The evening, passed in winding the yarn, wore slowly away to him after his resolve. He was very taciturn and still, and Mrs. Haight, finding so acquiescent a coadjutor, grew industrious, and hank succeeded hank upon his motionless and submissive wrists. His silence did not discourage her flow of words. On the contrary, it assumed the narrative form in lieu of their usual dialogue; and as the fervor of reminiscence waxed, her small black eyes grew brighter, her parchment-like cheek flushed, and, with her red "shoulder shawl" and big white cap and snowy hair and blue apron, she looked like some fairy godmother. And indeed, as she briskly wound the thread, now blue, now red, and again gray "clouded" with white, it might have seemed that she wielded some sorcery to reduce to this humble fireside utility this wild-eyed, defiant spirit. The young desperado, his belt stuck full of weapons, was oddly at variance with the solicitude which he now and again exhibited when a troublous tangle developed, and the thread perversely knotted and broke. The firelight that flickered on his face, the fairer from his sojourn in the sunless depths of the Lost Time mine, his great boots and spurs, his pliant attitude and submissive gestures, and his aged and incongruous companion served also to show what speed was made in disposing of the youthful gentry for the night. With that perverse disinclination for bedtime which betrays the old Adam in the youngest infant, they severally resisted, each to the best of his very respectable capacity. One or two of tender years, having been hustled up the ladder to the loft, came down again in scant attire, and he who had triumphed over the rickets, and whose bed was in a box, resuscitated himself from amongst the bedclothes whenever he was stowed away, but finally was overtaken, and fell asleep on the old house-dog's neck as he lay snoring on the hearth. Espey was of that type of man to whom juvenility is neither comical nor alluring. Duty was revealed to him in graduated doses adapted to the age of the taker, and he was disposed to make no allowance to infants for delinquency. It seemed to him that Mrs. Larrabee's patience was much misplaced, and he now and again gazed with disapproving eyes at the group. He was obliged to linger long before she was at leisure and sitting in front of the hearth with the shovel in her hand, ready to heap the ashes over the coals to keep the fire till day. The two beds in the room were edged with the tow-heads of the children, sleeping crosswise; the baby's box-crib and the turkey's basket had each its wonted occupant; and if the dreams that went up from the conclave could have been materialized, what wild display of phantasmagoria they would have made! The door had been barred up against the possible marauder of the elder's apprehension, and the black bear of juvenile dread. The shadows of the two loiterers were on the red, dully illumined ceiling, two gigantic, distorted heads of dusky brown.