“Naw’m!” said Skimpy hastily. “I war jes’ studyin’ ’bout that thar song— “‘The sperits o’ the woods ride by on the blast, An’ a witch they say lives up in the moon. Heigh! Ho! Jine in the chune! Jine in, neighbor, jine in the chune!’ “It jes’ makes my marrer freeze in my bones ter sing that song,” Skimpy said when his round fresh voice had quavered away into silence—somehow he could not sing to-night. “Waal, I never set no store by sech,” said his mother. She looked reassuringly at him over the head of the baby, who slept so much during the day that he kept late hours, and did his utmost to force the family to follow his example. He sat on her knee, sturdily upright, although she held her hand to his back under the mistaken impression that his youthful spine might be weak; but he had more backbone—literally and metaphorically—than many much bigger people. He was munching his whole fist, for his mouth seemed not only large but flexible, and as he gazed into the fire he soliloquized after an inarticulate fashion. His face was red; his head was bald except for a slight furze, which was very red, along the crown; notwithstanding his youth he looked both aged and crusty. Bose was at his mistress’s feet. He too sat upright, meditatively watching the fire with his one eye, and now and then lifting the remnants of his slit ears with redoubled attention as the wind took a fiercer twirl about the chimney. Occasionally as the baby’s monologue grew loud and vivacious, Bose wagged the stump of his tail in joy and pride, and it thwacked up and down on the floor. It was a very cheerful hearth—the grinding tidiness of Mrs. Sawyer showed its value when one glanced about the well-ordered room; at the clean pots and pans and yellow and blue ware on the shelves; at the bright tints of the quilts on the bed and of the hanks of yarn and strings of peppers hanging from the rafters that harbored no cobwebs; at the clear blazes unhindered by ashes. Obadiah with his fiddle under his chin was directly in front of the fire. He was tightening and twanging the strings; now and then cocking the instrument close to his ear to better distinguish the vibrations. There are few musicians who have a more capable and discerning air than Obadiah affected in those impressive moments of preparation. His three brothers sat on a bench, drawn across the hearth in the chimney corner, its equilibrium often endangered, for the two at one end now and again engaged in jocose scuffling, and Skimpy in the corner was barely heavy enough to keep it from upsetting. Sometimes their father, solemnly smoking his corn-cob pipe, would, with a sober sidelong glance and a deep half-articulate voice, admonish them to be quiet, and their efforts in this direction would last for a few moments at least. In one of these intervals their father spoke suddenly to Skimpy.