was about to speak to him when he startled her by
dropping on his knees and praying aloud.

"O merciful Powers, give me grace and strength to lead a healthy
fearless life in this house."

XIII

The Dales were beginning to prosper now, but their first winter had
been an anxious, difficult time.

Dale had made a common mistake in his calculations, and experience
soon taught him that what is known as good-will, the most delicate and
sensitive of all trade-values, can not by a mere stroke of the pen be
transferred from one person to another. Solid customers turned truant;
the business went down with terrifying velocity; and old Bates, who
loyally came day after day to advise and assist, spoke with sincere
regret. "William, I never foretold this. I must see what can be done.
I'll leave no stone unturned." And he trotted about, touting for his
successor, tramping long miles to beg for a continuance of favors that
had unexpectedly ceased, but usually returning sadly to confess that
his efforts had again been fruitless. They were gloomy evening hours,
when the old and the young man sat together in the office by the
roadway; and at night Mavis used to hear her sleeping husband moan and
groan so piteously that she sometimes felt compelled to wake him.

"What is it?" Awakened thus, he would spring up with a hoarse cry, and
be almost out of the bed before she was able to restrain him.

"It's nothing, dear. Only you were in one of your bad dreams, and I
simply couldn't let you go on being tormented."

"That's right," he used to mutter sleepily. "I don't want to dream.
I've enough that's real."

"Don't you worry, dear old boy. You're going to pull through grand--in
the end. I _know you are_. Besides, if not--then we'll try something
else."

She always murmured such consolatory phrases until he fell asleep once
more.

The fact was that Bates had been respected by the well-to-do and loved
by the humble; and Dale, out here, remained an unknown quantity.
Anything of his fame as postmaster that had traveled along these two
miles from Rodchurch did not help him. He was not liked. He felt it in
the air, a dull inactive hostility, when talking to gentlefolks'
coachmen or giving orders to his own servants. The coachmen could take
no pleasure in patronizing him, nor the men in working for him. Mr.
Bates advised him once or twice to cultivate a gentler and more
ingratiating method of dealing with the people in his employ.