'A good job for mistress we saved the cowhouse,' answered Abraham, with sulky unwillingness to admit that he was indebted to Elijah for anything.
'Don't you think you owe me your life?' asked Rebow.
'The cowhouse didn't burn.'
'No. But it would have, had not we been there to keep the flames off,' observed one of the men.
'Good job for mistress I wasn't burnt. I don't know how she'd got along without me.'
'It did not matter particularly to yourself then, Abby?'
'Don't know as it did. A man must die some time, and I've always heard as smothering is a nice quiet sort of death—better than being racked with cramps and tormented with rheumatics and shivered into the pithole with agues.' After a pause Abraham's voice was heard to add, 'Besides, I should have woke, myself, with the fire and smoke.'
'Not you. And if you had, what could you have done to save the old woman? She'd have been burnt to a cinder before you woke.'
'That's mistress' matter, not mine,' answered Dowsing.
'You could not have got the things out of the house.'