“It’s very good for the health to dig in the elements.  I was quite emaciated last year at the East, and the doctor told me to dig in the elements.  I got me a florial hoe and dug, and it’s been most excellent for me[19].”  Time, the Saturday following the Friday on which Ralph kept Shocky company as far as the “forks” near Granny Sanders’s house.  Scene, the Squire’s garden.  Ralph helping that worthy magistrate perform sundry little jobs such as a warm winter day suggests to the farmer.  Miss Martha Hawkins, the Squire’s niece, and his housekeeper in his present bereaved condition, leaning over the palings—­pickets she called them—­of the garden fence, talking to the master.  Miss Hawkins was recently from Massachusetts.  How many people there are in the most cultivated communities whose education is partial!

“It’s very common for school-master to dig in the elements at the East,” proceeded Miss Martha.  Like many other people born in the celestial empires (of which there are three—­China, Virginia, Massachusetts), Miss Martha was not averse to reminding outside barbarians of her good fortune in this regard.  It did her good to speak of the East.

Now Ralph was amused with Miss Martha.  She really had a good deal of intelligence despite her affectation, and conversation with her was both interesting and diverting.  It helped him to forget Hannah, and Bud, and the robbery, and all the rest, and she was so delighted to find somebody to make an impression on that she had come out to talk while Ralph was at work.  But just at this moment the school-master was not so much interested in her interesting remarks, nor so much amused by her amusing remarks, as he should have been.  He saw a man coming down the road riding one horse and leading another, and he recognized the horses at a distance.  It must be Bud who was riding Means’s bay mare and leading Bud’s roan colt.  Bud had been to mill, and as the man who owned the horse-mill kept but one old blind horse himself, it was necessary that Bud should take two.  It required three horses to run the mill; the old blind one could have ground the grist, but the two others had to overcome the friction of the clumsy machine.  But it was not about the horse-mill that Ralph was thinking nor about the two horses.  Since that Wednesday evening on which he escorted Hannah home from the spelling-school he had not seen Bud Means.  If he had any lingering doubts of the truth of what Mirandy had said, they had been dissipated by the absence of Bud from school.

“When I was to Bosting—­” Miss Martha was to Boston only once in her life, but as her visit to that sacred city was the most important occurrence of her life, she did not hesitate to air her reminiscences of it frequently.  “When I was to Bosting,” she was just saying, when, following the indication of Ralph’s eyes, she saw Bud coming up the hill near Squire Hawkins’s house.  Bud looked red and sulky, and to Ralph’s and Miss Martha Hawkins’s polite recognitions he returned only a surly nod.  They both saw that he was angry.  Ralph was able to guess the meaning of his wrath.