little Nancy, and--well, coffee was dearer than ever I'd seen
it, I know, about that time, and butter selling for nothing; we just
threw our milk away, and there wasn't any market for eggs; besides
doctor's bills and Isaac to be sent to school; so it seemed to be the
best thing, though your mother took on pretty badly about it at first.
Jedediah has been good to you, I'm sure, and brought you up
religious,--though you've cost him a sight, spending three hundred and
fifty dollars a year at Amherst College.

But, as I was going to say, when I started to talk about '41,--to tell
the truth, Johnny, I'm always a long while coming to it, I believe. I'm
getting to be an old man,--a little of a coward, maybe, and sometimes,
when I sit alone here nights, and think it over, it's just like the
toothache, Johnny. As I was saying, if she had cut that wick straight, I
do believe it wouldn't have happened,--though it isn't that I mean to
lay the blame on her _now_.

I'd been out at work all day about the place, slicking things up for
to-morrow; there was a gap in the barn-yard fence to mend,--I left that
till the last thing, I remember,--I remember everything, some way or
other, that happened that day,--and there was a new roof to put on the
pig-pen, and the grape-vine needed an extra layer of straw, and the
latch was loose on the south barn door; then I had to go round and take
a last look at the sheep, and toss down an extra forkful for the cows,
and go into the stall to have a talk with Ben, and unbutton the coop
door to see if the hens looked warm,--just to tuck 'em up, as you might
say. I always felt sort of homesick--though I wouldn't have owned up to
it, not even to Nancy--saying good by to the creeturs the night before I
went in. There, now! it beats all, to think you don't know what I'm
talking about, and you a lumberman's son. "Going in" is going up into
the woods, you know, to cut and haul for the winter,--up, sometimes, a
hundred miles deep,--in in the fall and out in the spring; whole gangs
of us shut up there sometimes for six months, then down with the
freshets on the logs, and all summer to work the farm,--a merry sort of
life when you get used to it, Johnny; but it was a great while ago, and
it seems to me as if it must have been very cold.--Isn't there a little
draft coming in at the pantry door?

So when I'd said good by to the creeturs,--I remember just as plain how
Ben put his great neck on my shoulder and whinn