Let me see; I began to tell you something, didn't I? O yes; about that winter of '41. I remember now. I declare, I can't get over it, to think you never heard about it, and you twenty-four year old come Christmas. You don't know much more, either, about Maine folks and Maine fashions than you do about China,--though it's small wonder, for the matter of that, you were such a little shaver when Uncle Jed took you. There were a great many of us, it seems to me, that year, I 'most forget how many;--we buried the twins next summer, didn't we?--then there was Mary Ann, and little Nancy, and--well, coffee was dearer than ever I'd seen it, I know, about that time, and butter selling for nothing; we just threw our milk away, and there wasn't any market for eggs; besides doctor's bills and Isaac to be sent to school; so it seemed to be the best thing, though your mother took on pretty badly about it at first. Jedediah has been good to you, I'm sure, and brought you up religious,--though you've cost him a sight, spending three hundred and fifty dollars a year at Amherst College. But, as I was going to say, when I started to talk about '41,--to tell the truth, Johnny, I'm always a long while coming to it, I believe. I'm getting to be an old man,--a little of a coward, maybe, and sometimes, when I sit alone here nights, and think it over, it's just like the toothache, Johnny. As I was saying, if she had cut that wick straight, I do believe it wouldn't have happened,--though it isn't that I mean to lay the blame on her _now_. I'd been out at work all day about the place, slicking things up for to-morrow; there was a gap in the barn-yard fence to mend,--I left that till the last thing, I remember,--I remember everything, some way or other, that happened that day,--and there was a new roof to put on the pig-pen, and the grape-vine needed an extra layer of straw, and the latch was loose on the south barn-door; then I had to go round and take a last look at the sheep, and toss down an extra forkful for the cows, and go into the stall to have a talk with Ben, and unbutton the coop-door to see if the hens looked warm,--just to tuck 'em up, as you might say. I always felt sort of homesick--though I wouldn't have owned up to it, not even to Nancy--saying good-by to the creeturs the night before I went in. There, now! it beats all, to think, you don't know what I'm talking about, and you a lumberman's son. "Going in" is going up into the woods, you know, to cut and haul for the winter,--up, sometimes, a hundred miles deep,--in in the fall and out in the spring; whole gangs of us shut up there sometimes for six months, then down with the freshets on the logs, and all summer to work the farm,--a merry sort of life when you get used to it, Johnny; but it was a great while ago, and it seems to me as if it must have been very cold.--Isn't there a little draft coming in at the pantry door?