"You needn't be afraid to speak," urged the Colonel. "If you'd stick to it, say so. I sha'n't call it any reflection upon me; I haven't the slightest intention of giving twenty-five thousand dollars to the poor, and if you've changed your mind, say so." "I haven't changed my mind, and I would stick to it," Jerome replied then. "And," said the Colonel, "you are sticking to that other resolution of yours, to work until you win a certain fair lady, are you?" Jerome colored high. He was inclined to be indignant, but there was a strange earnestness in the Colonel's manner. "I'm not the sort of fellow not to stick to a resolution of that kind when I've once made it," he replied, shortly. The Colonel chuckled. "Well, I didn't think you were," he returned--"didn't think you were, Jerome. That's all. Good-day." With that, to Jerome's utter astonishment, Colonel Lamson trudged laboriously up the hill to the Means house again. "He must have come down just to ask me those questions," thought Jerome, and thought with more bewilderment still that the Colonel must even have been watching for him. He had no conception of his meaning, but he laughed to himself at the bare fancy of twenty-five thousand dollars coming to him, and also at the suggestion that he would not be true to his resolution to win Lucina. Jerome was beginning to feel as if she were already won. The next spring, if he continued to prosper, he had decided to speak to her, and, as the months went on, nothing happened to discourage him. The next winter the snows were uncommonly heavy. They began before Thanksgiving and came in thick storms. There were great drifts in all the door-yards, the stone walls and fences were hidden, the trees stood in deep, swirling hollows of snow. Now and then a shed-roof broke under the frozen weight; one walked through the village street as through clear-cut furrows of snow, all the shadows were blue, there was a dazzle of glacier light over the whole village when the sun arose. However, it was a fine winter for Jerome, as far as his work was concerned. Wood is drawn easily on sleds, and the snow air nerves one for sharp labors. Jerome calculated that by May he should be not only doing a prosperous business, but should have a snug little sum clear. Then he would delay no longer. On the nineteenth day of March came the last snow-storm, and the worst of the season. Martin Cheeseman went home early. Jerome did not stay in the mill long after he left. The darkness was settling down fast, and he could do little by himself. Moreover, an intense eagerness to be at home seized him. He began to imagine that something had happened to his mother or Elmira, and imagination of evil was so foreign to him that it had almost the force of conviction. He fell also to thinking of his father, inconsequently, as it seemed, yet it was not so, for imagined disasters lead back by retrograde of sequence to memories of real ones.