“Your father was a temperance man?”

“Temperance!—­He had been fond enough of the whiskey bottle in his day.  He drank up a good farm in the United States, and then he thought he could not do better than turn loyal, and get one here for nothing.  He did not care a cent, not he, for the King of England.  He thought himself as good, any how.  But he found that he would have to work hard here to scratch along, and he was mightily plagued with the rheumatics, and some old woman told him that good spring water was the best cure for that; so he chose this poor, light, stony land on account of the spring, and took to hard work and drinking cold water in his old age.”

“How did the change agree with him?”

“I guess better than could have been expected.  He planted that fine orchard, and cleared his hundred acres, and we got along slick enough as long as the old fellow lived.”

“And what happened after his death, that obliged you to part with your land?”

“Bad times—­bad crops,” said Uncle Joe, lifting his shoulders.  “I had not my father’s way of scraping money together.  I made some deuced clever speculations, but they all failed.  I married young, and got a large family; and the women critters ran up heavy bills at the stores, and the crops did not yield enough to pay them; and from bad we got to worse, and Mr. C—–­ put in an execution, and seized upon the whole concern.  He sold it to your man for double what it cost him; and you got all that my father toiled for during the last twenty years of his life for less than half the cash he laid out upon clearing it.”

“And had the whiskey nothing to do with this change?” said I, looking him in the face suspiciously.

“Not a bit!  When a man gets into difficulties, it is the only thing to keep him from sinking outright.  When your husband has had as many troubles as I have had, he will know how to value the whiskey bottle.”

This conversation was interrupted by a queer-looking urchin of five years old, dressed in a long-tailed coat and trousers, popping his black shock head in at the door, and calling out,

“Uncle Joe!—­You’re wanted to hum.”

“Is that your nephew?”

“No!  I guess ’tis my woman’s eldest son,” said Uncle Joe, rising, “but they call me Uncle Joe.  ’Tis a spry chap that—­as cunning as a fox.  I tell you what it is—­he will make a smart man.  Go home, Ammon, and tell your ma that I am coming.”

“I won’t,” said the boy; “you may go hum and tell her yourself.  She has wanted wood cut this hour, and you’ll catch it!”

Away ran the dutiful son, but not before he had applied his forefinger significantly to the side of his nose, and, with a knowing wink, pointed in the direction of home.

Uncle Joe obeyed the signal, drily remarking that he could not leave the barn door without the old hen clucking him back.

At this period we were still living in Old Satan’s log house, and anxiously looking out for the first snow to put us in possession of the good substantial log dwelling occupied by Uncle Joe and his family, which consisted of a brown brood of seven girls, and the highly-prized boy who rejoiced in the extraordinary name of Ammon.