e, mistake," she cried. "The houses are ours. No undertanding was
in me. Cross was your Nuncle. 'Terrible if Joseph is bad with me,' he
said. Man religious and tidy is Essec." Then she prayed that Joseph
would die before her fault was found out.

Joseph did not know what to do for his joy. "Well-well, there's better I
am already," he said. He walked over the land and coveted the land of
his neighbors. "Dwell here for ever I shall," he cried to Madlen. "A
grand house I'll build--almost as grand as the houses of preachers."

In the fifth night he died, and before she began to weep, Madlen lifted
her voice: "There's silly, dear people, to covet houses! Only a smallish
bit of house we want."

IX

LIKE BROTHERS

Silas Bowen hated his brother John, but when he heard of John's
sickness, he reasoned: "Blackish has been his dealings. And trickish.
Sly also. Odd will affairs seem if I don't go to him at once."

At the proper hour he closed the door of his shop. Then he washed his
face, and put beeswax on the dwindling points of his mustache, and he
came out of Barnes into Thornton East; into High Road, where is his
brother's shop.

"That is you," said John to him.

"How was you, man?" Silas asked. "Talk the name of the old malady."

"Say what you have to say in English," John answered in a little voice.
"It is easier and classier."

That which was spoken was rendered into English; and John replied: "I am
pleazed to see you. Take the bowler off your head and don't put her on
the harimonium. The zweat will mark the wood."

"The love of brothers push me here," said Silas. "It is past
understanding. As boyss we learn the same pray-yer. And we talked the
same temperance dialogue in Capel Zion. I was always the temperance one.
And quite a champion reziter. The way is round and about, boy bach, from
Zion to the grave."

"Don't speak like that," pleaded John. "I caught a cold going to the
City to get ztok. I will be healthy by the beginning of the week."

"Be it so. Yet I am full of your trouble. Sick you are and how's trade?"

"Very brisk. I am opening a shop in Richmond again," John said.

"You're learning me something. Don't you think too much of that shop;
Death is near and set your mind on the crossing."

John's lame daughter Ann halted into the room, and stepped up to the
bed.

"Stand by the door for one minit, Silas," John cried. "I am having my
chat confidential."

From a book Ann recited the busine