d him very clearly. He was a Northerner, who
had come southward seeking health, and finding none. But he found Miss
Forsythe instead, and married her. How it happened that Ambrose Cranch,
not a relative but a nondescript, should be living in a household
presided over by Forsythe blood, was as follows: First, he had put out
years before a fire in Mrs. Manning's kitchen which would otherwise have
burned the wooden house to the ground; that began the acquaintance.
Second, learning that her small property was in danger of being swept
away entirely, owing to unpaid taxes and mismanagement, he made a
journey to the capital of the State in her behalf, and succeeded after
much trouble in saving a part of it for her. It was pure kindness on his
part in a time of general distress, and from another man would have been
called remarkable; but nothing could be called remarkable in Ambrose
Cranch: he had never been of any consequence in Wilbarger or his life.
Mrs. Manning liked him, and, after a while, asked him to come and take
his meals at the cottage: the saw-mill was directly opposite, and it
would be neighborly. Ambrose, who had always eaten his dinners at the
old Wilbarger Hotel, in the dark, crooked dining-room, which had an air
of mystery not borne out by anything, unless it might be its soups,
gladly accepted, and transferred his life to the mainland point and the
cottage opposite, with the row-boat as a ferry between. He was so
inoffensive and willing, and so skillful with his hands, that he was
soon as much a part of the household as old Dinah herself; he mended and
repaired, praised the good dishes, watered the flowers, and was an
excellent listener. It would be amusing to know how much the fact of
being, or securing, a good listener has to do with our lives. Mrs.
Manning, fond of reminiscence and long narratives which were apt to run
off at random, so that, whereas you began with the Browns, you ended
with something about the Smiths, and never heard the Brown story at all,
actually retained Ambrose Cranch at her table for eleven years because
he listened well. But she did not realize it; neither did he. A simpler,
more unplotting soul never existed than that in the saw-miller's body. A
word now as to that body: it had a good deal to do with its owner's
life, and our story. (O brothers and sisters, if Justice holds the
balance, how handsome some of us are going to be in the next life!)
Ambrose Cranch was tall and thin, what