e. Jerome had
not yet answered Lucina's letter. He did not know how to answer it;
but he carried it with him night and day.

He went home, got his horse and plough, and fell to work in his hilly
garden ground. His father came out and sat on a stone and watched him
happily. Jerome was scarcely accustomed to his father yet, but he
treated him as tenderly as if he were a child, and the old man
followed him like one. Indeed, he seemed to prefer his son to his
wife, though Ann watched him with jealous affection. Ann Edwards had
never walked since the night of her husband's return. She never
alluded to it; sometimes her children thought that she had not known
it herself.

Jerome was still ploughing in the afternoon when his uncle Ozias Lamb
came.

Ozias stumped softly through the new-turned mould. He had a folded
paper in his hand, and he extended it towards Jerome. "D'ye know
anythin' about this?" he asked. His face was ashy.

Jerome brought his horse to a stand. "What is it?"

"Don't ye know?"

"No, I don't."

"Well, it's that mortgage deed that Basset held on my place,
with--the signature torn off, cancelled--" Ozias said, in a hoarse
voice. "D'ye know anythin' about it now?"

"No, I don't," replied Jerome, with emphasis.

"Well," said Ozias, "I found it under the front door-sill. Belindy
said she heard a knock on the front door, but when she went there
wa'n't nobody there, an' there was this paper. She come runnin' out
to the shop with it. It was jest before noon. What d'ye s'pose it
means?"

Jerome took the deed and examined it closely. "Have you read what's
written above the heading of it?" he asked.

"No; what is it, J'rome?"

Ozias put on his spectacles; Jerome pointed to a crabbed line above
the heading of the mortgage deed.

"I giv as present the forth part of my proputty, this morgidge to
Ozier Lamm.

"Simon Basset."

"He's took crazy!" cried Ozias, staring wildly at it.

"Guess he's been crazy over dollars and cents all his life, and this
is just an acute phase of it," replied Jerome, calmly, taking up his
plough handles again.

"I b'lieve the hull town's crazy. I've heard that Doctor Prescott has
give his place back to John Upham, an' Peter Thomas is comin' out of
the poor-farm an' goin' back to his old house. J'rome, I declar' to
reason, I b'lieve you're crazy, an' the hull town has caught it.
What's that? Who's comin'?"

A wild-eyed little boy, with fair hair stiff to the breeze, c