e, following in their tracks with his uncle Ozias, heard
perfectly their last remarks, and lagged behind to hear no more,
though his heart leaped up to second with fierce affirmation the
lawyer and the Squire.

"Keep behind them," he whispered to Ozias; "I don't want to listen."

"Think you'd give it away if you had it, do ye?" his uncle asked,
with his dry chuckle.

"I don't _think_--I _know_."

"How d'ye know?"

"I _know_."

"Lord!"

"You think I wouldn't, do you?" asked Jerome, angrily.

"I'd be more inclined to believe ye if I see ye more generous with
what ye've got to give now."

Jerome started, and stared at his uncle's face, which, in the
freezing moonlight, looked harder, and more possessed of an
inscrutable bitterness of wisdom. "What d'ye mean?" he asked,
sharply. "What on earth have I got to give, I'd like to know?"

Ozias Lamb tapped his head. "How about that?" he asked. "How about
the strength you're puttin' into algebry an' Latin? You don't expect
ever to learn enough to teach, do ye?"

Jerome shook his head.

"Well, then it's jest to improve your own mind. Improve your
mind--what's that? What good is that goin' to do your fellow-bin's? I
tell ye, Jerome, ye ain't givin' away what you've got to give, an' we
ain't none of us."

"Maybe you're right," Jerome said, after a little.

After having left his uncle, he walked more slowly still. Soon the
Squire and his friends were quite out of sight. The moonlight was
very full and brilliant, the trees were crooked in hard lines, and
the snow-drifts crested with white lights of ice; there was no
softening of spring in anything, but the young man felt within him
one of those flooding stirs of the spirit which every spring faintly
symbolizes. A great passion of love and sympathy for the needy and
oppressed of his kind, and an ardent defence of them, came upon
Jerome Edwards, poor young shoemaker, going home with his sack of
meal over his shoulder. Like a bird, which in the spring views every
little straw and twig as towards his nest and purpose of love, Jerome
would henceforth regard all powers and instrumentalities that came in
his way only in their bearing upon his great end of life.

On reaching home that night he packed away his algebra and his Latin
books on the shelf in his room, and began a new study the next
evening.

Chapter XVIII

Seth Prescott was the only practising physician for some half-dozen
villages. His mud-bespatter