"I had enough saved to pay off the mortgage," my uncle answered. "I
suppose it'll have to go for the note."

Mr. Barnes' head was up among the dried apples on the ceiling. A
movement of his hand broke a string of them. Then he dropped his huge
bulk into a chair which crashed to the floor beneath him. He rose
blushing and said:

"I guess I better go or I'll break everything you've got here. I kind o'
feel that way."

Rodney Barnes left us.

I remember how Uncle Peabody stood in the middle of the floor and
whistled the merriest tune he knew.

"Stand right up here," he called in his most cheerful tone. "Stand
right up here before me, both o' ye."

I got Aunt Deel by the hand and led her toward my uncle. We stood facing
him. "Stand straighter," he demanded. "Now, altogether. One, two, three,
ready, sing."

He beat time with his hand in imitation of the singing master at the
schoolhouse and we joined him in singing an old tune which began: "O
keep my heart from sadness, God."

This irresistible spirit of the man bridged a bad hour and got us off to
bed in fairly good condition.

A few days later the note came due and its owner insisted upon full
payment. There was such a clamor for money those days! I remember that
my aunt had sixty dollars which she had saved, little by little, by
selling eggs and chickens. She had planned to use it to buy a tombstone
for her mother and father--a long-cherished ambition. My uncle needed
the most of it to help pay the note. We drove to Potsdam on that sad
errand and what a time we had getting there and back in deep mud and
sand and jolting over corduroys!

"Bart," my uncle said the next evening, as I took down the book to read.
"I guess we'd better talk things over a little to-night. These are hard
times. If we can find anybody with money enough to buy 'em I dunno but
we better sell the sheep."

"If you hadn't been a fool," my aunt exclaimed with a look of great
distress--"ayes! if you hadn't been a fool."

"I'm just what I be an' I ain't so big a fool that I need to be reminded
of it," said my uncle.

"I'll stay at home an' work," I proposed bravely.

"You ain't old enough for that," sighed Aunt Deel.

"I want to keep you in school," said Uncle Peabody, who sat making a
splint broom.

While we were talking in walked Benjamin Grimshaw--the rich man of the
hills. He didn't stop to knock but walked right in as if the house were
his own. It was common gossip that he held