He wondered if he should answer it. How could he refuse her dear constancy and affection, yet how could he accept it? He had no hope of marrying her, he reasoned that it would be better for her should he even repulse her rudely. It would be like screwing the rack for his own body to do that, but he declared to himself that he ought. "She'll never marry at all, if she waits for you; it'll hinder her looking at somebody else; she'll be an old maid, she'll be all alone in the world, with no husband or children, and you know it," he told himself, with a kind of mental squaring of his own fists in his face. All the time, with that curious, dogmatic selfishness which has sometimes its roots in unselfishness itself, he never considered the effect upon poor Lucina of the repulse of her love and constancy. Such was his ardor for unselfishness that, in its pursuit, he would have made all others selfish nor cared. That day the sun shone in a bright, windy sky. The snow was nearly gone, the brook still leaped in a furious torrent, but there was no more danger from it. The waters were, in fact, receding slowly. Jerome worked all day near the ruinous site of his mill, and Martin Cheeseman with him. He had a quantity of logs and lumber, which had escaped the flood, to care for. Cheeseman inquired if he was going to rebuild the mill. "When I get money enough," Jerome replied, with a sturdy fling of a log. "'Ain't ye got most enough?" "No." "Ye ought to have. What ye done with it?" "Put it to a good use," Jerome said, with no resentment of the other's curiosity. "Why don't ye hire money, if ye 'ain't got enough?" "I don't hire money," answered Jerome, and heaved another log with a splendid swing from his shoulders. Cheeseman looked at him doubtfully. "Well," he said, "I 'ain't got none to hire. I've got my money out of mills on the banks of roarin' streams, an' I'm goin' to keep it out. I believe in Providence, but I don't believe in temptin' of it. I 'ain't got no money to hire." "And I don't want to hire, so we sha'n't quarrel about that," Jerome replied, shortly. "I don't say that I wouldn't let ye have a little money, if you needed it, an' it was for somethin' safe for both of us," said Cheeseman, uneasily, "but, as I said before, I don't believe in temptin' of Providence, especially when it seems set agin you." "I am not going to shirk any blame off on to Providence," Jerome responded, scornfully. "It was Stimson's weak dam up above." "Mebbe the dam was weak, but Providence took advantage of it," insisted Cheeseman, who, in spite of his cheerful temperament, had a gloomy theology. "I'd like to know why ye think your mill went down; do ye think ye done anything to deserve it?" he said, further, in an argumentative tone. "If I thought I had, I'd do it again," Jerome returned, and went off to a distant pile of lumber out of sound of Cheeseman's voice.