n to Providence," Jerome
responded, scornfully. "It was Stimson's weak dam up above."

"Mebbe the dam was weak, but Providence took advantage of it,"
insisted Cheeseman, who, in spite of his cheerful temperament, had a
gloomy theology. "I'd like to know why ye think your mill went down;
do ye think ye done anything to deserve it?" he said, further, in an
argumentative tone.

"If I thought I had, I'd do it again," Jerome returned, and went off
to a distant pile of lumber out of sound of Cheeseman's voice.

He felt a proud sensitiveness, almost a shame, over his calamity,
which he would have been at a loss to explain. All day long, when men
came to view the scene of disaster, he tried to avoid them. He shrank
in spirit even from their sympathy.

"No worse for me than for anybody else," he would reply, when told
repeatedly, with gruff condolence, that it was hard luck. His
sensitiveness might have arisen from some hereditary taint from his
orthodox ancestors of their belief that misfortune is the whip-lash
for sin, or from his native resentment of pity. At home he could not
talk of it either with his mother or Elmira; as for his father, he
sat in the sun and dozed. It was doubtful if he fully realized what
had happened.

Jerome worked in the woods that day until after dark; when he went
home he found that the Squire had been there with a request for him
to be one of the bearers at the Colonel's funeral. That was
considered a post of melancholy honor, and his mother looked sadly
important over it.

"I s'pose as long as the poor Colonel is gone himself, an' there's
only three left that he used to be so intimate with, that they
thought you would be a good one," said she.

"It is strange they did not ask some one nearer his age," Jerome
said, wonderingly.

The funeral was appointed for the next afternoon. Jerome sat in the
parlor of the Means house with the mourners, who were few, as the
dead man had no kin in Upham. Indeed, there was nobody except his
three old friends, his house-keeper, and Abigail Merritt and Lucina.

Jerome did not look at Lucina, nor she at him; as the service went
on, he heard her weeping softly. The minister, Solomon Wells,
standing near the black length of the coffin, lifted his voice in
eulogy of the dead. The parlor door-way and that of the room beyond,
were set with faces straining with attention.

The minister's voice was weak; every now and then people looked
inquiringly at one anoth