outh's a fairly prosperous town,
and the paupers had died, one after the other, and no new ones had come,
until all there was left in the poorhouse was old Betsy Mullen, who was
down with creeping palsy, and Deborah Badger, who'd been keeper ever
since her husband died.

The poorhouse property was valuable, too, specially for a summer
cottage, being out on the end of Robbin's Point, away from the town, and
having a fine view right across the bay. Zoeth Tiddit was a committee
of one with power from the town to sell the place, but he hadn't found
a customer yet. And if he did sell it, what to do with Debby was more
or less of a question. She'd kept poorhouse for years, and had no other
home nor no relations to go to. Everybody liked her, too--that is,
everybody but Cap'n Benijah. He was down on her 'cause she was a
Spiritualist and believed in fortune tellers and such. The cap'n, bein'
a deacon of the Come-Outer persuasion, was naturally down on folks who
wasn't broad-minded enough to see that his partic'lar crack in the roof
was the only way to crawl through to glory.

Well, we voted to send Asaph to the poorhouse, and then I was appointed
a delegate to see him and tell him he'd got to go. I wasn't enthusiastic
over the job, but everybody said I was exactly the feller for the place.

"To tell you the truth," drawls Darius, "you, being a stranger, are the
only one that Ase couldn't talk over. He's got a tongue that's buttered
on both sides and runs on ball bearings. If I should see him he'd work
on my sympathies till I'd lend him the last two-cent piece in my baby's
bank."

So, as there wa'n't no way out of it, I drove down to Asaph's that
afternoon. He lived off on a side road by the shore, in a little,
run-down shanty that was as no account as he was. When I moored my horse
to the "heavenly-wood" tree by what was left of the fence, I would have
bet my sou'wester that I caught a glimpse of Brother Blueworthy, peeking
round the corner of the house. But when I turned that corner there was
nobody in sight, although the bu'sted wash-bench, with a cranberry crate
propping up its lame end, was shaking a little, as if some one had set
on it recent.

I knocked on the door, but nobody answered. After knocking three or
four times, I tried kicking, and the second kick raised, from somewheres
inside, a groan that was as lonesome a sound as ever I heard. No human
noise in my experience come within a mile of it for dead, downrigh