d he was going
to do as he'd a mind to. There'd be'n trouble about the property, for
old Mr. Ashby had given Joe some money he had in the bank. Joe had got
to be well off, he could have bought most any farm about here, but he
wanted the old place 'count of his attachment. He set everything by his
mother, spite of her being dead so long. John hadn't done very well
spite of his being so sharp, but he let out the best of the farm on
shares, and bought a mis'able sham-built little house down close by the
mills,--and then some idea or other got into his head to fit that up to
let and move it to one side of the lot, and haul down the old house from
the farm to live in themselves. There wa'n't no time to lose, else the
snow would be gone; so he got a gang o' men up there and put shoes
underneath the sills, and then they assembled all the oxen they could
call in, and started. Mother was living then, though she'd got to be
very feeble, and when they come for our yoke she wouldn't have Jonas let
'em go. She said the old house ought to stay in its place. Everybody had
been telling John Ashby that the road was too hilly, and besides the
house was too old to move, they'd rack it all to pieces dragging it so
fur; but he wouldn't listen to no reason.

"I never saw mother so stirred up as she was that day, and when she see
the old thing a moving she burst right out crying. We could see one end
of it looking over the slope of the hill in the pasture between it and
our house. There was two windows that looked our way, and I know Mis'
Ashby used to hang a piece o' something white out o' one of 'em when she
wanted mother to step over for anything. They set a good deal by each
other, and Mis' Ashby was a lame woman. I shouldn't ha' thought John
would had 'em haul the house right over the little gardin she thought so
much of, and broke down the laylocks and flowering currant she set
everything by. I remember when she died I wasn't more'n seven or eight
year old, it was all in full bloom and mother she broke off a branch and
laid into the coffin. I do' know as I've ever seen any since or set in a
room and had the sweetness of it blow in at the windows without
remembering that day,--'twas the first funeral I ever went to, and that
may be some reason. Well, the old house started off and mother watched
it as long as she could see it. She was sort o' feeble herself then, as
I said, and we went on with the work,--'twas a Saturday, and we was
bakin