“What you goin’ to do, mother?” inquired Nanny, in a timid voice.  A sense of something unusual made her tremble, as if it were a ghost.  Sammy rolled his eyes over his pie.

“You’ll see what I’m goin’ to do,” replied Mrs. Penn.  “If you’re through, Nanny, I want you to go upstairs an’ pack up your things; an’ I want you, Sammy, to help me take down the bed in the bedroom.”

“Oh, mother, what for?” gasped Nanny.

“You’ll see.”

During the next few hours a feat was performed by this simple, pious New England mother which was equal in its way to Wolfe’s storming of the Heights of Abraham.  It took no more genius and audacity of bravery for Wolfe to cheer his wondering soldiers up those steep precipices, under the sleeping eyes of the enemy, than for Sarah Penn, at the head of her children, to move all their little household goods into the new barn while her husband was away.

Nanny and Sammy followed their mother’s instructions without a murmur; indeed, they were overawed.  There is a certain uncanny and superhuman quality about all such purely original undertakings as their mother’s was to them.  Nanny went back and forth with her light loads, and Sammy tugged with sober energy.

At five o’clock in the afternoon the little house in which the Penns had lived for forty years had emptied itself into the new barn.

Every builder builds somewhat for unknown purposes, and is in a measure a prophet.  The architect of Adoniram Penn’s barn, while he designed it for the comfort of four-footed animals, had planned better than he knew for the comfort of humans.  Sarah Penn saw at a glance its possibilities.  Those great box-stalls, with quilts hung before them, would make better bedrooms than the one she had occupied for forty years, and there was a tight carriage-room.  The harness-room, with its chimney and shelves, would make a kitchen of her dreams.  The great middle space would make a parlor, by-and-by, fit for a palace.  Upstairs there was as much room as down.  With partitions and windows, what a house would there be!  Sarah looked at the row of stanchions before the allotted space for cows, and reflected that she would have her front entry there.

At six o’clock the stove was up in the harness-room, the kettle was boiling, and the table set for tea.  It looked almost as home-like as the abandoned house across the yard had ever done.  The young hired man milked, and Sarah directed him calmly to bring the milk to the new barn.  He came gaping, dropping little blots of foam from the brimming pails on the grass.  Before the next morning he had spread the story of Adoniram Penn’s wife moving into the new barn all over the little village.  Men assembled in the store and talked it over, women with shawls over their heads scuttled into each other’s houses before their work was done Any deviation from the ordinary course of life in this quiet town was enough to stop all progress in it.  Everybody paused to look at the staid, independent figure on the side track.  There was a difference of opinion with regard to her.  Some held her to be insane; some, of a lawless and rebellious spirit.