ed a word of censure against the
peculiar man, who was never known to smile, and who seldom spoke except
he was spoken to, and who, with his long white hair falling around his
thin face, looked like some old picture of a saint, when on Sunday he
sat in his accustomed pew by the door, and like the publican, seemed
almost to smite upon his breast as he confessed himself to be a
miserable sinner.

Had Burton Jerrold remained at home and been content to till the barren
soil of his father's rocky farm, not his handsome face, or polished
manners, or adoration of herself as the queen of queens, could have won
a second thought from Geraldine, for she hated farmers, who smelled of
the barn and wore cowhide boots, and would sooner have died than been a
farmer's wife. But Burton had never tilled the soil, nor worn cowhide
boots nor smelled of the barn, for when he was a mere boy, his mother
died, and an old aunt, who lived in Boston, took him for her own, and
gave him all the advantages of a city education until he was old enough
to enter one of the principal banks as a clerk; then she died and left
him all her fortune, except a thousand dollars which she gave to his
sister Hannah, who still lived at home upon the farm, and was almost as
silent and peculiar as the father himself.

"Marry one of the Grey girls if you can," the aunt had said to her
nephew upon her death bed. "It is a good family, and blood is worth more
than money; it goes further toward securing you a good position in
Boston society. The Jerrold blood is good, for aught I know, though not
equal to that of the Greys. Your father is greatly respected in
Allington, where he is known, but he is a codger of the strictest type,
and clings to everything old-fashioned and _outre_. He has resisted all
my efforts to have him change the house into something more modern, even
when, for the sake of your mother, I offered to do it at my own expense.
Especially was I anxious to tear down that projection which he calls a
lean-to, but when I suggested it to him, and said I would bring a
carpenter at once, he flew into such a passion as fairly frightened me.
'The lean-to should not be touched for a million of dollars; he
preferred it as it was,' he said; so I let him alone. He is a strange
man, and--and--Burton, I may be mistaken, but I have thought there was
something he was hiding. Else, why does he never smile, or talk, or look
you straight in the face? And why is he always broo