dmother--and was taken into the "best
room" to see all the family curiosities. There were wax flowers and
silhouettes and relics of every description. Mrs. Hamilton spared him not
one of these wonders.

"This," she said, "is the chain that was made of my grandfather's hair. It
was finished and brought home on a Wednesday, and Thursday, the next day,
grandfather was burned up in the great tannery fire, and this was all my
grandmother had to remember him by. These are the front teeth of a savage
that my uncle Josiah Abijah killed in the South Sea Islands. Uncle Josiah
Abijah always said it was either him or the black man, but I have always
felt that it was murder, just the same, and this is the stick of
birch-wood that a sailor-man, who came here once to see my mother, killed
a bull moose with."

My grandmother has told me that never before or since did she see a human
face change as did grandfather's.

"What?" he shouted, and his voice cracked.

"Yes, it sounds queer, but it's so. It's the only time a moose was ever
seen here, and folks thought the wolves must have chased it till it was
crazy or tired out. This sailor-man, who happened to be here, saw it, ran
out, snatched up a stick from the wood-pile, and went at that great animal
all alone. Folks say he was the bravest man this town ever saw. He got
right up on its back--"

Grandmother said grandfather had turned so pale by this time that she
thought he was going to faint and he sat down as if somebody had knocked
him down. On the dusty road to the cemetery, however, he only strode along
the faster, half forgetting the little girl who dragged at his hand, and
turned a sympathetically agitated face up to his narrative.

Mrs. Hamilton went on through the whole incident, telling every single
thing just the way old Jed did. She showed the dark places on the
birch-bark where the blood had stained it, and she said the skull of the
animal, with its one horn sawed off, was over among the relics in her
aunt's home.

"My Aunt Maria was accounted a very good-looking woman in her day, and
there were those that thought she might have taken a second husband, if
the sailor had been so disposed. He was so brave and so honest, bringing
all that money from my uncle, the sea-captain, when goodness knows, he
might have run off with every cent of it, and nobody been any the wiser!"

At this grandfather gave a loud exclamation and stood up, shaking his head
as if he had the ague.