s his silly old cousin Widow
Waller. He dared say they'd both of them want him to live with them.
At the thought a grin crossed his ruddy face. They both knew about
_it_--that was what it was. And he wouldn't live with either of them,
not he. Not yet a bit, anyway. All the same, he had a fondness for
Bessie and her husband. Bessie was always very civil to _him_--he
chuckled again--and if anything had to be done with it, while he was
five miles off at Frampton on a job of work that had been offered him,
he didn't know but he'd as soon trust Isaac Costrell and Bessie as
anybody else. You might call Isaac rather a fool, what with his
religion, and "extemp'ry prayin', an' that," but all the same
Bolderfield thought of him with a kind of uneasy awe. If ever there
was a man secure of the next world it was Isaac Costrell. His temper,
perhaps, was "nassty," which might pull him down a little when the last
account came to be made up; and it could not be said that his elder
children had come to much, for all his piety. But, on the whole,
Bolderfield only wished he stood as well with the Powers talked about
in chapel every Sunday as Isaac did.

As for Bessie, she had been a wasteful woman all her life, with never a
bit of money put by, and never a good dress to her back. But, "Lor'
bless yer, there was a many worse folk nor Bessie." She wasn't one of
your sour people--she could make you laugh; she had a merry heart.
Many a pleasant evening had he passed chatting with her and Isaac; and
whenever they cooked anything good there was always a bite for him.
Yes, Bessie had been a good niece to him; and if he trusted any one he
dared say he'd trust them.

"Well, how's Eliza, Muster Bolderfield?" said a woman who passed him in
the village street.

He replied, and then went on his way, sobered again, dreading to find
himself at the cottage once more, and in the stuffy upper room with the
bed and the dying woman. Yet he was not really sad, not here at least,
out in the air and the sun. There was always a thought in his mind, a
fact in his consciousness, which stood between him and sadness. It had
so stood for a long, long time. He walked through the village
to-night, in spite of Eliza and his sixty years, with a free bearing
and a confident glance to right and left. He knew, and the village
knew, that he was not as other men.

He passed the village green with its pond, and began to climb a lane
leading to the hill. H