ere
scrutiny. "Ef ye should be down cellar, and the candle should go out,
now?"

"I ain't," said I: "I ain't afraid of any thing. I never knew what it
was to be afraid in my life."

"Wal, then," said Sam, "I'll tell ye. This 'ere's what Cap'n Eb Sawin
told me when I was a boy about your bigness, I reckon.

"Cap'n Eb Sawin was a most respectable man. Your gran'ther knew him very
well; and he was a deacon in the church in Dedham afore he died. He
was at Lexington when the fust gun was fired agin the British. He was a
dreffle smart man, Cap'n Eb was, and driv team a good many years atween
here and Boston. He married Lois Peabody, that was cousin to your
gran'ther then. Lois was a rael sensible woman; and I've heard her tell
the story as he told her, and it was jest as he told it to me,--jest
exactly; and I shall never forget it if I live to be nine hundred years
old, like Mathuselah.

"Ye see, along back in them times, there used to be a fellow come round
these 'ere parts, spring and fall, a-peddlin' goods, with his pack on
his back; and his name was Jehiel Lommedieu. Nobody rightly knew where
he come from. He wasn't much of a talker; but the women rather liked
him, and kind o' liked to have him round. Women will like some fellows,
when men can't see no sort o' reason why they should; and they liked
this 'ere Lommedieu, though he was kind o' mournful and thin and
shad-bellied, and hadn't nothin' to say for himself. But it got to be
so, that the women would count and calculate so many weeks afore 'twas
time for Lommedieu to be along; and they'd make up ginger-snaps and
preserves and pies, and make him stay to tea at the houses, and feed
him up on the best there was: and the story went round, that he was
a-courtin' Phebe Ann Parker, or Phebe Ann was a-courtin' him,--folks
didn't rightly know which. Wal, all of a sudden, Lommedieu stopped
comin' round; and nobody knew why,--only jest he didn't come. It turned
out that Phebe Ann Parker had got a letter from him, sayin' he'd be
along afore Thanksgiving; but he didn't come, neither afore nor at
Thanksgiving time, nor arter, nor next spring: and finally the women
they gin up lookin' for him. Some said he was dead; some said he was
gone to Canada; and some said he hed gone over to the Old Country.

"Wal, as to Phebe Ann, she acted like a gal o' sense, and married 'Bijah
Moss, and thought no more 'bout it. She took the right view on't, and
said she was sartin that all things