which was to pass through part of his land; sub-contractors cheated him, and he, in his honesty, almost ruined himself to right their wrong.  Then he opened a little store; here, also, he failed.  He was too honest, too sympathizing, too inert.  His day-book was a curiosity; he had a vein of humor which no amount of misfortune could quench; and he used to enter under the head of “given” all the purchases which he knew were not likely to be paid for.  It was at sight of this book, one day, that Jane Miller, for the first and only time in her life, lost her temper with Reuben.

“Well, I must say, Reuben Miller, if I die for it,” said she, “I haven’t had so much as a pound of white sugar nor a single lemon in my house for two years, and I do think it’s a burnin’ shame for you to go on sellin’ ’em to them shiftless Greens, that’ll never pay you a cent, and you know it!”

Reuben was sitting on the counter smoking his pipe and reading an old tattered copy of Dryden’s translation of Virgil.  He lifted his clear blue eyes in astonishment, put down his pipe, and, slowly swinging his long legs over the counter, caught Jane by the waist, put both his arms round her, and said,—­

“Why, mother, what’s come over you!  You know poor little Eph’s dyin’ of that white swellin’.  You wouldn’t have me refuse his mother anything we’ve got, would you?”

Jane Miller walked back to the house with tears in her eyes, but her homely sallow face was transfigured by love as she went about her work, thinking to herself,—­

“There never was such a man’s Reuben, anyhow.  I guess he’ll get interest one o’ these days for all he’s lent the Lord, first and last, without anybody’s knowin’ it.”

But the Lord has His own system of reckoning compound interest, and His ways of paying are not our ways.  He gave no visible sign of recognition of indebtedness to Reuben.  Things went harder and harder with the Millers, until they had come to such a pass that when Reuben Miller went after the doctor, in the early dawn of the day on which little Draxy was born, he clasped his hands in sorrow and humiliation before he knocked at the doctor’s door; and his only words were hard words for a man of sensitiveness and pride to speak:—­

“Doctor Cobb, will you come over to my wife?  I don’t dare to be sure I can ever pay you; but if there’s anything in the store “—­

“Pshaw, pshaw, Reuben, don’t speak of that; you’ll be all right in a few years,” said the kind old doctor, who had known Reuben from his boyhood, and understood him far better than any one else did.

And so little Draxy was born.

“It’s a mercy it’s a girl at last,” said the village gossips.  “Mis’ Miller’s had a hard time with them four great boys, and Mr. Miller so behindhand allers.”

“And who but Reuben Miller’d ever think of givin’ a Christian child such a name!” they added.

But what the name was nobody rightly made out; nor even whether it had been actually given to the baby, or had only been talked of; and between curiosity and antagonism, the villagers were so drawn to Reuben Miller’s store, that it began to look quite like a run of custom.