“I waited till they were all through laughing, and then I broke loose.  I just gave them a piece of my mind!  ‘Look-a-here, you fellows!’ I said.  ’You think you’re awful smart, don’t you, making fun of poor old Jed as he lies a-dying?  Now, listen to me.  I’ve ridden forty miles over the mountains to get here before he goes, and make every man jack of you beg the old man’s pardon. That story’s true.  I’ve just found out that every word of it is absolutely, literally the way it happened.  Newtonville, where I’m staying in Massachusetts, used to be called Kennettown, and Jedediah did take the money there—­yes, that exact sum we’ve laughed at all these years.  They call him the honestest man in the world over there.  They’ve got the stick of birch-wood, with the bloodstains on it, and the moose’s skull, with the horn sawed off, and there are lots of old people who remember all about it.  And I’m here to say I believe old Jed’s been telling the truth, not only about that, but about all his adventures.  I don’t believe he’s ever lied to us!’

“I felt so grand and magnanimous,” grandfather went on, “to think how I was making it up to the poor old man, and so set up over bringing a piece of news that just paralyzed everybody with astonishment.  They all jumped up, yelling and carrying on. ’What?  That story true!  Well, did you ever!  Wouldn’t that beat all?  To think old Jed’s been telling—­”

“And then we all thought of him, and started toward the bed to say how bad we felt.

“I’ll never forget how he looked.  His eyes were fairly coming out of his head, and his face was as white as paper.  But that wasn’t the dreadful thing.  What always comes back to me whenever I think of him is the expression on his face.  You could just see his heart breaking.  He was so hurt, so surprised, so ashamed, that it wasn’t decent to look at him.  But we couldn’t look away.  We stood there, hanging our heads—­I never felt so mean in my life—­while he tried to get breath enough to say something.  And then he screamed out—­’twas dreadful to hear: 

“‘Why, didn’t you fellers believe me?  Did you think I was lyin?’”

Here grandfather stopped and blew his nose, and I choked.

“Those were his last words.  He had some kind of a spasm, and never came to enough to know anything before he died.  Those were the last words he said; and though they told us that in the coffin he looked just as he always had, only more quiet, with the foolish look gone, we were all of us ashamed to look the dead man in the face.”

Here grandfather laid the flowers on the unkempt grave, as if to serve as an “Amen” to his confession.

After this I always went around and held his hand tightly, and we stood very still.  It was the solemnest time of the year.

III

All this used to happen, as I said, when I was a little girl; but I, too, grew up, as grandfather grew bent and feeble.  When he was an old, old man of eighty-five, and when I had been away from Hillsboro several years teaching school, the last of my grandmother’s relatives in Newtonville died.  I was sent for to decide what should be done with the few family relics, and one Saturday and Sunday I went all through the little old house, looking over the things.