errand lead to another, and still another,--to make the solitary woman
depend on his help, and expect his coming; fifty thousand dollars, with
no more incumbrance than such a woman, was worth scheming for, and the
prey was easily snared.

It is not to be expected that any country village of two streets, much
less Greenfield, could long remain ignorant of such a new and amazing
phase as the devotion of any man to any woman therein; but, as nobody
liked to interfere too soon in what might only be, after all, a mere
business arrangement, Greenfield contented itself with using its eyes,
its ears, and its tongues, with one exception to the latter organ's
clatter, in favor of Hitty Hyde; _to_ her no one dared as yet approach
with gossip or advice.

In the mean time Hitty went on her way, all regardless of the seraphs at
the gate. Abner Dimock was handsome, agreeable, gentlemanly to a certain
lackered extent;--who had cared for Hitty, in all her life, enough to
aid and counsel her as he had already done? At first she was half afraid
of him; then she liked him; then he was "so good to me!" and then--she
pitied him! for he told her, sitting on that hard old sofa, in the June
twilight, how he had no mother, how he had been cast upon the charities
of a cruel and evil world from his infancy; reminded her of the old red
school-house where they had been to school together, and the tyranny of
the big boys over him,--a little curly, motherless boy. So he enlarged
upon his life; talked a mildly bitter misanthropy; informed Miss Hyde by
gradual insinuations that she was an angel sent on earth to console and
reform a poor sinner like him; and before the last September rose had
droped, so far had Abner Dimock succeeded in his engineering, that his
angel was astounded one night by the undeniably terrestrial visitation
of an embrace and a respectfully fervid kiss.