with her two children alone in the house, her husband away so. Her friends ha'n't been none too attentive to her in his absence, she thinks,—and so I think."

"I—I hope you don't mean that as a hint to us, Miss Beswick," said Mrs. Ducklow.

"You can take it as such, or not, jest as you please! I leave it to your own consciences. You know best whether you have done your duty to Sophrony and her family, whilst her husband has been off to the war; and I sha'n't set myself up for a judge. You never had any boys of your own, and so you adopted Reuben, jest as you have lately adopted Thaddeus; and I s'pose you think you've done well by him, jest as you think you will do by Thaddeus, if he's a good boy, and stays with you till he's twenty-one."

"I hope no one thinks or says the contrary, Miss Beswick!" said Mr. Ducklow, gravely, with flushed face.

"There may be two opinions on that subject!" said Miss Beswick, with a slight toss of the head, setting that small and irregular spheroid at a still loftier and more imposing altitude. "Reuben came to you when he was jest old enough to be of use about the house and on the farm; and if I recollect right, you didn't encourage idleness in him long. You didn't give his hands much chance to do 'some mischief still'! No, indeed! nobody can accuse you of that weakness!" And the skin of the wrinkled features tightened with a terrible grin.

"Nobody can say we ever overworked the boy, or ill used him in any way!" exclaimed Mrs. Ducklow, excitedly.

"No! I don't say it! But this I'll say, for I've had it in my mind ever since Sophrony was left alone,—I couldn't help seein' and feelin', and, now you've set me a-talkin', I may as well speak out. Reuben was always a good boy, and a willin' boy, as you yourselves must allow; and he paid his way from the first."

"I don't know about that!" interposed Mr. Ducklow, taking up his knife and fork, and dropping them again, in no little agitation. "He was a good and willin' boy, as you say; but the expense of clothin' him and keepin' him to school"——

"He paid his way from the first!" repeated Miss Beswick, sternly. "You kept him to school winters, when he did more work 'fore and after school than any other boy in town. He worked all the time summers; and soon he was as good as a hired man to you. He never went to school a day after he was fifteen; and from that time he was better 'n any hired man, for he was faithful, and took an interest, and looked after and took care of things, as no hired man ever would or could do, as I've heard you yourself say, Mr. Ducklow!"

"Reuben was a good, faithful boy: I never denied that! I never denied that!"

"Well, he stayed with you till he was twenty-one,—did ye a man's service for the last five or six years; then you giv' him what you called a settin' out,—a new suit o' clothes, a yoke of oxen, some farmin'-tools, and a hundred dollars in money! You, with yer thousands, Mr. Ducklow, giv' him a hundred dollars in money!"

"That was only a beginnin', only a beginnin', I've always said!" declared the red-flushed farmer.

"I know it; and I s'pose you'll continner to say so till the day of yer death! Then may-be you'll remember Reuben in yer will. That's the way! Keep puttin' him off as long as you can possibly hold on to your property yourself,—then, when you see you've got to go and leave it, give him what you ought to 've gi'n him years before. There a'n't no merit in that kind o' justice, did ye know it, Mr. Ducklow! I tell ye, what belongs to Reuben belongs to him now,—not ten or twenty year hence, when you've done with it, and he most likely won't need it. A few hundred dollars now'll be more useful to him than all your thousands will be by-and-by. After he left you, he took the Moseley farm; everybody respected him, everybody trusted him; he was doin' well, everybody said; then he married Sophrony, and a good and faithful wife she's been to him; and finally he concluded to buy the farm, which you yourself said was a good idee, and encouraged him in 't."

"So it was; Reuben used judgment in that, and he'd have got along well enough, if 't hadn't been for the war," said Mr. Ducklow; while his wife sat dumb, not daring to measure tongues with their vigorous-minded and plain-speaking neighbor.

"Jest so!" said Miss Beswick. "If it hadn't been for the war! He had made his first payments, and would have met the rest as they came due, no doubt of it. But the war broke out, and he left all to sarve his country. Says he, 'I'm an able-bodied man, and I ought to go,' says he. His business was as important, and his wife and children was as dear to him, as anybody's; but he felt it his duty to go, and he went. They didn't give no such big bounties to volunteers then as they do now, and it was a sacrifice to him every way when he enlisted. But says he, 'I'll jest do my duty,' says he, 'and trust to Providence for the rest.' You didn't discourage his goin',—and you didn't incourage him, neither, the way you'd ought to."

"My! what on 'arth, Miss Beswick!—--Seems to me you're takin' it upon yourself to say things that are uncalled for, to say the least! I can't understand what should have sent you here, to tell me what's my business, and what a'n't, this fashion! As if I didn't know my own duty and intentions!" And Mr. Ducklow poured his tea into his plate, and buttered his bread with a teaspoon.

"I s'pose she's been talking with Sophrony, and she has sent her to interfere."

"Mrs. Ducklow, you don't s'pose no such thing! You know Sophrony wouldn't send anybody on such an arrant; and you know I a'n't a person to do such arrants, or be made a cat's-paw of by anybody. I a'n't handsome, not partic'larly; and I a'n't wuth my thousands, like some folks I know; and I never got married, for the best reason in the world,—them that offered themselves I wouldn't have, and them I would have had didn't offer themselves; and I a'n't so good a Christian as I might be, I'm aware. I know my lacks as well as anybody; but bein' a spy and a cat's-paw a'n't one of 'em. I don't do things sly and underhand. If I've anything to say to anybody, I go right to 'em, and say it to their face,—sometimes perty blunt, I allow. But I don't wait to be sent by other folks. I've a mind o' my own, and my own way o' doin' things,—that you know as well as anybody. So, when you say you s'pose Sophrony or anybody else sent me here to interfere, I say you s'pose what a'n't true, and what you know a'n't true, Mrs. Ducklow!"

Mrs. Ducklow was annihilated; and the visitor went on.

"As for you, Mr. Ducklow, I haven't said you don't know your own duty and intentions. I've no doubt you think you do, at any rate."

"Very well! then why can't you leave me to do what I think 's my duty? Everybody ought to have that privilege."

"You think so?"

"Sartin, Miss Beswick; don't you?"

"Why, then, I ought to have the same."

"Of course; nobody in this house'll prevent your doin' what you're satisfied 's your duty."

"Thank ye! much obleeged!" said Miss Beswick, with gleaming, gristly features. "That's all I ask. Now I'm satisfied it's my duty to tell ye what I've been tellin' ye, and what I'm goin' to tell ye: that's my duty. And then it'll be your duty to do what you think 's right. That's plain, a'n't it?"

"Wal, wal!" said Mr. Ducklow, discomfited; "I can't hender yer talkin', I s'pose; though it seems a man ought to have a right to peace and quiet in his own house."

"Yes, and in his own conscience too!" said Miss Beswick. "And if you'll hearken to me now, I promise you'll have peace and quiet in your conscience, and in your house too, such as you never have had yit. I s'pose you know your great fault, don't ye? Graspin',—that's your fault, that's your besettin' sin, Mr. Ducklow. You used to give it as an