W'y, I git my fancy focussed on the past so mortul plane I kin even smell the locus'-blossoms bloomin' in the lane; And I hear the cow-bells clinkin' sweeter tunes 'n "Money-musk" Fer the lightnin' bugs a-blinkin' and a-dancin' in the dusk. And when I've kep' on "musin'," as the feller says, tel I'm Firm-fixed in the conclusion that they hain't no better time, When you come to cipher on it, than the _old_ times,--I de-clare I kin wake and say "dog-gone-it!" jest as soft as any prayer! AN OLD SETTLER'S STORY AN OLD SETTLER'S STORY William Williams his name was--er so he said;--Bill Williams they called him, and them 'at knowed him best called him Bill Bills. The first I seed o' Bills was about two weeks after he got here. The Settlement wasn't nothin' but a baby in them days, fer I mind 'at old Ezry Sturgiss had jist got his saw and griss-mill a-goin', and Bills had come along and claimed to know all about millin', and got a job with him; and millers in them times was wanted worse'n congerssmen, and I reckon got better wages; fer afore Ezry built, there wasn't a dust o' meal er flour to be had short o' the White Water, better'n sixty mil'd from here, the way we had to fetch it. And they used to come to Ezry's fer their grindin' as fur as that; and one feller I knowed to come from what used to be the old South Fork, over eighty mil'd from here, and in the wettest, rainyest weather; and mud! _Law!_ Well, this-here Bills was a-workin' fer Ezry at the time--part the time a-grindin', and part the time a-lookin' after the sawin', and gittin' out timber and the like. Bills was a queer-lookin' feller, shore! About as tall a build man as Tom Carter--but of course you don't know nothin' o' Tom Carter. A great big hulk of a feller, Tom was; and as fur back as Fifty-eight used to make his brags that he could cut and putt up his seven cord a day. Well, what give Bills this queer look, as I was a-goin' on to say, was a great big ugly scar a-runnin' from the corner o' one eye clean down his face and neck, and I don't know how fur down his breast--awful lookin'; and he never shaved, and there wasn't a hair a-growin' in that scar, and it looked like a--some kind o' pizen snake er somepin' a-crawlin' in the grass and weeds. I never seed sich a' out-and-out ornry-lookin' chap, and I'll never fergit the first time I set eyes on him.