and had run behind, till now, Solomon Gleason the schoolmaster, had
got hold of the mortgage, and was going to turn them into the street,
that very week. But all this with the mother, as with the brother, was
as nothing, compared with Reuben's imprisonment and sickness unto
death.

It was Mrs. Hamlin, who did most of the talking, and much of what she
said fell unheeded on Perez' ears, as he walked unceasingly to and fro
across the kitchen. For his mind was occupied with all the intensity
of application, of which it was capable, with the single point,--how
he was to get Reuben out of jail. Even the emergency, which would so
soon be raised, by the selling out of the homestead, and the turning
of the family into the street, was subordinated, in his mind, to this
prime question. The picture of his brother, shaggy-haired and foul,
wallowing in the filth of that prison sty, and breathing its fetid
air, which his memory kept constantly before him, would have driven
him distracted, if for a moment he had allowed himself to doubt that
he should somehow liberate him, and soon. He had told his mother
nothing of the horrible condition in which he had found him. Under no
circumstances must she know of that, not even if worst came to worst,
and so even while he shuddered at the vision before his mind's eye, he
essayed to speak cheerfully about Reuben's surroundings, and his
condition of health. When she told him that Deacon Nash had refused to
let him come home to be nursed back to health, Perez had to comfort
her by pretending that he was not so very badly off where he was, and
would doubtless recover.

"Nay, Perez," she said, "my eyes are dim, come close to me, that I may
read your eyes. You were ever tender to your old mother, and I fear
me, you hide somewhat lest I should disquiet myself. Come here my