er and no more, "I suppose there's no
doubt he was an eccentric. He built the hut up there and moved into it
and finally went over the countryside doctoring, in an unscientific
way--and praying--and finally hauled in Billy Jones, a sort of old rake
they thought of sending to the poor farm, and took care of him till he
died. Billy was a tank. When we were little, there used to be stories we
got hold of about the way Billy's legs swelled. One of the boys 'down
along' told me he'd been up there and looked into the hut and Billy sat
there in a chair with his legs bandaged and the water dripping through
to the floor. We all wished our legs would drip. We thought it was
great. Mother wouldn't let me go up there after old Billy went into
residence. But we boys kept on hearing about him. I've no doubt we got
most of the salient points."

He was giving her more than was good for her, after all. Amelia wouldn't
like this. She didn't like it.

"Shocking!" she commented, shaking her head in repudiation.

"I've thought since," said Raven, partly in musing recollection and
perhaps a little to show her what she got by fishing for old memories,
"Billy had cirrhosis of the liver. As I said, Billy was a tank."

"We needn't go into the question of Jones," said Amelia, with dignity.
"He doesn't concern us. It was a perfectly unjustifiable thing for Uncle
John to do, this taking him into his own house and nursing him.
Perfectly. But it only shows how unbalanced Uncle John really was."

"Call him Old Crow, Milly," Raven interrupted her, resolved she should
accept the picture as it was if she were bent on any picture at all.
"Everybody knew him by that: just Old Crow. At first, I suppose it was
the country way of trying to be funny over his name, as soon as he got
funny to them with his queerness. And then, after he'd gone round
nursing the sick and praying with the afflicted, they may have put real
affection into it. You can't tell. You see, Milly, Old Crow was a
practical Christian. From all I've heard, he was about the only one you
and I've ever met."

"He was certainly not normal," said Amelia ingenuously, and while Raven
sat rolling that over in his delighted mind and getting the full logic
of it, she continued: "Do you know, John, he was a very commanding man,
very handsome really? You look like him."

"Much obliged, Milly," said Raven. He was smiling broadly at her. His
eyes--the crinkles about them multiplied--withdrew in a way