He ranged them in a circle around the barrel. He stood at the spigot and filled every cup. Then he raised his own and said: "I want ye to drink to Peabody Baynes--one o' the squarest men that ever stood in cowhide." They drank the toast--not one of them would have dared refuse. "Now three cheers for the new home and every one that lives in it," he demanded. They cheered lustily and went away. Uncle Peabody and I put in the floors and stairway and partitions. More than once in the days we were working together I tried to tell him what Sally had told me, but my courage failed. We moved our furniture. I remember that Uncle Peabody called it "the houseltree." We had greased paper on the windows for a time after we moved until the sash came. Aunt Deel had made rag carpets for the parlor and the bedroom which opened off it. Our windows looked down into the great valley of the St. Lawrence, stretching northward thirty miles or more from our hilltop. A beautiful grove of sugar maples stood within a stone's throw of the back door. What a rustic charm in the long slant of the green hill below us with its gray, mossy boulders and lovely thorn trees! It was, I think, a brighter, pleasanter home than that we had left. It was built on the cellar of one burned a few years before. The old barn was still there and a little repairing had made it do. The day came, shortly, when I had to speak out, and I took the straight way of my duty as the needle of the compass pointed. It was the end of a summer day and we had watched the dusk fill the valley and come creeping up the slant, sinking the boulders and thorn tops in its flood, one by one. As we sat looking out of the open door that evening I told them what Sally had told me of the evil report which had traveled through the two towns. Uncle Peabody sat silent and perfectly motionless for a moment, looking out into the dusk. "W'y, of all things! Ain't that an awful burnin' shame-ayes!" said Aunt Deel as she covered her face with her hand. "Damn, little souled, narrer contracted--" Uncle Peabody, speaking in a low, sad tone, but with deep feeling, cut off this highly promising opinion before it was half expressed, and rose and went to the water pail and drank. "As long as we're honest we don't care what they say," he remarked as he returned to his chair. "If they won't believe us we ought to show 'em the papers--ayes," said Aunt Deel. "Thunder an' Jehu! I wouldn't go 'round the town tryin' to prove that I ain't a thief," said Uncle Peabody. "It wouldn't make no differ'nce. They've got to have somethin' to play with. If they want to use my name for a bean bag let 'em as long as they do it when I ain't lookin'. I wouldn't wonder if they got sore hands by an' by." I never heard him speak of it again. Indeed, although I knew the topic was often in our thoughts it was never mentioned in our home but once after that, to my knowledge.