I can't stand it--I jest can't! I'm goin' ter work."

"Jere-mi-ah!"

"Well, I am," repeated the old man doggedly. "You're goin' ter have some
shoes, an' I'm goin' ter earn 'em. See if I don't!" And he squared his
shoulders, and straightened his bent back as if already he felt the
weight of a welcome burden.

Spring came, and with it long sunny days and the smell of green things
growing. Jeremiah began to be absent day after day from the farmhouse.
The few tasks that he performed each morning were soon finished, and
after that he disappeared, not to return until night. William wondered a
little, but said nothing. Other and more important matters filled his
mind.

Only Hester noticed that the old man's step grew more languid and his
eye more dull; and only Hester knew that at night he was sometimes too
tired to sleep--that he could not "seem ter hit the bed," as he
expressed it.

It was at about this time that Hester began to make frequent visits to
the half-dozen farmhouses in the settlement about them. She began to be
wonderfully busy these days, too, knitting socks and mittens, or piecing
up quilts. Sarah Ellen asked her sometimes what she was doing, but
Hester's answers were always so cheery and bright that Sarah Ellen did
not realize that the point was always evaded and the subject changed.

It was in May that the inevitable happened. William came home one day to
find an excited, weeping wife who hurried him into the seclusion of