“You'll have to wait till morning, to be sick,” he said—“that is, to get 'tended to. I don't know anything about such things, an' I wouldn't wake M'rye up now for a whole baker's dozen o' you chaps.” Seeing my face fall at this sweeping declaration, he proceeded to modify it in a kindlier tone. “Now you just lay down again, sonny,” he added, “an' you'll be to sleep in no time, an' in the morning M'rye'll fix up something for ye. This ain't no fit time for white folks to be belly-achin' around.” “I kind o' thought I'd feel better if I was sleeping over here near you,” I ventured now to explain, and his nod was my warrant for tiptoeing across to the heap of disorganized furniture, and getting out some blankets and a comforter, which I arranged in the corner a few yards away and simply rolled myself up in, with my face turned away from the light. It was better over here than with Hurley, and though that prompt sleep which the farmer had promised did not come, I at least was drowsily conscious of an improved physical condition. Perhaps I drifted off more than half-way into dreamland, for it was with a start that all at once I heard someone close by talking with Abner. “I saw you were up, Mr. Beech”—it was Esther Hagadorn who spoke—“and I don't seem able to sleep, and I thought, if you didn't mind, I'd come over here.” “Why, of course,” the farmer responded. “Just bring up a chair there, an' sit down. That's it—wrap the shawl around you good. It's a cold night—snowin' hard outside.” Both had spoken in muffled tones, so as not to disturb the others. This same dominant notion of keeping still deterred me from turning over, in order to be able to see them. I expected to hear them discuss my illness, but they never referred to it. Instead, there was what seemed a long silence. Then the school-ma'am spoke. “I can't begin to tell you,” she said, “how glad I am that you and your wife aren't a bit cast down by the—the calamity.” “No,” came back Abner's voice, buoyant even in its half-whisper, “we're all right. I've be'n sort o' figurin' up here, an' they ain't much real harm done. I'm insured pretty well. Of course, this bein' obleeged to camp out in a hay-barn might be improved on, but then it's a change—somethin' out o' the ordinary rut—an' it'll do us good. I'll have the carpenters over from Juno Mills in the forenoon, an' if they push things, we can have a roof over us again before Christmas. It could be done even sooner, p'raps, only they ain't any neighbors to help _me_ with a raisin' bee. They're willin' enough to burn my house down, though. However, I don't want them not an atom more'n they want me.” There was no trace of anger in his voice. He spoke like one contemplating the unalterable conditions of life. “Did they really, do you believe, _set_ it on fire?” Esther asked, intently.