The night of the women's return from the funeral occasion, there was again some shooting down in the village, as there had been the night previous; and the women feared that Billy Lee was one of the culprits, as Lethie came up in his place to milk their cow next morning.
They were much troubled; and as Uncle Ephraim Kent, on account of rheumatism, was unable to come to his reading lesson Monday morning, Amy and Virginia, accompanied by Isabel, went across Troublesome after dinner, to consult with him on the subject. The Kent lands extended for a mile or two along the far side of the creek, and Uncle Ephraim's home was in a hollow opposite the village. They crossed on a long footlog, which was chained to a great water-elm on Uncle Ephraim's bank, so that it should not be entirely carried away by "tides."
The old man was sitting just inside the doorway of his ancient log house, trousers rolled up, and his legs, from the knee down, bound in red flannel. His wife placed chairs. It was Isabel's first visit to his home, and her eyes flew at once to the long old muzzle-loading rifle and the strange musical instrument that hung over his "fireboard," and as soon as possible she asked him about them.
The rifle, it appeared, had been the one used by his "grandsir," the old Cap'n, when he "fit under Washington"; the dulcimer he himself had made when a young man courting his first wife (the present one was his second).
"Dulcimores," he said, "used to be the onliest music in this country; the knowledge how to make 'em and pick on 'em was fotched in by our forebears. But banjos and fiddles has nigh run 'em out now."
At Isabel's urging, he picked a tune on the old dulcimer, laying it across his knees and using two quills, one to "note" with, and one to pick with. The music was like the droning of a million mosquitoes.
He said that the old musket was still in use in his young days—that he had killed many a deer with it. "Allus in them days I follered wearing red, because hit makes the deer stand at gaze. And"—pointing to the crimson linsey hunting-jacket that hung on a peg by the door—"I'm still a-wearing hit, though there hain't been a deer seed in these parts for allus. In them early days I never bothered with no shoes, or even moccasins—the soles of my feet was so thick I could easy crush chestnut-burrs with 'em. And many's the time I have laid out all night in the pouring rain and never kotched ary cold. Present-day young folks hain't no account—they have tendered theirselves too much."
He also had his wife get out from a chest his greatest treasure—his grandsir's old yellow, crumbling Bible, "fotched out in his saddlebags when he come acrost from Old Virginny. And which now," he said triumphantly, "I can read myself, nigh as good as him."
So saying, he opened the faded pages at the Twenty-third Psalm, and, with some prompting from Amy at the hard words, read it through proudly.
The women then broached the subject of their visit—the shooting in the village the past two nights.