Page:Dorothy Canfield--Hillsboro People.djvu/265

 have you heard him tell the story of how he rode the moose into Kennettown, Massachusetts?"

If the answer was negative, all business was laid aside until the withered little old man was found, pottering about some of the odd jobs by which he earned his living. He was always as pleased as Punch to be asked to perform, and laid aside his tools with a foolish, bragging grin on his face, of which grandfather has told me so many times that it seems as if I had really seen it.

This is how he told the story, always word for word the same way:

"Wa'al, sir, I've had queer things happen to me in my time, hain't I, boys?"—at which the surrounding crowd always wagged mocking heads—"but nothin' to beat that. When I was ashore wunst, from one of my long v'y'ges on the sea, I was to Kennettown, Massachusetts."

"How'd ye come to go there, Jed?" This was a question never to be omitted.

"Oh, I had a great sight of money to take to some folks that lived there. The captain of our ship had died at sea, and he give me nine thousand five hundred and seventy-two English gold guineas, to take to his brother and sister."

Here he always stared around at the company, and accepted credulously the counterfeit coin of grotesquely exaggerated amazement which was given him.

"Wa'al, sir, I done it. I give the gold to them as it belonged to, and I was to leave town on the noon stage coach. I was stayin' in the captain's brother's house. It was spang up against the woods, on the edge of town; and, I tell ye, woods was woods in them days.

"The mornin' I was to leave I was up early, lookin'