Fay burst into a loud laugh and said, “Read the question?”

It was, “Who rode on your grandfather’s back?”

This is a specimen of the cheap wit and harmless malice by which poor Gershom suffered as long as he stayed at school.  He was never offended, but was often sorely perplexed, at the apparent treachery of his unseen counselors.  He was dismissed at last from the academy for utter and incorrigible indolence.  He accepted his disgrace as a crown of martyrdom, and went proudly home to his sympathizing parents.

Here, with less criticism and more perfect faith, he renewed the exercise of what he considered his mysterious powers.  His fastings and vigils, and want of bodily movement and fresh air, had so injured his health as to make him tenfold more nervous and sensitive than ever.  But his faintings and hysterics and epileptic paroxysms were taken more and more as evidences of his lofty mission.  His father and mother regarded him as an oracle, for the simple reason that he always answered just as they expected.  A curious or superstitious neighbor was added from time to time to the circle, and their reports heightened the half-uncanny interest with which the Chaney house was regarded.

It was on a moist and steamy evening of spring that Allen Golyer, standing by his gate, saw Saul Chaney slouching along in the twilight, and hailed him:  “What news from the sperrits, Saul?”

“Nothing for you, Al Golyer,” said Saul, gloomily.  “The god of this world takes care of the like o’ you.”

Golyer smiled, as a prosperous man always does when his poorer neighbors abuse him for his luck, and rejoined:  “I ain’t so fortunate as you think for, Saul Chaney.  I lost a Barksher pig yesterday:  I reckon I must come up and ask Gershom what’s come of it.”

“Come along, if you like.  It’s been a long while sence you’ve crossed my sill.  But I’m gitting to be quite the style.  Young Lawyer Marshall is a-coming up this evening to see my Gershom.”

Before Mr. Golyer started he filled a basket, “to make himself welcome and pay for the show,” with the reddest and finest fruit of his favorite apple tree.  His wife followed him to the gate and kissed him—­a rather unusual attention among Western farmer-people.  Her face, still rosy and comely, was flushed and smiling:  “Al, do you know what day o’ the year it is?”

“Nineteenth of Aprile?”

“Yes; and twenty years ago to-day you planted the Blood Seedlin’ and I give you the mitten!” She turned and went into the house, laughing comfortably.

Allen walked slowly up the hollow to the Chaney house, and gave the apples to Seraphita and told her their story.  A little company was assembled—­two or three Chaney Creek people, small market-gardeners, with eyes the color of their gooseberries and hands the color of their currants; Mr. Marshall, a briefless young barrister from Warsaw, with a tawny friend, who spoke like a Spaniard.