I
IT was an evening at Chet McAusland’s farm, on the hill above Fraternity. Chet and I had been all day in the woodcock covers with the dogs, Reck and Frenchy, and with the ghost of old Tantrybogus going on before us. We had come home to a heaping supper of fried woodcock, boiled potatoes, sweet salt pork, squash, doughnuts, cheese, and Mrs. McAusland’s incomparable biscuits, with pie to follow after. When Chet’s chores were done, we went down to Will Bissell’s store to brag about our day’s bag and get the mail; and now we were at home again, and Chet, to confirm his recollection in connection with an ancient catch of trout of which he spoke, brought from the desk in the front room an old leather-backed account-book and conned its yellowing pages.
When he had found that which he sought, he laid the book down between us, and as he talked, I picked it up and looked it through, idly. The covers were worn and ragged with age, and there was a flap upon the one that entered a slit upon the other, holding the book securely closed. The pages were filled with entries in pencil or in pen, and some of these were concerned with matters of business concluded twenty years before; and some recorded the results of days with rod or gun; while here and there, dropped at random, were paragraphs or pages devoted to casual incidents that had struck Chet’s fancy through a space of forty years. On one such series I chanced, and read the entries through, first to myself, and then, with some amusement, aloud. They ran in this wise:
June 6, 1883. Jed was taken sick to-day with a pain in his stomach. He seems very weak. The old man won’t last long.
March, 1887. The old man’s stomach is bothering him again. He has to stay in bed right along.
September 2, 1892. Abbie Grant says Uncle Jed’s pain is worse. He’s not long for this world.
July, 1895. That pain in Uncle Jed’s insides still hangs on. It will be the death of him.
August 2, 1898. Deborah Grant was here to-day. The old man still breathes.
May, 1900. Uncle Jed is still alive and kicking.
When I had finished reading these items aloud, Chet drew his chin back against his neck and laughed with that robust vigor which is characteristic of him; and I, without at all understanding the jest, nevertheless laughed in sympathy.
“But it seems to me,” I suggested, “that the record ends here a bit abruptly. What happened to the old man, anyway?”
“That was old Uncle Jed Grant,” Chet told me, tears of mirth in his eyes. “I could tell you things about Uncle Jed that ’u’d surprise you.”
Mrs. McAusland called from the kitchen to warn me that if I didn’t look out I’d get Chet started; but I reassured her, and bade Chet tell on. That which follows is the substance of his telling.