"'Scuse me, sir," said Slack, rising and touching the lattice-work; "I ain't forgot Mr. Max, sir. Didn't I take him fishin', didn't I teach him to shoot? But there's soldiers and soldiers, and if Mr. Max, your brother, sir, went off to the war because he was a gentleman, there was some as went off because they hedn't no call to stay to hum, and they jest went to git the money. Naow poor little Phil he was too young to go to the war, but I tell you he fit a battle up there to his mill that was a good 'un."
Slack dallied with his "water-level" and his "green swad" for some seconds; like the adroit story-teller that he was, he did not disdain the art of delay.
"The machinery got too much for him, I suppose?" said Horatio, looking at the turf with one eye shut, as if he doubted the water-level.
"Wa'al, there I guess you're as much out of kilter as you were before, naow, for Phil he tended to that 'ere mill before he was seven years old. I remember him, the little shaver, as straight as a popple-tree; no hunch on to him then, naow, you better believe!"
"A child of seven tending that great wheel over that tremendous water-power?" said Horatio.
Slack never answered a question except by asking another, unless his emotions were aroused. He had, like most men of his queer class, a fund of good feeling behind his humor which sometimes betrayed him; but he preferred to be considered contrary and cross-grained.
"Don't you know nothin' about a saw-mill?" said he, cocking up a little gray eye at Horatio, with an enormous contempt hidden behind his pent-house eyebrow.
"Yes; I suppose I know that the water furnishes the power, and that the man shoves in the log," said Horatio, modestly.
"Wa'al, 'tain't that egzactly," said Slack, stamping down a piece of turf. "S'pose I couldn't make you understand ef you don't know nothin' about saw-mills." So, with a deep sigh at the gulf of ignorance that opened before him, he abandoned the idea of instruction, and plunged into his story.
"Ye see, Tim Thompson, Phil's father, he married Seth Jaquith's daughter down to Hardscrabble. She warn't a rugged woman, neither; pritty good-lookin', though, an' real lady in her manners. She kep' the deestrict school three winters, and I guess she hed some edication. Wa'al, Tim he was ambitious, an' he hed a tannery, and a saw-mill, an' a quarry for grave-stuns, and he hed I guess six or seven more irons in the fire; an' sometimes he was rich, and then agen guess he was pritty poor; an' his wife (Alice they called her) she was sick considerable spell, and this 'ere boy Phil was all the children they hed; but they lived up there to the saw-mill, and hed solid comfort when things were a-goin' right. Wa'al, Phil he was awful smart at learnin', so they sent him to the 'cademy winters, and let him tend mill in summer with the feller that helped Tim. What was his name? Wa'al, I forgit names. Jest naow I am a-gittin' old; we're all a-gittin' old all the time. An' Tim he used to tell us, there to the tavern, how smart his little shaver was. Spell! why, he could spell like a team o' horses before he could walk 'most; an' grammar and jography I guess didn't fetch him neither.