He replaced the great gold watch in his pocket.  “I will be in soon, and talk over matters with your mother,” he said, turning away.

Jerome gave a gasp.  He stumbled forward, as if to fall on his knees at the doctor’s feet.

“Oh, sir, don’t, don’t!” he cried out.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t foreclose the mortgage.  It will kill mother.”

“You don’t know what you are talking about,” said the doctor, calmly.  “Children should not meddle in matters beyond them.  I will settle it with your mother.”

“Mother’s sick!” gasped Jerome.  The doctor was moving with his stately strut to the door.  Suddenly the boy, in a great outburst of boldness, flung himself before this great man of his childhood and arrested his progress.  “Oh, sir, tell me,” he begged—­“tell me what you’re going to do!”

The doctor never knew why he stopped to explain and parley.  He was conscious of no softening towards this boy, who had so repelled him with his covert rebellion, and had now been guilty of a much greater offence.  An appeal to a goodness which is not in him is to a sensitive and vain soul a stinging insult.  Doctor Prescott could have administered corporal punishment to this boy, who seemed to him to be actually poking fun at his dignity, and yet he stopped and answered: 

“I am going to take your house into my hands,” said Doctor Prescott, “and your mother can live in it and pay me rent.”

“We can’t pay rent any better than interest money.”

“If you can’t pay the rent, I shall be willing to take that wood-lot of your father’s,” said Doctor Prescott.  “I will talk that over with your mother.”

Jerome looked at him.  There was a dreadful expression on his little boyish face.  His very lips were white.  “You are goin’ to take our woodland for rents?”

“If you can’t pay them, of course.  Your mother ought to be glad she has it to pay with.”

“Then we sha’n’t have anything.”

Doctor Prescott endeavored to move on, but Jerome fairly crowded himself between him and the door, and stood there, his pale face almost touching his breast, and his black eyes glaring up at him with a startling nearness as of fire.

“You are a wicked man,” said the boy, “and some day God will punish you for it.”

Then there came a grasp of nervous hands upon his shoulders, like the clamp of steel, the door was opened before him, and he was pushed out, and along the entry at arm’s-length, and finally made to descend the south door-steps at a dizzy run.  “Go home to your mother,” ordered Doctor Prescott.  Still, he did not raise his voice, his color had not changed, and he breathed no quicker.  Births and deaths, all natural stresses of life, its occasional tragedies, and even his own bitter wrath could this small, equally poised man meet with calm superiority over them and command over himself.  Doctor Seth Prescott never lost his personal dignity—­he