rehending grunt.

"Ruth Varnum was always as nervous as a rat; and, come to think of it,
she was the first one to see 'em after they was picked up. It happened
right below lawyer Varnum's, down at the bend of the Corbury road, just
round about the time that Ruth got engaged to Ned Hale. The young folks
was all friends, and I guess she just can't bear to talk about it. She's
had troubles enough of her own."

All the dwellers in Starkfield, as in more notable communities, had had
troubles enough of their own to make them comparatively indifferent to
those of their neighbours; and though all conceded that Ethan Frome's
had been beyond the common measure, no one gave me an explanation of the
look in his face which, as I persisted in thinking, neither poverty
nor physical suffering could have put there. Nevertheless, I might have
contented myself with the story pieced together from these hints had
it not been for the provocation of Mrs. Hale's silence, and--a little
later--for the accident of personal contact with the man.

On my arrival at Starkfield, Denis Eady, the rich Irish grocer, who was
the proprietor of Starkfield's nearest approach to a livery stable, had
entered into an agreement to send me over daily to Corbury Flats, where
I had to pick up my train for the Junction. But about the middle of the
winter Eady's horses fell ill of a local epidemic. The illness spread
to the other Starkfield stables and for a day or two I was put to it to
find a means of transport. Then Harmon Gow suggested that Ethan Frome's
bay was still on his legs and that his owner might be glad to drive me
over.

I stared at the suggestion. "Ethan Frome? But I've never even spoken to
him. Why on earth should he put himself out for me?"

Harmon's answer surprised me still more. "I don't know as he would; but
I know he wouldn't be sorry to earn a dollar."

I had been told that Frome was poor, and that the saw-mill and the arid
acres of his farm yielded scarcely enough to keep his household through
the winter; but I had not supposed him to be in such want as Harmon's
words implied, and I expressed my wonder.

"Well, matters ain't gone any too well with him," Harmon said. "When a
man's been setting round like a hulk for twenty years or more, seeing
things that want doing, it eats inter him, and he loses his grit. That
Frome farm was always 'bout as bare's a milkpan when the cat's been
round; and you know what one of them old water-mills is wu