house got a peaked roof on it. I see Jeaney Merimy climb it after her kitten a-yowling on the ridge. She wasn't but six years old then, and she was gritty the day she was born. Her mother—she's old Peterson's daughter—she whooped, and I fetched Jeaney down with Peterson's ladder. Jeaney Merimy grew up, and she was a tidy little thing. The Storrs boys calculated to marry her, one of 'em, only they weren't enterprising; and Jeaney ups and goes over to Eastport one day with Jim Hawks—cuts out early in the morning, and asks nobody. Pretty goings on in this valley! Then they come back when they were ready, and Jim says:

"What you got to say about it, Merimy?"

Merimy hadn't nothing to say about it, nor his wife hadn't nothing to say, nor Peterson, nor the Storrs boys. Dog-gone it! Nobody hadn't nothing to say; that is, they didn't say it to Jim.

That was five years ago, the spring they put up the Redman Hotel at Helder's. People's come into these parts now thicker'n bugs. They have a band that plays music at the Redman Hotel. But in my time I've seen sights. The bears used to scoop my chickens. You could hear wildcats 'most any night crying in the brush. I see a black bear come down Jumping Brook over there, slapping his toes in the water and grunting like a pig. Me, I was ploughing for buckwheat.

Jeaney Merimy went over to Eastport with her hair in a braid, and came back with it put up like a crow's nest on top of her head. She was a nice-looking girl, Jeaney, and born gritty, and it didn't do her any good.

I says to Jim: "Now, you're always looking for fighting," says I. "Now, me, I'm for peaceable doings. If you're looking for fighting any time, you start in beyond me.

"You!" says Jim. "I'd as soon scrap with a haystack."

I do know how it would be, doing with a haystack that way, but you take it from Jim's point of view, and you see it wouldn't be what he'd care for; and you take it from my point of view, and you see I didn't poke into Jim's business. That's natural good sense. Only I'm free to say he was a wicked one, 'stilling whiskey on the back side of Tioba, and filling up the Storrs boys with it, and them gone to the devil off East where the railroads are. And laying Peterson to his front door, drunk. My, he didn't know any more'n his front door! "He's my grandfather," says Jim. "That's the humor of it"—meaning he was Jeaney's grandfather. And mixing the singularest drinks, and putting 'em into an old man named Fargus, as ought to known better. My wife she said so, and she knew. I do' know what Jeaney Merimy thought, but I had my point of view on that. Jim got drunk himself on and off, and went wilder'n a wildcat, and slid over the mountains the Lord knows where. Pretty goings on in this valley!

This is a good climate if you add it all up and take the average. But sometimes it won't rain till you're gray waiting for it, and sometimes it will snow so the only way to get home is to stay inside, and sometimes it will rain like the bottom fallen out of a tub. The way of it is that when you've lived with it forty years you know how to add up and take the average.

That summer Tioba kept her head out of sight from June to September mainly. She kept it done up in cotton, as you might say, and she leaked in her joints surprising. She's a queer mountain that way. Every now and then she busts out a spring and dribbles down into Still River from a new place.

In September they were all dark days and drizzly nights, and there was often the two sounds of the wind on Tioba that you hear on a bad night. One of 'em is a kind of steady grumble and hiss that's made with the pine-needles and maybe the tons of leaves shaking and falling. The other is the toot of the wind in the gullies on edges of rock. But if you stand in the open on a bad night and listen, you'd think Tioba was talking to you. Maybe she is.

It come along the middle of September, and it was a bad night, drizzly, and Tioba talking double. I went over to the Hawkses' place early to borrow lantern-oil, and I saw Jeaney Merimy sitting over the fire alone, and the wind singing in the chimney. "Jim hasn't come," she says, speaking quiet; and she gets me the lantern-oil. After, when I went away, she didn't seem to notice; and what with the wind in the chimney, and Jeaney sitting alone with her big black eyes staring, and Tioba talking double, and the rain drizzling, and the night falling, I felt queer enough to expect a ghost to be standing at my gate. And I came along the road, and there was one!

Yes, sir; she was a woman in a gray, wet cloak, standing at my gate, and a horse and buggy in the middle of the road.

"'Mighty!" says I, and drops my oil-can smack in the mud.

"Does Mr. Hawks live here?" she says, seeing me standing like a tomfool in the mud.

"No, ma'am," says I. "That's his place across the flat half a mile. He ain't at home, but his wife is."

The wind blew her cloak around her sharp, and I could see her face, though it was more or less dark. She was some big and tall, and her face was white and wet with the rain. After a while she says:

"He's married?"

"Yes, ma'am. You'd better not—'Mighty, ma'am!" says I, "where you going?"

She swung herself into the buggy quicker'n women are apt to do, and she whops the horse around and hits him a lick, and off he goes, splashing and galloping. Me, I was beat. But I got so far as to think if she wasn't a ghost, maybe Jim Hawks would as lief she would be, and if she didn't drive more careful she'd be liable to oblige him that way. Because it stands to reason a woman don't come looking for a man on a bad night, and cut away like that, unless she has something uncommon on her mind. I heard the buggy-wheels and the splash of the horse dying away; and then there was nothing in the night but the drip of the rain and Tioba talking double—um-hiss, toot-toot.

Then I went into the house, and didn't tell my wife about it, she disliking Jim on account of his singular drinks, which had a tidy taste, but affecting a man sudden and surprising. My wife she went off to bed, and I sat by the fire, feeling like there was more wrong in the world than common. And I kept thinking of Jeaney Merimy sitting by herself off there beyond the rain, with the wind singing in the chimney, and Tioba groaning and tooting over her. Then there was the extra woman looking for Jim; and it seemed to me if I was looking for Jim on a dark night, I'd want to let him know beforehand it was all peaceable, so there wouldn't be a mistake, Jim being a sudden man and not particular. I had the extra woman on my mind, so that after some while it seemed to me she had come back and was driving splish-splash around my house, though it was only the wind. I was that foolish I kept counting how many times she went round the house, and it was more than forty; and sometimes she came so close to the front door I thought she'd come through it—bang!

Then somebody rapped sudden at the door, and I jumped, and my chair went slap under the table, and I says, "Come in," though I'd rather it would have stayed out, and in walks Jim Hawks. "'Mighty!" says I. "I thought you was a horse and buggy."

He picked up my chair and sat in it himself, rather cool, and began to dry off.

"Horse and buggy?" says he. "Looking for me?"

I just nodded, seeing he appeared to know all about it.

"Saw 'em in Eastport," says he. "I suppose she's over there"—meaning his place. "Gone down the road! You don't say! Now, I might have known she wouldn't do what you might call a rational thing. Never could bet on that woman. If there was one of two things she'd be likely to do, she wouldn't do either of 'em."

"Well," says I, "speaking generally, what might she want of you?"

Jim looks at me kind of absent minded, rubbing his hair the wrong way.

"Now, look at it, Fargus," he says. "It ain't reasonable. Now, she and me, we got married about five years ago. And she had a brother named Tom Cheever, and Tom and I