And Willy was trying. He continued to be rather hasty and headstrong, but the "Indian sulks" gradually melted out of his disposition like ice in a summer river. This exploit of running away had a humbling effect, no doubt; but more than that, as he grew older he learned to understand and love his father better. He found that those dreadful whippings had been given "more in sorrow than in anger,"—given as a help to make him better; and the time came when he thanked his father for them.
And this is all I have to tell of his younger days. When he was twenty-seven years old, and pretty Patience Lyman was twenty, they were married in Squire Lyman's parlor, by Elder Lovejoy, then a very old man.
After the wedding they rode at once to Willowbrook, where they have both lived to this day; she, the dearest of old ladies, and he, a large, beautiful, white-headed old man, whom no one would now think of calling the Little Grandfather.