“Mother’s.  He kept the old tavern stand on the west side of Lion’s Head, on the St. Albans Road, and I guess he kept a pootty good house in the old times when the stages stopped with him.  Ever noticed how a man on the mean side in politics always knows how to keep a hotel?  Well, it’s something curious.  If there was ever a mean side to any question, old Mason was on it.  My folks used to live around there, and I can remember when I was a boy hangin’ around the bar-room nights hearin’ him argue that colored folks had no souls; and along about the time the fugitive-slave law was passed the folks pootty near run him out o’ town for puttin’ the United States marshal on the scent of a fellow that was breakin’ for Canada.  Well, it was just so when the war come.  It was known for a fact that he was in with them Secesh devils up over the line that was plannin’ a raid into Vermont in ’63.  He’d got pootty low down by that time; railroads took off all the travel; tavern ’d got to be a regular doggery; old man always drank some, I guess.  That was a good while after his girl had married Durgin.  He was dead against it, and it broke him up consid’able when she would have him:  Well, one night the old stand burnt up and him in it, and neither of ’em insured.”

Whitwell laughed with a pleasure in his satire which gave the monuments in his lower jaw a rather sinister action.  But, as if he felt a rebuke in Westover’s silence, he added:  “There ain’t anything against Mis’ Durgin.  She’s done her part, and she’s had more than her share of hard knocks.  If she was tough, to sta’t with, she’s had blows enough to meller her.  But that’s the way I account for the boy.  I s’pose—­I’d oughtn’t to feel the way I do about him, but he’s such a pest to the whole neighborhood that he’d have the most pop’la’ fune’l.  Well, I guess I’ve said enough.  I’m much obliged to you, though, Mr.—­”

“Westover,” the painter suggested.  “But the boy isn’t so bad all the time.”

“Couldn’t be,” said Whitwell, with a cackle of humorous enjoyment.  “He has his spells of bein’ decent, and he’s pootty smart, too.  But when the other spell ketches him it’s like as if the devil got a-hold of him, as I said in the first place.  I lost my wife here two-three years along back, and that little girl you see him tormentin’, she’s a regular little mother to her brother; and whenever Jeff Durgin sees her with him, seems as if the Old Scratch got into him.  Well, I’m glad I didn’t come across him that day.  How you gittin’ along with Lion’s Head?  Sets quiet enough for you?” Whitwell rose from the stump and brushed the clinging chips from his thighs.  “Folks trouble you any, lookin’ on?”

“Not yet,” said Westover.

“Well, there ain’t a great many to,” said Whitwell, going back to his axe.  “I should like to see you workin’ some day.  Do’ know as I ever saw an attist at it.”

“I should like to have you,” said Westover.  “Any time.”