place anywheres ’round here in them days.  I used to think the Capitol to Washington must be somethin’ like the Cullom house, an’ that Billy P. (folks used to call him Billy P. ’cause his father’s name was William an’ his was William Parker), an’ that Billy P. ’d jest ’s like ’s not be president.  I’ve changed my mind some on the subject of presidents since I was a boy.”

Here Mr. Harum turned on his stool, put his right hand into his sack-coat pocket, extracted therefrom part of a paper of “Maple Dew,” and replenished his left cheek with an ample wad of “fine-cut.”  John took advantage of the break to head off what he had reason to fear might turn into a lengthy digression from the matter in hand by saying, “I beg pardon, but how does it happen that Mrs. Cullom is in such circumstances?  Has the family all died out?”

“Wa’al,” said David, “they’re most on ’em dead, all on ’em, in fact, except the widdo’s son Charley, but as fur ’s the family ’s concerned, it more ’n died out—­it gin out!  ’D ye ever hear of Jim Wheton’s calf?  Wa’al, Jim brought three or four veals into town one spring to sell.  Dick Larrabee used to peddle meat them days.  Dick looked ’em over an’ says, ‘Look here, Jim,’ he says, ’I guess you got a “deakin” in that lot,’ he says.  ‘I dunno what you mean,’ says Jim.  ’Yes, ye do, goll darn ye!’ says Dick, ‘yes, ye do.  You didn’t never kill that calf, an’ you know it.  That calf died, that’s what that calf done.  Come, now, own up,’ he says.  ‘Wa’al,’ says Jim, ‘I didn’t kill it, an’ it didn’t die nuther—­it jest kind o’ gin out.’”

John joined in the laugh with which the narrator rewarded his own effort, and David went on:  “Yes, sir, they jest petered out.  Old Billy, Billy P.’s father, inheritid all the prop’ty—­never done a stroke of work in his life.  He had a collidge education, went to Europe, an’ all that’, an’ before he was fifty year old he hardly ever come near the old place after he was growed up.  The land was all farmed out on shares, an’ his farmers mostly bamboozled him the hull time.  He got consid’able income, of course, but as things went along and they found out how slack he was they kept bitin’ off bigger chunks all the time, an’ sometimes he didn’t git even the core.  But all the time when he wanted money—­an’ he wanted it putty often I tell ye—­the easiest way was to stick on a morgidge; an’ after a spell it got so ’t he’d have to give a morgidge to pay the int’rist on the other morgidges.”

“But,” said John, “was there nothing to the estate but land?”

“Oh, yes,” said David, “old Billy’s father left him some consid’able pers’nal, but after that was gone he went into the morgidge bus’nis as I tell ye.  He lived mostly up to Syrchester and around, an’ when he got married he bought a place in Syrchester and lived there till Billy P. was about twelve or thirteen year old, an’ he was about fifty.  By that time he’d got ‘bout to the end of his rope, an’ the’