earliest instinct of every animate creature. Perhaps this child was
endowed with excessive vitality. Certainly, the babe's persistence in
living on "under difficulties" might have been the germ of that enormous
strength and power of will for which the man was afterwards so noted.

The professor kept his word with Hannah, and brought her some work. But
the little that he could afford to pay for it was not sufficient to
supply one-fourth of Hannah's necessities.

At last came a day when her provisions were all gone. And Hannah locked
the child up alone in the hut and set off to walk to Baymouth, to try to
get some meal and bacon on credit from the country shop where she had
dealt all her life.

Baymouth was a small port, at the mouth of a small bay making up from
the Chesapeake. It had one church, in charge of the Episcopal minister
who had baptized Nora's child. And it had one large, country store, kept
by a general dealer named Nutt, who had for sale everything to eat,
drink, wear, or wield, from sugar and tea to meat and fish; from linen
cambric to linsey-woolsey; from bonnets and hats to boots and shoes;
from new milk to old whisky; from fresh eggs to stale cheese; and from
needles and thimbles to plows and harrows.

Hannah, as I said, had been in the habit of dealing at this shop all her
life, and paying cash for everything she got. So now, indeed, she might
reasonably ask for a little credit, a little indulgence until she could
procure work. Yet, for all that, she blushed and hesitated at having to
ask the unusual favor. She entered the store and found the dealer alone.
She was glad of that, as she rather shrank from preferring her humble
request before witnesses. Mr. Nutt hurried forward to wait on her.