being a boy and settles down; it's in the blood; and I don't want to see
you, Delia, keel-hauled there--'"

"Like David's mother,--Prudence Frost, that was," said Uncle Silas;
"originally she was a good, smart girl, and full of jingle; but finally
she give up and come to it,--lef sweepin'-day out o' the almanic, washed
dishes in cold water, and made up beds at bedtime; and when she ironed a
shirt, jes' 's like's not she 'd iron a hoss-fly right into the bosom."

"And lived a dog's life generally," said Captain Bennett. "So I laid the
whole thing out to Delia, the best way I knew how.

"'Well,' says she, 'I know you mean my good, Captain Bennett,--but I
shall take my chances.' And so she did. Well--"

"Speakin' o' the barn," said Uncle Silas, "do you remember that high
shay that David's father hed? I was up to the Widow Pope's vendue the
day he bid it off. He managed to spunk up so fur's to hitch the shaffs
under his team and fetch the vehicle home, and then he hed n't no place
to put it up out o' the weather,--and so he druv it along under that big
Bald'n apple-tree that used to stand by the pantry window, on the north
side o' the house, and left it there, with the shaffs clawin' down in
the ground. Then the talk was, he was goin' to build him a sort of a
little tabernacle for it before winter set in; and he hed down a load
of lumber from Uncle Joe's mill and hed it dumped down alongside o' the
shay. But the shay was n't never once hitched up, nor the tabernacle
built; and the timber and the shay jes' set there, side by side, seein'
who 'd speak first, for twenty year, to my cer-ting knowledge; and you
go by there when it was blowin' fresh, and the old curtings would be
flappin' in and out, black and white, till finally the whole arrangement
sunk out o' sight. I guess there 's more or less wrack there now, 'f you
sh'd go poke in the grass."

"It was thirty-one year ago, come October, that he bought the shay,"
said Captain Philo; "it was the fall I was cast away on the Tombstones,
and lost every dollar I had. I remember it because the old man came down
to the house of his own accord, when I got home, and let me have two
hundred dollars. He 'd just been selling the West New Field; and when he
'd sold land and had money on hand, it was anybody's that wanted it. But
what was it about David's going off so sudden on the 'Viola'?"

"Oh, yes, I forgot my errand," said Captain Bennett; "and now I 've got
adrift in my stor