It was a cold clear night and when we reached home the new stove was snapping with the heat in its fire-box and the pudding puffing in the pot and old Shep dreaming in the chimney corner.  Aunt Deel gave me a hug at the door.  Shep barked and leaped to my shoulders.

“Why, Bart!  You’re growin’ like a weed—­ain’t ye?—­ayes ye be,” my aunt said as she stood and looked at me.  “Set right down here an’ warm ye—­ayes!—­I’ve done all the chores—­ayes!”

How warm and comfortable was the dear old room with those beloved faces in it.  I wonder if paradise itself can seem more pleasant to me.  I have had the best food this world can provide in my time, but never anything that I ate with a keener relish than the pudding and milk and bread and butter and cheese and pumpkin pie which Aunt Deel gave us that night.

Supper over, I wiped the dishes for my aunt while Uncle Peabody went out to feed and water the horses.  Then we sat down in the genial warmth while I told the story of my life in “the busy town,” as they called it.  What pride and attention they gave me then!

Three days before they had heard of my adventure with the flail, as to which Mr. Hacket, the district attorney and myself had maintained the strictest reticence.  It seemed that the deacon had blabbed, as they used to say, regarding his own brave part in the subsequent proceedings.

My fine clothes and the story of how I had come by them taxed my ingenuity somewhat, although not improperly.  I had to be careful not to let them know that I had been ashamed of the home-made suit.  They, somehow, felt the truth about it and a little silence followed the story.  Then Aunt Deel drew her chair near me and touched my hair very gently and looked into my face without speaking.

“Ayes!  I know,” she said presently, in a kind of caressing tone, with a touch of sadness in it.  “They ain’t used to coarse homespun stuff down there in the village.  They made fun o’ ye—­didn’t they, Bart?”

“I don’t care about that,” I assured them. “’The mind’s the measure of the man,’” I quoted, remembering the lines the Senator had repeated to me.

“That’s sound!” Uncle Peabody exclaimed with enthusiasm.

Aunt Deel took my hand in hers and surveyed it thoughtfully for a moment without speaking.

“You ain’t goin’ to have to suffer that way no more,” she said in a low tone.

I rose and went to the parlor door.

“Ye mustn’t go in there,” she warned me.

Delightful suspicions came out of the warning and their smiles.

“We’re goin’ to be more comf’table—­ayes,” said Aunt Deel as I resumed my chair.  “Yer uncle thought we better go west, but I couldn’t bear to go off so fur an’ leave mother an’ father an’ sister Susan an’ all the folks we loved layin’ here in the ground alone—­I want to lay down with ‘em by an’ by an’ wait for the sound o’ the trumpet—­ayes!—­mebbe it’ll be for thousands o’ years—­ayes!”