le girl; but I, too,
grew up, as grandfather grew bent and feeble. When he was an old, old man
of eighty-five, and when I had been away from Hillsboro several years
teaching school, the last of my grandmother's relatives in Newtonville
died. I was sent for to decide what should be done with the few family
relics, and one Saturday and Sunday I went all through the little old
house, looking over the things.

In the garret I came across the moose-skull with one horn. It made me feel
queer to think what a part it had played in the development of my
grandfather's honorable and tender old soul. There were a few sticks of
furniture, some daguerrotypes and silhouettes, and a drawerful of yellow
papers. The first I sent home to Hillsboro to grandmother. I took the
papers back to the town where I was teaching, to look over them.

Among other things was a quaint old diary of my grandmother's great-aunt,
she that was the buxom widow of Jed's story. It was full of homely items
of her rustic occupations; what day she had "sett the broune hen," and how
much butter was made the first month she had the "party-colored cowe from
over the mount'n." I glanced idly at these faded bits of insignificant
news, when I was electrified by seeing the following entry:

#This day came to my Bro. Amos and Me, a sea-man, bringeing news of my
Bro. Elijah's the capt'n's dethe, and allso mutch monie in gold, sent to
us by our Bro. The sea-man is the greatest in size aver I saw. No man in
towne his bed can reach so mutch as to his sholder. And comely withal#.

The words fairly whirled on the page before my astonished eyes. Where was
the image of the ill-favored little old Jed, so present to my imagination?
I read on breathlessly, skipping news of the hen-house and barnyard, until
I came upon this, the only other reference, but quite sufficient:

This day the sea-man, Samuel Harden, left us.

The self-restrained woman had said nothing of any disappointment she might
have felt. The item stood quite alone, however, in a significant
isolation. At least on that day she had not noticed the number of eggs.

I doubt if grandfather himself had been more excited when he saw the
birch-wood club than I was to read those few words. I could hardly wait
till the next Saturday to rush back to Hillsboro, and relieve the poor old
man of the burden of remorse he had carried so faithfully and so
mistakenly all these years, and to snatch the specious crown of martyrdom
f