Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/534

526 copper wire, and suspended on it a little old-fashioned ring of reddish gold, twisted of two wires, and holding a very small dark garnet. Jackson looked at it as I have seen many a Catholic look at his reliquary in mortal sickness.

“Well,” said he, “I’ve carried that ’are gimcrack nigh twenty long year round my old scrag, and when I’m sunk I want you to take it off, Doctor. Keep it safe till you go to Connecticut, and then some day take a tack over to Simsbury. Don’t ye go through the Gap, but go ’long out on the turnpike over the mountain, and down t’other side to Avon, and so nor’ard till jist arter you git into Simsbury town you see an old red house ’longside o’ the mountain, with a big ellum-tree afore the door, and a stone well to the side on’t. Go ’long in and ask for Hetty Duel, and give her that ’are tiling, and tell her where you got it, and that I ha’n’t never forgot to wish her well allus, though I couldn’t write to her.”

There was Eben Jackson’s romance! It piqued my curiosity. The poor fellow was wakeful and restless,—I knew he would not sleep, if I left him,—and I encouraged him to go on talking.

“I will, Jackson, I promise you. But wouldn’t it be better for you to tell me something about where you have been all these long years? Your friends will like to know.”

His eye brightened; he was like all the rest of us, pleased with any interest taken in him and his; he turned over on his pillow, and I lifted him into a half-sitting position.

“That’s ship-shape, Doctor! I don’t know but what I had oughter spin a yarn for you; I’m kinder on a watch to-night; and Hetty won’t never know what I did do, if I don’t send home the log ’long ’i’ the cargo.

“Well, you see I was born in them parts, down to Canton, where father belonged; but mother was a Simsbury woman, and afore I was long-togged, father he moved outer the old humstead up to Simsbury, when gran’ther Peek died. Our farm was right ’longside o’ Miss Buel’s; you’ll see’t when you go there; but there a’n’t nobody there now. Mother died afore I come away, and lies safe to the leeward o’ Simsbury meetin’-house.

Father he got a stroke a spell back, and he couldn’t farm it; so he sold out and went West, to Parmely Larkum’s, my sister’s, to live. But I guess the house is there, and that old well.—How etarnal hot it’s growin’! Doctor, give me a drink!

“Well, as I was tellin’, I lived there next to Miss Duel’s, and Hetty’n’ I went to deestrict-school together, up to the cross-roads. We used to hev’ ovens in the sand together, and roast apples an’ ears of corn in ’em; and we used to build cubby-houses, and fix ’em out with broken chiny and posies. I swan ’t makes me feel curus when I think what children du contrive to get pleased, and likewise riled about! One day I rec’lect Hetty’d stepped onto my biggest clam-shell and broke it, and I up and hit her a switch right across her pretty lips. Now you’d ’a’ thought she would cry and run, for she wasn’t bigger than a baby, much; but she jest come up and put her little fat arms round my neck, and says,—

“‘I’m so sorry, Eben!’

“And that’s Hetty Buel! I declare I was beat, and I hav’n’t never got over bein’ beat about that. So we growed up together, always out in the woods between schools, huntin’ checker-berries, and young winter-greens, and prince’s piney, and huckleberries, and saxifrax, and birch, and all them woodsy things that children hanker arter; and by-m-by we got to goin’ to the ’Cademy; and when Hetty was seventeen she went in to Hartford to her Aunt Smith’s for a spell, to do chores, and get a little Seminary larnin’, and I went to work on the farm; and when she come home, two year arter, she was growed to be a young woman, and though I was five year older’n her, I was as sheepish a land-lubber as ever got stuck a-goin’ to the mast-head, whenever I sighted her.

“She wasn’t very much for looks neither; she had black eyes, and she was