unrewarded was the act of toil. So in the odour of shiftlessness Abel's
father had died; so after ninety years his grandparents still sat by the
hearth to which his mother had called him.

The house, an oblong frame building, newly shingled, was set back from
the road in a straggling orchard of pear-trees, which bore a hard
green fruit too sour to be used except in the form of preserves. Small
shanties, including a woodhouse, a henhouse, and a smokehouse for drying
bacon and hams, flanked the kitchen garden at the rear, while in front a
short, gravelled path, bordered by portulaca, led to the paling gate at
the branch road which ran into the turnpike a mile or so farther on. In
Abel's dreams another house was already rising in the fair green meadow
beyond the mill-race. He had consecrated a strip of giant pine to this
purpose, and often, while he lingered in the door of his mill, he felt
himself battling against the desire to take down his axe and strike his
first blow toward the building of Molly's home. His mother might nag
at him about Molly now, but let them be married, he told himself, with
sanguine masculine assurance, and both women would reconcile themselves
to a situation that neither could amend. Before the immediate ache of
his longing for the girl, all other considerations evaporated to thin
air. He would rather be unhappy with her, he thought passionately, than
give her up!

"Abel, if you don't stop mopin' out thar an' come along in, I'll clear
off the dishes!" called his mother again in her rasping voice
which sounded as if she were choking in a perpetual spasm of moral
indignation.

Jerking his shoulders slightly in an unspoken protest, Abel turned
and entered the kitchen, where Sarah Revercomb--tall, spare and