ly fourteen, she worked miracles almost. Jerome
had shown uncommon, almost improbable, ability in his difficulties
when Abel had disappeared and her strength had failed her, but
afterwards her little nervous feminine clutch on the petty details
went far towards saving the ship.

Had it not been for his mother, Jerome could not have carried out his
own plans. Work as manfully as he might, he could not have paid
Squire Merritt his first instalment of interest money, which was
promptly done.

It was due the 1st of November, and, a day or two before, Squire
Merritt, tramping across lots, over the fields, through the old
plough ridges and corn stubble, with some plump partridges in his bag
and his gun over shoulder, made it in his way to stop at the Edwards
house and tell Ann that she must not concern herself if the interest
money were not ready at the minute it was due.

But Ann laid down her work--she was binding shoes--straightened
herself as if her rocking-chair were a throne and she an empress, and
looked at him with an inscrutable look of pride and suspicion. The
truth was that she immediately conceived the idea that this great
fair-haired Squire, with his loud, sweet voice, and his loud, frank
laugh and pleasant blue eyes, concealed beneath a smooth exterior
depths of guile. She exchanged, as it were, nods of bitter confidence
with herself to the effect that Squire Merritt was trying to make her
put off paying the interest money, and pretending to be very kind and
obliging, in order that he might the sooner get his clutches on the
whole property.

All the horizon of this poor little feminine Ishmael seemed to her
bitter fancy to be darkened with hands against her, and she sat on a
constant watch-tower of suspicion.

"Elmira," said she, "bring me that stockin'."

Elmira, who also was binding shoes, sitting on a stool before the
scanty fire, rose quickly at her mother's command, went into the
bedroom, and emerged with an old white yarn stocking hanging heavily
from her hand.

"Empty it on the table and show Squire Merritt," ordered her mother,
in a tone as if she commanded the resources of the royal treasury to
be displayed.

Elmira obeyed. She inverted the stocking, and from it jingled a
shower of coin into a pitiful little heap on the table.

"There!" said Ann, pointing at it with a little bony finger. The
smallest coins of the realm went to make up the little pile, and the
Lord only knew how she and her