“I am very sorry,” she wrote, “that you have been obliged to take the house.  You know how I always felt for poor old Granny Jacobs.  Perhaps we can do something to make her more comfortable in the alms-house.  I think Lizzy could manage that for us.”

And in her own mind Mercy resolved that the old woman should never lack for food and fire, however unwilling the overseers might be to permit her to have unusual comforts.

Stephen’s next letter opened with these words:  “O Mercy, I have such a strange thing to tell you.  I am so excited I can hardly find words.  I have found a lot of money in your old fireplace.  Just think of our having sat there so quietly night after night, within hands’ reach of it, all last winter!  And how lucky that I found it, instead of any of the workmen!  They’d have pocketed it, and never said a word.”

“To be sure they would,” thought Mercy, “and poor old Granny Jacobs would have been”—­she was about to think, “cheated out of her rights again,” but with a pang she changed the phrase into “none the better off for it.  Oh, how glad I am for the poor old thing!  People always said her husband must have hid money away somewhere.”

Mercy read on.  “I was in such a hurry to get the house done before the snow came that I took hold myself, and worked every night and morning before the workmen came; and, after they had gone, I found this last night, and I declare, Mercy, I haven’t shut my eyes all night long.  It seems to me too good to be true.  I think there must be as much as three thousand dollars, all in solid gold.  Some of the coins I don’t know the value of; but the greater proportion of them are English sovereigns.  Of course rich people wouldn’t think this such a very big sum, but you and I know how far a little can go for poor people.”

“Yes, indeed,” thought Mercy.  “Why, it will make the poor old woman perfectly comfortable all her life:  it will give her more than she had from the house.”  And Mercy laid the letter in her lap and fell into a reverie, thinking how strange it was that this good fortune should have come about by means of an act which had seemed to her cruel on Stephen’s part.

She took the letter up again.  It continued:  “O Mercy, my darling, do you suppose you can realize what this sudden lift is to me?  All my life I have found our poverty so hard to bear, and these latter years I have bitterly felt the hardship of being unable to go out into the world and make my fortune as other men do, as I think I might, if I were free.  But this sum, small as it is, will be a nucleus, I feel sure it will, of a competency at least.  I know of several openings where I can place it most advantageously.  O Mercy! dear, dear Mercy! what hopes spring up in my heart!  The time may yet come when we shall build up a lovely home together.  Bless old Jacobs’s miserliness!  How little he knew what he was hoarding up his gold for!”