Page:Dorothy Canfield--Hillsboro People.djvu/269

 And this is the stick of birch-wood that a sailor-man, who came here once to see my mother, killed a bull moose with."

My grandmother has told me that never before or since did she see a human face change as did grandfather's. "What?" he shouted, and his voice cracked.

"Yes, it sounds queer, but it's so. It's the only time a moose was ever seen here, and folks thought the wolves must have chased it till it was crazy or tired out. This sailor-man, who happened to be here, saw it, ran out, snatched up a stick from the wood-pile, and went at that great animal all alone. Folks say he was the bravest man this town ever saw. He got right up on its back"

Grandmother said grandfather had turned so pale by this time that she thought he was going to faint and he sat down as if somebody had knocked him down. On the dusty road to the cemetery, however, he only strode along the faster, half forgetting the little girl who dragged at his hand, and turned a sympathetically agitated face up to his narrative.

Mrs. Hamilton went on through the whole incident, telling every single thing just the way old Jed did. She showed the dark places on the birch-bark where the blood had stained it, and she said the skull of the animal, with its one horn sawed off, was over among the relics in her aunt's home.

"My Aunt Maria was accounted a very good-looking woman in her day, and there were those that thought she might have taken a second husband, if the sailor had been so disposed. He was so brave and so honest, bringing all that money from my uncle, the sea-captain, when,