,
she gave the matter no importance until she heard him sigh heavily one
night, after they had been in bed several hours. "What is it, father?"
she asked.

There was no answer, but a return to an imitation of the regular
breathing of a sleeper.

"Hiram," she insisted, "what is it?"

"Nothing, Ellen, nothing," he answered; "I must have ate something that
don't sit quite right."

"You didn't take no supper at all," said she.

This reminded him how useless it was to try to deceive her. "I ain't been
feeling well of late," he confessed, "but it'll soon be over." He did not
see the double meaning of his words until he had uttered them; he stirred
uneasily in his dread that she would suspect. "I went to the doctor."

"What did he say?--though I don't know why I should ask what such a fool
as Milbury said about anything."

"I got some medicine," replied he, evading telling her what doctor.

Instantly she sat up in bed. "I haven't seen you take no drugs!" she
exclaimed. Drugs were her especial abhorrence. She let no one in the
family take any until she had passed upon them.

"I didn't want to make a fuss," he explained.

"Where is it?" she demanded, on the edge of the bed now, ready to rise.

"I'll show it to you in the morning, mother. Lie down and go to sleep.
I've been awake long enough."

"Where is it?" she repeated, and he heard her moving across the room
toward the gas fixture.

"In my vest pocket. It's a box of pills. You can't tell nothin'
about it."

She lit the gas and went to his waistcoat, hanging where it always hung
at night--on a hook beside the closet door. He watched her fumble
through the pockets, watched her take her spectacles from the corner of
the mantel and put them on, th