ther. Miss Jane was Squire Inchly's maiden sister;
and though she was neither fat nor fair, she was forty. Perhaps she was
more than forty; but if she was fifty she was not ashamed of it. She
had a keen eye and a sharp tongue, and used both with a freedom
befitting her sex and her experience.

Squire Inchly's house was convenient to his shop; and just opposite
lived the Carews, father and son, once the most prosperous and
prominent family in the neighbourhood. It was the custom of Pinetucky
to take a half-holiday on Saturdays, and on one of these occasions
Squire Inchly, instead of going to his shop or to the store, sat in his
porch and smoked his pipe. After a while Miss Jane brought out her
sewing and sat with him. Across the way Uncle Billy Carew sat in his
easy-chair under the shade of a tree, and made queer gestures in the
air with his hands and cane, while his son, a young man of twenty-five
or thereabouts, paced moodily up and down the veranda. The birds
fluttered in and out of the hedges of Cherokee rose that ran along both
sides of the road, and over all the sun shone brightly.

"Billy is cuttin' up his antics ag'in," said the Squire, finally.
"First the limbs give way, and then the mind. It's Providence, I
reckon. We're all a-gittin' old."

"Why, you talk, Ichabod, as if Providence went around with a drink of
dram in one hand and a stroke of palsy in t'other one," said Miss Jane.
"It's the Old Boy that totes the dram. And don't you pester yourself on
account of old Billy Oarew's palsy. A man's nimble enough in the legs
when he can git to the dimmy-john."

"Well, I'm sorry for Jack, Sister Jane," exclaimed the Squire,
heartily. "I am, from the bottom of my heart. The boy is too lonesome
in his ways. He needs comp'ny; he needs to be holp up, Sister Jane. He
does, certain and shore."

"Well, we're all near-sighted; but when Im in trouble, I'm like a hen
a-layin'; I don't want nobody to stand around and watch me. Not even
them that feeds me. The Lord knows what he keeps old Billy Carew here
to fret poor Jack for, but I don't," continued Miss Jane, with a sigh.
"I'm much mistaken if that old creetur hain't got years before him to
drink and dribble in."

"It passes me, Sister Jane," said Squire Inchly, moving uneasily in his
chair. "It passes me, certain and shore. Here was Billy, rich and
healthy, Jack at college, and ever'thing a-runnin' slick and smooth,
when nothin' must do but the old creetur must take t