ia said.

"Folks got to kind o' respectin' Quassia. She come to meetin' Sunday
regular, and sot all fixed up in red and yaller and green, with glass
beads and what not, lookin' for all the world like one o' them ugly
Indian idols; but she was well-behaved as any Christian. She was a
master hand at cookin'. Her bread and biscuits couldn't be beat, and
no couldn't her pies, and there wa'n't no such pound-cake as she made
nowhere. Wal, this 'ere story I'm a goin' to tell you was told me by
Cinthy Pendleton. There ain't a more respectable gal, old or young, than
Cinthy nowheres. She lives over to Sherburne now, and I hear tell she's
sot up a manty-makin' business; but then she used to do tailorin' in
Oldtown. She was a member o' the church, and a good Christian as ever
was. Wal, ye see, Quassia she got Cinthy to come up and spend a week to
the Cap'n Brown house, a doin' tailorin' and a fixin' over his close:
'twas along toward the fust o' March. Cinthy she sot by the fire in the
front parlor with her goose and her press-board and her work: for there
wa'n't no company callin', and the snow was drifted four feet deep right
across the front door; so there wa'n't much danger o' any body comin'
in. And the cap'n he was a perlite man to wimmen; and Cinthy she liked
it jest as well not to have company, 'cause the cap'n he'd make himself
entertainin' tellin' on her sea-stories, and all about his adventures
among the Ammonites, and Perresites, and Jebusites, and all sorts o'
heathen people he'd been among.

"Wal, that 'are week there come on the master snow-storm. Of all the
snow-storms that hed ben, that 'are was the beater; and I tell you the
wind blew as if 'twas the last chance it was ever goin' to hev. Wal,
it's kind o' scary like to be shet up in a lone house with all natur'
a kind o' breakin' out, and goin' on so, and the snow a comin' down
so thick ye can't see 'cross the street, and the wind a pipin' and a
squeelin' and a rumblin' and a tumblin' fust down this chimney and then
down that. I tell you, it sort o' sets a feller thinkin' o' the three
great things,--death, judgment, and etarnaty; and I don't care who the
folks is, nor how good they be, there's times when they must be feelin'
putty consid'able solemn.

"Wal, Cinthy she said she kind o' felt so along, and she hed a sort o'
queer feelin' come over her as if there was somebody or somethin' round
the house more'n appeared. She said she sort o' felt it in the air; bu