his bedroom door. He thought of Charlotte, as if he had been
a child and she his mother. The maternal and protecting element in
her love was all that appealed to him then, and all that he missed or
wanted. "Charlotte, Charlotte," he mumbled to himself with his
parched, quivering lips.

At noon the next day Cephas Barnard came home from the store; he had
been down to buy some molasses. When he entered his kitchen he set
the jug down on the table with a hard clap, then stood still in his
wet boots.

Sarah and Charlotte were getting dinner, both standing over the
stove. Sarah glanced at Cephas furtively, then at Charlotte; Cephas
never stirred. A pool of water collected around his boots, his brows
bent moodily under his cap.

"Why don't you set down, Cephas, an' take off your boots?" Sarah
ventured at length, timidly.

"Folks are fools," grunted Cephas.

"I dunno what you mean, Cephas."

Cephas got the boot-jack out of the corner, sat down, and began
jerking off the wet boots with sympathetic screws of his face.

Sarah stood with a wooden spoon uplifted, eying him anxiously.
Charlotte went into the pantry.

"There 'ain't anythin' happened, has there, Cephas?" said Sarah,
presently.

Cephas pulled off the second boot, and sat holding his blue yarn
stocking-feet well up from the wet floor. "There ain't no need of
havin' the rheumatiz, accordin' to my way of thinkin'," said he.

"Who's got the rheumatiz, Cephas?"

"If folks lived right they wouldn't have it."

"You 'ain't got it, have you, Cephas?"

"I 'ain't never had a tech of it in my life except once, an' then
'twas due to my not drinkin' enough."

"Not drinkin' enough?"

"Yes, I didn't drink enough water. Folks with rheumatiz had ought to
drink all the water they can swaller. They had ought to drink more'n
they eat."

"I dunno what you mean, Cephas."

"It stands to reason. I've worked it all out in my mind. Rheumatiz
comes on in wet weather, because there's too much water an' damp
'round. Now, if there's too much water outside, you can kind of even
it up by takin' more water inside. The reason for any sickness
is--the balance ain't right. The weight gets shifted, an' folks begin
to topple, then they're sick. If it goes clean over, they die. The
balance has got to be kept even if you want to be well. When the
swamps are fillin' up with water, an' there's too much moisture in
the outside air, an' too much pressure of it on your bones an'
joints, if