“Was it you was tellin’ me that Ad’line was to work again in Lowell?  I shouldn’t think her husband’s folks would want the child to be fetched up there in them boardin’ houses”—­

“Belike they don’t,” responded Jacob, “but when they get Ad’line to come round to their ways o’ thinkin’ now, after what’s been and gone, they’ll have cause to thank themselves.  She’s just like her gre’t grandsir Thacher; you can see she’s made out o’ the same stuff.  You might ha’ burnt him to the stake, and he’d stick to it he liked it better’n hanging and al’ays meant to die that way.  There’s an awful bad streak in them Thachers, an’ you know it as well as I do.  I expect there’ll be bad and good Thachers to the end o’ time.  I’m glad for the old lady’s sake that John ain’t one o’ the drinkin’ ones.  Ad’line’ll give no favors to her husband’s folks, nor take none.  There’s plenty o’ wrongs to both sides, but as I view it, the longer he’d lived the worse ‘t would been for him.  She was a well made, pretty lookin’ girl, but I tell ye ’t was like setting a laylock bush to grow beside an ellum tree, and expecting of ’em to keep together.  They wa’n’t mates.  He’d had a different fetchin’ up, and he was different, and I wa’n’t surprised when I come to see how things had turned out,—­I believe I shall have to set the door open a half a minute, ‘t is gettin’ dreadful”—­but there was a sudden flurry outside, and the sound of heavy footsteps, the bark of the startled cur, who was growing very old and a little deaf, and Mrs. Martin burst into the room and sank into the nearest chair, to gather a little breath before she could tell her errand.  “For God’s sake what’s happened?” cried the men.

They presented a picture of mingled comfort and misery at which Mrs. Martin would have first laughed and then scolded at any other time.  The two honest red faces were well back toward the farther side of the room from the fire, which still held its own; it was growing toward low tide in the cider jug and its attendant mugs, and the pipes were lying idle.  The mistress of the old farm-house did not fail to notice that high treason had been committed during her short absence, but she made no comment upon the fireplace nor on anything else, and gasped as soon as she could that one of the men must go right up to the Corners for the doctor and hurry back with him, for’t was a case of life and death.

“Mis’ Thacher?” “Was it a shock?” asked the brothers in sorrowful haste, while Mrs. Martin told the sad little story of Adeline’s having come from nobody knew where, wet and forlorn, carrying her child in her arms.  She looked as if she were in the last stages of a decline.  She had fallen just at the doorstep and they had brought her in, believing that she was dead.  “But while there’s life, there’s hope,” said Mrs. Martin, “and I’ll go back with you if you’ll harness up.  Jacob must stop to look after this gre’t fire or ’twill burn the house down,” and this was the punishment which befell Jacob, since nothing else would have kept him from also journeying toward the Thacher house.