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“‘T was mysterious, I do maintain,” acknowledged Mrs. Forder. “Comes over me sometimes p’raps ‘t wasn’t Enoch; he’d ‘a’ branched out more in course o’ time. I’m waitin’ to see if he does extry well to sea ‘fore I let my mind come to bear on his bein’ clean handed.”

“Plenty thought ‘t was the ole Cap’n come back for it an’ sperited it away. Enough said that ‘t wasn’t no honest gains; most on’t was prize-money o’ slave ships, an’ all kinds o’ devil’s gold was mixed in. I s’pose you’ve heard that said?”

“Time an’ again,” responded Mrs. Forder; “an’ the worst on’t was simple old Pappy Flanders went an’ told the Knowles gals themselves that folks thought the ole Cap’n come back an’ got it, and Hannah done wrong to cuss Enoch Holt an’ his ginerations after him the way she done.”

“I think it took holt on her ter’ble after all she’d gone through,” said Mrs. Downs, compassionately. “He ain’t near so simple as he is ugly, Pappy Flanders ain’t. I’ve seen him set here an’ read the paper sober’s anybody when I’ve been goin’ about my mornin’s work in the shed-room, an’ when I’d come in to look about he’d twist it with his hands an’ roll his eyes an’ begin to git off some o’ his gable. I think them wander-in’ cheap-wits likes the fun on’t an’ ‘scapes stiddy work, an’ gits the rovin’ habit so fixed, it sp’iles ’em.”

“My gran’ther was to the South Seas in his young days,” related Mrs. Forder, impressively, “an’ he said cussin’ was common there. I mean sober spitin’ with a cuss. He seen one o’ them black folks git a gredge against another an’ go an’ set down an’ look stiddy at him in his hut an’ cuss him in his mind an’ set there an’ watch, watch, until the other kind o’ took sick an’ died, all in a fortnight, I believe he said; ‘t would make your blood run cold to hear gran’ther describe it, ‘t would so. He never done nothin’ but set an’ look, an’ folks would give him somethin’ to eat now an’ then, as if they thought ‘t was all right, an’ the other one ‘d try to go an’ come, an’ at last he hived away altogether an’ died. I don’t know what you’d call it that ailed him. There’s suthin’ in cussin’ that’s bad for folks, now I tell ye, Mis’ Downs.”

“Hannah’s eyes always makes me creepy now,” Mrs. Downs confessed uneasily. “They don’t look pleadin’ an’ childish same ‘s they used to. Seems to me as if she’d had the worst on’t.”

“We ain’t seen the end on’t yit,” said Mrs. Forder, impressively. “I feel it within me, Marthy Downs, an’ it’s a terrible thing to have happened right amon’st us in Christian times. If we live long enough we’re goin’ to have plenty to talk over in our old age that’s come o’ that cuss. Some seed’s shy o’ sproutin’ till a spring when the s’ile’s jest right to breed it.”

“There’s lobeely now,” agreed Mrs. Downs, pleased to descend to prosaic and familiar levels. “They ain’t a good crop one year in six, and then you find it in a place where you never observed none to grow afore, like’s not; ain’t it so, reelly?” And she rose to clear the table, pleased with the certainty of a guest that night. Their conversation was not reassuring to the heart of a timid woman, alone in an isolated farmhouse on a dark spring evening, especially so near the anniversary of old Captain Knowles’s death.

V.

Later in these rural lives by many years two aged women were crossing a wide field together, following a footpath such as one often finds between widely separated homes of the New England country. Along these lightly traced thoroughfares, the children go to play, and lovers to plead, and older people to companion one another in work and pleasure, in sickness and sorrow; generation after generation comes and goes again by these country by-ways.