"I know it; and I s'pose you'll continner to say so till the day of yer death! Then may-be you'll remember Reuben in yer will. That's the way! Keep puttin' him off as long as you can possibly hold on to your property yourself,--then, when you see you've got to go and leave it, give him what you ought to 've gi'n him years before. There a'n't no merit in that kind o' justice, did ye know it, Mr. Ducklow! I tell ye, what belongs to Reuben belongs to him _now_,--not ten or twenty year hence, when you've done with it, and he most likely won't need it. A few hundred dollars now'll be more useful to him than all your thousands will be by-and-by. After he left you, he took the Moseley farm; everybody respected him, everybody trusted him; he was doin' well, everybody said; then he married Sophrony, and a good and faithful wife she's been to him; and finally he concluded to buy the farm, which you yourself said was a good idee, and encouraged him in 't." "So it was; Reuben used judgment in that, and he'd have got along well enough, if 't hadn't been for the war," said Mr. Ducklow; while his wife sat dumb, not daring to measure tongues with their vigorous-minded and plain-speaking neighbor. "Jest so!" said Miss Beswick. "If it hadn't been for the war! He had made his first payments, and would have met the rest as they came due, no doubt of it. But the war broke out, and he left all to sarve his country. Says he, 'I'm an able-bodied man, and I ought to go,' says he. His business was as important, and his wife and children was as dear to him, as anybody's; but he felt it his duty to go, and he went. They didn't give no such big bounties to volunteers then as they do now, and it was a sacrifice to him every way when he enlisted. But says he, 'I'll jest do my duty,' says he, 'and trust to Providence for the rest.' You didn't _dis_courage his goin',--and you didn't _in_courage him, neither, the way you'd ought to." "My! what on 'arth, Miss Beswick!----Seems to me you're takin' it upon yourself to say things that are uncalled for, to say the least! I can't understand what should have sent you here, to tell me what's my business, and what a'n't, this fashion! As if I didn't know my own duty and intentions!" And Mr. Ducklow poured his tea into his plate, and buttered his bread with a teaspoon. "I s'pose she's been talking with Sophrony, and she has sent her to interfere."