Now, Whitney's place, with its stately old brick mansion, its avenue of silver firs, and its two hundred acres of clean, warm-lying land, was the finest, the most aristocratic property in all the neighborhood, and the boy-friend could not resist the temptation of repeating Jacob's grand design, for the endless amusement of the school. The betrayal hurt Jacob more keenly than the ridicule. It left a wound that never ceased to rankle; yet, with the inconceivable perversity of unthinking natures, precisely this joke (as the people supposed it to be) had been perpetuated, until “Jake Flint's Journey” was a synonyme for any absurd or extravagant expectation. Perhaps no one imagined how much pain he was keeping alive; for almost any other man than Jacob would have joined in the laugh against himself and thus good-naturedly buried the joke in time. “He's used to that,” the people said, like Becky Morton, and they really supposed there was nothing unkind in the remark! After Jacob had passed the thickets and entered the lonely hollow in which his father's house lay, his pace became slower and slower. He looked at the shabby old building, just touched by the moonlight behind the swaying shadows of the weeping-willow, stopped, looked again, and finally seated himself on a stump beside the path. “If I knew what to do!” he said to himself, rocking backwards and forwards, with his hands clasped over his knees,--“if I knew what to do!” The spiritual tension of the evening reached its climax: he could bear no more. With a strong bodily shudder his tears burst forth, and the passion of his weeping filled him from head to foot. How long he wept he knew not; it seemed as if the hot fountains would never run dry. Suddenly and startlingly a hand fell upon his shoulder. “Boy, what does this mean?” It was his father who stood before him. Jacob looked up like some shy animal brought to bay, his eyes full of a feeling mixed of fierceness and terror; but he said nothing. His father seated himself on one of the roots of the old stump, laid one hand upon Jacob's knee, and said with an unusual gentleness of manner, “I'd like to know what it is that troubles you so much.” After a pause, Jacob suddenly burst forth with: “Is there any reason why I should tell you? Do you care any more for me than the rest of 'em?” “I didn't know as you wanted me to care for you particularly,” said the father, almost deprecatingly. “I always thought you had friends of your own age.” “Friends? Devils!” exclaimed Jacob. “Oh, what have I done--what is there so dreadful about me that I should always be laughed at, and despised, and trampled upon? You are a great deal older than I am, father: what do you see in me? Tell me what it is, and how to get over it!”