d not submit to being one of those who are forgotten by the
world. Mrs. Dow was the hostess and social lawgiver here, where she
remembered every inmate and every item of interest for nearly forty
years, besides an immense amount of town history and biography for
three or four generations back.

She was the dear friend of the third woman, Betsey Lane; together they
led thought and opinion--chiefly opinion--and held sway, not only over
Byfleet Poor-farm, but also the selectmen and all others in authority.
Betsey Lane had spent most of her life as aid-in-general to the
respected household of old General Thornton. She had been much trusted
and valued, and, at the breaking up of that once large and flourishing
family, she had been left in good circumstances, what with legacies
and her own comfortable savings; but by sad misfortune and lavish
generosity everything had been scattered, and after much illness,
which ended in a stiffened arm and more uncertainty, the good soul had
sensibly decided that it was easier for the whole town to support her
than for a part of it. She had always hoped to see something of the
world before she died; she came of an adventurous, seafaring stock,
but had never made a longer journey than to the towns of Danby and
Northville, thirty miles away.

They were all old women; but Betsey Lane, who was sixty-nine, and
looked much older, was the youngest. Peggy Bond was far on in the
seventies, and Mrs. Dow was at least ten years older. She made a great
secret of her years; and as she sometimes spoke of events prior to the
Revolution with the assertion of having been an eye-witness, she
naturally wore an air of vast antiquity. Her tales were an
inexpressible delight to Betsey Lane, who felt younger by twenty years
because her friend and comrade was so unconscious of chronological
limitations.

The bushel basket of cranberry beans was within easy reach, and each
of the pickers had filled her lap from it again and again. The shed
chamber was not an unpleasant place in which to sit at work, with its
traces of seed corn hanging from the brown cross-beams, its spare
churns, and dusty loom, and rickety wool-wheels, and a few bits of old
furniture. In one far corner was a wide board of dismal use and
suggestion, and close beside it an old cradle. There was a battered
chest of drawers where the keeper of the poor-house kept his
garden-seeds, with the withered remains of three seed cucumbers
ornamenting the t