"Well, Hiram," I began, "Tiverton looks exactly the same, doesn't it? And poor Nancy, how is she?"
"Nancy's pretty low," said Hiram, drawing his mitten over the hand that had been used to iron out his smile, and giving critical attention to the colt's off hind-leg. "She hil' her own all winter, but now, come spring, she's breakin' up mighty fast. They don't cal'late she'll live more'n a day or two."
"Her poor husband! How will he get along without her!"
Hiram turned upon me with vehemence.
"Why, don't you know?" said he. "'Ain't nobody told ye? She 'ain't got no husband."
"What? Is the Cap'n dead?"
"Dead? Bless ye, he's divorced from Nancy, an' married another woman, two year ago come this May!"
I was amazed, and Hiram looked at me with the undisguised triumph of one who has news to sell, be it good or bad.
"But Nancy has written me!" I said. "She told me the neighborhood gossip; why didn't she tell me that?"
"Pride, I s'pose, pride," said Hiram. "You can't be sure how misery'll strike folks. It's like a September gale; the best o' barns'll blow down, an' some rickety shanty'll stan' the strain. But there! Nancy's had more to bear from the way she took her troubles than from the troubles themselves. Ye see, 'twas this way. Cap'n Jim had his own reasons for wantin' to git rid of her, an' I guess there was a time when he treated her pretty bad. I guess he as good's turned her out o' house an' home, an' when he sued for divorce for desertion, she never said a word; an' he got it, an' up an' married, as soon as the law'd allow, Nancy never opened her head, all through it. She jest settled down, with a bed an' a chair or two, in that little house she owned down by Wilier Brook, an' took in tailorin' an' mendin'. One spell, she bound shoes. The whole town was with her till she begun carryin' on like a crazed creatur', as she did arterwards."