cash,--a
pleasure boat--" added the Squire, "or a Bible--or anything of that
sort. I thought all this philustration was to set _him_ up."

Mr. Simlins gave a kind of grunt.

"It haint pulled him _down_ much," he said,--"as I see. And I suppose
Judge Harrison thinks that drivin' wedges under a church steeple is a
surrogate work--without he saw it was topplin'."

Without getting any too clear a notion of the meaning of these
words--it took a lively imagination to follow Mr. Simlins in some of
his flights, the Squire yet perceived enough to stay his own words a
little; and he passed away the tedium of the next few minutes by
peering round the corner of the house and getting far-off glimpses of
Faith.

"She looks 'most like a spectral illusion," he said admiringly. "The
tablecloths aint bleached a bit whiter 'n her dress."

"She aint no more like a spectre than I'm like a ghost," said Mr.
Simlins. "Washin' and ironin' 'll make a white frock for any woman."

Then stalking up to Mr. Linden accosted him grimly, after his fashion.
"Well Mr. Linden--what d' you think of that farm at Neanticut? don't
you want to take it of me?"

"There are too many fences between me and it," was the smiling reply.

"It's good land," Mr. Simlins went on; "you can't do better than settle
down there. I'd like to have you for a tenant--give you the land easy."

"Let me pay you in nuts?" said Mr. Linden.

But then came up other farmers and heads of families to claim Mr.
Linden's attention; men whose boys were at the school; and who now in
various states of gratification, but all gratified, came one after
another to grasp his hand and thank him for the good he had done and
was doing them.

"You're the first man, sir," said one, a broad-shouldered, tall, strong
man, with a stern reserved face,--"you're the first man that has been
able to make that boy of mine--Phil--attend to anything, or go to
school regular. He talks hard sometimes,--but you do what you like with
him, Mr. Linden! I give you my leave. He's smart, and he aint a bad
boy, at heart; but he's wild, and he has his own way and it aint always
a good one. His mother never had any government of him," said the
father, looking towards the identical person whom Dr. Harrison had
characterized as 'the perspective of a woman,' and who certainly had
the air of one whose mind--what she had--was shut up and shut off into
the further extremities of possibility.

Then came up Judge Harrison