“There’s one thing I wish to speak to you about,” said Mr. Waddy, after a considerable silence. “This Miss Sullivan--I have money enough and to spare. Do you know of anything I could do for her?” The question was put rather awkwardly; Mr. Waddy knew as well as anyone that money is not the current coin to repay an act of devotion. “Wal,” said Dempster, seeing the good feeling that suggested and checked the inquiry, “I don’t believe she wants fer money. She offered me a thousand dollars fer our P’int. I told her perhaps I’d sell out the whole farm for two thousand. I’ve been talkin’ some, along back, with Willum, of goin’ out west an’ settlin’ by some o’ them big lakes. When folks has been used to water, they don’t like to live away from it. Willum’s gone, but Dan’l’s a handy boy, an’ Mirandy’s as good as a whole drawin’ of some men. I guess we’ll go. It don’t look quite so bright ’round here as it did,” and he passed his hand across his eyes. “If Miss Sullivan doesn’t buy it, I will,” said Ira quickly. “Can you tell me where she is to be found, so that I can have inquiry made what her decision is? This is just the spot I should like to buy--it is a good lonely place, where I can escape from my friends,--if I ever make any,” he added, in a half-voice and rather bitterly. “She came with a grist o’ folks from York,” said Dempster; “pretty good folks, but different kind to her. Mirandy had their names on a paper, but it got lost. But she said she’d write about the farm an’ I kin let you know. Wal, if you want to go in the mornin’ I must go over an’ tell Jake. I’ll be gone to the other field when you start; so good-bye.” He gave Waddy a crushing grasp of the hand and looked at him wistfully, as if he were recalling his son through this one who had seen him last. Then, feeling that tears--tears of that better manhood which men call unmanly--were falling over his brown cheeks, now hollow with fatigue and sleepless grief, he unclosed his hand with grave gentleness and walked slowly away. Looking after him, something brought back to Waddy’s mind that sentence the old man had uttered a little while before: “When dying once gets into a family, there’s no knowing where it will stop.” He felt dimly that he had listened to a prophecy. CHAPTER IX THE NABOB RE-ENTERS CIVILISATION It was a lovely afternoon, two days after the events narrated in the last chapter, when a shabby stranger might have been seen slowly pacing the pavement that leads from one of those gates where a stream of ardent pilgrims disembogues into the purlieus of the Athens of America; pacing with reverent sloth up toward the Acropolis where, like fanes of gods still alive and kicking, tower the Boston State House, the Boston Anthenæum, and nobler than all, behind granite propylæa, the Boston Tremont House.