The wild October gale had been blowing all day long, a bleak legacy of the blizzard that swept over the land during the night. There were high, white drifts in sheltered nooks and corners; a fine, sleety snow cut mercilessly through the air, beating against window panes like sweeps of bird shot, scuttling through reluctantly opened doors, swirling in restless fury across porches, all to the tune of a shrill wind that came whistling out of the north. In an upstairs corner room, warmed by a big, carefully tended sheet-iron stove, young Oliver first saw the light of day. No finer “young-un” had ever been born, according to Mrs. Serepta Grimes, and Serepta was an authority on babies. It was she who took command of Oliver, his mother and his father, the house itself, and all that therein was. She was there hours ahead of Dr. Robinson, and she was still there hours after his departure. Throughout the town of Rumley, Serepta was known as a “blessing and a comfort.” Her word was law. Fond mothers and frightened fathers submitted to her gentle but arbitrary regulations without a murmur of protest. Joe Sikes claimed—and no one disputed him—that you couldn’t come into or go out of the world properly without being assisted by Serepta Grimes. She was that kind of a woman. She saw to it that all the cracks around the window frames were securely stuffed with paper to keep the wind from coming in; she kept Oliver’s beaddled father from darting into the room every time he heard the baby cry; she gave peremptory directions to neighbor-women who came in to see what they could do; she kept the fire going, the kitchen running, and, by virtue of her own vast experience and authority, she kept the doctor in his place. Perhaps a hundred times during the day she had patiently answered “Yes” to the senior Oliver’s tremulous question: “Is she going to pull through, Serepty?” In this cozy little room and in the presence of the doctor and Serepta Grimes, young Oliver was weighed by his father. For this purpose, a brand-new, perfectly balanced meat-scales, selected from stock, was brought up from the hardware store by Mr. Sikes, who, while being denied the privilege of witnessing the ceremony, subsequently was able to collect fifty cents from another bosom friend of the family, Mr. Silas Link, undertaker and upholsterer. The infant weighed nine and a quarter pounds, Joseph winning his wager by a scant quarter of a pound. The two worthies also had made another bet as to the sex of the infant, Mr. Sikes giving odds of two to one that it would be a boy. Up to seven o’clock in the evening, fully twelve hours after the baby was born, neither Mr. Sikes nor Mr. Link had the slightest idea who had won the bet, for, try as they would, there seemed to be absolutely no way of getting any authentic information from upstairs, owing to the speechless condition of Oliver senior and the drastic reticence of Serepta Grimes.