which he was to take to Dale. For the first time in
his life, when he entered the shop, he had an impulse to avert his
eyes and not meet his uncle's fully. Ozias had grown old rapidly of
late. He sat, with his usual stiff crouch, on his bench and hammered
away at a shoe-heel on his lapstone. His hair and beard were white
and shaggy, his blue eyes peered sharply, as from a very ambush of
old age, at Jerome loading himself with the finished shoes.

After the usual half-grunt of greeting, which was scarcely more than
a dissyllabic note of salutation between two animals, Ozias was
silent until Jerome was going out.

"Ain't ye well this mornin'?" he asked then.

"Yes," replied Jerome, "I'm well enough."

"When a man's smart," said Ozias Lamb, "and has got money in his
pocket, and don't want folks to know it, he don't keep feelin' of it
to see if it's safe. He acts as if he hadn't got any money, or any
pocket, neither. I s'pose that's what you're tryin' to do."

"Don't know what you mean," returned Jerome, coloring.

"Oh, nothin'. Go along," said his uncle.

But he spoke again before Jerome was out of hearing. "There ain't any
music better than a squeak, in the grind you an' me have got to make
out of life," said he, "an' don't you go to thinkin' there is. If you
ever think you hear it, it's only in your own ears, an' you might as
well make up your mind to it."

"I made up my mind to it as long ago as I can remember," Jerome
answered back, yet scarcely with bitterness, for the very music which
his uncle denied was too loud in his ears for him to disbelieve it.

When Jerome was returning from Dale, an hour later, his back bent
beneath great sheaves of newly cut shoes, like a harvester's with
wheat, he heard a hollow echo of hoofs in the road ahead, then
presently a cloud of dust arose like smoke, and out of it came two
riders: Lawrence Prescott, on a fine black horse--which his father
used seldom for driving, he was so unsuited for standing patiently at
the doors of affliction, yet kept through a latent fondness for good
horse-flesh--and Lucina Merritt, on his pretty bay mare. Lucina
galloped past at Lawrence's side, with an eddying puff of blue
riding-skirt and a toss of yellow curls and blue plumes. Jerome stood
back a little to give them space, and the dust settled slowly over
him after they were by. Then he went on his way, with his heart
beating hard, yet with no feeling of jealousy against Lawrence
Prescott. H