Northwick's letter at the dinner-parties in
Hatboro' because, socially speaking, they never dined there; but the
stores, the shops, the parlors, buzzed with comment on it; it became a
part of the forms of salutation, the color of the day's joke. Gates, the
provision man, had to own the error of his belief in Northwick's death.
He found his account in being the only man to own that he ever had such
a belief; he was a comfort to those who said they had always had their
doubts of it; the ladies of South Hatboro', who declared to a woman that
they had _never_ believed it, respected the simple heart of a man who
acknowledged that he had never questioned it. Such a man was not one to
cheat his customers in quantity or quality; that stood to reason; his
faith restored him to the esteem of many.

Mr. Gerrish was very bitter about the double fraud which he said
Northwick had practised on the community, in having allowed the rumor of
his death to gain currency. He denounced him to Mrs. Munger, making an
early errand from South Hatboro' to the village to collect public
opinion, as a person who had put himself beyond the pale of public
confidence, and whose professions of repentance for the past, and good
intention for the future, he tore to shreds. "It is said, and I have no
question correctly, that hell is paved with good intentions--if you will
excuse me, Mrs. Munger. When Mr. Northwick brings forth fruits meet for
repentance--when he makes the first payment to his creditors--I will
believe that he is sorry for what he has done, and not _till_ then."

"That is true," said Mrs. Munger. "I wonder what Mr. Putney will have to
say to all this. Can he feel that _his_ skirts are quite clean, acting
that way, as the family counsel of the Northwicks, after all he used to
say against him?"

Mr. Gerrish expressed his indifference by putting up a roll of muslin on
the shelf while he rejoined, "I care very little for the opinions of Mr.
Putney on any subject."

In some places Mrs. Munger encountered a belief, which she did not
discourage, that the Northwick girls had known all along that their
father was alive, and had been in communication with him; through
Putney, most probably. In the light of this conjecture the lawyer's
character had a lurid effect, which it did not altogether lose when Jack
Wilmington said, bluntly, "What of it? He's their counsel. He's not
obliged to give the matter away. He's obliged to keep it."

"But isn't i