"Do you keep them in the store?" queried Oscar Randall, aggressively. He felt aggrieved with Hiram, having himself intended to ask about the sweet nitre and turpentine. 

 "Do you keep them?" he asked again. 

 "Yes, I do," admitted Hiram, "and I've brought one along in case Sam should like to try it." 

 This rather crushed Oscar's insinuation as to Hiram's business policy in suggesting this remedy, so he sat silent, while old Sam and Hiram Green went out to administer the powder. 

 Jack Mackinnon, to whom silence was impossible, with the freedom of equality prevalent in Ovid, turned to where Suse sat making rick-rack. 

 "Wot are you making, Miss Suse?" he began, and without waiting for a reply, continued: "There was Adah Harris, daughter of old man Harris, wot was a carpenter and had a market garden, wot I worked for in Essex, and she was always a-doing things. She was busy every blessed minute, and I tell you she was smart; she married Henry Haynes wot kept a blacksmith's shop, wot I worked for: and when I left there, I left my clothes be, till I got a job, and when I went back after 'em, there was a new shirt, and two paper collars in a box, and my mother's picture gone. Now I knowed pretty clost to where them things went—and I'll have 'em back if I have to steal 'em. Why I thought no end of mother's picture, it was took standing; I wouldn't have lost that picture for a fifty-cent piece, and there 'twas gone and my new shirt and two collars I'd only had two months. I left them at Henry Haynes' wot married Adah Harris. Old man Harris went carpentering and kept a market garden, but, pshaw! Talk about squashes, why we growed one squash there took three men to get it into the waggon, and then we rolled it up a board—why squashes—" but just then Hiram and old Sam came in. Old Sam blew the long-lit lantern out. 

 "Well, father?" Suse asked. 

 "She's dead," said Sam. 

 "Dead's a door nail," added Hiram. 

 "No!" said Jack, with exaggerated incredulity. 

 "You don't say!" said Oscar, in a tone which betrayed a distinct conflict between self-satisfaction and proper sympathy. He could not resist adding in a lower key, "I seen as much." 

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