hed a room upstairs.

And so, for years, at home and on the sea, at New York and at Valparaiso
and in the Straits of Malacca, the little house and the little family
within it had grown into the fibre of Eli's heart. Nothing had given him
more delight than to meet, in the strange streets of Calcutta or before
the Mosque of Omar, some practical Yankee from Stonington or Machias,
and, whittling to discuss with him, among the turbans of the Orient,
the comparative value of shaved and of sawed shingles, or the economy
of "Swedes-iron" nails, and to go over with him the estimates and plans
which he had worked out in his head under all the constellations of the
skies.

The supper things were cleared away. The children had said good-night
and gone to bed, and Eli had been sitting for an hour by his wife's
bedside. He had had to tax his patience and ingenuity heavily during the
long months that she had lain there to entertain her for a little while
in the evening, after his hard, wet day's work. He had been talking now
of the coming week, when he was to serve upon the jury in the adjoining
county-town.

"I cal'late I can come home about every night," he said, "and it 'll be
quite a change, at any rate."

"But you don't seem so cheerful about it as I counted you would be,"
said his wife. "Are you afraid you'll have to be on the bank case?"

"Not much!" he answered. "No trouble 'n that case! Jury won't leave
their seats. These city fellers 'll find they 've bit off more 'n they
can chew when they try to figure out John Wood done that. I only hope
I 'll have the luck to be on that case--all hands on the jury whisper
together a minute, and then clear him, right on the spot, and then shake
hands with him all 'round!"

"But something is worrying you," she said. "What is it? You have looked
it since noon."

"Oh, nothin'," he replied--"only George Cahoon came up to-noon to say
that he was goin' West next week, and that he would have to have that
money he let me have awhile ago. And where to get it--I don't know."

III.

The court-room was packed. John Wood's trial was drawing to its close.
Eli was on the jury. Some one had advised the prosecuting attorney, in a
whisper, to challenge him, but he had shaken his head and said,--

"Oh, I could n't afford to challenge him for that; it would only leak
out, and set the jury against me. I 'll risk his standing out against
this evidence."

The trial had been short. It had bee