ng driven home later in the
evening. Mrs. Downs's husband had been dead three years, and her
friend's large family was scattered from the old nest; they were
lonely at times in their later years, these old friends, and found it
very pleasant now to have a walk together. Thin little Mrs. Forder,
with all her wheezing, was the stronger and more active of the two:
Downs had grown heavier and weaker with advancing years.

They paced along the footpath slowly, Mrs. Downs rolling in her gait
like a sailor, and availing herself of every pretext to stop and look
at herbs in the pasture ground they crossed, and at the growing grass
in the mowing fields. They discussed the wedding minutely, and then
where the way grew wider they walked side by side instead of following
each other, and their voices sank to the low tone that betokens
confidence.

"You don't say that you really put faith in all them old stories?"

"It ain't accident altogether, noways you can fix it in your mind,"
maintained Mrs. Downs. "Needn't tell me that cussin' don't do neither
good nor harm. I shouldn't want to marry amon'st the Holts if I was
young ag'in! I r'member when this young man was born that's married
to-day, an' the fust thing his poor mother wanted to know was about
his hands bein' right. I said yes they was, but las' year he was
twenty year old and come home from the frontier with one o' them
hands--his right one--shot off in a fight. They say 't happened to
sights o' other fel-lows, an' their laigs gone too, but I count 'em
over on my fingers, them Holts, an' he's the third. May say that 't
was all an accident his mother's gittin' throwed out o' her waggin
comin' home from meetin', an' her wrist not bein' set good, an' she,
bein' run down at the time, 'most lost it altogether, but thar' it is,
stiffened up an' no good to her. There was the second. An' Enoch Holt
hisself come home from the Chiny seas, made a good passage an' a sight
o' money in the pepper trade, jest's we expected, an' goin' to build
him a new house, an' the frame gives a kind o' lurch when they was
raisin' of it an' surges over on to him an' nips him under. 'Which
arm?' says everybody along the road when they was comin' an' goin'
with the doctor. 'Right one--got to lose it,' says the doctor to 'em,
an' next time Enoch Holt got out to meetin' he stood up in the house
o' God with the hymn-book in his left hand, an' no right hand to turn
his leaf with. He knowed what we was all a-