The old man had a thin, but rather long, gray beard; and while shearing one of the sheep, either in revenge for its cuts, or else, as is more likely, mistaking Peter's beard for a wisp of hay, it made a fitful grab at it and tweaked away a small mouthful. Peter cried out angrily and continued scolding in an undertone about it for some minutes. This vastly amused Addison, who chanced to see the incident. In addition to his duties with the wool, Addison was also "doctor." When a sheep was cut with the shears, Gramp had the spot touched up with a swab, dipped in a dish of melted tallow, to coat over the raw place and exclude the air. To be effective, however, the tallow needed to be hot, or at least quite warm, so that Addison was frequently making trips with the tallow dipper to the stove in the house kitchen. Going in with him to tell the girls of the accident to old Peter's beard, I found them laboring and discouraged over the churn; for some reason the cream had failed to come to butter that morning in a reasonable time. They had been churning for nearly two hours. It was an old-fashioned dasher churn, and the labor was far from light. Addison could not stop to assist them; but I volunteered to do so, and soon found that I had embarked in a tiresome business, for we had to work at the dasher for as much as an hour more before the butter came. That evening I had an ill turn. It may have been due to change of climate, or of food, or perhaps the unwonted exercise. Gram, however, was convinced that I had a "worm-turn;" and that night, for the first time, I made the acquaintance of the Vermifuge Bottle! Now Gram was a dear old soul, but had certain fixed ideas as to the ailments of youngsters and the appropriate remedies therefor. Whenever any one of us had taken cold, or committed youthful indiscretions in diet, she was always persuaded that we were suffering from an attack of Worms--which I am spelling with a big W, since it was a very large ailment in her eyes. To her mind, and in all honesty, the average child was a kind of walking helminthic menagerie, a thin shell of flesh and skin, inclosing hundreds, if not thousands, of Worms! And drastic measures were necessary to keep this raging internal population down to the limits where a child could properly live.