The young men were gone until the latter part of November. Several persons longed for their return. Mr. Job Goodwin, for one, began to feel a strong conviction that Mort had taken the fever and died in the woods. He was also very sure that each succeeding day would witness some act of hostility toward himself on the part of Captain Lumsden; and as each day failed to see any evil result from the anger of his powerful neighbor, or to bring any tidings of disaster to Morton, Job Goodwin faithfully carried forward the dark foreboding with compound interest to the next day. He abounded in quotations of such Scripture texts as set forth the fact that man's days were few and full of trouble. The book of Ecclesiastes was to him a perennial fountain of misery--he delighted to found his despairing auguries upon the superior wisdom of Solomon. He looked for Morton's return with great anxiety, hoping to find that nothing worse had happened to him than the shooting away of an arm. Mrs. Goodwin, for her part, dreaded the evil influences of the excitements of hunting. She feared lest Morton should fall into the bad habits that had carried away from home an older brother, for whose untimely death in an affray she had never ceased to mourn. And Patty! When her father had on that angry afternoon discovered the turkey that Morton had given her, and had sent it home with a message in her name, Patty had borne herself like the proud girl that she was. She held her head aloft; she neither indicated pleasure nor displeasure at her father's course; she would not disclose any liking for Morton, nor any complaisance toward her father. This air of defiance about her Captain Lumsden admired. It showed her mettle, he said to himself. Patty would almost have finished that two dozen cuts of yarn if it had cost her life. She even managed to sing, toward the last of her weary day of work; and when, at nine o'clock, she reeled off her twenty-fourth cut,--drawing a sigh of relief when the reel snapped,--and hung her twelve hanks up together, she seemed as blithe as ever. Her sickly mother sitting, knitting in hand, with wan face bordered by white cap-frill, looked approvingly on Patty's achievement. Patty showed her good blood, was the mother's reflection. [Illustration: PATTY IN HER CHAMBER.]