een in
the State prison standing over her with a great knife! And then she
laughed again.

"What are you laughing at?" he said.

"It popped into my head, supposing Susan should have looked in at the
south window and Joshua in at the door, when you was feeding out that
oyster to me, what they would have thought!"

Eph laughed too; and, surely enough, just then a stout, light-haired,
rather plain-looking young woman came up to the south window and leaned
in. She had on a sun-bonnet, which had not prevented her from securing
a few choice freckles. She had been working with a trowel in her
flower-garden.

"What's the matter?" she said, nodding easily to Eph. "What do you two
always find to laugh about?"

"Ephraim was feeding me with spoon-meat," said Aunt Lyddy, pointing to
the basket, which looked like a basket of anthracite coal.

"It looks like spoon-meat!" said Susan, and then she laughed too. "I 'll
roast some of them for supper," she added,--"a new way that I know."

Eph was not invited to stay to supper, but he stayed, none the less:
that was always understood.

"Well, well, well!" said Joshua, coming to the door-step, and washing
his hands and arms just outside, in a tin basin. "I thought I see you
set down a parcel of oysters--but there was sea-weed over 'em, and I
don' know's I could have said they was oysters; but then, if the square
question had been put to me, 'Mr. Carr, be them oysters or be they
not?' I s'pose I should have said they was; still, if they 'd asked me
how I knew--"

"Come, come, father!" said Aunt Lyddy, "do give poor Ephraim a little
peace. Why don't you just say you thought they were oysters, and done
with it?"

"Say I _thought_ they was?" he replied, innocently. "I knew well enough
they was--that is--knew? No, I did n't know, but--"

Aunt Lyddy, with an air of mock resignation, gave up, while Joshua
endeavored to fix, to a hair, the exact extent of his knowledge.

Eph smiled; but he remembered what would have made him pardon, a
thousand times over, the old man's garrulousness. He remembered who
alone had never failed, once a year, to visit a certain prisoner, at
the cost of a long and tiresome journey, and who had written to that
homesick prisoner kind and cheering letters, and had sent him baskets of
simple dainties for holidays.

Susan bustled about, and made a fire of crackling sticks, and began to
roast the oysters in a way that made a most savory smell. She set the
tabl