“My! how that winter flew by. I don’t reckon I l’arned a great deal to school, but I knew jest how many sticks of wood het the stove up right to bake, and how to plan to git time fer the churning Saturdays, and to turn out the wash-water Monday nights fer a gal who never said tire--but I couldn’t a-bear to see them little arms a-liftin’ so. “Summer time come, and the deacon wa’n’t no better, and father said how I’d better stay and hire out for hayin’. I was a powerful worker then--I can mow my swath pretty reg’lar now--and I was a powerful big eater, too; but there wa’n’t no lack of vittles. The deacon was allers a good provider, and Pamely was a rare cook.” Here he paused, and turning toward the white speck, now grown into a distinct homestead, he said gravely: “Ef ye was to put up there this very day, and no one a-knowin’ of yer comin’, _she’d_ set ye afore as good a meal at an hour’s notice as ever Hosmer sot for two dollars and a half a day.” Then the story went on. “At first I used to talk to Pamely some, but after a while every time I tried to speak somethin’ crammed in my throat, and it got to be so that I dassent try to talk. Evenin’s I jest sot and whittled mush-sticks out of white pine, till she bu’st out one night, and says she: “S’pose you think I’m goin’ to spile my mush every time with a new tastin’ stirrer.” And she laughed till she had to go out the room; but what did I care ef she used them stirrers fer kindlin’? I’d had my luck lookin’ at her fingers fly a-sewin’ or a-knittin’, and I’ve got a pair of double blue and white streaked mittens now that she made that winter. It went along so fer ’bout three year and more. I don’t think I keered much fer time. I jest wanted to be a-earnin’, winter and summer, and that was what it had come to, fer the deacon didn’t git much better, and the wimmen folks couldn’t git along without me very well. They do say now I’m dreffle handy; and so long’s Pamely set store by me, I was all right. I declare to goodness, I clean forgot there was another young man in Pitcher but me! But I had to wake up to it, arter all, and I’ve wished a thousand times I had waked up sooner. “Pamely went off on a visit to her folks, and when she come back, onexpected like, a feller fetched her. When I see him a-liftin’ her outen the sleigh I felt like a-heavin’ a claw-hammer at him; but when he turned round, and I saw what a putty-face he was, says I to myself, ‘Pshaw!’ Several times that winter he come, and set and set, and onct I got up and was a-goin’ up the kitchen stairs when I felt somethin’ in my heel. I sot down on the top step and pulled my stockin’ off, a-lookin’ fer a tack or perhaps a broke-off needle, when all of a sudden the door was ajar and they hadn’t spoke a word afore I heard Jim Whiffles say: ‘I knowed a feller as went a-courtin’ one gal fer a whole year.’ “‘P’r’aps,’ said Pamely. “‘And she didn’t chuck him off neither.’ “‘S’pose not.’