t Day of
November One Thous. and Seven Hundred Sixty & four: in the fifth year
of his Majesty's Reign George the third King etc.

Signed Sealed and Del:d
presence of Seth Towner, Daniel Linfield, Simeon Thayer."

Ann's two uncles by adoption, and Thomas Penniman of Stoughton, were
well pleased to get this permission to erect a stable, or
Horse-House, as they put it then, to shelter their horses during
divine worship. The want of one had long been a sore inconvenience to
them. The few stables already erected around the meeting-house, could
not accommodate half of the horses congregated there on a Puritan
Sabbath, and every barn, for a quarter of a mile about, was put into
requisition on severe days. After the women had dismounted from their
pillions at the meeting-house door, the men-folks patiently rode the
horses to some place of shelter, and then trudged back through the
snow-drifts, wrestling with the icy wind.

So this new "Horse-House" was a great benefit to the Waleses, and to
the Pennimans, who lived three miles from them over the Stoughton
line. They were all constant meeting-folks. Hard indeed was the storm
which could keep a Wales or a Penniman away from meeting.

Mrs. Polly Wales' horses were accommodated in this new stable also.
In the winter time, there were two of them; one which she and Ann
rode, Ann using the pillion, and one for Nabby Porter. Phineas Adams
always walked. Often the sturdy young blacksmith was at the
meeting-house, before the women, and waiting to take their horses.

One Sunday, the winter after the Horse-House was built, Mrs. Polly,
Ann, Phineas, and Nabby went to meeting as usual. It was a very cold,
bleak day; the wind blew in through the slight wooden walls of the
old meeting-house, and the snow lay in little heaps here and there.
There was no stove in the building, as every one knows. Some of the
women had hot bricks and little foot-stoves, and that was all. Ann
did not care for either. She sat up straight in the comfortless,
high-backed pew. Her cheeks were as red as her crimson cloak, her
black eyes shone like stars. She let Mrs. Polly and Nabby have the
hot stones, but her own agile little feet were as warm as toast.
Little Hannah French, over across the meeting-house, looked chilled
and blue, but somehow Ann never seemed to be affected much by the
cold.

The Wales pew was close to a window on the south side; the side where
the new stable was. Indeed Ann could see it