Yet the Hautville men heard nothing of the bitterness which was gathering towards Madelon and Burr, for people, fearing their fierce tempers, hesitated until the time was come to disclose it to them.  Even old Luke Basset dared not carry news to them.  The tongues were always hushed when one of them drew near; and as for Eugene, who, having a wife, might perhaps have discovered it, he and Dorothy took the stage coach for Boston the day after the marriage, and were paying a visit at Dorothy’s aunt’s there.

After three days Lot Gordon was reported to be no longer hovering between life and death, and yet it was said on good authority, through the doctor’s wife in fact, that he might at any time, by an injudicious step or a harder coughing-spell, end his life through the opening of that old wound, for which they held either Madelon or Burr, or perhaps both, accountable; and public indignation swelled higher and higher.  It was resolved that when the bridal couple returned a constant espionage should be kept upon them, and in case of Lot’s death active measures should be taken.

“We ain’t goin’ to have a man murdered to death in our midst by no French and Injuns nowadays and let it slide,” proclaimed a fiery spirit in the store one night.  Then when the door opened and Abner Hautville, dark and warlike in his carriage as any fighting chief, appeared, the man asked ostentatiously for a “quart of m’lasses, and not so black and gritty as the last was nuther,” transferring the rancor in his tone to an inoffensive object with Machiavellian policy.

However, Margaret Bean’s husband was in the store that night, and heard it all.  He had been sent thither for a half-pound of ginger, and told not to linger; but linger he did, disposing his old bones with a stiff fling upon a handy half-barrel and listening to every word with a shrewd sense, for which no one would have given him credit, that he could by repetition and enlargement, if necessary, appease his wife’s wrath at his delay.  The workings of the human mind towards selfish ends even in the simplest organization have an art beyond all mechanism, and can astonish the wisest when revealed.

Nobody who saw old man Bean pottering homeward that night, his back bent with age, yet moving with a childlike shuffle, carrying his parcel of ginger with tight clutch lest he drop it, like one whose weariness of body must make up for feebleness of mind, dreamed what a diplomat he was in his humble walk of life, and what an adept still in doubles and turns and twists and dodges towards his own petty ends.

A sweeter morsel than any sugar old man Bean, overborne with a sense of naughtiness and disobedience, like a child, carried home to his wife to quiet her chiding tongue.

Hardly had he entered the door when he heard afar the swift rattle of her starched skirts, like a very warning note of hostility, and cut in ahead of her reproaches with a triumphant manner.