look; but as months went on his wife’s caresses were more carelessly received, and her hinted corrections with more of resentment.  One evening stately old Thomas Macy had “happened in,” and Jim had greatly grieved his wife by his curt, uncivil manner to her father.  After he had gone Sarah spoke in a low tone and kindly as always, but with more spirit than she had ever before manifested or felt, of her husband’s disrespectful ways to the aged.

For a moment after his wife had ceased, Jim sat with his hat pulled closely over his eyes, fiercely biting into the apple he was eating—­biting and throwing the bits into the glowing mass of peat on the hearth.  Then he sprang to his feet, exclaiming, “I see!  It’s all come true, what ev’rybody said.  Thee thinks thee an’ thy folks is better’n me an’ my folks, an’ keeps all the time a-naggin’ on me.  I wish I’d merried Mary Allen!  I won’t stan’ no more o’ this talk.  If I ain’t to be maaster o’ my own house I won’t stay in’t.” (The house was his father’s, but angry men never think of such trifles.) And waxing pitiful of himself, he continued in a broken and injured tone, “The bed o’ the sea’s the bes’ place fur a man whose own wife’s got tew big feelin’ ter put up wi’ his ways.”

With this dignified burst of eloquence the angry fellow flung himself out of the house, letting in at the door as he went a dash of cold, sleety rain and a gust of wind that put out the flickering tallow dip that was enabling Sarah to take the last stitches in the tiny white slip that now fell from her fingers.  Too sorely wounded for resentment, too fond of her husband to wish even his parents to see him in the light in which he was now revealed to her, Sarah silently stooped to recover her work, and as she did so her hand was met under the table by a sympathizing pressure from that of her mother-in-law.  This was too much, and, laying her head in the elder woman’s lap, poor Sarah wept without restraint; while the mother sorrowfully and tenderly stroked her soft brown tresses.  The father, quietly puffing at his pipe, seemed to take no notice, only now and then glancing with kindly eye covertly from under his hat-brim at the two grieving women.

Silently, but for the roaring of the wind and surf and fitful dashing of the rain, the hours passed on till the high clock in the kitchen corner sharply struck eleven.  This was a late hour for those times, and a faint fear began to come upon them all.  Could it be that Jim had really meant what he said?  “Had he—­” And the two women looked blankly at each other.  Not a word had been uttered, but each felt the other’s dread.

The father rose and said with a well-affected yawn, “Guess likely Jim’s went deown ter Uncle Will’amses, an’ they thought as ’t’s so stormy he’d bes’ not come back.  So guess I’ll jest go eout ter the shed and git some more peat, fur ter keep the fire.”