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 going father—now at rest—had long ago declared. Jane's marriage and removal to another town might have brought about a truce, had she not carried with her the rankling memory of one of William's very worst and most reprehensible speeches. When all the family were up in arms about her predilection for Henry Bennett, William had said to his mother—and Jane had overheard the taunt: "We may as well make up our minds to Jane, Mother. There's no use in trying to reason with her, since she's got too old to be spanked."

It was certainly a most indecorous as well as disrespectful remark, and one which Jane had every reason to resent. How could she be expected, after that, to feel a proper gratitude, when the offender subsequently loaned her husband fifteen hundred dollars, without interest and with but small hope of return? What if this timely help did enable Henry Bennett to set up for himself in his trade of optician? What money obligations could atone to a really noble mind for a personal insult? Henceforth Jane nursed her grievance and hated her brother to her heart's content.

This was not the only time that William Pratt had "tied a knot with his tongue which he could not untie with his teeth." He was not a bad-tempered man himself, but he was often the occasion of bad temper in others. He had his enemies, men who, with or without reason,