Though he
was prospering again with his sheep, owned the pasture and his house now,
and had even built on another room as well as repairing the older part, he
spent little on his own adornment. It all went for pretty clothes for
Susie, for better food, for books and pictures, for tickets for Susie to
go to the circus and the county fair. Susie knew this and loved him by
stealth for it, but the intolerably sensitive vanity of her twelve years
made her wretched to be seen in public with him.

Divining this, he ceased going with her to school-picnics and
Sunday-school parties, where he had been a most useful pack-animal, and,
dressing her in her best with his big calloused hands, watched her from
the window join a group of the other children. His mother predicted
savagely that his "spoilin' on that bad-blooded young one would bring her
to no good end," and when, at fifteen, Susie began to grow very pretty and
saucy and willful and to have beaux come to see her, the old woman exulted
openly over Lem's helpless anxiety.

He was quite gray now, although not yet forty-five, and so stooped that he
passed for an old man. He owned a little farm, his flock of sheep was the
largest in the township, and Susie was expected to make a good marriage in
spite of her antecedents.

And then Frank Gridley's oldest son, Ed, came back from business college
with store clothes and city hats and polished tan shoes, and began idling
about, calling on the girls. From the first, he and Susie ran together
like two drops of water. Bronson Perkins, a cousin of mine, a big, silent,
ruminative lad who had long hung about Susie, stood no show at all. One
night in county-fair week, Susie, who had gone to the fair with a crowd of
girl friends, was not at home at ten o'clock. Lem, sitting in his doorway
and watching the clock, heard the approach of the laughing, singing
straw-ride in which she had gone, with a long breath of relief; but the
big hay-wagon did not stop at his gate.

He called after it in a harsh voice and was told that "Ed Gridley and she
went off to the hotel to get supper. He said he'd bring her home later."

Lem went out to the barn, hitched up the faster of his two heavy
plow-horses and drove from his house to Woodville, eight miles and
up-hill, in forty-five minutes. When he went into the hotel, the clerk
told him that the two he sought had had supper served in a private room.
Lem ascertained which room and broke the door in with one