The interview that succeeded, had it been reported verbatim, deserved to be recorded in local history. Deacon Baxter had met in Jane Tillman a foeman more than worthy of his steel. She was just as crafty as he, and in generalship as much superior to him as Napoleon Bonaparte to Cephas Cole. Her knowledge of and her experiences with men, all very humble, it is true, but decidedly varied, enabled her to play on every weakness of this particular one she had in hand, and at the same time skilfully to avoided alarming him. Heretofore, the women with whom the Deacon had come in contact had timidly steered away from the rocks and reefs in his nature, and had been too ignorant or too proud to look among them for certain softer places that were likely to be there--since man is man, after all, even when he is made on a very small pattern. If Jane Tillman became Mrs. Baxter, she intended to get the whip hand and keep it; but nothing was further from her intention than to make the Deacon miserable if she could help it. That was not her disposition; and so, when the deluded man left her house, he had made more concessions in a single hour than in all the former years of his life. His future spouse was to write out a little paper for his signature; just a friendly little paper to be kept quite private and confidential between themselves, stating that she was to do no work outside of the house; that her pension was to be her own; that she was to have five dollars in cash on the first of every month in lieu of wages; and that in ease of his death occurring first she was to have a third of his estate, and the whole of it if at the time of his decease he was still pleased with his bargain. The only points in this contract that the Deacon really understood were that he was paying only five dollars a month for a housekeeper to whom a judge had offered twelve; that, as he had expected to pay at least eight, he could get a boy for the remaining three, and so be none the worse in pocket; also, that if he could keep his daughters from getting his money, he didn't care a hang who had it, as he hated the whole human race with entire impartiality. If Jane Tillman didn't behave herself, he had pleasing visions of converting most of his fortune into cash and having it dropped off the bridge some dark night, when the doctor had given him up and proved to his satisfaction that death would occur in the near future. All this being harmoniously settled, the Deacon drove away, and caused the announcement of his immediate marriage to be posted directly below that of Waitstill and Ivory Boynton. “Might as well have all the fat in the fire to once,” he chuckled. “There won't be any house-work done in this part of the county for a week to come. If we should have more snow, nobody'll have to do any shovellin', for the women-folks'll keep all the paths in the village trod down from door to door, travellin' round with the news.”