“Not only ain’t there never been seen a moose in the State of Massachusetts, and not only are a moose’s horns set too wide to catch a little squinch of a man like Jed, but what do you think?—­there ain’t no Kennettown in Massachusetts!  No, nor in any other State.  No, nor never was.  Old Jed just made the town up out of his head, like the moose, an’ the money, and the birch-bark and the handsome widow.  Don’t he beat all?”

II

My grandfather was one of these boys; in fact, he always used to say he was the ringleader, but that may have been another form of his penance.  As he grew up he began to work into his father’s business of tanning leather, and by and by, when a man grown, he traveled down to a big tannery at Newtonville, in Massachusetts, to learn some new processes in leather-curing.

When grandfather got along to this part of the story he began stretching his long legs faster and faster, until I was obliged to trot along, panting.  He always lived the hurried last part over again, and so did I, although it happened so long before I was born.

One evening he was asked to tea by the mother of the prettiest girl in the village—­she afterward became my grandmother—­and was taken into the “best room” to see all the family curiosities.  There were wax flowers and silhouettes and relics of every description.  Mrs. Hamilton spared him not one of these wonders.

“This,” she said, “is the chain that was made of my grandfather’s hair.  It was finished and brought home on a Wednesday, and Thursday, the next day, grandfather was burned up in the great tannery fire, and this was all my grandmother had to remember him by.  These are the front teeth of a savage that my uncle Josiah Abijah killed in the South Sea Islands.  Uncle Josiah Abijah always said it was either him or the black man, but I have always felt that it was murder, just the same, and this is the stick of birch-wood that a sailor-man, who came here once to see my mother, killed a bull moose with.”

My grandmother has told me that never before or since did she see a human face change as did grandfather’s.

“What?” he shouted, and his voice cracked.

“Yes, it sounds queer, but it’s so.  It’s the only time a moose was ever seen here, and folks thought the wolves must have chased it till it was crazy or tired out.  This sailor-man, who happened to be here, saw it, ran out, snatched up a stick from the wood-pile, and went at that great animal all alone.  Folks say he was the bravest man this town ever saw.  He got right up on its back—­”

Grandmother said grandfather had turned so pale by this time that she thought he was going to faint and he sat down as if somebody had knocked him down.  On the dusty road to the cemetery, however, he only strode along the faster, half forgetting the little girl who dragged at his hand, and turned a sympathetically agitated face up to his narrative.