While the purchases were being put up, an awkward silence prevailed, which the oil-suits hanging on the walls, broadly displaying their arms and legs, seemed to mock, in dumb show.

Nothing was changed, to Eph’s eyes, as he looked about.  Even the handbill of familiar pattern: 

   “Standing Wood for Sale. 
   Apply to J. Carter, ADMIN’R,”

seemed to have always been there.

The village parliament remained spellbound.  Mr. Adams tied up the purchases and mildly inquired: 

“Shall I charge this?”

Not that he was anxious to open an account, but that he would probably have gone to the length of selling Eph a barrel of molasses “on tick” rather than run any risk of offending so formidable a character.

“No,” said Eph; “I will pay for the things.”

And having put the packages into a canvas bag, and selected some fish-hooks and lines from the show-case, where they lay environed by jackknives, jewsharps, and gum-drops—­dear to the eyes of his childhood—­he paid what was due, said “Good-night, William,” to the storekeeper, and walked steadily out into the night.

“Wall,” said the skipper, “I am surprised!  I strove to think o’ suthin’ to say, all the time he was here, but I swow I couldn’t think o’ nothin’.  I couldn’t ask him if it seemed good to git home, nor how the thermometer had varied in different parts o’ the town where he’d been.  Everything seemed to fetch right up standin’ to the State’s-prison.”

“I was just goin’ to say, ‘How’d ye leave everybody?’” said Doane; “but that kind o’ seemed to bring up them he’d left.  I felt real bad, though, to hev the feller go off ‘thout none on us speakin’ to him.  He’s got a hard furrer to plough; and yet I don’t s’pose there’s much harm in him, ’f Eliphalet only keeps quiet.”

“Eliphalet!” said a young sailor, contemptuously.  “No fear o’ him!  They say he’s so sca’t of Eph he hain’t hardly swallowed nothin’ for a week.”

“But where will he live?” asked a short, curly-haired young man, whom Eph had seemed not to recognize.  It was the new doctor, who, after having made his way through college and “the great medical school in Boston,” had, two years before, settled in this village.

“I believe,” said Mr. Adams, rubbing his hands, “that he wrote to Joshua Carr last winter, when his mother died, not to let the little place she left, on the Salt Hay Road, and I understand that he is going to make his home there.  It is an old house, you know, and not worth much, but it is weather-tight, I should say.”

“Speakin’ of his writin’ to Joshua,” said Doane, “I have heard such a sound as that he used to shine up to Joshua’s Susan, years back.  But that’s all ended now.  You won’t catch Susan marryin’ no jailbirds.”

“But how will he live?” said the doctor.  “Will anybody give him work?”

“Let him alone for livin’,” said Doane.  “He can ketch more fish than any other two men in the place—­allers seemed to kind o’ hev a knack o’ whistlin’ ’em right into the boat.  And then Nelson Briggs, that settled up his mother’s estate, allows he’s got over a hundred and ten dollars for him, after payin’ debts and all probate expenses, and that and the place is all he needs to start on.”