With his one free hand the Squire put the crumpled notes to his teeth and began quietly to tear at them. He caught her looking at him with wistful inquiry in which there was absolute trust. “I don’t know my Bible as well as I do the revised statutes, Sylvie,” he said, smiling at her, “but I believe there is a passage somewhere that states that a good wife is better than much fine gold, yea, more precious than rubies and all beautiful gems. Now with the thorough understanding that the Bible is right, let us sit down and have a little family conference about some things that a wife should know.” He brushed from her hair and shoulders the bits of torn paper, drew her on his knee and began to talk. The old Judge sat opposite, gazing mistily out of the window in the direction his son had taken. For the first and the last time in his life Squire Phin did not tell the whole truth to the woman he loved. But the sad, though unclouded resignation in the eyes of the woman, and the dumb gratitude on the face of the old man opposite when he had finished, made his lie a holy one. CHAPTER XXIII--HIRAM LOOK’S TWO LIVELY BUSINESS ENGAGEMENTS WITH CAPTAIN NYMPHUS BODFISH OF THE “EFFORT” Old Zibe Haines walked out one day, And a barbed wire fence it stopped his way. Never climbed over, never crawled through, But he bit that wire right plumb in two. --Ballads of “Gumption.” Hiram Look was approaching Palermo village and letting his horse walk up the long Witch-Run hill. He was in the middle of the seat of a brand-new top carriage. His elbows were on his knees and he was gazing at the reflection of himself in the bright dasher of the carriage. Occasionally he broke out into mellow chucklings. “I’d have given ten dollars if Phin and all close pers’nal friends had been there with me to see it,” he soliloquised. “Me behind the wistery on the porch of the widder’s, a-takin’ it all in, and he not knowin’ I was there! Phew! Lemme git out a few more of them laughs I’ve had to swaller!” He leaned back and haw-hawed boisterously, to the renewed astonishment of the horse, who stopped and bent his head around to gaze at his master. “G’long!” shouted the showman. “I’ve told you all about it three times already on the way down. I had to tell some one.” When the horse plodded on he set his elbows on his knees again and went on with his delighted monologue. He was rolling it again over his tongue with smacks of relish.