The Village Convict | Page 8

can make 'em all finally own up and admit that I'm honest with 'em, I'm satisfied. That's all I 'll ever ask of anybody. But there's one thing that worries me sometimes,--that is, whether I ought to come here so often. I 'm afraid, sometimes, that it 'll hinder your father from gettin' work, or--something--for you folks to be friends with me."
"I think such things take care of themselves," said Susan, quietly. "If a chip won't float, let it sink."
"Good-night," said Eph; and he walked off, and went home to his echoing house.
After that, his visits to Joshua's became less frequent.
*****
It was a bright day in March,--one of those which almost redeem the reputation of that desperado of a month. Eph was leaning on his fence, looking now down the bay and now to where the sun was sinking in the marshes. He knew that all the other men had gone to the town-meeting, where he had had no heart to intrude himself,--that free democratic parliament where he had often gone with his father in childhood; where the boys, rejoicing in a general assembly of their own, had played ball outside, while the men debated gravely within. He recalled the time when he himself had so proudly given his first vote for President, and how his father had introduced him then to friends from distant parts of the town. He remembered how he had heard his father speak there, and how respectfully everybody had listened to him. That was in the long ago, when they had lived at the great farm. And then came the thought of the mortgage, and of Eliphalet's foreclosure, and--
"Hullo, Eph!"
It was one of the men from whom he took fish,--a plain-spoken, sincere little man.
"Why wa'n't you down to town-meet'n'?"
"I was busy," said Eph.
"How'd ye like the news?"
"What news?"
There was never any good news for him now.
"Hain't heard who 's elected town-clerk?"
"No."
Had they elected Eliphalet, and so expressed their settled distrust of him, and sympathy for the man whom he had injured?
"Who is elected?" he asked harshly.
"You be!" said the man; "went in flyin',--all hands clappin' and stompin' their feet!"
*****
An hour later the doctor drove up, stopped, and walked toward the kitchen door. As he passed the window, he looked in.
Eph was lying on his face, upon the settle, as he had first seen him there, his arms beneath his head.
"I will not disturb him now," said the doctor.
*****
One breezy afternoon, in the following summer, Captain Seth laid aside his easy every-day clothes, and transformed himself into a stiff broadcloth image, with a small silk hat and creaking boots. So attired, he set out in a high open buggy, with his wife, also in black, but with gold spectacles, to the funeral of an aunt. As they pursued their jog-trot journey along the Salt Hay Road, and came to Ephraim Morse's cottage, they saw Susan sitting in a shady little porch at the front door, shelling peas and looking down the bay.
"How is everything, Susan?" called out Captain Seth; "'bout time for Eph to be gitt'n' in?"
"Yes," she answered, nodding and smiling, and pointing with a pea-pod; "that's our boat, just coming to the wharf, with her peak down."

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