“’Tis pretty bad, that’s a fact.  Do you know, Emily, if I was a believer in signs such as mentioned a little while ago, I might almost be tempted to believe this storm was one of ’em.  About every big change in my life has had a storm mixed up with it, comin’ at the time it happened or just afore or just after.  I was born, so my mother used to tell me, on a stormy night about like this one.  And it poured great guns the day I was married.  And Eben, my husband, went down with his vessel in a hurricane off Hatteras.  And when poor Jedediah run off to go gold-diggin’ there was such a snowstorm the next day that I expected to see him plowin’ his way home again.  Poor old Jed!  I wonder where he is tonight?  Let’s see; six years ago, that was.  I wonder if he’s been frozen to death or eat up by polar bears, or what.  One thing’s sartin, he ain’t made his fortune or he’d have come home to tell me of it.  Last words he said to me was, ‘I’m a-goin’, no matter what you say.  And when I come back, loaded down with money, you’ll be glad to see me.’”

Jedediah Cahoon was Mrs. Barnes’ only near relative, a brother.  Always a visionary, easy-going, impractical little man, he had never been willing to stick at steady employment, but was always chasing rainbows and depending upon his sister for a home and means of existence.  When the Klondike gold fever struck the country he was one of the first to succumb to the disease.  And, after an argument—­violent on his part and determined on Thankful’s—­he had left South Middleboro and gone—­somewhere.  From that somewhere he had never returned.

“Yes,” mused Mrs. Barnes, “those were the last words he said to me.”

“What did you say to him?” asked Emily, drowsily.  She had heard the story often enough, but she asked the question as an aid to keeping awake.

“Hey?  What did I say?  Oh, I said my part, I guess.  ‘When you come back,’ says I, ’it’ll be when I send money to you to pay your fare home, and I shan’t do it.  I’ve sewed and washed and cooked for you ever since Eben died, to say nothin’ of goin’ out nursin’ and housekeepin’ to earn money to buy somethin’ to cook.  Now I’m through.  This is my house—­or, at any rate, I pay the rent for it.  If you leave it to go gold-diggin’ you needn’t come back to it.  If you do you won’t be let in.’  Of course I never thought he’d go, but he did.  Ah hum!  I’m afraid I didn’t do right.  I ought to have realized that he wa’n’t really accountable, poor, weak-headed critter!”

Emily’s eyes were fast shutting, but she made one more remark.

“Your life has been a hard one, hasn’t it, Auntie,” she said.