ewed as he talked.
He'd pull out the bill and shake it at the man that owed it and say: 'A
debt to the church is registered above. Not to pay it is a mortal sin.
To perish in sin is to be burned with brimstone and eaten by the worm
that dieth not.' Before Deacon Todd got through that sinner was ready to
come across."

Westbury in childhood had seen Deacon Timothy Todd and could imitate his
speech and manner. He enjoyed doing it as much as we enjoyed hearing
him.

"Deacon Todd had two boys," he went on, "Jim and Tim, and he used to
say, 'My Jim is a good boy, but Tim proved himself a bad one when he
slapped his mother with an eel-skin.' Deacon Todd married a second time.
He lent some money to a woman to set up a business in Westport, and a
little while after his wife died he went down to collect it. Somebody
met him on the road and asked him where he was going. 'Well,' he said,
'I'm just going down to Westport to collect a little money I loaned a
young woman, and I'll bring back the money or the young woman, one of
the two,' and he did. He was back with her next day. Timothy Todd was a
great old chap. When the Civil War broke out he didn't want to go. He
was getting along pretty well, then--forty or so--and had already lost
two of his front teeth and claimed he couldn't bite off the ca'tridges.
They used to have to bite off the paper ends of them for muzzle-loading
guns. Then the draft came and he was scared up for fear they'd get him.
They didn't, though, but they got about all the others that were left,
and Deacon Todd went down to see them off. When the train came and he
saw them all get on, and the train starting, he forgot all about not
wanting to go, and jumped on with them, and went. 'I saw all my friends
was goin',' he said, 'an' th'd be nobody left in the country but me. "I
reckon I can bite them ca'tridges off with my eye-teeth, if I really
want to do it," I says, an' I was on the train an' half-way to Danbury
before I recollected that Mrs. Todd had told me to bring home a dime's
wuth o' coffee an' a pound o' sugar. I didn't get back with 'em fer two
years, an' then I come in limpin' with a bullet in my left hind leg.
"Here's that pound o' coffee and dime's wuth o' sugar," I says. "I
waited fer 'em to git cheaper."'"

Westbury's visits did much to brighten up the somber days, while our
blazing hearth and the sturdy little furnace down-stairs kept us warm and
cozy. Looking out on a landscape that was like a C