en just one person, and one person only, that's ever been
able to keep the best of you on top--and she was my best friend, your
wife. She kept you human, and turned even the worst side of you to
some account. If you did scrape and grub, 'most night and day, to make
your pile, and was hard on those that crossed your path while doin' of
it, it was she that showed you there was pleasure in usin' it for
others as well as for yourself, and while she lived you did it. But
since she's been gone,"--the old man tried to keep his face firm and
his glance steady, but in vain--he winced,--"since she's been gone,
the human in you's dried up like a sun-baked apple. And it's you,
Sylvester Bascom, that's been made the most miserable, 'spite of all
the little carks you've put on many another."

His face hardened again, and Hepsey paused.

"What has all this to do with Mr. Maxwell, may I ask?"

"I'm comin' to that," continued Hepsey, patiently. "If Mary Bascom
were alive to-day, would the rector of Durford be livin' in a tent
instead of in the rectory--the house she thought she had given over,
without mortgage or anything else, to the church? And would you be
holdin' back your subscription to the church, and seein' that others
held back too? I never thought you'd have done, when she was dead,
what'd have broken her heart if she'd been livin'. The church was her
one great interest in life, after her husband and her daughter; and it
was _her_ good work that brought the parish to make you Senior Warden.
After you'd made money and moved to your new house, just before she
died, she gave the old house, that was hers from her father, to the
church, and you were to make the legal transfer of it. Then she died
suddenly, and you delayed and delayed--claiming the house as yours,
and at last sold it to us subject to the mortgage."

The old man stirred uneasily in his chair.

"This is all quite beside the mark. What might have been proper to do
in my wife's life-time became a different matter altogether after her
death. I had my daughter's welfare to think of; besides----"

"I'm not talkin' about your legal right. But you know that if you'd
wanted to have it, you could have got your interest on the mortgage
quick enough. If you hadn't held back on his salary, others wouldn't
have; or if they had, you could have got after 'em. What's the use of
tryin' to mix each other up? You couldn't keep Maxwell in your pocket,
and because he didn't come to