Arthur’s close friend was now Laurent Tague, a young cooper—­huge, deep-chested, tawny, slow of body and swift of mind.  They had been friends as boys at school.  When Arthur came home from Exeter from his first long vacation, their friendship had been renewed after a fashion, then had ended abruptly in a quarrel and a pitched battle, from which neither had emerged victor, both leaving the battle ground exhausted and anguished by a humiliating sense of defeat.  From that time Laurent had been a “damned mucker” to Arthur, Arthur a “stuck-up smart Alec” to Laurent.  The renewal of the friendship dated from the accident to Arthur’s hand; it rapidly developed as he lost the sense of patronizing Laurent, and as Laurent for his part lost the suspicion that Arthur was secretly patronizing him.  Then Arthur discovered that Lorry had, several years before, sent for a catalogue of the University of Michigan, had selected a course leading to the B.S. degree, had bought the necessary text-books, had studied as men work only at that which they love for its own sake and not for any advantage to be got from it.  His father, a captain of volunteers in the Civil War, was killed in the Wilderness; his mother was a washerwoman.  His father’s father—­Jean Montague, the first blacksmith of Saint X—­had shortened the family name.  In those early, nakedly practical days, long names and difficult names, such as naturally develop among peoples of leisure, were ruthlessly taken to the chopping block by a people among whom a man’s name was nothing in itself, was simply a convenience for designating him.  Everybody called Jean Montague “Jim Tague,” and pronounced the Tague in one syllable; when he finally acquiesced in the sensible, popular decision, from which he could not well appeal, his very children were unaware that they were Montagues.

Arthur told Lorry of his engagement to Madelene an hour after he told his mother—­he and Lorry were heading a barrel as they talked.  This supreme proof of friendship moved Laurent to give proof of appreciation.  That evening he and Arthur took a walk to the top of Reservoir Hill, to see the sun set and the moon rise.  It was under the softening and expanding influence of the big, yellow moon upon the hills and valleys and ghostly river that Laurent told his secret—­a secret that in the mere telling, and still more in itself, was to have a profound influence upon the persons of this narrative.

“When I was at school,” he began, “you may remember I used to carry the washing to and fro for mother.”

“Yes,” said Arthur.  He remembered how he liked to slip away from home and help Lorry with the big baskets.

“Well, one of the places I used to go to was old Preston Wilmot’s; they had a little money left in those days and used to hire mother now and then.”

“So the Wilmots owe her, too,” said Arthur, with a laugh.  The universal indebtedness of the most aristocratic family in Saint X was the town joke.