Indiana, and now in Minnesota, always on the go, and all the time shedding needles from various parts of her body as if she really enjoyed it!  Then there’s that versatile patriarch who walks hundreds of miles and saws thousands of feet of wood, before breakfast, and shows no signs of giving out.  Then there’s that remarkable, one may say that historical colored woman who knew Benjamin Franklin, and fought at the battle of Bunk—­no, it is the old negro man who fought at Bunker Hill, a mere infant, of course, at that period.  Really, now, it is quite curious to observe how that venerable female slave—­formerly an African princess—­is repeatedly dying in her hundred and eleventh year, and coming to life again punctually every six months in the small-type paragraphs.  Are you aware, sir, that within the last twelve years no fewer than two hundred and eighty-seven of General Washington’s colored coachmen have died?”

For the soul of me I could not tell whether this quaint little gentleman was chaffing me or not.  I laid down my knife and fork, and stared at him.

“Then there are the mathematicians!” he cried vivaciously, without waiting for a reply.  “I take great interest in them.  Hear this!” and Mr. Jaffrey drew a newspaper from a pocket in the tail of his coat, and read as follows:—­“It has been estimated that if all the candles manufactured by this eminent firm (Stearine & Co.)_ were placed end to end, they would reach 2 and 7-8 times around the globe_.  Of course,” continued Mr. Jaffrey, folding up the journal reflectively, “abstruse calculations of this kind are not, perhaps, of vital importance, but they indicate the intellectual activity of the age.  Seriously, now,” he said, halting in front of the table, “what with books and papers and drives about the country, I do not find the days too long, though I seldom see any one, except when I go over to K——­ for my mail.  Existence may be very full to a man who stands a little aside from the tumult and watches it with philosophic eye.  Possibly he may see more of the battle than those who are in the midst of the action.  Once I was struggling with the crowd, as eager and undaunted as the best; perhaps I should have been struggling still.  Indeed, I know my life would have been very different now if I had married Mehetabel—­if I had married Mehetabel.”

His vivacity was gone, a sudden cloud had come over his bright face, his figure seemed to have collapsed, the light seemed to have faded out of his hair.  With a shuffling step, the very antithesis of his brisk, elastic tread, he turned to the door and passed into the road.

“Well,” I said to myself, “if Greenton had forty thousand inhabitants, it couldn’t turn out a more astonishing old party than that!”

II

THE CASE OF SILAS JAFFREY