"Grand-pa, where's brother Elbridge?"
The old man changed his countenance and struggled a moment with himself.
"He had better know all," he said, after a pause of thought, in which he looked, or seemed to look afar off from the scene about him. "Margaret, painful though it be to you and to me, let the truth be spoken. God knows I love your son, Elbridge, and would have laid down my life that this thing had not chanced, but the child asks of his brother so often, and is so often evaded that he will be presently snared in a net of falsehoods and deceptions if we speak not more plainly to him."
An inexpressible anguish overspread the countenance of the widowed woman, and she turned aside to breathe a brief prayer of trust and hope of strength in the hour of trial.
The thanksgiving turkey, full of his banquet of corn, strutted away to a slope in the sun by the roadside, and little Sam Peabody renewed his question.
"Can't I see brother Elbridge, grand-pa?"
"Never again, I fear, my child."
"Why not, grandfather?"
"Answer gently, father," the widow interposed. "Make not the case too harsh against my boy."
"Margaret," said the old man, lifting his countenance upon her with dignity of look, "I shall speak the truth. I would have the name of my race pure of all stains and detractions, as it has been for an hundred years, but I would not bear hardly against your son, Margaret. This child, innocent and unswayed as he is, shall hear it, and shall be the judge."