w to where the sun was sinking in the
marshes. He knew that all the other men had gone to the town-meeting,
where he had had no heart to intrude himself,--that free democratic
parliament where he had often gone with his father in childhood; where
the boys, rejoicing in a general assembly of their own, had played ball
outside, while the men debated gravely within. He recalled the time when
he himself had so proudly given his first vote for President, and how
his father had introduced him then to friends from distant parts of the
town. He remembered how he had heard his father speak there, and how
respectfully everybody had listened to him. That was in the long ago,
when they had lived at the great farm. And then came the thought of the
mortgage, and of Eliphalet's foreclosure, and--

"Hullo, Eph!"

It was one of the men from whom he took fish,--a plain-spoken, sincere
little man.

"Why wa'n't you down to town-meet'n'?"

"I was busy," said Eph.

"How'd ye like the news?"

"What news?"

There was never any good news for him now.

"Hain't heard who 's elected town-clerk?"

"No."

Had they elected Eliphalet, and so expressed their settled distrust of
him, and sympathy for the man whom he had injured?

"Who is elected?" he asked harshly.

"You be!" said the man; "went in flyin',--all hands clappin' and
stompin' their feet!"

*****

An hour later the doctor drove up, stopped, and walked toward the
kitchen door. As he passed the window, he looked in.

Eph was lying on his face, upon the settle, as he had first seen him
there, his arms beneath his head.

"I will not disturb him now," said the doctor.

*****

One breezy afternoon, in the following summer, Captain Seth laid
aside his easy every-day clothes, and transformed himself into a stiff
broadcloth image, with a small silk hat and creaking boots. So attired,
he set out in a high open buggy, with his wife, also in black, but
with gold spectacles, to the funeral of an aunt. As they pursued their
jog-trot journey along the Salt Hay Road, and came to Ephraim Morse's
cottage, they saw Susan sitting in a shady little porch at the front
door, shelling peas and looking down the bay.

"How is everything, Susan?" called out Captain Seth; "'bout time for Eph
to be gitt'n' in?"

"Yes," she answered, nodding and smiling, and pointing with a pea-pod;
"that's our boat, just coming to the wharf, with her peak down."

End of Project Gutenberg's The Vil