et up in the
dooryard, and I remember that some drank it too freely. The he-o-hee of
the men as they lifted on the pikes and the sound of the hammer and
beetle rang in the air from morning until night. Mrs. Rodney Barnes and
Mrs. Dorothy came to help Aunt Deel with the cooking and a great dinner
was served on an improvised table in the dooryard, where the stove was
set up. The shingles and sheathes and clapboards were on before the day
ended.

When they were about to go the men filled their cups and drank to Aunt
Deel.

I knew, or thought I knew, why they had not mentioned my Uncle Peabody,
and was very thoughtful about it. Suddenly the giant Rodney Barnes
strode up to the barrel. I remember the lion-like dignity of his face as
he turned and said:

"Now, boys, come up here an' stand right before me, every one o' you."

He ranged them in a circle around the barrel. He stood at the spigot and
filled every cup. Then he raised his own and said:

"I want ye to drink to Peabody Baynes--one o' the squarest men that ever
stood in cowhide."

They drank the toast--not one of them would have dared refuse.

"Now three cheers for the new home and every one that lives in it," he
demanded.

They cheered lustily and went away.

Uncle Peabody and I put in the floors and stairway and partitions. More
than once in the days we were working together I tried to tell him what
Sally had told me, but my courage failed.

We moved our furniture. I remember that Uncle Peabody called it "the
houseltree." We had greased paper on the windows for a time after we
moved until the sash came. Aunt Deel had made rag carpets for the parlor
and the bedroom which opened off it. Our windows looked down into the
great valley of the St. Lawrence, stretching northward thirty miles or
more from our hilltop. A beautiful grove of sugar maples stood within a
stone's throw of the back door.

What a rustic charm in the long slant of the green hill below us with
its gray, mossy boulders and lovely thorn trees! It was, I think, a
brighter, pleasanter home than that we had left. It was built on the
cellar of one burned a few years before. The old barn was still there
and a little repairing had made it do.

The day came, shortly, when I had to speak out, and I took the straight
way of my duty as the needle of the compass pointed. It was the end of a
summer day and we had watched the dusk fill the valley and come creeping
up the slant, sinking the boulders a