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It was the lonesome time of the year: not November, that accomplishment of a gracious death, but the moment before the conscious spring, when watercourses have not yet stirred in awakening, and buds are only dreamed of by trees still asleep but for the sweet trouble within their wood; when the air finds as yet no response to the thrill beginning to creep where roots lie blind in the dark; when life is at the one dull, flat instant before culmination and movement. I had gone down post-haste to my well-beloved Tiverton, in response to the news sent me by a dear countrywoman, that Nancy Boyd, whom I had not seen since my long absence in Europe, was dying of “galloping consumption.” Nancy wanted to bid me good-by. Hiram Cole met me, lean-jawed, dust-colored, wrinkled as of old, with the overalls necessitated by his “sleddin'” at least four inches too short. Not the Pyramids themselves were such potent evidence that time may stand still, withal, as this lank, stooping figure, line for line exactly what it had been five years before. Hiram helped me into the pung, took his place beside me, and threw a conversational “huddup” to the rakish-looking sorrel colt. We dashed sluing away down the country road, and then I turned to look at my old friend. He was steadfastly gazing at the landscape ahead, the while he passed one wiry hand over his face, to smooth out its broadening smile. He was glad to see me, but his private code of decorum forbade the betrayal of any such “shaller” emotion.

“Well, Hiram,” I began, “Tiverton looks exactly the same, doesn’t it? And poor Nancy, how is she?”

“Nancy’s pretty low,” said Hiram, drawing his mitten over the hand that had been used to iron out his smile, and giving critical attention to the colt’s off hind-leg. “She hil’ her own all winter, but now, come spring, she’s breakin’ up mighty fast. They don’t cal’late she’ll live more’n a day or two.”

“Her poor husband! How will he get along without her!”

Hiram turned upon me with vehemence.

“Why, don’t you know?” said he. “‘Ain’t nobody told ye? She ‘ain’t got no husband.”

“What? Is the Cap’n dead?”

“Dead? Bless ye, he’s divorced from Nancy, an’ married another woman, two year ago come this May!”

I was amazed, and Hiram looked at me with the undisguised triumph of one who has news to sell, be it good or bad.

“But Nancy has written me!” I said. “She told me the neighborhood gossip; why didn’t she tell me that?”

“Pride, I s’pose, pride,” said Hiram. “You can’t be sure how misery’ll strike folks. It’s like a September gale; the best o’ barns’ll blow down, an’ some rickety shanty’ll stan’ the strain. But there! Nancy’s had more to bear from the way she took her troubles than from the troubles themselves. Ye see, ’twas this way. Cap’n Jim had his own reasons for wantin’ to git rid of her, an’ I guess there was a time when he treated her pretty bad. I guess he as good’s turned her out o’ house an’ home, an’ when he sued for divorce for desertion, she never said a word; an’ he got it, an’ up an’ married, as soon as the law’d allow, Nancy never opened her head, all through it. She jest settled down, with a bed an’ a chair or two, in that little house she owned down by Wilier Brook, an’ took in tailorin’ an’ mendin’. One spell, she bound shoes. The whole town was with her till she begun carryin’ on like a crazed creatur’, as she did arterwards.”

My heart sank. Poor Nancy! if she had really incurred the public scorn, it must have been through dire extremity.

“Ye see,” Hiram continued, “folks were sort o’ tried with her from the beginnin’. You know what a good outfit she had from her mother’s side,–bureaus, an’ beddin’, an’ everything complete? Well, she left it all right there in the house, for Jim to use, an’ when he brought his new woman home, there the things set jest the same, an’ he never said a word. I don’t deny he ought to done different, but then, if Nancy wouldn’t look out for her own interests, you can’t blame him so much, now can ye? But the capsheaf come about a year ago, when Nancy had a smart little sum o’ money left her,–nigh onto a hunderd dollars. Jim he’d got into debt, an’ his oxen died, an’ one thing an’ another, he was all wore out, an’ had rheumatic fever; an’ if you’ll b’lieve it, Nancy she went over an’ done the work, an’ let his wife nuss him. She wouldn’t step foot into the bedroom, they said; she never see Jim once, but there she was, slavin’ over the wash-tub and ironin’-board,–an’ as for that money, I guess it went for doctor’s stuff an’ what all, for Jim bought a new yoke of oxen in the spring.”