nd snowing a little, so no traces of footsteps were to be
perceived in the morning.

"Father found that the neighbors were dropping in to bear the old man
company, so he drove on to Sudbury, and then returned home. When he got
back, he said Jacobs was hanging about the stable in a nervous kind of a
way, and said he wanted to speak to him. Father said very good, but
put the horse in first. Jacobs unhitched, and father sat on one of the
stable benches and watched him till he came lounging along with a straw
in his mouth, and said he'd made up his mind to go West, and he'd like
to set off at once.

"Father said again, very good, but first he had a little account to
settle with him, and he took out of his pocket a paper, where he had
jotted down, as far as he could, every quart of oats, and every bag of
grain, and every quarter of a dollar of market money that Jacobs had
defrauded him of. Father said the fellow turned all the colors of the
rainbow, for he thought he had covered up his tracks so cleverly that
he would never be found out. Then father said, 'Sit down, Jacobs, for I
have got to have a long talk with you.' He had him there about an hour,
and when he finished, the fellow was completely broken down. Father told
him that there were just two courses in life for a young man to take;
and he had gotten on the wrong one. He was a young, smart fellow, and
if he turned right around now, there was a chance for him. If he didn't
there was nothing but the State's prison ahead of him, for he needn't
think he was going to gull and cheat all the world, and never be found
out. Father said he'd give him all the help in his power, if he had his
word that he'd try to be an honest man. Then he tore up the paper, and
laid there was an end of his indebtedness to him.

"Jacobs is only a young fellow, twenty-three or thereabout, and father
says he sobbed like a baby. Then, without looking at him, father gave in
account of his afternoon's drive, just as if he was talking to himself.
He said that Pacer never to his knowledge had been on that road before,
and yet he seemed perfectly familiar with it, and that he stopped and
turned already to leave again quickly, instead of going up to the door,
and how he looked over his shoulder and started on a run down the lane,
the minute father's foot was in the cutter again. In the course of his
remarks, father mentioned the fact that on Monday, the evening that the
robbery was committed, Jacobs ha