emerity he clutched Tim's great
miry boots to help him up and on his way round. Occasionally he swayed
to and fro, with his teeth on exhibition, laughing and babbling and
shrilly exclaiming, inarticulately bragging of his agile prowess, as
if he were able to defy all the Quimbeys, who would not notice him. And
when it was all over he went in his wriggling ursine gait back to the
hearth-stone, and there he was sitting, demurely enough, and as if he
had never moved, when his mother returned and found him.

There was no indication that he had attracted a moment's attention. She
looked gravely down at him; then took her chair. A pair of blue yarn
socks was in her hand. "I never see sech darnin' ez Aunt Sairy Ann do
fur ye, dad; I hev jes tuk my shears an' cut this heel smang out, an' I
be goin' ter do it over."

She slipped a tiny gourd into the heel, and began to draw the slow
threads to and fro across it.

The blaze, red and yellow, and with elusive purple gleams, leaped up the
chimney. The sap was still in the wood; it sang a summer-tide song. But
an autumn wind was blowing shrilly down the chimney; one could hear the
sibilant rush of the dead leaves on the blast. The window and the door
shook, and were still, and once more rattled as if a hand were on the
latch.

Suddenly--"Ever weigh him?" her father asked.

She sat upright with a nervous start. It was a moment before she
understood that it was of the Kittredge scion he spoke.

With his high cracked laugh the old man leaned over, his outspread hand
hovering about the plump baby, uncertain where, in so much soft fatness,
it might be practicable to clutch him. There were some large horn
buttons on the back of his frock, a half-dozen of which, gathered
together, afforded a grasp. He lifted the child by them, laughing in
undisguised pleasure to feel the substantial strain upon the garment.

"Toler'ble survigrus," he declared, with his high chirp.

His daughter suddenly sprang up with a pallid face and a pointing hand.

"The winder!" she huskily cried--"suthin's at the winder!"

But when they looked they saw only the dark square of tiny panes,
with the fireside scene genially reflected on it. And then she fell to
declaring that she had been dreaming, and besought them not to take
down their guns nor to search, and would not be still until they had
all seemed to concede the point; it was she who fastened the doors and
shutters, and she did not lie down to rest til