, as he took off his gloves and began
to warm his face and hands at the fire.

"Is it?" asked the Judge, comfortably, rising on his tiptoes, only to
fall back into his usual attitude legal, legs well spread, shoulders
thrown back.

"You bet it is!" replied Amos. "I d'know when I've felt the cold more'n
I have t'-day. It's jest snifty; doubles me up like a jack-knife, Judge.
How do you stand it?"

"Toler'ble, toler'ble, Amos. But we're agin', we ain't what we were
once. Cold takes hold of us."

"That's a fact," answered Amos to the retrospective musings of the
Judge. "Time was you an' me would go t' singing-school or sleigh-riding
with the girls on a night like this and never notice it."

"Yes, sir; yes, sir!" said the Judge with a sigh. It was a little
uncertain in Robie's mind whether the Judge was regretting the lost
ability to stand the cold, or the lost pleasure of riding with the
girls.

"Great days, those, gentlemen! Lived in Vermont then. Hot-blooded--lungs
like an ox. I remember, Sallie Dearborn and I used to go a-foot to
singing-school down the valley four miles. But now, wouldn't go riding
to-night with the handsomest woman in America, and the best cutter in
Rock River."

"Oh! you've got both feet in the grave up t' the ankles, anyway," said
Robie, from his desk, but the Judge immovably gazed at the upper shelf
on the other side of the room, where the boilers and pans and washboards
were stored.

"The Judge is a little on the sentimental order to-night," said Amos.

"Hold on, Colonel! hold on. You've _got_'o jump. Hah! hah!" roared
Gordon from the checkerboard. "That's right, that's right!" he ended,
as the Colonel complied reluctantly.

"Sock it to the old cuss!" commented Amos. "What I was going to say," he
resumed, rolling down the collar of his coat, "was, that when my wife
helped me bundle up t'night, she said I was gitt'n' t' be an old
granny. We _are_ agin', Judge, the's no denyin' that. We're both gray as
Norway rats now. An' speaking of us agin' reminds me,--have y' noticed
how bald the old Kyernel's gitt'n'?"

"I have, Amos," answered the Judge, mournfully. "The old man's head is
showing age, showing age! Getting thin up there, ain't it?"

The old Colonel bent to his work with studied abstraction, and even when
Amos said, judicially, after long scrutiny: "Yes, he'll soon be as bald
as a plate," he only lifted one yellow, freckled, bony hand, and brushed
his carroty growth of hair acro