ore it patient for a spell, 'cause his wife--she that was
Elizabeth Morton from up-mountain--thought the world an' all of the old
folks an' they o' her. She'd been raised on a farm an' could an' did
turn her hand to every sort o' work, but 'twasn't no use. She loved
them, but she loved her husband better; an', one night, after there'd
been more hard talk 'an common 'twixt the Squire an' Verplanck, there
was three folks missin' from Marsden township. They was somethin' else
missin', too, an' that was the queer brass bound box with all the
Squire's money an' vallybles. The hired man told 'bout the box, else
nobody might ever have heard that part. He was carryin' in the day's
wood next mornin' an' overheard the Squire an' the Madam talkin' 'bout
it; him callin' his son a 'thief,' an' forbiddin' his name ever to be
spoke in that house again. She declarin' that no child of them two
honest people could ever be a thief. Hot an' heavy they had it, though
nobody had ever heard them two quarrel afore. An' right on top of that
stalks in Jim Pettijohn--him that's a sort o' Squire, a justice of the
peace, now--an' demands his son. He'd let the feller grow up without
good trainin' or lookin' after of any kind, though 'twas needed bad
enough. All Nate did know, or the little he knowed, was badness an'
deviltry. Why, he used to go with your own pa, Johnny, consid'able, an'
'peared to like him almost as well as he did Verplanck, an' many's the
time I've had the three on my hands a-fishin'. But Johnny didn't tackle
much to ary one them other boys. He was all for trompin' 'round by
himself, drawin' pictur's on whatever come handy, or lyin' under the
trees a-dreamin' the summer days through. In the winter he'd dream afore
the wood fire just the same idle way, an' finally he dreamed himself out
o' Marsden an' run away to be an artist. Eunice, she was set an'
determined he should be a minister, else maybe 'twouldn't never ha'
turned out as it did. But Johnny was good, good clean through to the
core, parson or artist or what not; an' 'twasn't o' him I set out to
tell. An' I must hurry up, anyway, 'cause Susanna she'll be in purty
soon, an' that'll end all our nice time."

"Oh, Uncle Moses! I like Susanna better to-day than I ever did before.
She showed me the real inside of herself, and it isn't half as crusty as
the outside."

"Huh! What'd she do to manage that? She seems powerful still an'
sot-lookin' sence she come back from inspectin' he