When he had found that which he sought, he laid the book down between us, and as he talked, I picked it up and looked it through, idly. The covers were worn and ragged with age, and there was a flap upon the one that entered a slit upon the other, holding the book securely closed. The pages were filled with entries in pencil or in pen, and some of these were concerned with matters of business concluded twenty years before; and some recorded the results of days with rod or gun; while here and there, dropped at random, were paragraphs or pages devoted to casual incidents that had struck Chet’s fancy through a space of forty years. On one such series I chanced, and read the entries through, first to myself, and then, with some amusement, aloud. They ran in this wise: June 6, 1883. Jed was taken sick to-day with a pain in his stomach. He seems very weak. The old man won’t last long. March, 1887. The old man’s stomach is bothering him again. He has to stay in bed right along. September 2, 1892. Abbie Grant says Uncle Jed’s pain is worse. He’s not long for this world. July, 1895. That pain in Uncle Jed’s insides still hangs on. It will be the death of him. August 2, 1898. Deborah Grant was here to-day. The old man still breathes. May, 1900. Uncle Jed is still alive and kicking. When I had finished reading these items aloud, Chet drew his chin back against his neck and laughed with that robust vigor which is characteristic of him; and I, without at all understanding the jest, nevertheless laughed in sympathy. “But it seems to me,” I suggested, “that the record ends here a bit abruptly. What happened to the old man, anyway?” “That was old Uncle Jed Grant,” Chet told me, tears of mirth in his eyes. “I could tell you things about Uncle Jed that ’u’d surprise you.” Mrs. McAusland called from the kitchen to warn me that if I didn’t look out I’d get Chet started; but I reassured her, and bade Chet tell on. That which follows is the substance of his telling. II This Jedidiah Grant, so Chet assured me, was by all odds the meanest man that ever dwelt in Fraternity, where to be mean and to be miserly are synonymous. “Why,” said Chet, “he was so mean he wouldn’t let you see him laugh; fear it ’u’d tickle you.” And he began to chuckle at some recollection, so that it was necessary to spur him before he would go on. “I was thinking,” he explained, “of the time Jed went down to Boston. Went to turn some gold into greenbacks. This was after the war, when the greenbacks was ’way down. Jed had made some money boot-legging in Bangor, and he see a chance to make some more. Trip didn’t cost him a thing, because a couple of Boston men asked him to come down.” He had met these men in Bangor, it appeared.