His color presently grew, and his neck assumed a partial steadiness. “What news, what news?” he asked. “You gather up a plenty in your goin's-around. It's little I get, except the bones, after they've been gnawed over by the whole neighborhood.” “There is not much now, I believe,” Dr. Deane observed. “Jacob and Leah Gilpin have another boy, but thee hardly knows them, I think. William Byerly died last week in Birmingham; thee's heard of him,--he had a wonderful gift of preaching. They say Maryland cattle will be cheap, this fall: does Alfred intend to fatten many? I saw him riding towards New-Garden.” “I guess he will,” the old man answered,--“must make somethin' out o' the farm. That pastur'-bottom ought to bring more than it does.” “Alfred doesn't look to want for much,” the Doctor continued. “It's a fine farm he has.” “_Me_, I say!” old Barton exclaimed, bringing down the end of his stick upon the floor. “The farm's mine!” “But it's the same thing, isn't it?” asked Dr. Deane, in his cheeriest voice and with his pleasantest smile. The old man looked at him for a moment, gave an incoherent grunt, the meaning of which the Doctor found it impossible to decipher, and presently, with a cunning leer, said.-- “Is all your property the same thing as your daughter's?” “Well--well,” replied the Doctor, softly rubbing his hands, “I should hope so--yes, I should hope so.” “Besides what she has in her own right?” “Oh, thee knows that will be hers without my disposal. What I should do for her would be apart from that. I am not likely, at my time of life, to marry again--but we are led by the Spirit, thee knows; we cannot say, I will do thus and so, and these and such things shall happen, and those and such other shall not.” “Ay, that's my rule, too, Doctor,” said the old man, after a pause, during which he had intently watched his visitor, from under his wrinkled eyelids. “I thought,” the Doctor resumed, “thee was pretty safe against another marriage, at any rate, and thee had perhaps made up thy mind about providing for thy children. “It's better for us old men to have our houses set in order, that we may spare ourselves worry and anxiety of mind. Elisha is already established in his own independence, and I suppose Ann will give thee no particular trouble; but if Alfred, now, should take a notion to marry, he couldn't, thee sees, be expected to commit himself without having some idea of what thee intends to do for him.” Dr. Deane, having at last taken up his position and uncovered his front of attack, waited for the next movement of his adversary. He was even aware of a slight professional curiosity to know how far the old man's keen, shrewd, wary faculties had survived the wreck of his body. The latter nodded his head, and pressed the top of his hickory stick against his gums several times, before he answered. He enjoyed the encounter, though not so sure of its issue as he would have been ten years earlier.