He recalled old Peter Thomas from the poorhouse, and set him at Doctor Prescott's front window in a broadcloth coat.

An imbecile pauper by the name of Mindy Toggs he established in undisturbed possession of Simon Basset's house and lands.
Doctor Seth Prescott little dreamed when he met this small, shabby lad, and passed him as he might have passed some way-side weed, what was in his mind.

If people, when they meet, could know half the workings of one another's minds, the recoils from the shocks might overbalance creation.

But Doctor Prescott never saw the phantom paupers slouching through his clover-fields, and Simon Basset never jostled Mindy Toggs on his threshold.

However, Mindy Toggs had once lived in Simon Basset's house.
As Jerome advanced through boyhood it seemed as if everything combined to strengthen, by outside example, the fancies and beliefs derived from Ozias Lamb's precepts and his own constantly hard and toilsome life.