When the men left the store that night, Simon Basset’s, Jake Noyes’s, and Adoniram Judd’s way lay in the same direction.  They still discussed poor Abel Edwards’s disappearance as they went along.  Their voices were rising high, when suddenly Jake Noyes gave Simon Basset a sharp nudge.  “Shut up,” he whispered; “the Edwards boy’s behind us.”

And indeed, as he spoke, Jerome’s little light figure came running past them.  He was evidently anxious to get by without notice, but Simon Basset grasped his arm and brought him to a standstill.

“Hullo!” said he.  “You’re Abel Edwards’s boy, ain’t you?”

“I can’t stop,” said Jerome, pulling away.  “I’ve got to go home.  Mother’s waiting for me.”

“I don’t s’pose you’ve heard anything yet from your father?”

“No, I ’ain’t.  I’ve got to go home.”

“Where’ve you been, Jerome?” asked Adoniram Judd.

“Up to Uncle Ozias’s to get Elmira’s shoes.”  Jerome had the stout little shoes, one in each hand.

“I don’t s’pose you’ve formed any idee of what’s become of your father,” said Simon Basset.

Jerome, who had been pulling away from his hold, suddenly stood still, and turned a stern little white face upon him.

“He’s dead,” said he.

“Yes, of course he’s dead.  That is, we’re all afraid he is, though we all hope for the best; but that ain’t the question,” said Simon Basset.  “The question is, how did he die?”

Jerome looked up in Simon Basset’s face.  “He died the same way you will, some time,” said he.  And with that Simon Basset let go his arm suddenly, and he was gone.

“Lord!” said Jake Noyes, under his breath.  Simon Basset said not another word; his grandfather, his uncle, and a brother had all taken their own lives, and he knew that the others were thinking of it.  They all wondered if the boy had been keen-witted enough to give this hard hit at Simon intentionally, but he had not.  Poor little Jerome had never speculated on the laws of heredity; he had only meant to deny that his father had come to any more disgraceful end than the common one of all mankind.  He did not dream, as he raced along home with his sister’s shoes, of the different construction which they had put upon his words, but he felt angry and injured.

“That Sim’ Basset pickin’ on me that way,” he thought.  A wild sense of the helplessness of his youth came over him.  “Wish I was a man,” he muttered—­“wish I was a man; I’d show ’em!  All them men talkin’—­sayin’ anything—­’cause I’m a boy.”

Just before he reached home Jerome met two more men, and he heard his father’s name distinctly.  One of them stretched out a detaining hand as he passed, and called out, “Hullo! you’re the Edwards boy?”

“Let me go, I tell you,” shouted Jerome, in a fury, and was past them with a wild flourish of heels, like a rebellious colt.

“What in creation ails the boy?” said the man, with a start aside; and he and the other stood staring after Jerome.