“I’m afraid I don’t understand quite as well as I’d like to,” admitted the lawyer sadly, “but as for you, I reckon you don’t know ’em at all, ’Caje. And you don’t know even your own self, you old numbhead. You’re sitting meeching there on that tussock, and you don’t know your heart well enough to understand whether you ought to be ashamed of your attentions to the schoolma’am or to be proud of them, as showing that you still have human feelings left. And the result of it all is that you’ve blundered ’round till you’ve made your wife jealous, instead of putting tenderness and generosity and mother-feeling into her heart. You blind old mole, you simply don’t know---don’t know! Here! You come along after me with that paper in your hand!” He led the way across the field, up the apple-tree bordered lane and into the house. There was no one in the kitchen or in the little sitting-room, where Esther Dunham always sat at her sewing o’ afternoons, the sun filtering on her through the leaves of the window plant? No one in the house! They searched and called, and only the clock’s tick-tack answered in the silences. Everything was tidied. The table had been reset after the noon meal, and its well scoured ware glinted cheerfully. Micajah grabbed the lawyer’s arm. “She’s took her napkin ring!” he gasped. “She’s gone, Squire!” The husband hurried into the west bedroom and fumbled in the closet. “And her clothes is gone, Squire!” he called dismally. “Oh, my Gawd, if this ain’t trouble come double then I don’t know what ’tis.” He sat down on the edge of the bed and seemed about to weep. “Get up there, you old fool!” Look roared. “I’ve about concluded that the two of you need guardians or--or keepers.” He stood before Micajah with his arms akimbo. “Eleven thousand at interest and twenty-five hundred on first mortgages!” he sneered. “And while you’ve been pawing that out of the muck, you and your wife, you have never stood up straight, taken full, free breath of air and God’s sunshine and looked into each other’s eyes like true man and wife. And she doesn’t know you and you don’t know her, and you don’t know your own selves. Oh, ’Caje Dunham, I’m ashamed of you!” The man stared at him stupidly. “You don’t know yet what I mean, do you?” the lawyer went on. “You’re waiting for me, an old bach, to explain to you your mistakes and point out your duty.” A youngster came slapping his bare feet along the shed walk. “Squire Look,” he called, “Mis’ Dunham is over to my marm’s, and she just see you come in here, and sent word if you got any business with her you can call over there.” He added, triumphantly, “She’s brung her clothes to our house, too, and she’s goin’ to be our boarder.” He had edged into the bedroom, and his round eyes, big with the half-knowledge and guesses of childhood, goggled at the woe-stricken husband.