"So it happened I was away from the hut a good deal of the time, and I got an idea the Ravens liked that. It must have touched their pride to have Old Crow living up here alone, queer as Dick's hat-band. Whichever way I fixed it, I was a kind of a curse: for when I went off on my wanderings I was a tramp and the news of it came back home, and I often think the boy's mother was sorry and wished I wouldn't, though even that was better than my being around, toleing off the boy. I liked my wanderings, in summer best of all. But in winter the folks needed me more, shut up so in tight houses, catching colds in bad air, and it got so when they were sick they'd send for me and I was proper pleased to go. And they came to have a kind of a trust in me, and I was nearer being contented than I'd been in my whole life. Because the questions didn't come hardly at all, now. I was too busy by day and too tired at night. So it went on till one day I came to old Billy Jones's little house, where he lived all alone in the dirt and filth. It was just at the foot of the mountain and no neighbors under half a mile. I say he lived there, but he wasn't there more than a third of the time. The boy will remember how he used to go along the road, full as a tick, and the school children making fun of him and then running before he could get at them. I don't know as he would, though. There never was any harm in him, only he did neglect himself so he was an awful sight. And the only time he was in his little house was when he'd been hired out haying or something, and got his money and spent it and come back with crackers and cheese in his old carpet bag, to sober up. "This day I was speaking about (it was October and no wind) I was going by his house and I saw a smoke coming out of the chimney, and I thought old Billy had come home to sober up. But I hadn't hardly got to the house before I heard him calling me, and I looked and there he was in the front door leaning on a cane. "'You come in here,' says he, and I went in. "It was a terrible hog's nest, his front room was, but I paid no attention, for that's the way he lived. He sat down in a chair and made a motion with his hand for me to come near, and I did, and he took my hand and put it on his knee. "'Feel that,' he says. And when I didn't know what he meant, nor care hardly, for I thought he might be in drink, he called out, in a queer voice--sharp it was, and pitiful--and says he: 'My legs are swelling. Hard as a rock.'