Eliphalet Means, whose partner Abigail had become by this deflection, nodded, and seated himself at once in his place at table, the pleasant titillation of the punch in his veins and approval in his heart.  He considered Abigail a better player than her husband, and began to meditate proposing a small stake that evening.

The Squire, setting forth on his errand to Doctor Prescott, striding heavily through the sweet dampness of the spring night, experienced a curious combination of amusement, satisfaction, and indignation with himself.  “I’m a fool!” he declared, with more vehemence than he would have declared four aces in bezique; and then he cursed his folly, and told himself that if he kept on he would leave Abigail and the child without a penny.  But then, after all, he realized that singularly warm glow of self-approval for a good deed which at once comforts and irradiates the heart in spite of all worldly prudence and wisdom.

That night the air was very heavy with moisture, which seemed to hold all the spring odors of newly turned earth, young grass, and blossoms in solution.  Squire Eben moved through it as through a scented flood in which respiration was possible.  Over all the fields was a pale mist, waving and eddying in such impalpable air currents that it seemed to have a sentient life of its own.  These soft rises and lapses of the mist on the fields might seemingly have been due to the efforts of prostrate shadows to gather themselves into form.  Beyond the fields, against the hills and woods and clear horizon, pale fogs arose with motions as of arms and garments and streaming locks.  The blossoming trees stood out suddenly beside one with a white surprise rather felt than seen.  The young moon and the stars shone dimly with scattering rays, and the lights in the house windows were veiled.  The earth and sky and all the familiar features of the village had that effect of mystery and unreality which some conditions of the atmosphere bring to pass.

A strangely keen sense of the unstability of all earthly things, of the shadows of the tomb, of the dreamy half-light of the world, came over Eben Merritt, and his generous impulse seemed suddenly the only lantern to light his wavering feet.  “I’ll do what I can for the poor little chap, come what will,” he muttered, and strode on to Doctor Prescott’s house.

Just before he reached it a horse and sulky turned into the yard, driven rapidly from the other direction.  Squire Eben hastened his steps, and reached the south house door before the doctor entered.  He was just ascending the steps, his medicine-case in hand, when he heard his name called, and turned around.

“I want a word with you before you go in, doctor,” called the Squire, as he came up.

“Good-evening, Squire Merritt,” returned the doctor, bowing formally on his vantage-ground of steps, but his voice bespoke a spiritual as well as material elevation.

“I would like a word with you,” the Squire said again.