"Well, little Kitty Keehoty, I hain't seen that your warm heart gets any colder toward folks when they get into trouble 'an when they don't. That tramp, now, that stole your victuals—Oh, I know! I did know last night, though you didn't know that I knowed—"
"'I saw Esau kissing Kate, Esau saw that I saw,'" quoted this other Kate, in laughing interruption.
Moses laughed, too, as he was glad to do. He had had enough of gloom and grumble for that sweet Lord's Day, now so near its close. And though the story he was going to tell was anything but a bright one, he meant to tell it in such wise that his young listener should be the tenderer and more compassionate because of hearing it.
"Well, Keehoty, it's ruther a long yarn. That is, it goes a good way back, clean to the old Squire's time—no such a Squire as Pettijohn, forename James, mind ye—but a good, high-sprung, old-fashioned gentleman; with high-up English blood in his veins, an' a reg'lar English temper to balance the blood. Never did a dirty trick in his life nor an unjust one—except to his own and only son. That was Monty's father, poor little stutterin' shaver! Well, along of his late years the old Squire had bad feelin's in his head, suffered terr'ble agony, an' hardly knowed what he did do or say. He got a notion that he was goin' to be robbed, an' used to carry 'round with him a cur'ous old box that folks said held his bonds an' money an' the old family jewels that had been brought over from England a hunderd years afore. If he went a-ridin'—an' he was the splendidest horseman ever seen in these parts—he'd have the thing on the saddle afore him. If he druv, 'twould be in the box o' the carriage-seat. Nobody ever seen the inside that box, an' 'twas 'lowed there wasn't none could open it, except him an' the Madam."
"Oh!" gasped Katharine, leaning forward, breathlessly intent. Naturally such close attention flattered the narrator, who went on with renewed earnestness:
"The old Squire an' his son didn't hit it off together very well. Never did from the time Verplanck, 'Planck he was called for short, was born. He was a good deal like Monty is, only more oneasy—if anybody could be; an' from the time he could toddle he was hand in glove with Jim Pettijohn's little tacker, Nate. Nate, he wasn't so smart as some folks. Not a fool, uther, an' consid'able better'n half-witted, but queer—queer. He just worshipped Planck Sturtevant, an' where you see one you see t'other, sure. Well, they growed up, an' Planck got married. That seemed to 'bout break Nate's heart, an' he got queerer an' queerer. Old Squire got queerer, too. Nothin' Verplanck could do or say was right in his father's eyes; an' though he managed to work the farm fairly well, he never made any money off it, an' that made the old man mad. Planck, he bore it patient for a spell, 'cause his wife—she that was Elizabeth Morton from up-mountain—thought the world an' all of the old folks an' they o' her. She'd been raised on a farm an' could an' did turn her hand to every sort o' work, but 'twasn't no use. She loved them, but she loved her husband better; an', one night, after there'd been more hard talk 'an common 'twixt the Squire an' Verplanck, there was three folks missin' from Marsden township. They was somethin' else missin', too, an' that was the queer brass bound box with all the Squire's money an' vallybles. The hired man told 'bout the box, else nobody might ever have heard that part. He was carryin' in the day's wood next mornin' an' overheard the Squire an' the Madam talkin' 'bout it; him callin' his son a 'thief,' an' forbiddin' his name ever to be spoke in that house again. She declarin' that no child of them two honest people could ever be a thief. Hot an' heavy they had it, though nobody had ever heard them two quarrel afore. An' right on top of that stalks in Jim Pettijohn—him that's a sort o' Squire, a justice of the peace, now—an' demands his son. He'd let the feller grow up without good trainin' or lookin' after of any kind, though 'twas needed bad enough. All Nate did know, or the little he knowed, was badness an' deviltry. Why, he used to go with your own pa, Johnny, consid'able, an' 'peared to like him almost as well as he did Verplanck, an' many's the time I've had the three on my hands a-fishin'. But Johnny didn't tackle much to ary one them other boys. He was all for trompin' 'round by himself, drawin' pictur's on whatever come handy, or lyin' under the trees a-dreamin' the summer days through. In the winter he'd dream afore the wood fire just the same idle way, an' finally he dreamed himself out o' Marsden an' run away to be an artist. Eunice, she was set an' determined he should be a minister, else maybe 'twouldn't never ha' turned out as it did. But Johnny was good, good clean through to the core, parson or artist or what not; an' 'twasn't o' him I set out to tell. An' I must hurry up, anyway, 'cause Susanna she'll be in purty soon, an' that'll end all our nice time."
"Oh, Uncle Moses! I like Susanna better to-day than I ever did before. She showed me the real inside of herself, and it isn't half as crusty as the outside."
"Huh! What'd she do to manage that? She seems powerful still an' sot-lookin' sence she come back from inspectin' her 'prope'ty.' By the way, did you happen to notice whuther the slat top to that cistern o' hers was over the manhole? Out in the open shed, or lean-to? 'Cause she's a great notion of leavin' it off to 'air'—as if a cistern that hasn't had no water in it for fifteen twenty years wasn't dry as a pipe-stem a'ready or needed 'airin''! Gen'ally, after she's been out there I take a look 'round myself. I wouldn't admire to have anything, even a tramp, fall down that cistern, though it might not hurt 'em much, 'cause it's shallower 'n it's broad. A real good 'system,' I 'low, even if that everlastin' Sprigg did build it. But what's the inside o' Susanna 't you saw an' liked?"
"She showed me her baby's things, an' looked as sad as if it had died only yesterday. But she showed me, too, her shroud—her shroud! Just think of it, Uncle Moses! And that was horrible."
"Pooh! That's nothin'. Lots of women has 'em laid by. Same's some fool-men has a coffin built an' kep' handy. As for me, I'm goin' to worry 'bout things only up till the day o' my death, an' not a minute beyond. But, I was tellin' of Verplanck Sturtevant, an' must finish the job. Squire, he had always given the cold shoulder to Jim, an' despised him out an' out. Jim was crafty an' underhand, Squire was open an' above board—an' them two kinds don't mix. Still, Jim had been able to get his claw on the Squire's meat, so to speak; that is, he'd made money himself, lawin' an' grindin' the face of them worse off 'an he was, an' the Squire needin' ready cash, to make some improvements he'd better ha' let alone, Jim advanced it an' Squire give a mortgage. That was the beginnin', an' now, they say, Pettijohn owns about every acre of the old Sturtevant property, an' could turn the Madam out any day. Yet, somehow, he dassent. Indeed, I'd like to see the man could walk straight up to that old lady an' say: 'Your house is mine. Please to get out.' Out she'd go at the first word; head up, back straight as one her own hall chairs, but a look in her eye that that man wouldn't forget in his lifetime. Verplanck, he was of the same sort—prouder'n Lucifer; an' even if she'd knowed where to send for him his mother would ha' understood 'twouldn't done a mite o' good. But she didn't send. She obeyed her husband to the last say-so. An' he didn't live long after that, anyway. Elizabeth, she come back, bringin' Monty with her; but her own folks tell as how there was never a thing said betwixt even them two, except Elizabeth sayin': 'I've come home, Mother Sturtevant, to bring your grandson to the old place. I haven't long to live; but Verplanck will never come till he has made a fortune and redeemed everything. Let us not talk of him.' They never did. Where he was or how, his old mother could only guess. Then Elizabeth died and there was just them two—Madam an' Montgomery—left in the Mansion. Every year she let Jim Pettijohn get a tighter clutch on the property, till, as I tell ye, he prob'ly owns all.