ave to go out on business," he announced. "I shall not be long.
Mrs. Merritt will have to take my place."

Abigail looked at him in surprise. But she was a most discreet wife.
She never asked a question, though she wondered why her husband had
not spoken of this before. The truth was he had forgotten his
card-party when he had made his promise to Jerome, and then he had
forgotten his promise to Jerome in thinking of his card-party, and
little Lucina on her way to bed had just brought it to mind by asking
when he was going. She had heard the promise, and had not forgotten.

"By the Lord Harry!" said the Squire, for he heard his friends
down-stairs. Then, when Lucina looked at him with innocent wonder, he
said, hurriedly, "Now, Pretty--I am going now," and went down to
excuse himself to his guests.

Eliphalet Means, whose partner Abigail had become by this deflection,
nodded, and seated himself at once in his place at table, the
pleasant titillation of the punch in his veins and approval in his
heart. He considered Abigail a better player than her husband, and
began to meditate proposing a small stake that evening.

The Squire, setting forth on his errand to Doctor Prescott, striding
heavily through the sweet dampness of the spring night, experienced a
curious combination of amusement, satisfaction, and indignation with
himself. "I'm a fool!" he declared, with more vehemence than he would
have declared four aces in bezique; and then he cursed his folly, and
told himself that if he kept on he would leave Abigail and the child
without a penny. But then, after all, he realized that singularly
warm glow of self-approval for a good deed which at once comforts and
irradiates the heart in spite of all worldly prudence and wisdom.

That night the air was very heavy with moisture, which seemed to hold
all the spring odors of newly turned earth, young grass, and blossoms
in solution. Squire Eben moved through it as through a scented flood
in which respiration was possible. Over all the fields was a pale
mist, waving and eddying in such impalpable air currents that it
seemed to have a sentient life of its own. These soft rises and
lapses of the mist on the fields might seemingly have been due to the
efforts of prostrate shadows to gather themselves into form. Beyond
the fields, against the hills and woods and clear horizon, pale fogs
arose with motions as of arms and garments and streaming locks. The
blossoming trees stood out