ls," said Abel Day. "Uncle Bart sees consid'able
of Ivory an' he says his mother is as quiet as a lamb.--Couldn't you git
no kind of a certif'cate of Aaron's death out o' that Enfield feller,
Peter? Seems's if that poor woman'd oughter be stopped watchin' for a
dead man; tuckerin' herself all out, an' keepin' Ivory an' the boy all
nerved up."

"I've told Ivory everything I could gether up in the way of information,
and give him the names of the folks in Ohio that had writ back to
New Hampshire. I didn't dialate on Aaron's goin's-on in Effingham an'
Portsmouth, cause I dassay 't was nothin' but scandal. Them as hates
the Cochranites'll never allow there's any good in 'em, whereas I've met
some as is servin' the Lord good an' constant, an' indulgin' in no kind
of foolishness an' deviltry whatsoever."

"Speakin' o' Husshons," said Bill Dunham from his corner, "I remember--"

"We wa'n't alludin' to no Husshons," retorted Timothy Grant. "We was
dealin' with the misfortunes of Aaron Boynton, who never fit valoriously
on the field o' battle, but perished out in Ohio of scarlit fever, if
what they say in Enfield is true."

"Tis an easy death," remarked Bill argumentatively. "Scarlit fever don't
seem like nothin' to me! Many's the time I've been close enough to
fire at the eyeball of a Husshon, an' run the resk o' bein' blown to
smithereens!--calm and cool I alters was, too! Scarlit fever is an easy
death from a warrior's p'int o' view!"

"Speakin' of easy death," continued Timothy, "you know I'm a great one
for words, bein' something of a scholard in my small way. Mebbe you
noticed that Elder Boone used a strange word in his sermon last Sunday?
Now an' then, when there's too many yawnin' to once in the congregation,
Parson'll out with a reg'lar jaw-breaker to wake 'em up. The word as
near as I could ketch it was 'youthinasia.' I kep' holt of it till
noontime an' then I run home an' looked through all the y's in the
dictionary without findin' it. Mebbe it's Hebrew, I thinks, for Hebrew's
like his mother's tongue to Parson, so I went right up to him at
afternoon meetin' an' says to him: 'What's the exact meanin' of
"youthinasia"? There ain't no sech word in the Y's in my Webster,' says
I. 'Look in the E's, Timothy; "euthanasia"' says he, 'means easy death';
an' now, don't it beat all that Bill Dunham should have brought that
expression of 'easy death' into this evenin's talk?"

"I know youth an' I know Ashy," said Abel Day,