opping them again, in no little agitation. "He was a
good and willin' boy, as you say; but the expense of clothin' him and
keepin' him to school"----

"He paid his way from the first!" repeated Miss Beswick, sternly. "You
kept him to school winters, when he did more work 'fore and after school
than any other boy in town. He worked all the time summers; and soon he
was as good as a hired man to you. He never went to school a day after
he was fifteen; and from that time he was better 'n any hired man, for
he was faithful, and took an interest, and looked after and took care of
things, as no hired man ever would or could do, as I've heard you
yourself say, Mr. Ducklow!"

"Reuben was a good, faithful boy: I never denied that! I never denied
that!"

"Well, he stayed with you till he was twenty-one,--did ye a man's
service for the last five or six years; then you giv' him what you
called a settin' out,--a new suit o' clothes, a yoke of oxen, some
farmin'-tools, and a hundred dollars in money! You, with yer thousands,
Mr. Ducklow, giv' him a hundred dollars in money!"

"That was only a beginnin', only a beginnin', I've always said!"
declared the red-flushed farmer.

"I know it; and I s'pose you'll continner to say so till the day of yer
death! Then may-be you'll remember Reuben in yer will. That's the way!
Keep puttin' him off as long as you can possibly hold on to your
property yourself,--then, when you see you've got to go and leave it,
give him what you ought to 've gi'n him years before. There a'n't no
merit in that kind o' justice, did ye know it, Mr. Ducklow! I tell ye,
what belongs to Reuben belongs to him _now_,--not ten or twenty year
hence, when you've done with it, and he most likely won't need it. A few
hundred dollars now'll be more useful to him than all your thousands
will be by-and-by. After he left you, he took the Moseley farm;
everybody respected him, everybody trusted him; he was doin' well,
everybody said; then he married Sophrony, and a good and faithful wife
she's been to him; and finally he concluded to buy the farm, which you
yourself said was a good idee, and encouraged him in 't."

"So it was; Reuben used judgment in that, and he'd have got along well
enough, if 't hadn't been for the war," said Mr. Ducklow; while his wife
sat dumb, not daring to measure tongues with their vigorous-minded and
plain-speaking neighbor.

"Jest so!" said Miss Beswick. "If it hadn't been for the war! He had
made