Then he remembered that it was not yet dark, and that, on account of the coming storm, he was an hour earlier than usual in getting home. His face lightened. He saw it all now: Betty had not expected him so soon, and would be home in a little while. When he entered the kitchen again he saw the table. There was but one plate laid, with the knife and fork beside it. This was covered by a big china bowl. Under it was some cold meat with the bread and butter. Near the table, by the stove, a freshly ironed shirt hung over a chair. He understood it all now. She had put his supper and his shirt where he would find them, and was not coming home till late. He would “clean up” right away, so as to be ready for her. When he had washed, dressed himself in his house clothes, and combed his big beard, he dragged a chair out on the front porch, to watch for her up and down the road. The men going home, carrying their dinner-pails, nodded to him as they passed, and one stopped and leaned over the gate long enough to wonder whether the big August storm would break that night, adding, “We generally has a blow ’bout this time.” While he sat waiting the butcher stopped to leave the weekly piece of meat for Sunday,—the itinerant country butcher, with his shop in one of the neighboring villages, and his customers up and down all the roads that led out of it; supplies for every household in his wagon, and the gossip of every family on his lips. His wagon had sides of canvas painted white, with “Fish, Meat and Poultry” in a half-moon of black letters arching over the owner’s name, and was drawn by a horse that halted and moved on, not by the touch of the lines,—they were always caught to a hook in the roof of the wagon,—but by a word from the butcher, who stood at the tail-board, where the scales dangled, sorting fish, hacking off pieces of red meat, or weighing scraggly chickens proportionate to the wants and means of his various customers. He was busying himself at this tail-board, the dripping of the ice pock-marking the dusty road below, when he caught sight of Caleb. “Wall, I kind’er hoped somebody’d be hum,” he said to himself, wrapping the six-pound roast in a piece of yellow paper. With a tuck to his blue over-sleeves, he swung open the gate. “So ye didn’t go ’long, Caleb, with Mis’ West? I see it begin to blow heavy, and was wond’rin’ whether you’d get in—best cut, you see,” opening the paper for Caleb’s inspection, “and I broke them ribs jes’ ’s Mis’ West allers wants ’em. Then I wondered agin how ye could leave the Ledge at all to-day. Mis’ Bell tol’ me yesterday the cap’n was goin’ to set them derricks. I see ’em a-layin’ on the dock ’fore that Cape Ann sloop loaded ’em, an’ they was monstrous, an’ no mistake. Have some butter? She didn’t order none this mornin’, but I got some come in this forenoon, sweet’s a nut,—four pounds for a dollar, an’”— Caleb looked at him curiously. “Where did the wife say she was a-goin’?” he interrupted.