hev married because they both
use a good deal o' salt--'t least they ain't much else they're alike in.
An' Emerel is just one-half workin' her head off for him. Little nervous
thing she is--when I heard she was down with nervous prostration two
years ago, I says, 'Land, land,' I says, 'but ain't she _always_ had
it?' They's a strain o' good blood in that girl,--Al Kitton was New
England,--but they don't none of it flow up through her head. She's
great on sacrificin', but she don't sacrifice judicious. If folks is
goin' to sacrifice, I think they'd ought to do it conscientious, the
kind in the Bible, same as Abraham an' like that."

Peleg Bemus rubbed one hand up and down his axe handle.

"I reckon you can't always tell, Miss Marsh," he said meditatively. "I
once knowed a man that done some sacrificin' that ain't called by that
name when it gets into the newspapers." He turned to me, with a manner
of pointing at me with his head, "You been in New York," he said; "ain't
you ever heard o' Mr. Loneway--Mr. John Loneway?"

I was sorry that I could not answer "yes." He was so expectant that I
had the sensation of having failed him.

"Him an' I lived in the same building in East Fourteenth Street there,"
he said. "That is to say, he lived top floor back and I was janitor.
That was a good many years ago, but whenever I get an introduction to
anybody that's been in New York, I allus take an interest. I'd like to
know whatever become of him."

He scrupulously waited for our question, and then sat down beside the
oven door and laid his axe across his knees.

"It was that hard winter," he told us, "about a dozen years ago. I'd hev
to figger out just what year, but most anybody on the East Side can tell
you. Coal was clear up an' soarin', an' vittles was too--everybody
howlin' hard times, an' the Winter just commenced. Make things worse,
some philanthropist had put up two model tenements in the block we was
in, an' property alongside had shot up in value accordin' an' lugged
rents with it. Everybody in my buildin' 'most was rowin' about it.

"But John Loneway, he wasn't rowin'. I met him on the stairs one mornin'
early an' I says, 'Beg pardon, sir,' I says, 'but you ain't meanin' to
make no change?' I ask him. He looks at me kind o' dazed--he was a
wonderful clean-muscled little chap, with a crisscross o' veins on each
temple an' big brown eyes back in his head. 'No,' he says. 'Change? I
can't move. My wife's sick,' he says.