“Can I have lodging here?” once more I said. 
He blew a whiff, and, leaning back his head,
“You come a piece through Bailey’s woods, I s’pose,
Acrost a bridge where a big swamp-oak grows? 
It don’t grow, neither; it’s ben dead ten year,
Nor th’ ain’t a livin’ creetur, fur nor near,
Can tell wut killed it; but I some misdoubt
’Twas borers, there’s sech heaps on ’em about. 
You didn’ chance to run ag’inst my son,
A long, slab-sided youngster with a gun? 260
He’d oughto ben back more ’n an hour ago,
An’ brought some birds to dress for supper—­sho! 
There he comes now.  ’Say, Obed, wut ye got? 
(He’ll hev some upland plover like as not.)
Wal, them’s real nice uns, an’ll eat A 1,
Ef I can stop their bein’ overdone;
Nothin’ riles me (I pledge my fastin’ word)
Like cookin’ out the natur’ of a bird;
(Obed, you pick ’em out o’ sight an’ sound,
Your ma’am don’t love no feathers cluttrin’ round;) 270
Jes’ scare ’em with the coals,—­thet’s my idee.” 
Then, turning suddenly about on me,
“Wal, Square, I guess so.  Callilate to stay? 
I’ll ask Mis’ Weeks; ’bout thet it’s hern to say.”

’Well, there I lingered all October through,
In that sweet atmosphere of hazy blue,
So leisurely, so soothing, so forgiving,
That sometimes makes New England fit for living. 
I watched the landscape, erst so granite glum,
Bloom like the south side of a ripening plum, 280
And each rock-maple on the hillside make
His ten days’ sunset doubled in the lake;
The very stone walls draggling up the hills
Seemed touched, and wavered in their roundhead wills. 
Ah! there’s a deal of sugar in the sun! 
Tap me in Indian summer, I should run
A juice to make rock-candy of,—­but then
We get such weather scarce one year in ten.

’There was a parlor in the house, a room
To make you shudder with its prudish gloom. 290
The furniture stood round with such an air,
There seemed an old maid’s ghost in every chair,
Which looked as it had scuttled to its place
And pulled extempore a Sunday face,
Too smugly proper for a world of sin,
Like boys on whom the minister comes in. 
The table, fronting you with icy stare,
Strove to look witless that its legs were bare,
While the black sofa with its horse-hair pall
Gloomed like a bier for Comfort’s funeral. 300
Each piece appeared to do its chilly best
To seem an utter stranger to the rest,
As if acquaintanceship were deadly sin,
Like Britons meeting in a foreign inn. 
Two portraits graced the wall in grimmest truth,
Mister and Mistress W. in their youth,—­
New England youth, that seems a sort of pill,
Half wish-I-dared, half Edwards on the Will,
Bitter to swallow, and which leaves a trace
Of Calvinistic colic on the face. 310
Between them, o’er the mantel, hung in state