The stories go on, with a touch here and a touch there to accent the village flavor. The Bodfishes, huge father and huge sons, lived a patriarchal life on their farm; for more than seventy years their estate was held in common, the father acting as trustee and granting his sons only as much as would qualify them for voters. And a scion of the less illustrious branch of a prominent family was ready to argue his claim for preëminence: “We’ll discuss that,” he would thunder with swelling port. And won the sobriquet of “Scussion Sam” for his pains. There was another member of the same family whose shrewd humor served as well as roguery. He was master of the little packet nicknamed Somerset after the British man-of-war, which carried to Boston onions, among other cargo, for the West Indies market. “Gentlemen,” said he persuasively to some possible buyers, “these are what are called ’tarnity’ onions; they’ll keep to all eternity.” But a week out of port on their way to the south, the onions had to be thrown overboard. At another time he outsailed a neighbor who was shipping onions to a Salem trader, and presented his own cargo in their stead. “But how about Huckins?” asked the trader. “My son-in-law,” returned the captain glibly. “Here are the onions.” One may fancy that tavern and living-room buzzed with the news of this trick when the discomfited Huckins made the home port. Still another member of the family was of different mould—one who gloried in the ease his poverty gave him. “I’m thankful I don’t own that number of cattle,” commented he, watching a neighbor laboring over his stock on a snowy day. “Squire and I,” said he again genially, “keep more cows than any other two men in town.” Squire, his brother, had twenty cows, he one. But the account of Barnabas Downs best typifies, perhaps, the tranquil village life that flowed on amid the outer turmoil of war and politics and finance. He was born in 1730 and lived long and laborious years on his thirty-acre farm, which supported some cattle, a horse or two, a large flock of sheep, and produced sufficient grain and vegetables. His stock ran at large through the summer; his winter hay he cut in the salt meadows. His clothing was made from the wool of his sheep; the surplus produce of his farm he traded for groceries at the village shop, and exchanged labor for labor with blacksmith, shoemaker, and carpenter. Sometimes he shipped onions to Boston; but he had little money, and needed little. And at this time his class of small farmers made perhaps more than half the population in any one of the Cape towns except those, like Truro, where practically every man in the community “went to sea”—simple, industrious creatures, who lived comfortably by another standard than ours, and were not unmindful of larger interests than their own. “He was the most independent of men,” is the comment of Otis. “Six days he labored and did all his work, and the seventh was a day of rest.” CHAPTER V THE ENGLISH WARS