“She was sick all summer long—­kind o’ out o’ her head, ye know, an’ I used to go over hossback an’ take things fer her to eat.  An’ one day when I was over there they was wonderin’ what they was goin’ to do with her little baby.  I took it in my arms an’ I’ll be gol dummed if it didn’t grab hold o’ my nose an’ hang on like a puppy to a root.  When they tried to take it away it grabbed its fingers into my whiskers an’ hollered like a panther—­yis, sir.  Wal, ye know I jes’ fetched that little baby boy home in my arms, ay uh!  My wife scolded me like Sam Hill—­yis, sir—­she had five of her own.  I tol’ her I was goin’ to take it back in a day er two but after it had been in the house three days ye couldn’t ‘a’ pulled it away from her with a windlass.

“We brought him up an’ he was alwuss a good boy.  We called him Enoch—­Enoch Rone—­did ye ever hear the name?”

“‘No.’

“I didn’t think ‘twas likely but I’m alwuss hopin’.

“Early that fall Kate got better an’ left the poorhouse afoot.  Went away somewheres—­nobody knew where.  Some said she’d crossed the lake an’ gone away over into York State, some said she’d drowned herself.  By’m by we heard that she’d gone way over into St. Lawrence County where Silas Wright lives an’ where young Grimshaw had settled down after he got married.

“Wal, ’bout five year ago the squire buried his second wife—­there ’tis over in there back o’ Kate’s with the little speckled angel on it.  Nobody had seen the squire outside o’ his house for years until the funeral—­he was crippled so with rheumatiz.  After that he lived all ‘lone in the big house with ol’ Tom Linney an’ his wife, who’ve worked there fer ’bout forty year, I guess.

“Wal, sir, fust we knew Kate was there in the house livin’ with her father.  We wouldn’t ‘a’ knowed it, then, if it hadn’t been that Tom Linney come over one day an’ said he guessed the ol’ squire wanted to see me—­no, sir, we wouldn’t—­fer the squire ain’t sociable an’ the neighbors never darken his door.  She must ‘a’ come in the night, jest as she went—­nobody see her go an’ nobody see her come, an’ that’s a fact.  Wal, one day las’ fall after the leaves was off an’ they could see a corner o’ my house through the bushes, Tom was walkin’ the ol’ man ‘round the room.  All to once he stopped an’ p’inted at my house through the winder an’ kep’ p’intin’.  Tom come over an’ said he ca’llated the squire wanted to see me.  So I went there.  Kate met me at the door.  Gosh!  How old an’ kind o’ broke down she looked!  But I knew her the minute I set my eyes on her—­uh huh—­an’ she knew me—­yis, sir—­she smiled an’ tears come to her eyes an’ she patted my hand like she wanted to tell me that she hadn’t forgot, but she never said a word—­not a word.  The ol’ squire had the palsy, so ‘t he couldn’t use his hands an’ his throat was paralyzed—­couldn’t speak ner nothin’.  Where do ye suppose he was when I found him?”

“In bed?” I asked.