ooked disposition out of it, if nothing else. I s'pose there never was
a man loved sperit better. They said one year he was over to Cyrus
Barker's to help with the haying, and there was a jug o' New England rum
over by the spring with some gingerbread and cheese and stuff; and he
went over about every half an hour to take something, and along about
half-past ten he got the jug middling low, so he went to fill it up with
a little water, and lost holt of it and it sunk, and they said he drunk
the spring dry three times!

"Joe and Susan Ellen stayed there at the old place well into the summer,
and then after planting they moved down to the Four Corners where they
had bought a nice little place. Joe did well there,--he carried on the
carpenter trade, and got smoothed down considerable, being amongst
folks. John he married a Pecker girl, and got his match too; she was the
only living soul he ever was afraid of. They lived on there a spell
and--why, they must have lived there all of fifteen or twenty years, now
I come to think of it, for the time they moved was after the railroad
was built. 'Twas along in the winter and his wife she got a notion to
buy a place down to the Falls below the Corners after the mills got
started and have John work in the spinning-room while she took boarders.
She said 'twa'n't no use staying on the farm, they couldn't make a
living off from it now they'd cut the growth. Joe's folks and she never
could get along, and they said she was dreadfully riled up hearing how
much Joe was getting in the machine shop.

"They needn't tell me about special providences being all moonshine,"
said Miss Debby for the second time, "if here wa'n't a plain one, I'll
never say one word more about it. You see, that very time Joe Ashby got
a splinter in his eye and they were afraid he was going to lose his
sight, and he got a notion that he wanted to go back to farming. He
always set everything by the old place, and he had a boy growing up that
neither took to his book nor to mill work, and he wanted to farm it too.
So Joe got hold of John one day when he come in with some wood, and
asked him why he wouldn't take his place for a year or two, if he wanted
to get to the village, and let him go out to the old place. My brother
Jonas was standin' right by and heard 'em and said he never heard nobody
speak civiller. But John swore and said he wa'n't going to be caught in
no such a trap as that. His father left him the place an