tyin'
'em."

In September Jerome began work on his mill. He had never been so
hopeful in his life. It cost him more self-denial not to go to Lucina
and speak out his hope than ever before. He queried with himself if
he could not go, then shut his heart, opening like a mouth of hunger
for happiness, hard against it. "The mill may burn down; they may not
buy the logs. I've got to wait," he told himself.

By early spring the mill was in full operation. The railroad through
Dale was surveyed, and work was to be commenced on it the next fall,
and Jerome had the contract for the sleepers. Again he wondered if he
should not go to Lucina and tell her, and again he resolved to wait.
He had made up his mind that he would not speak until a fixed income
was guaranteed by at least a year's test.

"I wish they would put railroads through for us every year," he said
to the man whom he had secured to help him. He was an elderly man
from Granby, who had owned a mill there, which had been sold three
years before. He had a tidy sum in bank, and people wondered at his
going to work again.

"I 'ain't got so very many years to work," he told Jerome when he
sought to hire him, "an' I thought I'd give up for good three years
ago; thought I'd take it easy, an' have a comfortable old age. I got
fifty dollars more'n I expected when I sold out the mill, an' I laid
it out for extras for mother an' me; bought her a sofy an' stuffed
rockin'-chair, a new set of dishes, an' some teaspoons, an' some
strainers for the windows agin fly-time. 'Now, mother,' says I,
'we'll jest lay down in the daytime, an' rock, an' eat with our new
spoons out of our new dishes, an' keep the flies out, the rest of our
lives.'

"But mother she looked real sober. 'What's the matter?' says I.

"'Nothin',' says she, 'only I was thinkin' about your father.'

"'What about him?' says I.

"'Nothin',' says she, 'only I remember mother's sayin', when he quit
work, he wouldn't live long. She always said it was a bad sign.'

"That settled me. I remembered father didn't live six months after he
quit work, an' grandfather before him, an' I'd every reason to think
it run in the family. So says I to mother, 'Well, I'm havin' too good
a time livin' to throw it away settin' in rockin'-chairs an' layin'
down in the daytime. If work is goin' to keep up the picnic a while
longer, why, I'm goin' to work.'

"So the very next day I hired out to the man that bought my mill, an'
there