Jerome, who had stood listening in the door, slid up to his mother and touched her arm.  “Oh, mother,” he whispered, “I know all about it—­it’s all right!”

Ann gave him a thrust with a little sharp elbow.  “What do you know about it?” she cried.  “I’m here to look out for you and your sister, and take care of what little we’ve got, an’ I’m goin’ to.  Go out an’ tend to your work.”

“Oh, mother, do let me stay!”

“Go right along, I tell you.”  And Jerome, who was the originator of all this, went out helplessly, slighted and indignant.  He did think the Squire might have interceded for him to stay, knowing what he knew.  Even youth has its disadvantages.

But Squire Eben stood somewhat aloof, looking at the small, frail, pugnacious woman in the rocking-chair with perplexity and growing impatience.  He wanted to go fishing that morning, and the vision of the darting trout in their still, clear pool was before him, like a vision of his own earthly paradise.  He gave a despairing glance at Doctor Prescott, who had hitherto said little.  “Can’t you convince her it is all right?  She knows you better than the rest of us,” he whispered.

Doctor Prescott nodded, arose—­he had been sitting apart—­went to Mrs. Edwards, and touched her shoulder.  “Mrs. Edwards,” said he—­Ann gave a terrified yet wholly unyielding flash of her black eyes at him—­“Mrs. Edwards, will you please attend to what we have come to tell you.  I have transferred the mortgage note given me by your late husband to Squire Eben Merritt; there is nothing for you to sign.  You will simply pay the interest money to him, instead of to me.”

“You can tear me to pieces, if you want to,” said Ann, “but I won’t sign away what little my poor husband left to me and my children, for you or any other man.”

“Look at me,” said the doctor.

Ann never stirred her head.

“Look at me.”

Ann looked.

“Now,” said the doctor, “you listen and you understand.  I can’t waste any more time here.  Squire Merritt has bought that mortgage which your husband gave me, and paid me for it in land.  You have simply nothing to do with it, except to understand.  Nobody wants you to sign anything.”

Ann looked at him with some faint light of comprehension through her wild impetus of resistance.  “I’d ruther it would stay the way it was before,” said she.  “My husband gave you the mortgage.  He thought you were trustworthy.  I’d jest as soon pay you interest money as Squire Merritt.”

Then Eliphalet Means spoke dryly, still with that utter patience of preparation and expectation:  “If Doctor Prescott retains this mortgage he intends to foreclose.”

Ann looked at him, and then at Doctor Prescott.  She gasped, “Foreclose!”

Doctor Prescott nodded.

“You mean to foreclose?  You mean to take this place away from us?” Ann cried, shrilly.  “You with all you’ve got, and we a widow and orphans!  And you callin’ yourself a good man an’ a pillar of the sanctuary!”