The door opened to a gaunt figure, partly composed of bed-quilt and partly of plaid shawl. A predominance of the latter and a long wisp of iron-gray hair determined her sex. She leaned against the post with an air of fatigue, half moral and half physical. “How ye kin lie thar, abed, Jeff, and read and smoke on sich a night! The sperrit o' the Lord abroad over the yearth--and up stage not gone by yet. Well, well! it's well thar ez SOME EZ CAN'T SLEEP.” “The up coach, like as not, is stopped by high water on the North Fork, ten miles away, aunty,” responded Jeff, keeping to the facts. Possibly not recognizing the hand of the beneficent Creator in the rebellious window shutter, he avoided theology. “Well,” responded the figure, with an air of delivering an unheeded and thankless warning, “it is not for ME to say. P'raps it's all His wisdom that some will keep to their own mind. It's well ez some hezn't narves, and kin luxuriate in terbacker in the night watches. But He says, 'I'll come like a thief in the night!'--like a thief in the night, Jeff.” Totally unable to reconcile this illustration with the delayed “Pioneer” coach and Yuba Bill, its driver, Jeff lay silent. In his own way, perhaps, he was uneasy--not to say shocked--at his aunt's habitual freedom of scriptural quotation, as that good lady herself was with an occasional oath from his lips; a fact, by the way, not generally understood by purveyors of Scripture, licensed and unlicensed. “I'd take a pull at them bitters, aunty,” said Jeff feebly, with his wandering eye still recurring to his page. “They'll do ye a power of good in the way o' calmin' yer narves.” “Ef I was like some folks I wouldn't want bitters--though made outer the simplest yarbs of the yearth, with jest enough sperrit to bring out the vartoos--ez Deacon Stoer's Balm 'er Gilead is--what yer meaning? Ef I was like some folks I could lie thar and smoke in the lap o' idleness--with fourteen beds in the house empty, and nary lodger for one of 'em. Ef I was that indifferent to havin' invested my fortin in the good will o' this house, and not ez much ez a single transient lookin' in, I could lie down and take comfort in profane literatoor. But it ain't in me to do it. And it wasn't your father's way, Jeff, neither!”