Miss Letitia Lamson sat by the open fire, at a point where she could easily reach the tongs for the adjusting of any vagabond stick, and Cap'n Oliver Drown, in the opposite angle, held dominion over the poker. No one else would Miss Letitia have admitted to partnership in the managing of her fire; but Cap'n Oliver wielded an undisputed privilege. The poker suited him because he had a way, in the heat of friendly dissension, of smashing a stick much before it was ready to drop apart of its own charring; and that Miss Letitia never resented. She herself was gentle and persuasive with a fire; but the cap'n's more impetuous method seemed to belong to him, and she understood, without much thinking about it, that when he blustered a little, even over a hard-working blaze, it was because he must. He was a tempestuously organized creature, of a martial front and a baby heart, most fortunate in his breadth of shoulder, his height, and the readiness of the choleric blood to come into his cheeks, the eagerness of his husky voice to bluster. These outward tokens of an untrammeled spirit helped him to hold his own among his kind, though his oldest friend, Miss Letty, prized him for different reasons. In her soul she had always regarded him as "real cunning," and had even, when she passed to bring up the dish of apples from the cellar, or a mug of cider, longed to touch the queer lock that would straggle down from his sparsely covered poll in absurd travesty of a baby's tended curl. Probably no one, and certainly not the captain himself, knew exactly how Miss Letty regarded him. Miss Letty had been forty-seven years old the last November that ever was, as she had just told him, in talking over her forthcoming departure from the house where she had lived all the forty-seven years; and he knew, she added, just how she felt about the place and all that was in it. The cap'n nodded gravely, thinking, if it paid to say so, that he knew how the town looked upon her. She was good as gold, the neighbors said, and at that moment she especially looked it, in a still, serious way. She was a wholesome woman, with nothing showy to commend her and little to remark except the extreme earnestness of her upward glance. From her unconscious humility she seemed to be always gazing up at people, even when their eyes were on a level with hers. It might have indicated a habit of mind. It was only to-night that the rumor of her going had reached Cap'n Oliver, and he had come in to talk it over. Miss Letty's heart quieted as she saw him take her father's capacious armchair and settle on the applique cushion, so sacred to him that whenever the cat stole a nap out of it, stray hairs had to be brushed scrupulously off, lest Cap'n Oliver should appear for an evening's gossip.