ll just a kind
of a bull-dog clinch that the dog himself can't unloose? I take it a man
that has a good will is a strong man. If Jeff done a right thing against
his will, he wouldn't rest easy till he'd showed that he wa'n't obliged
to, by some mischief worse 'n what he was kept out of. I tell you, Mr.
Westover, if I'd made that fellow toe the mark any way, I'd be afraid of
him." Whitwell looked at Westover with eyes of significance, if not of
confidence. Then he rose with a prolonged "M--wel-l-l! We're all born,
but we a'n't all buried. This world is a queer place. But I guess Jeff
'll come out right in the end."

Westover said, "I'm sure he will!" and he shook hands warmly with the
father of the girl Jeff was going to marry.

Whitwell came back, after he had got some paces away, and said: "Of
course, this is between you and me, Mr. Westover."

"Of course!"

"I don't mean Mis' Durgin. I shouldn't care what she thought of my
talkin' him over with you. I don't know," he continued, putting up his
hand against the door-frame, to give himself the comfort of its support
while he talked, "as you understood what she mean by the young ladies
at Boston keepin' up with the fellows in college. Well, that's what
Cynthy's doin' with Jeff, right along; and if he ever works off them
conditions of his, and gits his degree, it' ll be because she helped him
to. I tell you, there's more than one kind of telepathy in this world,
Mr. Westover. That's all."

XXXIX

Westover understood from Whitwell's afterthought that it was Cynthia he
was anxious to keep ignorant of his misgivings, if they were so much as
misgivings. But the importance of this fact could not stay him against
the tide of sleep which was bearing him down. When his head touched
the pillow it swept over him, and he rose from it in the morning with a
gayety of heart which he knew to be returning health. He jumped out of
bed, and stuffed some shavings into his stove from the wood-box beside
it, and laid some logs on them; he slid the damper open, and then lay
down again, listening to the fire that showed its red teeth through
the slats and roared and laughed to the day which sparkled on the white
world without. When he got out of bed a second time, he found the room
so hot that he had to pull down his window-sash, and he dressed in a
temperature of twenty degrees below zero without knowing that the dry
air was more than fresh. Mrs. Durgin called to him through the op