t nobody! I'll tell ye what it makes
me think on. It makes me think o' one o' these 'ere accordions that ye
open and shet. I'm afeerd, teacher, that it ain't a goin' to fit!"

"Thar! 'sh! 'sh! pa," said Grandma, with all the unction of holy
disapproval; but, for once, my ever dear friend and champion was
compelled to turn her back upon the scene.

In this position, she exclaimed in a low, broken tone of voice, "There
may be legs, pa, as we don't know on!"

Grandpa was curiously aroused.

"I tell ye, I've travelled to the four quarters of the 'arth, ma," said
he; "and set eyes on the tarnalest critters under God's canopy, but I
never see anybody yit that 'ud fit into that 'ere. Besides," he added,
knowingly, in a milder tone; "I reckin that 'ere stockin's meant for
somebody nearer hum, and a pretty straight-legged fellow, too."

I was enabled to judge something still further of the speculations waking
in the Wallencamp brain, when, having to keep Henry G. after school, one
night, as a means of discipline, he bawled out:--

"Ye don't keep Simmy B. after school no more! And why not?" continued the
aggrieved infant, at the same time framing for himself an answer of
malicious significance: "Oh, 'cause he's Lute Cradlebow's brother!"

Social converse was at its high tide, now, in Wallencamp among the birds
in the trees and the fowls in the door-yards, and quite as naturally and
harmlessly so, for the most part, I think, among the beings of a superior
order. They had little other recreation.

The bonfire had marked the close of the gay epoch in Wallencamp. It was
too warm now for the livelier recreations of the winter. Religious
interest, especially, was at a low ebb. At the evening prayer-meetings,
the number of worshippers appeared but as a handful compared with the
number of the unconcerned who lingered outside in the pleasant moonlight.
Conspicuous among these latter, replacing the fervid debates of the
winter with a calm philosophy befitting a warmer season, were Captain
Sartell and Bachelor Lot.

The old songs held the same charm for them all, however. They sang them
ever with pathos in their voices and tears in their eyes.

The little unpremeditated chats by gate and roadside, the neighborly
"droppings-in," grew more and more frequent.

But when poor Rebecca was taken up on the tide of social wonder and
debate, and I heard whisperings concerning her, and knew that an evil
suspicion had taken hold of the mind