Charles looked at him.  “How on earth—?” he demanded.  “What in blazes are you—­a clairvoyant?”

“No-o.  No.  But it don’t need a spirit medium to see through a window pane, Charlie; that is, the average window pane,” he added, with a glance at his own, which were in need of washing just then.  “You want to know,” he continued, “what you’d ought to do now that will be the right thing, or the nighest to the right thing, for your sister and Babbie and yourself—­and Maud.”

“Yes, I do.  It isn’t any new question for me.  I’ve been putting it up to myself for a long time, for months; by, George, it seems years.”

“I know.  I know.  Well, Charlie, I’ve been puttin’ it up to myself, too.  Have you got any answer?”

“No, none that exactly suits me.  Have you?”

“I don’t know’s I have—­exactly.”

“Exactly?  Well, have you any, exact or otherwise?”

“Um. . . .  Well, I’ve got one, but . . . but perhaps it ain’t an answer.  Perhaps it wouldn’t do at all.  Perhaps . . . perhaps . . .”

“Never mind the perhapses.  What is it?”

“Um. . . .  Suppose we let it wait a little spell and talk the situation over just a little mite.  You’ve been talkin’ with your sister, you say, and she don’t entirely agree with you.”

“No.  I say things can’t go on as they’ve been going.  They can’t.”

“Um-hm.  Meanin’—­what things?”

“Everything.  Jed, do you remember that day when you and I had the talk about poetry and all that?  When you quoted that poem about a chap’s fearing his fate too much?  Well, I’ve been fearing my fate ever since I began to realize what a mess I was getting into here in Orham.  When I first came I saw, of course, that I was skating on thin ice, and it was likely to break under me at any time.  I knew perfectly well that some day the Middleford business was bound to come out and that my accepting the bank offer without telling Captain Hunniwell or any one was a mighty risky, not to say mean, business.  But Ruth was so very anxious that I should accept and kept begging me not to tell, at least until they had had a chance to learn that I was worth something, that I gave in and . . .  I say, Jed,” he put in, breaking his own sentence in the middle, “don’t think I’m trying to shove the blame over on to Sis.  It’s not that.”

Jed nodded.  “Sho, sho, Charlie,” he said, “course ’tain’t.  I understand.”

“No, I’ll take the blame.  I was old enough to have a mind of my own.  Well, as I was saying, I realized it all, but I didn’t care so much.  If the smash did come, I figured, it might not come until I had established myself at the bank, until they might have found me valuable enough to keep on in spite of it.  And I worked mighty hard to make them like me.  Then—­then—­well, then Maud and I became friends and—­and—­oh, confound it, you see what I mean!  You must see.”