the exact location of the hour an uncertain thing; and
there were days, when the wind was in the east, when the hour hand
needed periodical assistance.

"It wasn't much of a job," as Eph said, "to reach up once an hour and
send the hand along one space, and Aunt Tildy had to have something to
look forward to."

Aunt Tildy was the first inmate at Todd's, and if Eph had possessed no
other recommendation to eternal beatitude, surely Aunt Tildy's prayers
had been sufficient. She passed his house on her way to the poor farm
on the very day that news of the legacy arrived, and Eph had stopped
the carriage and begged the overseer to leave her with him.

"Are you sure you can take care of her?" asked the overseer,
doubtfully.

"Sure?" echoed Eph with delight. "Of course I'm sure. Ain't I got four
hundred dollars a year for the rest of my natural born days?"

"He's a good fellow, Eph Todd," mused the overseer as he drove away,
"but I never heard of his having any money."

Next day the news of the legacy was common property, and Aunt Tildy
had been an inmate at Todd's ever since. Her gratitude knew no bounds,
and she really managed to keep the house after a fashion, her chief
care being the clock.

Then there was the heaven-born inventor. He had dissipated his
substance in inventing an incubator that worked with wonderful success
till the day the chickens were to come out, when it took fire and
burned up, taking with it chickens, barn, house, and furniture,
leaving the heaven-born inventor standing in the field, thinly clad,
and with nothing left in the world but another incubator.

With this he had shown up promptly at Todd's, and there he had dwelt
thenceforth, using a pretty fair portion of the annuity in further
incubator experiments.

With excellent sagacity, for him, Eph had obliged the heaven-born
inventor to keep his machine in a little shed behind the barn, so that
when this one burned up there was time to get the horse and cow out
before the barn burned, and the village fire department managed to
save the house. Repairing this loss made quite a hole in the annuity,
and all the heaven-born inventor had to show for it was Miltiades. He
had put a single turkey's egg in with a previous hatch, and though he
had raised nary chicken, and it was contrary to all rhyme and reason,
the turkey's egg had hatched and the chick had grown up to be
Miltiades.

Miltiades was a big gobbler now, and had a right to be named Ish