lage lads who tormented Jed, the old dizzard had been for years the
local butt. Of course I never saw him, but I have keard so much about him
from all the gossips in the village, and grandfather used to describe him
so vividly, that I feel as if I know all about him.

For about ten years of his youth Jedediah had been way from our little
Vermont town, wandering in the great world. From his stories, he had been
everywhere on he map. In the evening, around the stove in the village
post-office, when somebody read aloud from the newspaper a remarkable
event, all the loafers turned to Jed with wide, malicious grins, to hear
him cap it with a yet ore marvelous tale of what had happened to him. They
gathered around the simple-minded little old man, their tongues in their
cheeks, and drew from him one silly, impossible, boastful story after
another. They made him amplify circumstantially by clumsily artful
questions, and poked one another in the ribs with delight over his deluded
joy in their sympathetic interest.

As he grew older, his yarns solidified like folk-lore, into a consecrated
and legendary form, which he repeated endlessly without variation. There
were many of them--"How I drove a team of four horses over a falling
bridge," "How I interviewed the King of Portugal," "How I saved big Sam
Harden's life in the forest fire." But the favorite one was, "How I rode
the moose into Kennettown, Massachusetts." This was the particular
flaunting, sumptuous yarn which everybody made old Jed bring out for
company. If a stranger remarked, "Old man Chillingworth can tell a tale or
two, can't he?" everybody started up eagerly with the cry: "Oh, but have
you heard him tell the story of how he rode the moose into Kennettown,
Massachusetts?"

If the answer was negative; all business was laid aside until the withered
little old man was found, pottering bout some of the odd jobs by which he
earned his living. He was always as pleased as Punch to be asked to
perform, and laid aside his tools with a foolish, bragging grin on his
face, of which grandfather has told me so many times that it seems as if I
had really seen it.

This is how he told the story, always word for word the same way:

"Wa'al, sir, I've had queer things happen to me in my time, hain't I,
boys?"--at which the surrounding crowd always wagged mocking heads--"but
nothin' to beat that. When I was ashore wunst, from one of my long v'y'ges
on the sea, I was to Kennettown, M