o his room, and before he could compose himself to sleep
the women called him.

But he shed no more tears. He saw Eliza die, his companion of forty
years, and hardly felt it. What troubled him all through the last
scene was the thought that now he should never know why she was so set
against "Bessie's 'avin' it."

SCENE II

It was, indeed, the general opinion in Clinton Magna that John
Bolderfield--or "Borrofull," as the village pronounced it, took his
sister-in-law's death too lightly. The women especially pronounced him
a hard heart. Here was "poor Eliza" gone, Eliza who had kept him
decent and comfortable for forty years, ever since he was a lad, and he
could go about whistling, and--to talk to him--as gay as a lark! Yet
John contributed handsomely to the burial expenses--Eliza having
already, through her burial club, provided herself with a more than
regulation interment; and he gave Jim's Louisa her mourning.
Nevertheless, these things did not avail. It was felt instinctively
that he was not beaten down as he ought to have been, and Mrs.
Saunders, the smith's wife, was applauded when she said to her
neighbours that "you couldn't expeck a man with John Bolderfield's
money to have as many feelin's as other people." Whence it would seem
that the capitalist is no more truly popular in small societies than in
large.

John, however, did not trouble himself about these things. He was hard
at work harvesting for Muster Hill's widow, and puzzling his head day
and night as to what to do with his box.

When the last field had been carried and the harvest supper was over,
he came home late, and wearied out. His working life at Clinton Magna
was done; and the family he had worked for so long was broken up in
distress and poverty. Yet he felt only a secret exultation. Such toil
and effort behind--such a dreamland in front!

Next day he set to work to wind up his affairs. The furniture of the
cottage was left to Eliza's son Jim, and the daughter had arranged for
the carting of it to the house twelve miles off where her parents
lived. She was to go with it on the morrow, and John would give up the
cottage and walk over to Frampton, where he had already secured a
lodging.

Only twenty-four hours!--and he had not yet decided. Which was it to
be--Saunders, after all--or the savings bank--or Bessie?

He was cording up his various possessions--a medley lot--in different
parcels and bundles when Bessie Cos