own self-respect and community opinion than in the actual loss. Though he never mentioned it, I have no doubt but that Mrs. Dack's wit coruscated around this sorest of points, and that poor Abel suffered as only a sensitive nature can, in being held up in ridicule for the diversion of the summer young ladies.
However that may be, season followed season with no change in Abel's "prospects." He still "batched it" in the little green (or brown or yellow) house among the elder-berry bushes, and went his daily round of milking, chicken-feeding, and housekeeping, ever a little more bronzed, a little heavier of step, a little more humble-minded. A gentler dignity settled upon him; the dignity of faithful and honorable toil and of association with Nature's wind-swept tides and spaces. It became him well.
But Nature does not change words with you or put a stick on the fire when it languishes. We have need of our kind. The fear began to haunt me that some fine spring we should find Abel had vanished, driven forth by the loneliness of the life he had undertaken, combined with the jibes of his erratic neighbor.
Then one February when the ice bill came
