“I know you smoke, mister,” she smiled. “Wal, I do,” answered the tramp, whiffing away in great comfort. “'Pears to me you're the biggest-hearted woman I ever see.” She laughed bitterly. “There wan't a cluser woman in Corinth than me, an' folks'll tell you so. I turned my own son outer doors.” “It was part my fault, Mri, an' you hush now,” pleaded Silas, forgiving even her giving his tobacco away if she would not bring out that family skeleton. “I've heered you was cluse,” said the stranger, “an' thet you sent Jim off because he went to circuses in Bath, an' wore store clothes, an' wanted wages to pay for 'em.” “All true,” said Maria, “an' he wanted to ride the horse, an' was mad at workin' him so hard.” She went on then, and told how the old animal had come home. “An' me thinkin' the critter was a speerit,” said the stranger in a hushed voice. “Beat's all what a dumb brute knows!” “I thought mebbe,” went on Maria, twisting her thin fingers, “as Jim might be comin' home this time. They says things happens curious when folks is goin' ter die----” “Your good fur a good meny years, M'ri,” said Silas, pitifully. “There's folks in this wurld,” said the stranger, his kindly face growing sad and careworn since the mother's eager words, “that ain't men enuff, an' comes to charity to the end----” “That there be,” assented Silas. “And as can't bring up their folks comfurble, nor keep 'em well an' happy, nor have a home as ain't berried under a mortgage they can't never clear off.” “Ay, there's lots of 'em,” cried Silas, “an' Mis Lowell was a twitting me this very night of bein' mean.” “An' this good home, an' the fields I passed thro', an' the lane where the old hoss come a gallopin' up behind me, is paid fur, no mortgage on a acre?” “There never was on the Lowell prop'ty; they'll tell ye thet ennywhere,” said Silas. “We uns in the South, where I come from,” said the stranger, shading his face with his bony hand, “ain't never forehanded somehow. My name is Dexter Brown, marm, an' I was alius misfortinat. I tell you, marm, one day when my creditors come an' took the cotton off my field, thet I'd plarnted and weeded and worked over in the brilin' sun, my wife says--an' she'd been patient and long-sufferin'--'Dex, I'm tired out; jest you bury me in a bit of ground that's paid fur, an' I'll lie in peace,' an' she died thet night.” “Mebbe she never knowed what it were to scrimp an' save, an' do without, an never see nawthin', till all the good died in her,” muttered Maria. “Part o' my debt was wines an' good vittles fur her, marm.” “I'll warrant!” said Maria quickly, “an' she never wept over the graves of her dead children, an' heered their father complainin' of how much their sickness hed cost him. Oh, I tell you, there's them that reckons human agony by dollars an' cents, an' they're wus'n murderers!” “M'ri!” cried Silas.