a stump; but faith and Luclarion's dairy did it. It was a stump when
Marcus wanted to go to college, and they undertook that, after the
mortgage. It was a stump when Adam Burge wanted her to marry him,
and go and live in the long red cottage at Side Hill, and she could
not go till they had got through with helping Marcus. It was a
terrible stump when Adam Burge married Persis Cone instead, and she
had to live on and bear it. It was a stump when her mother died, and
the farm was sold.

Marcus married; he never knew; he had a belles-lettres professorship
in a new college up in D----. He would not take a cent of the farm
money; he had had his share long ago; the four thousand dollars
were invested for Luke. He did the best he could, and all he knew;
but human creatures can never pay each other back. Only God can do
that, either way.

Luclarion did not stay in ----. There were too few there now, and
too many. She came down to Boston. Her two hundred and eighty
dollars a year was very good, as far as it went, but it would not
keep her idle; neither did she wish to live idle. She learned
dress-making; she had taste and knack; she was doing well; she
enjoyed going about from house to house for her days' work, and then
coming back to her snug room at night, and her cup of tea and her
book.

Then it turned out that so much sewing was not good for her; her
health was threatened; she had been used to farm work and "all
out-doors." It was a "stump" again. That was all she called it; she
did not talk piously about a "cross." What difference did it make?
There is another word, also, for "cross" in Hebrew.