And agin I sez, "What wuz the strain?"

   But Josiah didn't answer, for that very minute he remembered a pressin' engagement he had about borrowin' a plow. He said he had got to go up to Joe Charnick's to get his plow. (I don't believe he wanted a plow that time of night.) But he hurried away from the spot. And soon after Submit went home lookin' more deprested and down-casted than ever.

   And Josiah Allen didn't get home till

    late

   at night. I dare persume to say it wuz as late as a quarter to nine when that man got back to the bosom of his family.

   And I sot there all alone, and a-meditatin' on things, and a-wonderin' what under the sun he wuz a-traipsin up to Joe Charnick's for at that time of night, and a-worryin' some for fear he wuz a-keepin' Miss Charnick up, and a-spozin' in my mind what Miss Charnick would do, to get along with the meetin' house, and the Conference question, if she wuz a member. (She is a

    very

   sensible woman, Jenette Charnick is,

    very

   , and a great favorite with me, and others.)

   And I got to thinkin' how prosperus and happy she is now, and how much she had went through. And I declare the hull thing come back to me, all the strange and curius circumstances connected with her courtship and marriage, and I thought it all out agin, the hull story, from beginnin' to end.

   The way it begun wuz—and the way Josiah Allen and me come to have any connectin with the story wuz as follers:

   Some time ago, and previus, we had a widder come to stay with us a spell, she that wuz Tamer Shelmadine, Miss Trueman Pool that now is.

   Her husband died several years ago, and left her not over and above well off. And so she goes round a-visitin', and has went ever sense his death. And finds sights of faults with things wherever she is, sights of it.

   Trueman wuz Josiah's cousin, on his own side, and I always made a practice of usin' her quite well. She used to live neighbor to me before I wuz married, and she come and stayed nine weeks.

   She is a tall spindlin' woman, a Second Adventist by perswasion, and weighs about ninety-nine 

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