ith tense excitement. What did it all mean? If a
chicken had sneezed the whole gathering would have been dissolved in
hysterics, it was so keyed up with a sense of the impending disclosure
of a deep mystery. As for Hepsey, she sat motionless, though Jonathan
believed that he caught sight of a tear glistening in its descent.

"Hepsey Burke had a right to call me a skinflint, because she knew
what none of you knew; but because it was private knowledge she
wouldn't make use of it against me--not unless she couldn't have done
what was right any other way. And now I'm going to tell you what she
knew:

"The rectory was my wife's property, and she intended it as a gift to
the parish, for the rectory of the church. I was preparing the deeds
of transfer, when she died--suddenly, as some of you remember," his
voice made heroic efforts to keep clear and steady, "owing to her
death before the transfer, that house passed to our daughter; and what
I intended to do was to buy it of her and present it to the parish. I
delayed, at first for good reasons. And I suppose as I got more and
more lonesome and mixed less and less with people, I got sourer--and
then I delayed from meanness. It would have been easy enough for me to
buy it of my daughter, and she'd have been willing enough; but as I
saw more and more put upon me, and less and less human recognition--I
was 'a rich man,' and needed no personal sympathy or encouragement, it
seemed--I held back. And I got so mean, I couldn't make friends with
the rector, even."

He paused, and from the half smile on his face, and the hint of
brightness that passed over his expression, the audience caught
relief.

"I guess a good shaking up is good for a man's liver: it cures a sour
stomach--and as there are those that say the way to a man's heart is
through his stomach, perhaps it cures a sour heart. I got my shaking
up all right, as you know; and perhaps that's been working a cure on
me. Or perhaps it was the quiet ministrations of that little Mrs.
Betty of yours"--applause--"or the infusion of some of the rector's
blood in my veins (he let himself be bled to keep me alive, after I'd
lost what little blood I had, as you probably have never
heard)"--shouts of applause--"or possibly what cured me was a little
knitting-visit that Hepsey Burke paid me the other day, and during
which she dropped some home-truths: I can't say.

"Before I decided what I would do about the rectory, I wanted to see
wh