had replied
gently. "I never before knew of anybody who had not a relative or a friend
in the world; and I am afraid they are cruel to the poor people at the
alms-house. They all look so starved and wretched!"

"Well, it will be no more than she deserves," said Stephen; "for she was
cruel to her husband's brother's wife. I used to hear horrid stories, when
I was a boy, about how she drove them out of the house; and she was cruel
to her son too, and drove him away from home. Of course, I am sorry to be
the instrument of punishing her, and I do have a certain pity for the old
woman; but it is really her own fault. She might be living now in comfort
with her son, perhaps, if she had treated him well."

"We can't go by such 'ifs' in this world, Steve," said Mercy, earnestly.
"We have to take things as they are. I don't want to be judged way back in
my life. Only God knows all the 'ifs.'" Such conversations as these had
prepared Mercy for the news which Stephen now wrote her; but they had in
no wise changed her feeling in regard to it. She believed in the bottom of
her heart that Stephen might have secured a tenant, if he had tried. He
had once, in speaking of the matter, dropped a sentence which had shocked
her so that she could never forget it.

"It would be a great deal better for me," he had said, "to have the money
invested in some other way. If the house does fall into my hands, I shall
sell it; and, even if I don't get the full amount of what father loaned, I
shall make it bring us in a good deal more than it does this way."

This sentence rang in Mercy's ears, as she read in Stephen's letter all
his plans for improving the house; but the thing was done, and it was not
Mercy's habit to waste effort or speech over things which could not be
altered.

"I am very sorry," she wrote, "that you have been obliged to take the
house. You know how I always felt for poor old Granny Jacobs. Perhaps we
can do something to make her more comfortable in the alms-house. I think
Lizzy could manage that for us."

And in her own mind Mercy resolved that the old woman should never lack
for food and fire, however unwilling the overseers might be to permit her
to have unusual comforts.

Stephen's next letter opened with these words: "O Mercy, I have such a
strange thing to tell you. I am so excited I can hardly find words. I have
found a lot of money in your old fireplace. Just think of our having sat
there so quietly night after nig