Yet Jotham is in the main taciturn. It is only when the northeaster soughs in the eaves and brings him leisure that he drops into narrative. His tales are grotesque fancies, simple yarns withal, such as fluttered from the homely life of pasture and woodland in early days of enforced idleness to light on the threshing floor of some great old barn, or to warm themselves at the big kitchen fireplace on winter nights when the wind guffawed down the throat of the big chimney and sprinkled the hearth with an attic salt of snow for the seasoning of them for the country palate. I do not doubt Jotham's grandfather told them of his grandfather and that they belong to neither but are local folk lore, pasture sagas, changelings born of the queer union of east wind and blueberry blooms, brought up by hand--farm hand. "My grandfather," says Jotham, "was a great hunter. On stormy days like this he would take down his old long, singlebarrelled gun and go out and bring home all kinds of game, mostly ducks and geese. In his day the ducks and geese bred around here and you could get 'em any time, but the best shooting was in the early fall on a northeaster. The heavy waves down on the coast drive the birds out of their feeding grounds and they come up to the fresh-water ponds inland to drink and get a change of feed. It is the same way with the shore birds; yellow-legs and plover and the like; though in my grandfather's day they didn't care much about such small game. Bigger birds were plenty enough. Grandfather used to hate yellow-legs, though, for they are telltales." [Illustration: Wild Geese in Flight over the Pond] "Once he went over to Muddy Pond loaded for duck. It is a great place for ducks. In those days they used to come in there and sometimes pack it solid full. You could hardly see the pond for the ducks in it. Grandfather always knew just the right day to go, and this time when 'he looked down on the pond from the hill he saw hardly any water at all, nothing much but ducks. It was the chance of his life. He slipped down the hill among the scrubs to the cedars and then began to creep carefully up. You know what the pond is like; perfectly round and only a couple of acres or so, with a rim of marsh and then another big rim of swamp cedars, then the hills all about; neither inlet nor outlet; a queer pond anyway and queer things happen on it, same as they did that day. Grandfather had got half way through the swamp cedars when he came to a little opening which he had to cross. Just then there came up on the east wind a big flock of telltales, 762 of them, whirling over the hills without a sound till they saw him. Then they began to yelp." "Look here, Jotham," I am always careful to say at this point, "How could he tell that there were just 762 of them? He couldn't count so many as they flew." "Didn't have to count 'em as they flew," answers Jotham. "He counted 'em after he had shot 'em.