Little by little the excitement over Phil’s return abated, being merged in curiosity as to why his father was remaining in the city. Local curiosity was somewhat discouraged, too, by a few sharp retorts to persons who were impertinently inquisitive about the New York developments of Phil’s acquaintance with Lucia. There was no lack of stories, however, regarding the couple: in any part of the civilized world, no matter how stolid the inhabitants, there is imagination enough to replace the absent links in a desired chain of facts. All that Haynton and its vicinity really knew about the supposed Hayn-Tramlay affair was that the Tramlays had been at Hayn Farm, that they had a daughter named Lucia whose age did not differ much from Phil’s, that Phil had been in New York for more than a fortnight, that he had gone direct from Sol Mantring’s sloop to Tramlay’s office, that he had been seen in New York in store-clothes, and that he admitted having seen Lucia once or twice. Out of these few facts, which would have been useless to even a detective were he unable to treat them as mere clues to be followed carefully, the enterprising people of Haynton constructed a number of stories, each of which hung together admirably. That they differed radically from one another was not the fault of the local romancers; they had honestly done their best with the material at hand.

Phil did not regard the matter in this light. When day by day his little brothers returned from school with tales they had heard from class-mates and wondered greatly that they had not first heard them at home, Phil’s temper broke loose so suddenly that the boys almost feared to repeat all they had heard. The wrathful young man learned that he had proposed to Lucia and been refused, that he had been accepted, apparently at the same interview, that Tramlay was to build a handsome house on the water front of Hayn Farm for his daughter as a wedding-present, that Phil took his refusal so seriously to heart that he was going to study for the ministry, and that while in New York he had fallen into drinking-habits so deeply that Tramlay had been obliged to write Farmer Hayn to hurry to the city and remove his unfortunate son from the scene of temptation.

Phil grumbled and stormed; he even vowed that if gossip about him did not end he would go to sea. He thought seriously of publishing a list of denials in the weekly paper, edited in the county town, which devoted a column or two to Haynton news. Then he wondered whether he might not make a confidant of the minister and beg that a sermon be preached on the sinfulness of gossip; but this plan disappeared abruptly when the statement of his approaching marriage was traced, almost with certainty, to the minister himself.

But the worst trial of all remained. On Sunday he met at church and in the Young People’s Bible-Class all the girls who lived at or near Haynton. Some of them belonged to churches other than that which included the Hayn family among its members, but for once they waived denominational preferences and went to the First Church, and not only to see Phil’s new clothes and cane, of which Sol Mantring had brought such astonishing reports. They were as good and sweet-hearted, those Haynton girls, as any of their sex on the face of the earth: fashions a trifle old, and lack of professional advice as to how best to enhance their natural charms by borrowing from art, could not disguise the fact that some of them were quite pretty. It was not their fault that Phil’s heart had gone elsewhere for a mate, but that the young man himself was greatly to blame for such a course was the general opinion among them, and they would have at least the consolation of seeing how he had been affected by a step so unusual among Haynton youth. And what questions those girls’ eyes did ask! There was no need that they should put any of them into words; Phil understood them all, with the result that never before on Sunday had he heard so little of sermon, hymn, or prayer or betrayed so feeble a grasp of the topic of the day in the Bible-class.

So seriously was his mind disturbed that he held himself sharply to account, “examined his evidences” in the time-honored and orthodox manner, and resolved that lack of occupation was at the bottom of his trouble. He would begin bright and early Monday morning an extension of the big ditch in the marsh land: if the mud and stones and roots and quicksands, the tugging and straining and perspiring, sure to be incident to the work, would not cure him, he grimly told himself, then his case was hopeless indeed.

Bravely he kept his word. At sunrise he was already on his way to the marsh, and by the middle of the morning a single sensation encompassed his entire mind: it was that ditching was the hardest, dirtiest, forlornest work that ever fell to a farmer’s lot. He dragged one heavily-booted foot after the other from the ooze, leaned on his spade, and offered himself five minutes’ rest. He looked wearily along the prolongation of the line of the ditch already completed, and wondered how many hundred days the entire improvement would require. Before he decided, his calculations were disturbed by the sound of the family dinner-bell. He looked at the sun, which was his only timepiece while at work, and wondered what could have befallen the hitherto faithful family clock. Again the bell sounded, and when he looked in the direction of the house he saw, on the brow of the hill behind the orchard, his mother waving her apron to him. Something was the matter: what could it be? a tramp?—a persistent lightning-rod man? He hurried toward the house, and soon saw that his mother was waving also something that looked like a handkerchief and then like a piece of paper. A little nearer, and he heard his mother shouting,—

“Father’s writ! We’ve got a letter!”

Phil ran nearly all the way up the hill; he had not performed that difficult feat since he and another boy had raced up, in coasting-time, in wild strife as to which should capture a popular girl and take her down on his sled. A letter from his father was indeed an unusual event, for the old man had not been away from home before, except when on jury-duty in the county town, in many years, yet from the old lady’s manner it seemed the letter must contain something unusual. As he reached the hilltop his mother placed the sheet in his hand, saying,—

“I thought mebbe you’d better see it at once.”

Phil took it, and read aloud as follows:

Phil took off his hat, rubbed his eyes, looked away in the direction of the ditch-extension, and made a face at the faithful old spade.

“I s’pose you’d better be thinkin’ about gettin’ off at once,” said his mother.

“Father’s will is law,” said Phil, in the calmest tone he could command. “Do you think the boys and Carlo can help you take care of the place for a few days?”

“To be sure,” said his mother, “an’ a powerful sight o’ days besides, if it’s goin’ to save your father from drudgin’ away the rest of his days. An’ I ain’t above sayin’ that I’d stand a good deal of loneliness if I thought ’twould end in my stoppin’ trottin’ around in a pint-pot day in an’ day out. An’ you,” said the old lady, looking at her son, “I want to see the time come when I can take them old boots out to a brush-heap and burn ’em out o’ sight an’ knowledge. But what does your father mean about that gal not bein’ engaged? Is it that Tramlay gal?”

“I suppose so,” said Phil, carelessly, though his manner was the result of prodigious effort. “When he found me he asked me about her, along with the other folks, and I told him, just as I’d heard, that she was engaged to be married. Father must have been asking some pointed questions about her. It does beat everything, the interest that old men sometimes take in young women who aren’t kith nor kin to them, doesn’t it? I guess it’s about as well that I’m going back, if only to keep the old gentleman’s country curiosity within proper bounds. Don’t you think so?”

“She ain’t engaged,” said Mrs. Hayn, ignoring her son’s explanation and his attempt at joking. “She ain’t engaged,” the old lady repeated; “so you—”

The sentence was not completed, but Phil’s face flushed as he looked down at his muddy boots. For the first time since his return he had heard an allusion to Lucia which did not make him uncomfortable.

Within two hours Haynton was shaken from centre—the railway-station—to circumference by the announcement that Phil Hayn, in his store-clothes, had bought a ticket for New York and was already well on his journey. Meanwhile, at Hayn Farm an old woman as deeply interested as any one in the business and other possibilities that had been foreshadowed was doing all in her power to further them: she was spending the afternoon on her knees at her bedside.