It was said that Burr was far behind in his payments, and that
Lot would foreclose. Burr had a better head than his father's, but he
had terrible odds against him. There was only one chance for his
release from difficulty, people thought. All the property, by a
provision in the grandfather's will, was to fall to him if Lot died
unmarried. Lot was twenty years older than Burr, and he coughed.

"Burr Gordon ain't makin' out much now," people said; "the paint's
all off his house and his land's run down, but there's dead men's
shoes with gold buckles in the path ahead of him."

Burr thought of it sometimes, although he turned his face from the
thought, and Lot considered it when he took the mortgage note out of
his desk and scored another installment of unpaid interest on it. "If
a man's only his own debtor he won't be very hard on himself," he
said aloud, and laughed. Old Margaret Bean, his housekeeper, looked
at him over her spectacles, but she did not know what he meant. She
prepared many a valuable remedy for his cough from herbs and roots,
but Lot would never taste them, and she made her old husband swallow
them all as preventatives of colds, that they should not be wasted.
Lot was coughing harder lately. To-night, after he returned from the
Hautvilles', he had one paroxysm after another. He did not go to bed,
but huddled over the fire wrapped in a shawl, with a leather-bound
book on his knees, all night, holding to his chest when he coughed,
then turning to his book again.

When daylight was fully in the room he blew out the candle, and went
over to the window and looked out across the road at the house
opposite, which had always been called the "new house" to distinguish
it from the old Gordon homestead. It was not so solid and noble as
the other, but it had sundry little touches of later times, which his
father had always characterized as wasteful follies. For one thing,
it was elevated ostentatiously far above the road-level upon terraces
surmounted by a flight of stone steps. It fairly looked down, like
any spirit of a younger age, upon the older house, which might have
been regarded in a way as its progenitor.

The smoke was coming out of the kitchen chimney in the ell. Lot
Gordon looked across. Burr was clearing the snow from the stone steps
over the terraces. There had never been any lack of energy and
industry in Burr to account for his flagging fortunes. He arose
betimes every morning. Lot, standing well