curely tied up in bed-ticking.

Flint watched the rustic with idle curiosity, as the old man entered
the store and deposited his bundle on the counter. Marsden sat on a
chair with no back, nursing his knee and assuming indifference to the
entrance of the new-comer.

"Be thar any market naow for _quilts_, or _be_ thar?" asked the old
farmer, somewhat anxiously, while untying the knots of his parcel.

"I dunno ez thar be, and I dunno _ez_ thar be," Marsden answered.

Both parties seemed to understand each other perfectly. They
approached as warily as two foxes. When the roll was finally spread
out on the counter, the dim lamplight flickered over a patchwork quilt
of the familiar log-cabin pattern, gay with colors as varied as those
of Joseph's coat.

"What cher s'pose yer could give fur this?" the new-comer asked with
a relapse into unwary eagerness, and an irrepressible pride in this
evidence of the household industry of his women folk.

"Dunno, I'm sure," said Marsden, slowly, shifting his quid of tobacco
and spitting meditatively on the floor. "Shop-keepin' 's all a resk
anyhow. I'll give yer seventy-five cents for it though, jest for a
gamble; but nobody has much use for quilts in this weather, except to
hide their heads under from the skeeters."

"Truth will out," whispered Flint. "Marsden always declares that
mosquitoes are unknown at Nepaug."

The owner of the quilt shook his head dubiously.

"Couldn't you go a dollar on it?" he queried. "It took my wife a month
to make it, sewin' evenin's."

"Did--did it?"

"Yaas, 'n' it's made out of pieces of the children's clothes, and some
on 'em 's dead--and associations ought to caount for somethin'."

"Will it last?" questioned the cautious Marsden, twitching it this way
and that, and testing the material with his thumb-nail, which he kept
long and sharp apparently for the purpose of detecting flaws in
dry-goods.

"Wall," assumed the other, somewhat nettled by the purchaser's
skepticism, "I reckon it'll last ez long ez a dollar will."

"Mebbe," said Marsden, quite impressed by the logic of this last
statement. "Anyhaow I'll give you ninety cents, and that's my last
figger."

The man glanced furtively over his shoulder at the female in the
buggy, who sat twitching the reins impatiently, then he hitched up
closer to Marsden and held out a dime.

"Take it," he whispered, "'n' give me the greenback. I promised I
wouldn't let it go fur less'n a dollar, 'n' I