“Where to?” shouted Jerome, pulling the tackle off the horse.

“Come quick, J’rome!”

“Where to?”

“Speak up, can’t ye?” cried Ozias, shaking the boy by his small shoulder.

“To Basset’s!” screamed the boy, shrilly, jerked away from Ozias, and was off, clearing the ground like a hound, with long leaps.

“Lord,” said Ozias, looking at the deed, “it’s killed him!”

Jerome had freed the horse from the plough, and now sprang upon his back.

“Ye ain’t goin’ to ride him bare-back?” asked Ozias.

“I’m not going to stop for a saddle.  G’long!” Jerome bent forward, slapped the horse on the neck, dug his heels into his sides, and was off at a gallop.

Ozias followed, still clutching the deed.  Abel Edwards came out as he reached the house.  “Where’s J’rome goin’ to?” he asked.

“Down to Basset’s; somethin’s happened.  He’s fell dead or somethin’.  I’m goin’ to see what the matter is.”

“Wait till I git my hat, an’ I’ll go with ye.”

The two old men went at a fast trot down the road, and many joined them, all hurrying to Simon Basset’s.

They had reached Lawyer Means’s house, which stood in sight of Basset’s, before they met a returning company.  “It’s no use your goin’,” shouted a man in advance.  “He’s gone.  J’rome Edwards said so the minute he see him, an’ now Doctor Prescott he’s come, an’ he says so.  He was dead before they cut him down.”

With the throng of excited men and boys came one pale-faced, elderly woman, with her cap awry and her apron over her shoulders.  She was Miss Rachel Blodgett, Eliphalet Means’s house-keeper.

She took up her position by the Means’s gate, and the crowd gathered about her as a nucleus.  Other women came running out of neighboring houses, and pressed close to her skirts.  Cyrus Robinson’s son pushed before her, and, when she began to speak in a strained treble, overpowered it with a coarse volume of bass.  “Let me tell what I’ve got to first,” he ordered, importantly.  “My part comes first, then it’s your turn.  I’ve got to go back to the store.  It was just about noon that Simon Basset come in ag’in and asked for a piece of rope.  Said he wanted it to tie his cow with.  I got out some rope, and he tried to beat me down on it; asked me if I hadn’t got some second-hand rope I’d let him have a piece of.  Finally I got mad, and asked him why, if he wasn’t willing to pay for rope what it was worth, he didn’t use a halter or his clothes-line.

“He whined out that his halter was broke, and he hadn’t had a clothes-line for years.  That last I believed, quick enough, for I knew he didn’t ever have any washing done.

“Then I asked him why he didn’t steal a rope if he was too poor to pay for it, and he said he was too poor.  He wasn’t worth more than five thousand dollars in the world, and he’d given away all he was going to of that.  When he got started on that, he ripped and raved the way he did this morning; hang it, if I didn’t begin to think he was out of his mind.  Then he went off, about ten minutes past twelve, without his rope.  I suppose there were pieces of rope enough around, but I got mad, he acted so darned mean about it, and wouldn’t hunt it up for him, and I’m glad now I didn’t.”