"I know what you mean," said Eph. "But here--I got mad once, and I
almost had a right to, and I can't get started again; I never shall. I
can get a livin', of course; but I shall always be pointed out as a
jail-bird, and could no more get any footin' in the world than
Portuguese Jim."

Portuguese Jim was the sole professional criminal of the town, a weak,
good-natured, knock-kneed vagabond, who stole hens, and spent every
winter in the House of Correction as an "idle and disorderly person."

Susan laughed outright at the picture. Eph smiled, too, but a little
bitterly.

"I suppose it was more ugliness than anything else," he said, "that made
me come back here to live, where everybody knows I've been in jail and
is down on me."

"They are not down on you," said Susan. "Nobody is down on you. It's all
your own imagination. And if you had gone anywhere that you was a
stranger, you know that the first thing that you would have done would
have been to call a meetin' and tell all the people that you had burned
down a man's barn, and been in the State's-prison, and that you wanted
them all to know it at the start; and you wouldn't have told them why
you did it, and how young you was then, and how Eliphalet treated your
mother, and how you was going to pay him for all he lost. Here,
everybody knows that side of it. In fact," she added, with a little
twinkle in her eye, "I have sometimes had an idea that the main thing
they don't like is to see you savin' every cent to pay to Eliphalet."

"And yet it was on your say that I took up that plan," said Eph. "I