“Mebbe,” said Ozias Lamb, “somebody killed poor Abel for his mortgage.  I dun’no’ of anything else he had.”  Ozias laughed again.  He was a stout, squat man, leaning forward upon his knees as he sat, with a complete subsidence of all his muscles, which showed that it was his accustomed attitude.  Just in that way had Ozias Lamb sat and cobbled shoes on his lapboard for nearly forty years.  He was almost resolved into a statue illustrative of his own toil.  He never stood if he could help it; indeed, his knees felt weak under him if he tried to do so.  He sank into the first seat and settled heavily forward into his one pose of life.

All the other men looked rather apprehensively at him.  His face was all broadened with sardonic laughter, but his blue eyes were fierce under his great bushy head of fair hair.  “Abel Edwards has been lugging of that mortgage ’round for the last ten years,” said he, “an’ it’s been about all he had to lug.  It’s been the meat in his stomach an’ the hope in his heart.  He ‘ain’t been a-lookin’ forward to eatin’, but to payin’ up the interest money when it came due; he ‘ain’t been a-lookin’ forward to heaven, but to clearin’ off the mortgage.  It’s been all he’s had; it’s bore down on his body and his soul, an’ it’s braced him up to keep on workin’.  He’s been a-livin’ in this Christian town for ten years a-carryin’ of this fine mortgage right out in plain sight, an’ I shouldn’t be a mite surprised if somebody see it an’ hankered arter it.  Folks are so darned anxious in this ’ere Christian town to get holt of each other’s burdens!”

Simon Basset edged his chair away still farther; then he spoke.  “Don’t s’pose you expected folks to up an’ pay Abel Edwards’s mortgage for him,” he said.

“No, I didn’t,” returned Ozias Lamb, and the sardonic curves around his mouth deepened.

“An’ I don’t s’pose you’d expect Doctor Prescott to make him a present of it,” said Jake Noyes, suddenly, from the outskirts of the group.  He had come in for the doctor’s mail, and was lounging with one great red-sealed missive and a religious newspaper in his hand.

“No,” said Ozias Lamb, “I shouldn’t never expect the doctor to make a present to anybody but himself or the Lord or the meetin’-house.”

A general chuckle ran over the group at that.  Doctor Prescott was regarded in the village as rather parsimonious except in those three directions.

Jake Noyes colored angrily and stepped forward.  “I ain’t goin’ to hear no nonsense about Doctor Prescott,” he exclaimed.  “I won’t stan’ it from none of ye.  I give ye fair warnin’.  I don’t eat no man’s flapjacks an’ hear him talked agin within swing of my fists if I can help it.”

The storekeeper and postmaster, Cyrus Robinson, had been leaning over his counter between the scales and a pile of yellow soap bars, smiling and shrewdly observant.  Now he spoke, and the savor of honey for all was in his words.