until the road between its walls of rusty hazel-bushes and its fringe
of joepye-weed and goldenrod turned to the left and the stout, kindly
figure disappeared. The great elm moved softly overhead, and Lizzie
glanced up through its branches, all hung with feathery twigs, at the
deep August sky.

"Jonesville's never talked about _me_!" she said to herself,
proudly. "I mayn't be wealthy, but I got a good name. Course it
wouldn't do to take Nat; but my! ain't it a poor planet where you
can't do a kind act?"


II


Nathaniel May sat in his darkness, brooding over his machine. Since it
had been definitely arranged that he was to go to the Poor Farm, he
did not care how soon he went; there was no need, he told Dyer, to
keep him for the few days which had been promised.

"I had thought," he said, patiently, "that some one would take me in
and help me finish my machine--for the certain profit that I could
promise them. But nobody seems to believe in me," he ended.

"Oh, folks believe in you, all right, Mr. May," Dyer told him; "but
they don't believe in your machine. See?"

Nathaniel's face darkened. "Blind--blind!" he said.

"How did it come on you?" Dyer asked, sympathetically.