"Well, you always had a tender conscience. Yet I can trust your love better 'n ary promise. Well--_I--burnt--it!_" "Burned it? Your house? Your home? Yours and Mercy's? Why--Abel!" The pioneer squared his mighty shoulders, and faced her as a defiant child might an offended mother. "Yes, I did. The house, the bed-quilts, the antiquated bedstead, the whole endurin' business. It was the only way. Year after year she'd keep naggin' for me to move on further into the wilderness. _Me_, that was starvin' for folks, an' knew she was! It was just plumb lonesomeness made her what she is: a nagger. So, at last--you've heard about worms turnin', hain't you? I watched, an' when she'd gone trudgin' off on a four-mile tramp, pretendin' somebody's baby was sick, but really meanin' she was that druv to hear the sound of another woman's voice, I took pity on her--an' myself--an' set fire to that hateful old heirloom of a bedstead; an' whilst it was burnin' I just whipped out the old fiddle, an' I played--my! how I played! Every time a post fell into the middle, I just danced. 'So much nearer folks!' I thought. And the rag-carpet an' the nineteen-hunderd-million-patch-bedspread--Kit, I've set there, day after day, an' seen Mercy cuttin' up whole an' decent rags, an' sewin' 'em together again, till I've near gone stark mad. Fact. I used to wonder if it wasn't a sort of craziness possessed her to do that foolishness. Now, it's all over. She lays the fire to an Indian feller that I've spoke fair to, now an' again, an' that had been round our way huntin' not long before. I don't know where he come from, an' I never asked him. He never told. Pretended he couldn't talk Yankee. Don't know as he could, but he could talk chicken or little pig fast enough. Leastways, I missed such after he'd been there. Well, it wasn't him. _It was--me!_ I burnt the bedstead, an' now we're free folks!" "But, Abel, why not have brought the bedstead with you, if she loved it so? Why destroy----" "Sissy, you don't know Mercy--not as I do. It was that furniture kept her. So long as she had it, so long as she could kind of boast it over her neighbors, there she'd set. We couldn't have moved it. She near worried herself into her grave gettin' it into the wilderness, first off, an' she ain't so young now as she was then. She'd ruther lost a leg than had it scratched. I saved that load of feed, an' the ox team, an' the old horse. Yes, an' my fiddle. Mercy's got money. She had it hid. I'm goin' to settle here an' keep tavern, if I can. If not here, then somewheres else. Anywhere where there's folks. Trees are nice; prairies are nice; a clearin' of your own is nice; but human natur' is nicer. Don't tell Mercy, though, or there'll be trouble! Now, Kit, where's Gaspar?" "_Oh, Abel! Only the dear Lord knows!_" CHAPTER XVII. A DAY OF HAPPENINGS. "Abel! Abel Smith! Here I am. Right here, in our little Kitty's own house. How'd you get along? Did the man buy?"