afraid
that he would have to pay it. I didn't know what a note was and I
remember that one night, when I lay thinking about it, I decided that it
must be something in the nature of horse colic. My uncle told me that a
note was a trouble which attacked the brain instead of the stomach. I
was with Uncle Peabody so much that I shared his feeling but never
ventured to speak of it or its cause. He didn't like to be talked to
when he felt badly. At such times he used to say that he had the brain
colic. He told me that notes had an effect on the brain like that of
green apples on the stomach.

One autumn day in Canton Uncle Peabody traded three sheep and twenty
bushels of wheat for a cook stove and brought it home in the big wagon.
Rodney Barnes came with him to help set up the stove. He was a big giant
of a man with the longest nose in the township. I had often wondered how
any one would solve the problem of kissing Mr. Barnes in the immediate
region of his nose, the same being in the nature of a defense.

I remember that I regarded it with a kind of awe because I had been
forbidden to speak of it. The command invested Mr. Barnes' nose with a
kind of sanctity. Indeed it became one of the treasures of my
imagination.

That evening I was chiefly interested in the stove. What a joy it was to
me with its damper and griddles and high oven and the shiny edge on its
hearth! It rivaled, in its novelty and charm, any tin peddler's cart
that ever came to our door. John Axtell and his wife, who had seen it
pass their house, hurried over for a look at it. Every hand was on the
stove as we tenderly carried it into the house, piece by piece, and set
it up. Then they cut a hole in the upper floor and the stone chimney and
fitted the pipe. How keenly we watched the building of the fire! How
quickly it roared and began to heat the room!

When the Axtells had gone away Aunt Deel said:

"It's grand! It is sartin--but I'm 'fraid we can't afford it--ayes I
be!"

"We can't afford to freeze any longer. I made up my mind that we
couldn't go through another winter as we have," was my uncle's answer.

"How much did it cost?" she asked.

"Not much differ'nt from thirty-four dollars in sheep and grain," he
answered.

Rodney Barnes stayed to supper and spent a part of the evening with us.

Like other settlers there, Mr. Barnes was a cheerful optimist.
Everything looked good to him until it turned out badly. He stood over
the stove with a st