ew to hold on to part of it, anyhow. I bought
this paper, and it's in it. He never ought to have bought it, but
it's come up. I hope it will learn him a lesson. He's had enough
trouble over it."

Nothing could exceed the mixture of recrimination and exultation
with which the old woman spoke. She eyed Fanny accusingly; she
looked at Andrew with grudging triumph. "Lawyer Samson says it will
make him rich, he guesses; at any rate, he'll come out whole," said
she. "I hope it will learn you a lesson."

Andrew dropped into a chair. His face was distended with a foolish
smile like a baby's. He seemed to smile at all creation. He looked
at his wife and Ellen; then his face again took on its expression of
joyful vacuity.

Fanny went close to him and laid a firm hand on his shoulder. "You
'ain't had a mite of supper, Andrew Brewster," said she; "come right
out and have something to eat."

Andrew shook his head, still smiling. His wife and daughter looked
at him alarmedly, then at each other. Then his mother went behind
him, laid a hard, old hand on each shoulder, and shook him.

"If you _have_ got a streak of luck, there's no need of your actin'
like a fool about it, Andrew Brewster," said she. "Go out and eat
your supper, and behave yourself, and let it be a lesson to you.
There you had worked and saved that little money you had in the
bank, and you bought an old mine with it, and it might have turned
out there wasn't a thing in it, no mine at all, and there was. Just
let it be a lesson to you, that's all; and go out and eat your
supper, and don't be too set up over it."

Andrew looked at his wife and mother and daughter, still with that
expression of joy, so unreserved that it was almost idiotic. They
had all stood by him loyally; he had their fullest sympathy; but had
one of them fully understood? Not one of them could certainly
understand what was then passing in his mind, which had been
straitened by grief and self-reproach, and was now expanding to hold
its full measure of joy. That poor little sum in the bank, that
accumulation of his hard earnings, which he had lost through his own
bad judgment, had meant much more than itself to him, both in its
loss and its recovery. It was more than money; it was the value of
money in the current coin of his own self-respect.

His mother shook him again, but rather gently. "Get up this minute,
and go out and eat your supper," said she; "and then I don't see why
you can't go w