out, and jump there and scratch ’em in agin--that ’ere’s life.’” _Sam_ loved nothing so much as to “‘kind o’ go along and sort o’ see how things turn out’” with the boys. He told them tales that made their eyes stand out, constantly interspersing the incidents with moral persuasions and advice. “‘So, boys,’” he would say, “‘you just mind and remember and allers see what there is in a providence afore you quarrel with it.’” With this lofty moral altitude, an intellectual superiority in _Sam_ combined to make him a popular favorite. For forty years in the village there had not been a marriage or a birth or a burial or a slight beginning of a love-making which he did not know all about. This knowledge made his charm and also his power. A great intellect had been really wasted in this shiftless fellow. The variety of his accomplishments was amazing. His work shop was filled with cracked china, lame tea-pots, rickety tongs and decrepit andirons, and any one of these would afford opportunity for hours of conversation if a neighbor came in and if--important consideration!--the sharp, black eyes of _Hepsy_, his wife, were not at the minute upon him. _Hepsy_ was a “gnarly, compact, efficient little pepper-box of a woman.” Of course if she came in his fun was over. “‘You’re always everywhere but where you’ve business to be,’” her scolding voice would cry out, “‘helpin’ and doin’ for everybody but your own. For my part, I think that charity ought to begin at home.’” _Hepsy_ was a “great talker.” She frequently was so bad in this respect that _Sam_, who was not a specially silent person, could not “get in a word edgeways, nor crossways, nor noways.” At such times no one could blame _Sam_ if he did “‘go Indianing around the country a spell till she kind o’ come to.’”