“What you’ve said, Square, an’ your comin’ here, has done me a lot o’ good. It’s pooty nigh wuth bein’ burnt out for--to have this sort o’ thing come \ on behind as an after-clap. Sometimes, I tell you, sir, I’ve despaired o’ the republic. I admit it, though it’s to my shame. I’ve said to myself that when American citizens, born an’ raised right on the same hill-side, got to behavin’ to each other in such an all-fired mean an’ cantankerous way, why, the hull blamed thing wasn’t worth tryin’ to save. But you see I was wrong--I admit I was wrong. It was jest a passin’ flurry--a kind o’ snow-squall in hayin’ time. All the while, right down ’t the bottom, their hearts was sound an’ sweet as a butternut. It fetches me--that does--it makes me prouder than ever I was before in all my born days to be an American--yes, sir--that’s the way I--I feel about it.” There were actually tears in the big farmer’s eyes, and he got out those finishing words of his in fragmentary gulps. None of us had ever seen him so affected before. After the Squire had shaken hands again and started off, Abner stood at the open door, looking after him, then gazing in a contemplative general way upon all out-doors. The vivid sunlight reflected up from the melting snow made his face to shine as if from an inner radiance. He stood still and looked across the yards with their piles of wet straw smoking in the forenoon heat, and the black puddles eating into the snow as the thaw went on; over the further prospect, made weirdly unfamiliar by the disappearance of the big old farm-house; down the long broad sloping hill-side with its winding road, its checkered irregular patches of yellow stubble and stacked fodder, of deep umber ploughed land and warm gray woodland, all pushing aside their premature mantle of sparkling white, and the scattered homesteads and red barns beyond--and there was in his eyes the far-away look of one who saw still other things. He turned at last and came in, walking over to where Jeff and Esther stood hand in hand beside the bed on the floor. Old Jee Hagadorn was sitting up now, and had exchanged some words with the couple. “Well, Brother Hagadorn,” said the farmer, “I hope you’re feelin’ better.” “Yes, a good deal--B--Brother Beech, thank’ee,” replied the cooper, slowly and with hesitation. Abner laid a fatherly hand on Esther’s shoulder and another on Jeff’s. A smile began to steal over his big face, broadening the square which his mouth cut down into his beard, and deepening the pleasant wrinkles about his eyes. He called M’rye over to the group with beckoning nod of the head. “It’s jest occurred to me, mother,” he said, with the mock gravity of tone we once had known so well and of late had heard so little--“I jest be’n thinkin’ we might’a’ killed two birds with one stun while the Square was up here. He’s justice o’ the peace, you know--an’ they say them kind o’ marriages turn out better ’n all the others.”