“He’d been that way some time when I went over.  I’d heard about his notions, and I was scared of him at first, but I found out there wasn’t no need.  Don’t you know I was sort o’ ’fraid to go, ’Lizabeth, when Cousin Statiry sent for me after she went home from that visit she made here?  She’d told us about him, but sometimes, ’long at the first of it, he used to be cross.  He never was after I went there.  He was a clever, kind-hearted man, if ever there was one,” said Aunt Polly, with decision.  “He used to go down to the corner to the store sometimes in the morning, and he would see to business.  And before he got feeble sometimes he would work out on the farm all the morning, stiddy as any of the men; but after he come in to dinner he would take off his coat, if he had it on, and fall asleep in his arm-chair, or on a l’unge there was in his bedroom, and when he waked up he would be sort of bewildered for a while, and then he’d step round quick’s he could, and get his dress out o’ the clothes-press, and the cap, and put ’em on right over the rest of his clothes.  He was always small-featured and smooth-shaved, and I don’ know as, to come in sudden, you would have thought he was a man, except his hair stood up short and straight all on the top of his head, as men-folks had a fashion o’ combing their hair then, and I must say he did make a dreadful ordinary-looking woman.  The neighbors got used to his ways, and, land!  I never thought nothing of it after the first week or two.

“His sister’s clothes that he wore first was too small for him, and so my cousin Statiry, that kep’ his house, she made him a linsey-woolsey dress with a considerable short skirt, and he was dreadful pleased with it, she said, because the other one never would button over good, and showed his wais’coat, and she and I used to make him caps; he used to wear the kind all the old women did then, with a big crown, and close round the face.  I’ve got some laid away up-stairs now that was my mother’s—­she wore caps very young, mother did.  His nephew that lived with him carried on the farm, and managed the business, but he always treated the cap’n as if he was head of everything there.  Everybody pitied the cap’n; folks respected him; but you couldn’t help laughing, to save ye.  We used to try to keep him in, afternoons, but we couldn’t always.”

“Tell her about that day he went to meeting,” said Mrs. Snow.

“Why, one of us always used to stay to home with him; we took turns; and somehow or ’nother he never offered to go, though by spells he would be constant to meeting in the morning.  Why, bless you, you never’d think anything ailed him a good deal of the time, if you saw him before noon, though sometimes he would be freaky, and hide himself in the barn, or go over in the woods, but we always kept an eye on him.  But this Sunday there was going to be a great occasion.  Old Parson Croden was going to preach; he was thought more of than anybody