"Don't be so cuttin' with your tongue, Barb'ry," said her mother, "we can stand it, and poor Tom didn't mean to do it."

"Pshaw!" said Barbara, giving herself a shake of impatience, "what a baby excuse that is for a grown-up man like Tom! Tom's no fool if he would only think; but he'll certainly spoil everything before he comes to his senses, and then we'll all be here in the mud together;—the family'll be disgraced, and there'll be no chance of Tom's getting on. What makes me mad is that Tom'll sit there and let you excuse him by saying that he didn't mean any harm, and then he'll be just as gay as ever by day after to-morrow, and just as ready to run into some new scrape."

"Go on, Barb, that's hitting the sore spot," said Tom, leaning his head on his hand. "Maybe if you knew all I've gone through, you'd let up a little." Tom thought of telling her of the good resolutions he had made, but he had done that on other occasions like this, and he knew that his resolutions were by this time at a heavy discount in the home market. He would liked to have told Barbara how he intended to make it all up to them whenever he should get into a lucrative practice, but he dreaded to expose his cherished dreams to the nipping frost of her deadly common sense.

He looked about for a change of subject.

"Where's Bob McCord?" he asked.

"It was a rainy day, and he's gone off to the grocery, I guess," said Mrs. Grayson. "I'm afeerd he won't come home in time to cut us wood to do over Sunday."

Tom had intended to ride back to Moscow and pay his debt this very evening. But here was a chance to show some little gratitude—a chance to make a beginning of amendment. He did not want to stay at home, where the faces of his mother and Barbara and the pinching economy of the household arrangements would reproach him, but for this very reason he would remain until the next day; it would be a sort of penance, and any self-imposed suffering was a relief. The main use that men make of penitence and the wearing of sackcloth is to restore the balance of their complacency. Tom announced his intention to see to the Sunday wood himself; putting his uncle's horse in the stable, he went manfully to chopping wood in the rain and attending to everything else that would serve to make his mother and sister more comfortable.

IV

LOCKWOOD'S PLAN

George Lockwood, being only mildly malicious, felt something akin to compensation at having procured for Tom so severe a loss. But he was before all things a man secretive and calculating; the first thing he did with any circumstance was to take it into his intellectual backroom, where he spent most of his time, and demand what advantage it could give to George Lockwood. When he had let all the boys out of the store at a quarter past twelve, he locked and barred the door. Then he put away the boxes and all other traces of the company, and carried his tallow candle into his rag-carpeted bedroom, which opened from the rear of the store and shared the complicated and characteristic odors of the shop with a dank smell of its own; this last came from a habit Lockwood had when he sprinkled the floor of the store, preparatory to sweeping it, of extending the watering process to the rag-carpet of the bedroom. His mind gave only a passing thought of mild exultation, mingled with an equally mild regret, to poor Tom Grayson's misfortune. He was already inquiring how he might, without his hand appearing in the matter, use the occurrence for his own benefit. Tom had had presence of mind enough left to beg the whole party in the store to say nothing about the affair; but notwithstanding the obligation which the set felt to protect one another from the old fogies of their families, George Lockwood thought the matter would probably get out. He was not the kind of a man to make any bones about letting it out, if he could thereby gain any advantage. The one feeling in his tepid nature that had ever attained sufficient intensity to keep him awake at night was his passion for Rachel Albaugh; and his passion was quite outside of any interest he might have in Rachel's reversionary certainty of the one-half of John Albaugh's lands. This, too, he had calculated, but as a subordinate consideration.

He reflected that Rachel might come to town next Saturday, which was the general trading-day of the country people. If she should come, she would be sure to buy something of him. But how could he tell her of Tom's unlucky gambling? To do so directly would be in opposition to all the habits of his prudent nature. Nor could he bethink him of a ruse that might excuse an indirect allusion to it; and he went to sleep at length without finding a solution of his question.

But chance favored him, for with the Saturday came rain, and Rachel regretfully gave over a proposed visit to the village. But as some of the things wanted were quite indispensable, Ike Albaugh was sent to Moscow, and he came into Wooden & Snyder's store about 4 o'clock in the afternoon. George Lockwood greeted him cordially, and weighed out at his request three pounds of ten-penny nails to finish the new corn-crib, a half-pound of cut tobacco to replenish the senior Albaugh's pipe from time to time, a dollar's worth of sugar, and a quarter of a pound of Epsom salts,—these last two for general use. He also measured off five yards of blue cotton drilling, six feet of half-inch rope for a halter, and two yards of inch-wide ribbon to match a sample sent by Rachel. Then he filled one of the Albaugh jugs with molasses and another with whisky, which last was indispensable in the hay harvest. These articles were charged to John Albaugh's account; he was credited at the same time with the ten pounds of fresh butter that Isaac had brought. George Lockwood also wrapped up a paper of "candy kisses," as they were called, which he charged Ike to give to Rachel from him, but which he forgot to enter to his own account on the day-book.

"By the way, Ike," he said, "did you know that Dave Sovine got back last week?"

"Yes," said Ike; "I hear the Sovine folks made a turrible hullabaloo over the returned prodigal,—killed the fatted calf, and all that."

"A tough prodigal he is!" said Lockwood, with a gentle smile of indifference. "You'd better look out for him."

"Me? Why?" asked Ike. "He never had any grudge ag'inst me, as I know of."

"No," said Lockwood, laughing, "not that. But he's cleaned all the money out of all the boys about town, and he'll be going after you country fellows next, I guess. He's the darnedest hand with cards!"

"Well, he won't git a-holt of me," said Ike, with boyish exultation. "I don't hardly more 'n know the ace f'um the jack. I never played but on'y just once; two or three games weth one of the harvest hands, four years ago. He was showin' me how, you know, one Sunday in the big hay-mow, an' jus' as I got somethin' 't he called high low jack, the old man took 't into his head to come up the ladder to see what was goin' on. You know father's folks was Dunkers, an' he don't believe in cards. I got high low jack that time, an' I won't fergit it the longest day I live." Ike grinned a little ruefully at the recollection. "Could n' draw on my roundabout fer a week without somebody helpin' me, I was so awful sore betwixt the shoulders. Not any more fer me, thank you!"

"It'u'd be good for some other young fellows I know, if they'd had some of the same liniment," said Lockwood, beginning to see his way clear, and speaking in a languid tone with his teeth half closed. "Blam'd 'f I didn't see Sovine, a-settin' right there on that kag of sixp'ny nails the other night, win all a fellow's money, and then his handkerchief and his knife. The fellow—you know him well—got so excited that he put up his hat and his coat and his boots, an' Dave took 'em all. He's got some cheatin' trick ur 'nother, but I stood right over 'im an' I can't quite make it out yet. I tried to coax 'im to give back