at one or the other
side of the bridge. When cooler weather came the group of local wits
gathered in Riverboro, either at Uncle Bart's joiner's shop or at
the brick store, according to fancy. The latter place was perhaps the
favorite for Riverboro talkers. It was a large, two-story, square, brick
building with a big-mouthed chimney and an open fire. When every house
in the two villages had six feet of snow around it, roads would always
be broken to the brick store, and a crowd of ten or fifteen men would be
gathered there talking, listening, betting, smoking, chewing, bragging,
playing checkers, singing, and "swapping stories."

Some of the men had been through the War of 1812 and could display
wounds received on the field of valor; others were still prouder of
scars won in encounters with the Indians, and there was one old codger,
a Revolutionary veteran, Bill Dunham by name, who would add bloody
tales of his encounters with the "Husshons." His courage had been so
extraordinary and his slaughter so colossal that his hearers marvelled
that there was a Hessian left to tell his side of the story, and Bill
himself doubted if such were the case.

"'T is an awful sin to have on your soul," Bill would say from his place
in a dark corner, where he would sit with his hat pulled down over his
eyes till the psychological moment came for the "Husshons" to be trotted
out. "'T is an awful sin to have on your soul,--the extummination of
a race o' men; even if they wa'n't nothin' more 'n so many ignorant
cockroaches. Them was the great days for fightin'! The Husshons was
the biggest men I ever seen on the field, most of 'em standin' six feet
eight in their stockin's,--but Lord! how we walloped 'em! Once we had a
cannon mounted an' loaded for 'em that was so large we had to draw the
ball into it with a yoke of oxen!"

Bill paused from force of habit, just as he had paused for the last
twenty years. There had been times when roars of incredulous laughter
had greeted this boast, but most of this particular group had heard the
yarn more than once and let it pass with a smile and a wink, remembering
the night that Abel Day had asked old Bill how they got the oxen out of
the cannon on that most memorable occasion.

"Oh!" said Bill, "that was easy enough; we jest unyoked 'em an' turned
'em out o' the primin'-hole!"

It was only early October, but there had been a killing frost, and Ezra
Simms, who kept the brick store, flung some shavi