And so, for years, at home and on the sea, at New York, and at Valparaiso, and in the Straits of Malacca, the little house and the little family within it had grown into the fibre of Eli's heart. Nothing had given him more delight than to meet, in the strange streets of Calcutta or before the Mosque of Omar, some practical Yankee from Stonington or Machias, and, whittling, to discuss with him, among the turbans of the Orient, the comparative value of shaved and of sawed shingles, or the economy of "Swedes-iron" nails, and to go over with him the estimates and plans which he had worked out in his head under all the constellations of the skies. * * * * * The supper things were cleared away. The children had said good-night and gone to bed, and Eli had been sitting for an hour by his wife's bedside. He had had to tax his patience and ingenuity heavily during the long months that she had lain there to entertain her for a little while in the evening, after his hard, wet day's work. He had been talking now of the coming week, when he was to serve upon the jury in the adjoining county-town. "I cal'late I can come home about every night," he said, "and it'll be quite a change, at any rate." "But you don't seem so cheerful about it as I counted you would be," said his wife. "Are you afraid you'll have to be on the bank-case?" "Not much!" he answered. "No trouble 'n that case! Jury won't leave their seats. These city fellers'll find they've bit off more'n they can chew when they try to figure out John Wood done that. I only hope I'll have the luck to be on that case--all hands on the jury whisper together a minute, and then clear him, right on the spot, and then shake hands with him all 'round!" "But something is worrying you," she said. "What is it? You have looked it since noon." "Oh, nothin'," he replied--"only George Cahoon came up to-noon to say that he was goin' West next week, and that he would have to have that money he let me have a while ago. And where to get it--I don't know." III. The court-room was packed. John Wood's trial was drawing to its close. Eli was on the jury. Some one had advised the prosecuting attorney, in a whisper, to challenge him, but he had shaken his head and said: "Oh, I couldn't afford to challenge him for that; it would only leak out, and set the jury against me. I'll risk his standing out against this evidence." The trial had been short. It had been shown how the little building of the bank had been entered. Skilled locksmiths from the city had testified that the safe was opened with a key, and that the lock was broken afterward, from the inside--plainly to raise the theory of a forcible entry by strangers.