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Enoch was called in many times to give counsel which seemed to gain from his masculinity what it might be supposed to lack by reason of his ignorance concerning the ailments and accomplishments of the small stranger who held the heart of the community in his tiny purple fist. It was to Enoch that the young mother brought her small woes, and it was with Enoch that she left them.

The song of the hay-balers and the whir of the threshing-machine had died out of the valley, and the raisin-making had come on. The trays were spread in the vineyards, and the warm white air was filled with the fruity smell of the grapes, browning and sweetening beneath the October sun.

One drowsy afternoon Enoch was in the back room of the store, weighing barley and marking the weight on the sacks. Suddenly there was a quick step, and a voice in the outer room, and the old man turned slowly, with the brush in his hand, and confronted a man in the doorway.

“Jerry!”

“Yes, uncle, here I am; slightly disfigured, but still in the ring. How’s the market? Long on barley, I see. I”–he broke off suddenly, and assumed an air of the deepest dejection. “I’ve had a great deal of trouble since I saw you, uncle. I’ve lost my wife.”

He turned to the window and pretended to look through the cobwebbed glass.

“She went off very sudden, but she was conscious to the last.”

Enoch stood still and slowly stirred the paint in the paint-pot until his companion turned and caught the glance of his keen blue eye.

“Does thee think she will stay lost, Jerry?” he asked quietly.

The young fellow came close to Enoch’s side.

“You bet,” he said, with low, husky intensity; “the law settled that. She was a cursed fraud anyway,” he went on, with hurrying wrath; “she ran away with–I thought she was dead–I’ll swear by”–

“Thee needn’t swear, Jerry,” interrupted Enoch quietly; “if thy word is good for nothing, thy blasphemy will not help it any.”

The young man’s face relaxed. There was a little silence.

“Has thee been up to thy house?” asked Enoch presently.

“Yes, yes,” said Jerry lightly; “I dropped right in on the family circle. The widow seems to be a nice, tidy little person, and the kid–did you ever see anything to beat that kid, uncle?”

Enoch had been appealed to on this subject before.

“He’s a very nice baby,” he said gravely.

“They seem to be settled rather comfortably, and I guess I’ll get a tent and pitch it on some of these vacant lots, and not disturb them. The little woman isn’t really well enough to move, and besides, the kid might kick if he had to give up the cradle; perfect fit, isn’t it?”

* * * * *

“Enoch,” said Rachel Embody to her husband, as they drove their flea-bitten gray mare to the Friends’ meeting on First Day, “what does thee think of Jerry Sullivan and the widow Hart marrying as they did? Doesn’t thee think it was a little sudden for both of them?”

Enoch slapped the lines on the gray’s callous back.

“I don’t know, Rachel,” he said; “there are some subjects which I do not find profitable for reflection.”