s
still fluttering. After all, the sun was shining.

"No; Mr. Taylor."

The mother put her hands to her head.

"_Hiram!_ You ain't never borrowed any money of Hiram, have you?" she
cried in an agonized voice.

"But, Mother dear, he forced it upon me. He came--"

"Yes, that's what he did to me. Give it back to him, child, now,
'fore you sleep. Don't wait a minute. Borrowed two hundred dollars of
Hiram--and my child, too! Oh, it can't be! It can't be!"

The mother dropped into a chair and rocked herself to and fro. The girl
started to explain, to protest, to comfort her with promises; then she
crossed to where her mother was sitting, and stood patient until the
paroxysm should pass. A sudden fright now possessed her; these attacks
were coming on oftener; was her mother's mind failing? Was there
anything serious? Perhaps it would have been better not to tell her at
all.

The mother motioned Abbie to a chair.

"Sit down, child, and listen to me. I ain't crazy; I ain't out of my
head--I'm only skeered."

"But, Mother dear, I can get the money any day I want it. All I've got
to do is to telephone them and a check comes the next day."

"Yes, I know--I know." She was still trembling, her voice hardly
audible. "But that ain't what skeers me; it's Hiram. He done the same
thing to me last December. Come in here and laid the bills on that table
behind you and begged me to take 'em; he'd heard about the mortgage; he
wanted to fix the house up, too. I put my hands behind my back and got
close to the wall there. I couldn't touch it, and he begged and begged,
and then he went away. Next he went to the school-house, and you know
what he did. That's why you got the post-office."

A light broke in upon the girl. "And you've known him before?"

"Yes, forty years ago. He loved me and I loved him. We had bad luck, and
my father got into trouble. He and Hiram's father were friend's; been
boys together, and Hiram's father loaned him money. I don't know how
much--I never knew, but considerable money. My father couldn't pay, and
then come bad blood. The week before Hiram and I were to be called in
church they struck each other, and when Hiram took my father's part his
father drove him out of his house, and Hiram hadn't nothing, and went
West; and I never heard from him nor saw him till the day he come in
here last fall. Don't you see, child, you got to take him back his
money?"

Abbie squared her shoulders. The blood of the Puri