“And yet it was on your say that I took up that plan,” said Eph.  “I never thought of it till you asked me when I was goin’ to begin to pay him up.”

“And you ought to,” said Susan.  “He has a right to the money—­and then you don’t want to be under obligations to that man all your life.  Now, what you want to do is to cheer up and go around among folks.  Why, now, you’re the only fish-buyer there is that the men don’t watch when he’s weighin’ their fish.  You’ll own up to that, for one thing, won’t you?”

“Well, they are good fellows that bring fish to me,” he said.

“They weren’t good fellows when they traded at the great wharf,” said Susan.  “They had a quarrel down there once a week, reg’larly.”

“Well, suppose they do trust me in that,” said Eph.  “I can never rub out that I’ve been in State’s-prison.”

“You don’t want to rub it out.  You can’t rub anything out that’s ever been; but you can do better than rub it out.”

“What do you mean?”

“Take things just the way they are,” said Susan, “and show what can be done.  Perhaps you’ll stake a new channel out, for others to follow in that haven’t half so much chance as you have.  And that’s what you will do, too,” she added.

“Susan!” he said, “if there’s anything I can ever do, in this world or the next, for you or your folks, that’s all I ask for, the chance to do it.  Your folks and you shall never want for anything while I’m alive.

“There’s one thing sure,” he added, rising.  “I’ll live by myself and be independent of everybody, and make my way all alone in the world; and if I can make ’em all finally own up and admit that I’m honest with ’em, I’m satisfied.  That’s all I’ll ever ask of anybody.  But there’s one thing that worries me sometimes—­that is, whether I ought to come here so often.  I’m afraid, sometimes, that it’ll hinder your father from gettin’ work, or—­something—­for you folks to be friends with me.”

“I think such things take care of themselves,” said Susan, quietly.  “If a chip won’t float, let it sink.”

“Good-night,” said Eph, and he walked off, and went home to his echoing house.

After that, his visits to Joshua’s became less frequent.

* * * * *

It was a bright day in March—­one of those which almost redeem the reputation of that desperado of a month.  Eph was leaning on his fence, looking now down the bay and now to where the sun was sinking in the marshes.  He knew that all the other men had gone to the town-meeting, where he had had no heart to intrude himself—­that free democratic parliament where he had often gone with his father in childhood; where the boys, rejoicing in a general assembly of their own, had played ball outside, while the men debated gravely within.  He recalled the time when he himself had so proudly given his first vote for President, and how his father had introduced him then to friends from distant parts of the town.  He remembered how he had heard his father speak there, and how respectfully everybody had listened to him.  That was in the long ago, when they had lived at the great farm.  And then came the thought of the mortgage, and of Eliphalet’s foreclosure, and—­