es on."

"G'lang!" said Barnabas. The horse started, and he bent to the
plough. His mother stepped homeward over the plough-ridges with stern
unyielding steps, as if they were her enemies slain in battle.

Just as she reached her own yard her husband drove in on a rattling
farm cart. She beckoned to him, and he pulled the horse up short.

"I've told him he needn't come home to dinner," she said, standing
close to the wheel.

Caleb looked down at her with a scared expression. "Well, I s'pose
you know what's best, Deborah," he said.

"If he can't do what's right he's got to suffer for it," returned
Deborah.

She went into the house, and Caleb drove clanking into the barn.

Before dinner the old man stole off across lots, keeping well out of
sight of the kitchen windows lest his wife should see him, and
pleaded with Barnabas, but all in vain. The young man was more
outspoken with his father, but he was just as firm.

"Your mother's terrible set about it, Barney. You'd better go over to
Charlotte's and make up."

"I can't; it's all over," Barney said, in reply; and Caleb at length
plodded soberly and clumsily home.

After dinner he went out behind the barn, and Rebecca, going to feed
the hens, found him sitting under the wild-cherry tree, fairly
sobbing in his old red handkerchief.

She went near him, and stood looking at him with restrained sympathy.

"Don't feel bad, father," she said, finally. "Barney'll get over it,
and come to supper."

"No, he won't," groaned the old man--"no, he won't. He's jest like
your mother."

Chapter VI

The weeks went on, and still Barnabas had not yielded. The story of
his quarrel with Cephas Barnard and his broken engagement with
Charlotte had become an old one in Pembroke, but it had not yet lost
its interest. A genuine excitement was so rare in the little peaceful
village that it had to be made to last, and rolled charily under the
tongue like a sweet morsel. However, there seemed to be no lack now,
for the one had set others in motion: everybody knew how Barnabas
Thayer no longer lived at home, and did not sit in his father's pew
in church, but in the gallery, and how Richard Alger had stopped
going to see Sylvia Crane.

There was not much walking in the village, except to and from church
on a Sabbath day; but now on pleasant Sabbath evenings an occasional
couple, or an inquisitive old man with eyes sharp under white brows,
and chin set ahead like a pointer's,