ike the rest. No more idle hours in the snug
hollow of the rock, where he seemed to pause like a bee on the sweets
of existence itself that he might taste them fully, were there for
Jerome. Very few chances he had for outspeeding his comrades in any
but the stern and sober race of life, for this little Mercury had to
shear the wings from his heels of youthful sport and take to the gait
of labor. Very seldom he could have one of his old treasure hunts in
swamps and woods, unless, indeed, he could perchance make a labor and
a gain of it. Jerome found that sassafras, and snakeroot, and various
other aromatic roots and herbs of the wilds about his house had their
money value. There was an apothecary in the neighboring village of
Dale who would purchase them of him; at the cheapest of rates, it is
true--a penny or so for a whole peck measure, or a sheaf, of the
largess of summer--but every penny counted. Poor Jerome did not care
so much about his woodland sorties after they were made a matter of
pence and shillings, sorely as he needed, and much as he wished for,
the pence and shillings. The sense was upon him, a shamed and
helpless one, of selling his birthright. Jerome had in the natural
beauty of the earth a budding delight, which was a mystery and a
holiness in itself. It was the first love of his boyish heart; he had
taken the green woods and fields for his sweetheart, and must now put
her to only sordid uses, to her degradation and his.

Sometimes, in a curious rebellion against what he scarcely knew, he
would return home without a salable thing in hand, nothing but a
pretty and useless collection of wild flowers and sedges, little
swamp-apples, and perhaps a cast bird-feather or two, and meet his
mother's stern reproof with righteously undaunted front.

"I don't care," he said once, looking at her with a meaning she could
not grasp; nor, indeed, could he fathom it himself. "I ain't goin' to
sell everything; if I do I'll have to sell myself."

"I'd like to know what you mean," said his mother, sharply.

"I mean I'm goin' to keep some things myself," said Jerome, and
pattered up to his chamber to stow away his treasures, with his
mother's shrill tirade about useless truck following him. Ann was a
good taskmistress; there were, indeed, great powers of administration
in the keen, alert mind in that little frail body. Given a poor house
encumbered by a mortgage, a few acres of stony land, and two
children, the elder on