If there ever was a man crushed out of all courage, all self- reliance, all comfort in life, it
was Jacob Flint. Why this should have been, neither he nor any one else could have
explained; but so it was. On the day that he first went to school, his shy, frightened face
marked him as fair game for the rougher and stronger boys, and they subjected him to all
those exquisite refinements of torture which boys seem to get by the direct inspiration of
the Devil. There was no form of their bullying meanness or the cowardice of their brutal
strength which he did not experience. He was born under a fading or falling star,--the
inheritor of some anxious or unhappy mood of his parents, which gave its fast color to the
threads out of which his innocent being was woven.
Even the good people of the neighborhood, never accustomed to look below the externals
of appearance and manner, saw in his shrinking face and awkward motions only the signs
of a cringing, abject soul.
"You'll be no more of a man than Jake Flint!" was the reproach which many a farmer
addressed to his dilatory boy; and thus the parents, one and all, came to repeat the sins of
the children.
If, therefore, at school and "before folks," Jacob's position was always uncomfortable and
depressing, it was little more cheering at home. His parents, as all the neighbors believed,
had been unhappily married, and, though the mother died in his early childhood, his
father remained a moody, unsocial man, who rarely left his farm except on the 1st of
April every year, when he went to the county town for the purpose of paying the interest
upon a mortgage. The farm lay in a hollow between two hills, separated from the road by
a thick wood, and the chimneys of the lonely old house looked in vain for a neighbor-
smoke when they began to grow warm of a morning.
Beyond the barn and under the northern hill there was a log tenant- house, in which dwelt
a negro couple, who, in the course of years had become fixtures on the place and almost
partners in it. Harry, the man, was the medium by which Samuel Flint kept up his
necessary intercourse with the world beyond the valley; he took the horses to the
blacksmith, the grain to the mill, the turkeys to market, and through his hands passed all
the incomings and outgoings of the farm, except the annual interest on the mortgage.
Sally, his wife, took care of the household, which, indeed, was a light and comfortable
task, since the table was well supplied for her own sake, and there was no sharp eye to
criticise her sweeping, dusting, and bed-making. The place had a forlorn, tumble-down
aspect, quite in keeping with its lonely situation; but perhaps this very circumstance
flattered the mood of its silent, melancholy owner and his unhappy son.
In all the neighborhood there was but one person with whom Jacob felt completely at
ease--but one who never joined in the general habit of making his name the butt of
ridicule or contempt. This was Mrs. Ann Pardon, the hearty, active wife of Farmer Robert
Pardon, who lived nearly a mile farther down the brook. Jacob had won her good-will by
