was ordered out for the best; and
it was jest as well folks couldn't always have their own way. And so,
in time, Lommedieu was gone out o' folks's minds, much as a last year's
apple-blossom.

"It's relly affectin' to think how little these 'ere folks is missed
that's so much sot by. There ain't nobody, ef they's ever so important,
but what the world gets to goin' on without 'em, pretty much as it did
with 'em, though there's some little flurry at fust. Wal, the last
thing that was in anybody's mind was, that they ever should hear from
Lommedieu agin. But there ain't nothin' but what has its time o' turnin'
up; and it seems his turn was to come.

"Wal, ye see, 'twas the 19th o' March, when Cap'n Eb Sawin started with
a team for Boston. That day, there come on about the biggest snow-storm
that there'd been in them parts sence the oldest man could remember.
'Twas this 'ere fine, siftin' snow, that drives in your face like
needles, with a wind to cut your nose off: it made teamin' pretty
tedious work. Cap'n Eb was about the toughest man in them parts. He'd
spent days in the woods a-loggin', and he'd been up to the deestrict o'
Maine a-lumberin', and was about up to any sort o' thing a man gen'ally
could be up to; but these 'ere March winds sometimes does set on a
fellow so, that neither natur' nor grace can stan' 'em. The cap'n
used to say he could stan' any wind that blew one way 't time for
five minutes; but come to winds that blew all four p'ints at the same
minit,--why, they flustered him.

"Wal, that was the sort o' weather it was all day: and by sundown Cap'n
Eb he got clean bewildered, so that he lost his road; and, when night
came on, he didn't know nothin' where he was. Ye see the country was all
under drift, and the air so thick with snow, that he couldn't see a foot
afore him; and the fact was, he got off the Boston road without knowin'
it, and came out at a pair o' bars nigh upon Sherburn, where old Cack
Sparrock's mill is.

"Your gran'ther used to know old Cack, boys. He was a drefful drinkin'
old crittur, that lived there all alone in the woods by himself
a-tendin' saw and grist mill. He wasn't allers jest what he was then.
Time was that Cack was a pretty consid'ably likely young man, and his
wife was a very respectable woman,--Deacon Amos Petengall's dater from
Sherburn.

"But ye see, the year arter his wife died, Cack he gin up goin' to
meetin' Sundays, and, all the tithing-men and selectmen could do,