of the mountain and no neighbors under half a mile. I say he
lived there, but he wasn't there more than a third of the time. The boy
will remember how he used to go along the road, full as a tick, and the
school children making fun of him and then running before he could get
at them. I don't know as he would, though. There never was any harm in
him, only he did neglect himself so he was an awful sight. And the only
time he was in his little house was when he'd been hired out haying or
something, and got his money and spent it and come back with crackers
and cheese in his old carpet bag, to sober up.

"This day I was speaking about (it was October and no wind) I was going
by his house and I saw a smoke coming out of the chimney, and I thought
old Billy had come home to sober up. But I hadn't hardly got to the
house before I heard him calling me, and I looked and there he was in
the front door leaning on a cane.

"'You come in here,' says he, and I went in.

"It was a terrible hog's nest, his front room was, but I paid no
attention, for that's the way he lived. He sat down in a chair and made
a motion with his hand for me to come near, and I did, and he took my
hand and put it on his knee.

"'Feel that,' he says. And when I didn't know what he meant, nor care
hardly, for I thought he might be in drink, he called out, in a queer
voice--sharp it was, and pitiful--and says he: 'My legs are swelling.
Hard as a rock.'

"Then I saw he was in a trouble of fear, and I asked him questions and
he told me how long it had been coming on and how he went to the doctor
down to the street, and the doctor told him he was a sick man, and how
he would grow worse instead of better and could never take care of
himself in the world, and the doctor would get him sent to the Poor
Farm. That was his trouble. He did not want to go to the Farm, and when
I told him it was the right way, he broke down and shook and cried and
said he was afraid to go. Then he told me why. The boy must not read
this until he is grown up, but when he is, he will hear there was a man
killed over across the mountain: Cyrus Graves, a poor, good-for-nothing
creature as it was said. (But God made him.) He was found by the side of
the road, and it was thought he had words with a peddler that went along
that day and never was found afterward. But some thought the authorities
never tried so hard as they might to find the peddler, because Cyrus was
such a poor good-for-not