his memory.

Yet it had been simple enough, as paths to strange conclusions always
are. He had returned home from Squire Eben's that morning, changed
his clothes, and resumed his work in the garden.

Elmira had questioned him, but he gave her no information. He had an
instinct, which had been born in him, of secrecy towards womankind.
Nobody had ever told him that women were not trustworthy with respect
to confidences; he had never found it so from observation; he simply
agreed within himself that he had better not confide any but fully
matured plans, and no plans which should be kept secret, to a woman.
He had, however, besides this caution, a generous resolution not to
worry Elmira or his mother about it until he knew. "Wait till I find
out; I don't know myself," he told Elmira.

"Don't you know where you've been? You can tell us that," she
persisted, in her sweet, querulous treble. She pulled at his jacket
sleeve with her little thin, coaxing hand, but Jerome was obdurate.
He twitched his jacket sleeve away.

"I sha'n't tell you one thing, and there is no use in your teasin',"
he said, peremptorily, and she yielded.

Elmira reported that their mother was sitting still in her
rocking-chair, with her head leaning back and her eyes shut. "She
seems all beat out," she said, pitifully; "she don't tell me to do a
thing."

The two tiptoed across the entry and stood in the kitchen door,