"The
lad moved away, smiling to himself and shaking his head.
"He has broken all my pitchers," she added. "To-day I had to send my last
roll of linen to town by Amy to buy more queen's-ware. The moss will grow on
the bucket before he gets back."
When the boy was out of hearing, she turned again to him:
"What is it? Tell me quickly."
"I have had news from Philadelphia. The case is at last decided in favour of
the heirs, and I come at once into possession of my share. It may be eight
or ten thousand dollars." His voice trembled a little despite himself.
She took his hands in hers with a warm, close pressure, and tears of joy
sprang to her eyes.
The whole of his bare, bleak life was known to her; its half-starved
beginning; its early merciless buffeting; the upheaval of vast circumstance
in the revolutionary history of the times by which he had again and again
been thrown back upon his own undefended strength; and stealthily following
him from place to place, always closing around him, always seeking to
strangle him, or to poison him in some vital spot, that most silent, subtle
serpent of life--Poverty. Knowing this, and knowing also the man he had
become, she would in secret sometimes liken him to one of those rare unions
of delicacy and hardihood which in the world of wild flowers Nature refuses
to bring forth except from the cranny of a cold rock.
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