l to greater or less
degree and some to delusion. Jerome, with his one principle of
giving, could not even grasp a problem which involved taking.

He puzzled much over it, then decided, not with that lenient
slighting, as in other cases when womankind had vexed him with blind
words, but with a fond reverence, as for some angelic mystery, that
it was because Lucina was a girl. "Maybe girls are given to talking
in that riddlesome kind of way," thought Jerome.

He was blissfully certain upon one point, at all events. Lucina's
whole manner had given evidence to a confidence and understanding
upon her part.

"She knows what I am doing," he told himself. "She knows how I am
working, and she is contented and willing to wait. She knows, but she
isn't bound." Jerome had not dreamed that Lucina's indisposition had
had aught to do with distress of mind upon his account.

Now he fell upon work as if it had been a veritable dragon of old,
which he must slay to rescue his princess. He toiled from earliest
dawn until far dark, and not with hands only. Still he did not
neglect his gratuitous nursing and doctoring. He saved like a miser,
though not at his mother's and sister's expense. He himself would
taste, in those days, no butter, no sugar, no fresh meat, no bread of
fine flour, but he saw to it that is mother and Elmira were well
provided.

When winter came again, he used to hasten secretly along the road,
not wishing to meet Lucina for a new reason--lest she discover how
thin his coat was against the wintry blast, how thin his shoes
against the snow.

"I never thought Jerome was so close," Elmira sometimes said to her
mother.

"He ain't close, he's got an object," returned Ann, with a shrewd,
mysterious look.

"What do you mean, mother?"

"Nothin'."

Elmira's and Lawrence's courtship progressed after the same fashion.
If Doctor Prescott suspected anything he made no sign. Lawrence was
attending patients regularly with his father and reading hard.

Sometimes, during his occasional calls upon Elmira, he saw Jerome.
The two young men, when they met on the road, exchanged covertly
cordial courtesies; a sort of non-committal friendship was struck up
between them. Lawrence was the means of introducing Jerome to a new
industry, of which he might otherwise never have heard.

"Father and I were on the old Dale road this morning," he said, "and
there is a fine cranberry-meadow there on the left, if anybody wants
to improv