He considered her question in silence for a moment. The bitterness
against Andrew Bolton had grown and strengthened with the years into
something rigid, inexorable. Since early boyhood he had grown
accustomed to the harsh, unrelenting criticisms, the brutal epithets
applied to this man who had been trusted with money and had
defaulted. Even children, born long after the failure, reviled the
name of the man who had made their hard lot harder. It had been the
juvenile custom to throw stones at the house he had lived in. He
remembered with fresh shame the impish glee with which, in company
with other boys of his own age, he had trampled the few surviving
flowers and broken down the shrubs in the garden. The hatred of
Bolton, like some malignant growth, had waxed monstrous from what it
preyed upon, ruining and distorting the simple kindly life of the
village. She was waiting for his answer.

"It would seem so much more honest," she said in a tired voice. "Now
they can only think me eccentric, foolishly extravagant, lavishly
generous--when I am trying-- I didn't dare to ask Deacon Whittle or
Judge Fulsom for a list of the creditors, so I paid a large sum--far
more than they would have asked--for the house. And since then I have
bought the old bank building. I should like to make a library there."

"Yes, I know," he said huskily.

"Then the furniture--I shall pay a great deal for that. I want the
house to look just as it used to, when father comes home. You see he
had an additional sentence for trying to escape and for conspiracy;
and since then his mind--he doesn't seem to remember everything.
Sometimes he calls me Margaret. He thinks I am--mother."