the chores incidental to
both houses with such easy efficiency that old Chauncey was repeatedly
reminded of his bachelorhood. From continually sunning themselves behind
the kitchen like two old snakes the men had acquired a wrinkled
black-walnut finish, but Celia still retained the firm, buxom ripeness
of an apple.

As a practical communist Old Chauncey kept his latch-key out by
inclination. His generosity was limitless.

Thus, Old Shep did not have to ask for anything he wanted. It was share
and share alike.

For example, he charged tobacco to Old Chauncey's account at the store
in town. He always had. If he preferred a grade of tobacco superior to
what Old Chauncey himself used, such was his privilege. A plug is a
plug.

Shep and Chauncey once had occupied the same double desk of raw
cherrywood in the schoolhouse which was now a weedy hill of rubble and
rotten wood a half-mile out on the backroad.

Besides words, Old Shep hoarded tobacco plugs in case the cause of
communism ever collapsed.

In accordance with this scheme of living, Old Chauncey gradually became
accustomed to being spared the nuisance of opening the occasional letter
he received from another old soldier in Sackett's Harbor, New York. At
first Shep had gone to the trouble of sneaking the mail down to the
ice-house and steaming it open. But currently the mail arrived slit open
without any subterfuge. The knife, incidentally, was the better of Old
Chauncey's two. Shep had borrowed it, knowing that in communism there
can be no Indian giving.

On one occasion Chauncey accosted Old Shep behind the kitchen with a
crumpled letter in his fingers.

"Shep," he suggested casually, "I wish you'd slit my letters open at the
top instead of an end. It wouldn't bunch the writing up so much when you
shove it back inside."

"Chauncey," Old Shep replied tremblingly, "you're not serious with me,
are you? If you want to keep secrets from your old crony, why, you just
tell me seriously not to open those letters any more and I won't."

It used to give Chauncey a funny feeling when Old Shep talked like that.

* * * * *

Of a somnolent summer morning while Chauncey was scrubbing his long
yellow teeth he glimpsed blurred movement through the starched white
bathroom curtain. Tweaking the curtain somewhat aside he witnessed Old
Shep scampering down the side hill to the ice-house with a load of
kindling in his arms.

"I'll be dog-gon