"Wal, no, I reckon not. A young fellow from somewhere about Boston or York, come up the river one summer to hunt and fish in the hills, he married the gal, and carried her off to the city."
"And did she never come back?"
"No; but a year or two after, the young man come and brought a little girl with him, the purtyest creature you ever sat eyes on. Hard words passed between him and the old man, for Wilcox wouldn't let any human being breathe a whisper agin his daughter. Nobody ever knew exactly what happened, but the young man went away and left his child with the old people. It wasn't long after this before the old man kinder seemed to give up, he and his wife too, just as if that bright little grandchild had brought a canker into the house.
"After that things went wrong, nothing on earth could make the old people neighborly; they gin up going to meeting, and sat all Sunday long on the hearth, there, looking into the fire. Wal, you know the best of us will talk when anything happens that is not quite understood. Some said one thing, and some another, and Wilcox, arter a while, got so shy of his neighbors that they took a sort of distaste to him."
"Did the old people live alone after their daughter went away?" asked Jacob, in a husky voice. "There was a young man or boy in the family when I knew anything about it."
"Oh, yes, I jist remember, there was a young chap that Mr. Wilcox brought up—a clever critter as ever lived. He went away just arter the gal was married, and nobody ever knew what became of him. People thought the old man pined about that too: at any rate, one thing and another broke him down, and his wife with him."
"You do not mean to say that Mr. Wilcox and his wife are dead?"
The farmer turned his eyes suddenly on the form of Jacob Strong, as these words were uttered, for there was something in the tone that took his honest heart by surprise. Jacob sat before him like a criminal, pale, and shrinking in his chair.
"No, I did not mean to say that they died, but when a tough, cheerful man, like Wilcox, gives up, it is worse than death."
"What happened then—where did he go? is the child living?" almost shouted Jacob Strong, unable to control the agony of his impatience a moment longer; but the astonished look of his auditors checked the burst of impetuous feeling, and he continued more quietly——