"Place whar they swollow knives, I reckon. Seed a feller do that at a school-house one night, an' I thought he'd killed hisse'f, but he spit it out jest like a stick of molasses candy. Wall, suh, I never seed as many lanterns hung up befo'. An' I want to tell you they've got good roads through this place. What's that feller doin' over thar with that crowd about him?" "Preaching," Foster answered. "Wall, he couldn't call up mourners--the wagins would run over 'em. What do you think of all this, Jasper?" "Who, me?" the old man replied as if startled out of a dream, "I wasn't thinkin' of it--didn't see it." "I don't reckon," said Laz, "that all these folks knows we air goin' to jail." Old Jasper shook as if with a chill. "We know it, an' that's enough," he replied. The wagon, directed by Foster, turned into a darker street, into an alley, and drew up in front of a building black in the dusk. The old man's legs were so stiffened that they had to help him out and rheumatically he walked through the portals of stone-walled disgrace. Into a cell they turned him, and when the bolt grated, he leaped from the rock beneath his feet, leaped as he had when he struck Peters; and then into a corner he sank with a groan. The two boys were given the liberty of a long corridor, and up and down they walked, light of foot, in reverence for the dejected man behind the bars. CHAPTER XXII. CAME TO WEEP. Old Mrs. Barker, true to instinct, hastened to put on her saddest bonnet, kept in an old chest at the demand of funerals, and with all speed set out for the afflicted home. Margaret was feeding the chickens when this consoling stimulator of grief arrived, and what little sun was left, immediately went down. Beneath the mantle-piece there was no blaze, the weather being hot, so they could not sit down "and weep the fire out," but they could hover over old ashes and weep them wet. The real griefs in old Mrs. Barker's life had been but few. It was a mercy-shaft that had shot Old Barker down; rheumatic cripple, he had beaten her with his crutch, and at his death she could not from her rebellious eye wring out a tear. No offspring had she over whose death to mourn, and now she was put to for a companion piece to sorrow. But her mind flew back to a time when there died a man whom she could have loved, and her tears came full with the memory of a blissful morning when at church he had tied her horse and walked with her to the door. She had forgotten his name, if indeed she had ever been possessed of it, but she spoke of him as "he" as fast as her tears were falling. "Ah, Lord, Sister Starbuck, I don't want to question the ways of Providence, but it do appear that we have staid here too long. I ought to have been taken when he left." "You mean Barker, Sister?"