friends or foes. He always sat in one corner of the
fireplace, poker in hand, and the crowd tacitly allowed him the role of
Greek chorus. Indeed, nobody could have told a story properly without
Jake Bean's parentheses and punctuation marks poked in at exciting
junctures.

"That 's so every time!" he would say, with a lunge at the forestick.
"I'll bate he was glad then!" with another stick flung on in just the
right spot. "Golly! but that served 'em right!" with a thrust at the
backlog.

The New England story seemed to flourish under these conditions: a
couple of good hard benches in a store or tavern, where you could not
only smoke and chew but could keep on your hat (there was not a man in
York County in those days who could say anything worth hearing with his
hat off); the blazing logs to poke; and a cavernous fireplace into which
tobacco juice could be neatly and judiciously directed. Those were good
old times, and the stage-coach was a mighty thing when school children
were taught to take off their hats and make a bow as the United States
mail passed the old stage tavern.

Life Lane's coaching days were over long before this story begins, but
the Midnight Cry was still in pretty fair condition, and was driven
ostensibly by Jeremiah Todd, who lived on the "back-nippin'" road from
Bonny Eagle to Limington.

When I say ostensibly driven, I but follow the lead of the villagers,
who declared that, though Jerry held the reins, Mrs. Todd drove the
stage, as she drove everything else. As a proof of this lady's strong
individuality, she was still generally spoken of as "the Widder Bixby,"
though she had been six years wedded to Jeremiah Todd. The Widder Bixby,
then, was strong, self-reliant, valiant, indomitable. Jerry Todd was,
to use his wife's own characterization, so soft you could stick a cat's
tail into him without ruffling the fur. He was always alluded to as "the
Widder Bixby's husband;" but that was no new or special mortification,
for he had been known successively as Mrs. Todd's youngest baby, the
Widder Todd's only son, Susan Todd's brother, and, when Susan Todd's
oldest boy fought at Chapultepec, William Peck's uncle.

The Widder Bixby's record was far different. She was the mildest of the
four Stover sisters of Scarboro, and the quartette was supposed to
have furnished more kinds of temper than had ever before come from one
household. When Peace, the eldest, was mad, she frequently kicked the
churn out o