"Old Ethan has been dead many a day. Ethan," continued old Sylvester, in explanation, "was the father of our Mr. Barbary. He was a preacher too, and carried a gun in the revolution. I remember he was accounted a peculiar man. I never knew why. To be sure he used to spend the time he did not employ in prayers, preaching and tending the sick, in working on the farms about, for he had no wages for preaching. When there was none of that to be had, he took his basket, and sallying through the fields, gathered berries, which he bestowed on the needy families of the neighborhood. In winter he collected branches in the woods about, as fire-wood for the poor."
"That was a capital idea," said Oliver the politician. "It must have made him very popular."
"Wasn't he always thought to be a little out of his head?" asked the merchant. "He might have sold the wood for a good price in the severe winters."
"I remember as if it were yesterday," old Sylvester went on in his own way, not heeding in the slightest the suggestions of his sons, "he and black Burling, who is buried in the woods by the Great Walnut tree, near the pond, both fought in the American ranks, and had but one gun between them, which they used turn about."
"You saw rough times in those days, grandfather," said the Captain.
"I did, Charley," old Sylvester answered, looking kindly on the Captain, who had always been something of a favorite of his from the day he had married into the family; "and there are but few left to talk with me of them now. I am one of the living survivors of an almost extinguished race. The grave will soon be our only habitation. I am one of the few stalks that still remain in the field where the tempest passed. I have fought against the foreign foe for your sake; they have disappeared from the land, and you are free; the strength of my arm delays, and my feet fail me in the way; the hand which fought for your liberties is now open to bless you. In my youth I bled in battle that you might be independent—let not my heart, in my old age, bleed because you abandon the path I would have you follow."
The old patriarch leaned his head upon his hand, and the company was silent as though they had listened to a voice from the grave. He presently looked up and smiled—"Old Ethan, I call to mind now," he renewed, "had a quality which our poor Barbary inherited, and for which," he added, looking toward his son William, "and for which I greatly honor his memory. He counted the money of this world but as dross. From his manhood to the very moment of his entering on the ministry, he never would touch silver nor gold, partly, I think, because it was the true Scripture course, and partly because a dreadful murder had once happened in the Barbary family, growing out of a quarrel for the possession of a paltry sum of money."
The bread she was raising to her lips fell from the widow's hand, for she could not help but think of the history of her absent son; and the voice of Miriam, who did not present herself at the table, was heard from a distant chamber, not distinctly, but in that tone of chanting lament which had become habitual to her whether in house, garden, or field. It was an inexpressibly mournful cadence, and for the time stilled all other sounds. They were only drawn away from it by descrying Mopsey, the black servant, at a turn of the road, hurrying with great animation towards the homestead, but with a singularity in her progress which could not fail to be observed. She rushed along at great speed, for several paces, and suddenly came to a halt, during which her head disappeared, and then renewed her pace, repeating the peculiar manœuvre once at least in every ten yards. In a word, she was shuffling on in her loose shoes, (which were on or off, one or the other of them every other minute,) at as rapid a rate as that peculiar species of locomotion allowed. Bursting with impatience and the importance of her communication, her cap flaunting from her head, she stood in the doorway and announced, "We've beat Brundage—we've beat Brundage!"
"What's this, Mopsey?" old Sylvester inquired.
"I've tried it and I've spanned it. I can't span ours!"