Up in the sheep pasture, as we sat to rest the horse, he told me this: “I always thought Aunt Almera knew all about the John Brown raid before most folks did--maybe she sent some money to help him. She wasn’t a bit surprised, anyhow, when she heard of it, and all through the whole business she never thought of another thing, nor let anybody else. He was caught--any of us that lived in that house those days will never forget a one of those dates--and put in jail on the 9th of October, and his trial lasted until the 31st. Aunt Almera made us get together in the evenings, me and the hired girl and one of her grandsons and her daughter, all the family, and she’d read aloud to us out of the ‘Tribune’ about what had happened that day at his trial. I never saw her so worked up about anything--just like ashes her old face was, and her voice like cold steel. We got as excited about it as she did, all of us, especially her grandson, that was about my age. The day of his execution--December 2d, it was--Aunt Almera came at dawn to wake me up. ‘Put on your clothes,’ says she, ‘and go over to the church and begin to toll the bell.’ I didn’t need to ask her what for, either. I’ll never forget how awful she looked to me. “Well, we tolled the bell all day long, one or the other of the family, never stopped a minute. You never heard anything so like death. All day long that slow, deep clang--and then a stillness--and then _clang!_ again. I could hear it in my head for days afterwards. Folks came in from all around to find out what it meant, and Aunt Almera called them all into her parlor--she sat there all day and never ate a mouthful of food--and _told_ them what it meant, so they couldn’t ever get the sound of her voice out of their ears. Between times she’d read out of the Bible to whoever was there, ‘Avenge thou thy cause, O Lord God of battles,’ and ‘It is time for thee, O Lord, to lay to thy hand, for they have destroyed thy law,’ and ‘Let there be no man to pity them; nor to have compassion of their fatherless children.’ It was the darndest thing to hear her! “You’d better believe when Abraham Lincoln sent out the first call for men there wasn’t a boy of military age in our town that didn’t enlist!” An aged cousin had just died, and as we sat downstairs talking with the doctor, he said to my aunt, who had been taking care of the sick woman: “She took it hard! She took it hard!” They both frowned, and my aunt looked rather sick. Then the doctor said, “Not much like your grandmother, do you remember?” “Oh, yes, I remember,” said my aunt, her face quivering, her eyes misty, her lips smiling.