The carpenter pulled his rough hat farther over his forehead, and replied: 

“As dead as two big splits in the skull could make him.  But ’xcuse me, sir; he was my bosom friend, and I can’t bear to talk of his death.”

“He is dead, then, and no mistake,” said Matthew, soliloquizing.  “Yet I am not exactly glad to know it.”

The carpenter’s face expressed surprise at this remark.

“I beg your pardon,” said Matthew.  “Of course I am not glad to hear of your friend’s death.  But, to tell the truth,” he continued (inventing an excuse), “I had always heard that this Frump was a wild fellow; that he didn’t treat his wife decently, and at last ran away from her.  You see I am acquainted with the family.  In fact, I know Mrs. Frump quite well.”

“And did she tell you all this about her dead husband?” asked the carpenter.

“Oh, no!” returned Matthew, who began to fear that he had gone too far.  “She never says anything about his personal character.  I only spoke from common report.”

“Then common report is a common liar; for I know there never was a steadier chap than this same Amos Frump; and his wife can’t say that he ever struck her, or said a cross word to her.  Amos told me all about himself; and I’d believe him through thick and thin.”  The carpenter spoke in his dismal chest voice, without the least indication of excitement.

“Then why did he leave his wife? and why did she never hear of him until the time of his death?  You will confess that that was odd.”

“I give you the reasons,” answered the carpenter, “as Amos give ’em to me.  It seems that he was a poor, uneducated feller. She had a few thousand dollars from her grandfather’s property, and was sent by her parents to the best o’ schools.  Though he and she were so much unlike, they got up a kind o’ fondness for each other from the time when Amos saved her from bein’ run over by a horse.  They used to meet each other secretly, because, you see, her folks didn’t like Amos.  They thought that a girl with three or four thousand dollars in her own name, ought to set her eyes rather above a feller like him.  Well, arter no end o’ trouble, they was married.  Her folks pretended to treat Amos all right, but was allers talkin’ agin him; and finally they pizened her mind with the idee that he had married her only for her money, and that all the while he loved another gal.  She began to treat him very cold like, and, one day, when she was in a little bit of temper—­”

“Has Mrs. Frump any temper?” asked Matthew, anxiously.  “I never saw it.”