Little Dr. Pingree, who felt the arrival to be very inopportune, nevertheless gallantly hastened to replenish the fire.

The poor-mistress hospitably offered to remove the visitor’s wet wrappings, but she shook her head.

“I want to find the relatives of Ephrum Spencer,” she said.

“You’ll have to go a good ways,” said Cap’n ’Kiah.

“The graveyard is chock full of ’em,” said Uncle Peter.

“They’ve kind of died out,” explained Cap’n ’Kiah.  “They seemed to be the kind that dies out easy and nateral.”

“His uncle Hiram isn’t dead, is he?” asked the woman, with the strain of anxiety in her voice.

“He died about a year ago.”

“What’s become of his money?” asked the stranger sharply.

“Well, there wa’n’t so much as folks thought,” said Cap’n ’Kiah.  “He frittered away a good deal on new-fangled merchines and such things that wa’n’t of any account,—­had a reg’lar mania for ’em for a year or so before he died; and then he give some money to his housekeeper and the man that worked for him, and what was left he give to the town for a new town-hall; but, along of quarrellin’ about where ’twas to set and what ‘twas to be built of, and gittin’ legal advice to settle the p’ints, I declare if ’tain’t ’most squandered!  But, la! if there wa’n’t such quarrellin’ amongst folks, what would become of the lawyers?  They’d all be here, a-settin’ us by the ears, I expect.”

“And there isn’t a cent for his own nephew’s starving children?” said the woman bitterly.

“Ephrum’s?  Oh, la, no!  The old man never set by Ephrum, you know:  them two was always contr’y-minded.  You don’t say, now, that you’re Ephrum’s wife?” Cap’n ’Kiah surveyed her with frank curiosity.

“I’m Ephrum’s widow.”

“You don’t say so, now!  Well, there’s wuss ockerpations than bein’ a widow,” remarked Cap’n ’Kiah consolingly.

Miranda had drawn the younger boy to her side.  She was chafing his numb hands and smoothing the damp locks from his forehead.

“Why, how cold your hands have grown!” the child cried.  “They’re colder than mine.  And how funny and white you look!”

Miranda had felt, from the moment when she first saw the forlorn little group, that Ephraim was dead, and yet the sure knowledge came as a shock.  But this child was looking at her with Ephraim’s eyes:  they warmed her heart.

“She knew me, if none of the rest of you did,” said the widow, indicating Miranda by a nod of her head.  “And I knew her, too, just as soon as I set eyes on her.—­Well, you needn’t hold any grudge against me, Miranda Daggett.  I calculate you got the best of the bargain.  Ephrum hadn’t any faculty to get along.  I’ve struggled and slaved till I’m all worn out; and now I haven’t a roof to cover me nor my children, nor a mouthful to eat.”

Miranda sprang up, her arms around both the boys.

“I have! I have plenty for you all.  And I’ve been a-wonderin’ why it should have come to me, that didn’t need it; but now I know.  You come right home with me.—­Mis’ Bemis, you’ll let Tready harness up?”