en continued: "No, I'm
not one o' them as can take a new wife almost as soon as t' first
one's gone"--and then suddenly: "But it's time to boil t' kettle.
You'se getting hungry, I 'lows, and me chattering like a fool, and not
thinking of anything beyond my own troubles. I'm forgetting you must
be worriting over being kept so long in this bit of a tilt, but you'll
not get away till morning, so just make yourself as miserable as you
can!"

As he bustled around filling the kettle with ice for water, and
struggling to heat up a small molasses barrel in order to let out
some "sweetness" for our tea, I had made a bird, a boat, and a couple
of darts out of paper, as overtures to the lady of the house. Before
the humble meal was spread she had the room ringing with her laughter,
as she darted now here, now there, and at last succeeded in hitting
the old man himself almost in the eye. Many times that meal has come
back to my memory. The rough bare boards of the walls, naked but for
one old picture of a horse cut from a magazine, carefully pasted
upside down, and probably designed chiefly to cover some defective
spot that was admitting too much coldness; the crazy table shaking
with every gust and causing a tiny kerosene lamp to flare up and
menace the dim religious darkness by depositing even more lamp-black
than was its wont on its already negrine globe; the meagre board of
dark bread, "oleo," and molasses; the weird minstrelsy of the
hurricane--the whole a harmony of poverty and war. Yet the memory
brings deeper pleasure to my mind than that of many costly
banquets--and even I have eaten from plates of silver with implements
of gold. For in the flickering light of the crackling logs I can still
see the joy of the old man's kindly face over the boisterous happiness
of his quaint ward, the dance in the eyes of the merry child as some
colored candies placed in my nonny-bag by my wife fell somehow from
the sky right on to the table before her. The telling of his story,
never before mentioned to any one but his wife and foster child, but
kept like some vendetta wrong waiting for revenge in his rebellious
heart these many years, seemed to have renewed his youth. A merrier,
happier party it has never been my lot to share in; and now that I
know the pathos of the last chapter written in this strange life, I
rejoice more than ever that for that night, anyhow, the enemy that
haunted him overreached, and the very blizzard proved the key