l and the land
if he can, knowin'--KNOWIN', mind you--that the father ain't got a cent
to hire lawyers nor even to pay for his next meal. And when the father
says he won't go, but wants his dear one that belongs to him, the rich
feller abuses him, knocks him down with his fist! Knocks down a poor,
weak, lame invalid, just off a sick bed! Is THAT the kind of a man we
want on our school committee?"

He asked the question with both hands outspread and the perspiration
running down his cheeks. The meeting was in an uproar.

"No need for me to tell you who I mean," shouted Tad, waving his arms.
"You know who, as well as I do. You've just heard him praised as bein'
all that's good and great. But _I_ say--"

"You've said enough! Now let me say a word!"

It was Captain Cy who interrupted. He had pushed his way through the
crowd, down the aisle, and now stood before the gesticulating Mr.
Simpson, who shrank back as if he feared that the treatment accorded the
"poor weak invalid" might be continued with him.

"Knowles," said Captain Cy, turning to the moderator, "let me speak,
will you? I won't be but a minute. Friends," he continued, facing the
excited gathering--"for some of you are my friends, or I've come to
think you are--a part of what this man says is so. The girl at my house
is Emily Thomas; her mother was Mary Thomas, who some of you know, and
her father's name is Henry Thomas. She came to me unexpected, bein' sent
by a Mrs. Oliver up to Concord, because 'twas either me or an orphan
asylum. I took her in meanin' to keep her a little while, and then send
her away. But as time went on I kept puttin' off and puttin' off, and at
last I realized I couldn't do it; I'd come to think too much of her.

"Fellers," he went on, slowly, "I--I hardly know how to tell you what
that little girl's come to be to me. When I first struck Bayport, after
forty years away from it, all I thought of was makin' over the old place
and livin' in it. I cal'lated it would be a sort of Paradise, and HOW I
was goin' to live or whether or not I'd be lonesome with everyone of my
folks dead and gone, never crossed my mind. But the longer I lived there
alone the less like Paradise it got to be; I realized more and more
that it ain't furniture and fixin's that make a home; it's them you love
that's in it. And just as I'd about reached the conclusion that 'twas a
failure, the whole business, why, then, Bos'n--Emily, that is--dropped
in, and inside of a