A strange incident happened to Mercy in these first weeks of her mother’s illness.  She was called to the door one morning by the message that a stranger wished to speak to her.  She found standing there an elderly woman, with a sweet but care-worn face, who said eagerly, as soon as she appeared,—­

“Are you Mrs. Philbrick?”

“Yes,” said Mercy.  “Did you wish to see me?”

The woman hesitated a moment, as if trying to phrase her sentence, and then burst out impetuously, with a flood of tears,—­

“Won’t you come and help me make my husband come home.  He is so sick, and I believe he will die in that wretched old garret.”

Mercy looked at her in blank astonishment, and her first thought was that she must be insane; but the woman continued,—­

“I’m Mrs. Wheeler.  You never saw me before, but my husband’s talked about you ever since he first saw you on the street, that day.  You’re the only human being I’ve ever known him take a fancy to; and I do believe, if anybody could do any thing with him, you could.”

It seemed that, in addition to all his other eccentricities, “Old Man Wheeler” had the habit of disappearing from his home at intervals, leaving no clew behind him.  He had attacks of a morbid unwillingness to see a human face:  during tkese attacks, he would hide himself, sometimes in one place, sometimes in another.  He had old warehouses, old deserted mills and factories, and uninhabited rooms and houses in all the towns in the vicinity.  There was hardly any article of merchandise which he had not at one time or another had a depot for, or a manufactory of.  He had especially a hobby for attempting to make articles which were not made in this country.  It was only necessary for some one to go to him, and say, “Mr. Wheeler, do you know how much this country pays every year for importing such or such an article?” to throw him into a rage.

“Damned nonsense!  Damned nonsense, sir.  Just as well make it here.  I’ll make it myself.”  And up would start a new manufacture, just as soon as he could get men to work at it.

At one time it was ink, at another time brushes, then chintz, and then pocket-books; in fact, nobody pretended to remember all the schemes which the old man had failed in.  He would stop them as instantaneously as he began them, dismiss the workmen, shut up the shops or the mills, turn the key on them just as they stood, very possibly filled full of material in the rough.  He did not care.  The hobby was over:  he had proved that the thing could be made in America, and he was content.  It was usually in some one of these disused buildings that he set up his hermitage in these absences from home.  He would sally out once a day and buy bread, just a pittance, hardly enough to keep him alive, and then bury himself again in darkness and solitude.  If the absence did not last more than three or four days, his wife and sons gave themselves no concern about him.  He