But he thought his hour had come:  he was alone in the house, and there was no neighbor within call.

Eph took out a roll of bills, counted out eighty dollars, laid the money on the table, and said, quietly: 

“Give me a receipt on account.”

When it was written he walked out, leaving Eliphalet stupefied.

Joshua Carr was at work, one June afternoon, by the road-side, in front of his low cottage, by an enormous pile of poles, which he was shaving down for barrel-hoops, when Eph appeared.

“Hard at it, Joshua!” he said.

“Yes, yes!” said Joshua, looking up through his steel-bowed spectacles.  “Hev to work hard to make a livin’—­though I don’t know’s I ought to call it hard, neither; and yet it is rather hard, too; but then, on t’other hand, ’taint so hard as a good many other things—­though there is a good many jobs that’s easier.  That’s so!  That’s so!

   “’Must we be kerried to the skies
   On feathery beds of ease?’

Though I don’ know’s I oughter quote a hymn on such a matter; but then—­I don’ know’s there’s any partic’lar harm in’t, neither.”

Eph sat down on a pile of shavings and chewed a sliver; and the old man kept on at his work.

“Hoop-poles goin’ up and hoops goin’ down,” he continued.  “Cur’us, ain’t it?  But then, I don’ know as ‘tis; woods all bein’ cut off—­poles gittin’ scurcer; hoops bein’ shoved in from Down East.  That don’ seem just right, now, does it—­but then, other folks must make a livin’, too.  Still, I should think they might take up suthin’ else; and yet, they might say that about me.  Understand, I don’ mean to say that they actually do say so; I don’ want to run down any man unless I know—­”

“I can’t stand this,” said Eph to himself; “I don’t wonder that they always used to put Joshua off at the first port, when he tried to go coasting.  They said he talked them crazy with nothing.

“I’ll go into the house and see Aunt Lyddy,” he said, aloud.  “I’m loafing this afternoon.”

“All right! all right!” said Joshua.  “Lyddy’ll be glad to see ye—­that is, as glad as she would be to see anybody,” he added, reaching out for a pole.  “Now, I don’ s’pose that sounds very well; but still, you know how she is—­she allus likes to hev folks to talk, and then she’s allus sayin’ talkin’ wears on her; but I ought not to say that to you, because she allus likes to see you—­that is, as much as she likes to see anybody—­in fact, I think, on the whole—­”

“Well, I’ll take my chances,” said Eph, laughing, and he opened the gate and went in.

Joshua’s wife, whom everybody called Aunt Lyddy, was oscillating in a rocking-chair in the kitchen, and knitting.  It was currently reported that Joshua’s habit of endlessly retracting and qualifying every idea and modification of an idea which he advanced, so as to commit himself to nothing, was the effect of Aunt Lyddy’s careful revision.