de stairs; none o' your steep
kind that breaks a feller's neck to get up and down, but gret broad
stairs with easy risers, so they used to say you could a cantered a pony
up that 'are stairway easy as not. Then there was gret wide rooms, and
sofys, and curtains, and gret curtained bedsteads that looked sort o'
like fortifications, and pictur's that was got in Italy and Rome and all
them 'are heathen places. Ye see, the Gineral was a drefful worldly
old critter, and was all for the pomps and the vanities. Lordy massy!
I wonder what the poor old critter thinks about it all now, when his
body's all gone to dust and ashes in the graveyard, and his soul's gone
to 'tarnity! Wal, that are ain't none o' my business; only it shows the
vanity o' riches in a kind o' strikin' light, and makes me content that
I never hed none."

"But, Sam, I hope General Sullivan wasn't a wicked man, _was_ he?"

"Wal, I wouldn't say he was railly wickeder than the run; but he was
one o' these 'ere high-stepping, big-feeling fellers, that seem to be
a hevin' their portion in this life. Drefful proud he was; and he was
pretty much sot on this world, and kep' a sort o' court goin' on round
him. Wal, I don't jedge him nor nobody: folks that hes the world is apt
to get sot on it. Don't none on us do more than middlin' well."

"But, Sam, what about Ruth Sullivan?"

"Ruth?--Oh, yis!--Ruth--

"Wal, ye see, the only crook in the old Gineral's lot was he didn't hev
no children. Mis' Sullivan, she was a beautiful woman, as handsome as a
pictur'; but she never had but one child; and he was a son who died when
he was a baby, and about broke her heart. And then this 'ere Ruth was
her sister's child, that was born about the same time; and, when the boy
died, they took Ruth home to sort o' fill his place, and kind o' comfort
up Mis' Sullivan. And then Ruth's father and mother died; and they
adopted her for their own, and brought her up.

"Wal, she grew up to be amazin' handsome. Why, everybody said that she
was jest the light and glory of that 'are old Sullivan place, and worth
more'n all the pictur's and the silver and the jewels, and all there was
in the house; and she was jest so innercent and sweet, that you never
see nothing to beat it. Wal, your Aunt Lois she got acquainted with Ruth
one summer when she was up to Old Town a visitin' at Parson Lothrop's.
Your Aunt Lois was a gal then, and a pretty good-lookin' one too; and,
somehow or other, she took to