and that his owner might be glad to drive me over.

I stared at the suggestion. "Ethan Frome? But I've never even spoken
to him. Why on earth should he put himself out for me?"

Harmon's answer surprised me still more. "I don't know as he would;
but I know he wouldn't be sorry to earn a dollar."

I had been told that Frome was poor, and that the saw-mill and the
arid acres of his farm yielded scarcely enough to keep his household
through the winter; but I had not supposed him to be in such want as
Harmon's words implied, and I expressed my wonder.

"Well, matters ain't gone any too well with him," Harmon said. "When
a man's been setting round like a hulk for twenty years or more,
seeing things that want doing, it eats inter him, and he loses his
grit. That Frome farm was always 'bout as bare's a milkpan when the
cat's been round; and you know what one of them old water-mills is
wuth nowadays. When Ethan could sweat over 'em both from sunup to
dark he kinder choked a living out of 'em; but his folks ate up most
everything, even then, and I don't see how he makes out now. Fust
his father got a kick, out haying, and went soft in the brain, and
gave away money like Bible texts afore he died. Then his mother got
queer and dragged along for years as weak as a baby; and his wife
Zeena, she's always been the greatest hand at doctoring in the
county. Sickness and trouble: that's what Ethan's had his plate full
up with, ever since the very first helping."

The next morning, when I looked out, I saw the hollow-backed bay
between the Varnum spruces, and Ethan Frome, throwing back his worn