By early spring the mill was in full operation.  The railroad through Dale was surveyed, and work was to be commenced on it the next fall, and Jerome had the contract for the sleepers.  Again he wondered if he should not go to Lucina and tell her, and again he resolved to wait.  He had made up his mind that he would not speak until a fixed income was guaranteed by at least a year’s test.

“I wish they would put railroads through for us every year,” he said to the man whom he had secured to help him.  He was an elderly man from Granby, who had owned a mill there, which had been sold three years before.  He had a tidy sum in bank, and people wondered at his going to work again.

“I ’ain’t got so very many years to work,” he told Jerome when he sought to hire him, “an’ I thought I’d give up for good three years ago; thought I’d take it easy, an’ have a comfortable old age.  I got fifty dollars more’n I expected when I sold out the mill, an’ I laid it out for extras for mother an’ me; bought her a sofy an’ stuffed rockin’-chair, a new set of dishes, an’ some teaspoons, an’ some strainers for the windows agin fly-time.  ‘Now, mother,’ says I, ‘we’ll jest lay down in the daytime, an’ rock, an’ eat with our new spoons out of our new dishes, an’ keep the flies out, the rest of our lives.’

“But mother she looked real sober.  ‘What’s the matter?’ says I.

“‘Nothin’,’ says she, ‘only I was thinkin’ about your father.’

“‘What about him?’ says I.

“‘Nothin’,’ says she, ‘only I remember mother’s sayin’, when he quit work, he wouldn’t live long.  She always said it was a bad sign.’

“That settled me.  I remembered father didn’t live six months after he quit work, an’ grandfather before him, an’ I’d every reason to think it run in the family.  So says I to mother, ‘Well, I’m havin’ too good a time livin’ to throw it away settin’ in rockin’-chairs an’ layin’ down in the daytime.  If work is goin’ to keep up the picnic a while longer, why, I’m goin’ to work.’

“So the very next day I hired out to the man that bought my mill, an’ there I’ve worked ever since, till now, when he’s got his son he wants to give the job to.  I’ll go with ye, an’ welcome, for a spell.  Mother ain’t afeard to stay alone, an’ I’ll go home over Sundays.  Ye need somebody who knows somethin’ about a mill, if ye’re green at it yourself.”

This man, whose name was Martin Cheeseman, was hoary with age, but far from being past his prime of work.  He had a large and shambling strength of body and limb, like an old bear, and his sinews were, of their kind, as tough as those of the ancient woods which he severed.

One afternoon, when the mill had been in operation about two months, Squire Eben Merritt, John Jennings, and Colonel Lamson came through from the thick woods into the clearing.  The Squire bore his fishing-rod and dangled a string of fine trout.  John Jennings had a book under his arm.