Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/536

528 never could get there, and she never could live there. She says very often she wouldn’t leave Simsbury for gold untold; she was born here, and she’s bound to die here. I know she wouldn’t go.’

“ ‘Ask her, Hetty!’

“ ‘No, it wouldn’t be any use; it would only fret her always to think I staid at home for her, and you know she can’t do without me.’

“ ‘No more can’t I,’ says I. ‘Do you love her the best, Hetty?’

“I was kinder sorry I’d said that; for she grew real white, and I could see by her throat she was chokin’ to keep down somethin’. Finally she said,—

“ ‘That isn’t for me to say, Ebon. If it was right for me to go with you, I should be glad to; but you know I can’t leave grandmother.’

“Well, Doctor, I couldn’t say no more. I got up to go. Hetty put down her work and walked to the big ellum by the gate with me. I was most too full to speak, but I catched her up and kissed her soft little tremblin’ lips, and her pretty eyes, and then I set off for home as if I was goin’ to be hanged.

“Young folks is obstreperous, Doctor. I’ve been a long spell away from Hetty, and I don’t know as I should take on so now. That night I never slept. I lay kickin’ and tumblin’ all night, and before mornin’ I’d resolved to quit Simsbury, and go seek my fortin’ beyond seas, hopin’ to conic back to Hetty, arter all, with riches to take care on her right there in the old place. You’d ’a’ thought I might have had some kind of feelin’ for my old father, after seein’ Hetty’s faithful ways; but I was a man and she was a woman, and I take it them is two different kind o’ craft. Men is allers for themselves first, an’ Devil take the hindmost; but women lives in other folks’s lives, and ache, and work, and endure all sorts of stress o’ weather afore they’ll quit the ship that’s got crew and passengers aboard.

“I never said nothin’ to father,—I couldn’t ’a’ stood no jawin’,—but I made up my kit, an’ next night slung it over my shoulder, and tramped off. I couldn’t have gone without biddin’ Hetty goodbye; so I stopped there, and told her what I was up to, and charged her to tell father.

“She tried her best to keep me to home, but I was sot in my way; so when she found that out, she run up stairs an’ got a little Bible, and made me promise I’d read it sometimes, and then she pulled that ’are little ring off her finger and give it to me to keep.

“ ‘Eben,’ says she, ‘I wish you well always, and I sha’n’t never forget you!’

“And then she put up her face to me, as innocent as a baby, to kiss me goodbye. I see she choked up when I said the word, though, and I said, kinder laughin’,—

“ ‘I hope you’ll get a better husband than me, Hetty!’

“I swear! she give me a look like the judgment-day, and stoopin’ down she pressed her lips onto that ring, and says she, ‘That is my weddin’-ring, Eben!’ and goes into the house as still and white as a ghost; and I never see her again, nor never shall.—Oh, Doctor! give me a drink!”

I lifted the poor fellow, fevered and gasping, to an easier position, and wet his hot lips with fresh orange-juice.

“Stop, now, Jackson!” said I, “you are tired.”

“No, I a’n’t, Doctor! No, I a’n’t! I’m bound to finish now. But Lord deliver us! look there! one of the Devil’s own imps, I b’lieve!”

I looked on the little deal stand where I had set the candle, and there stood one of the quaint, evil-looking insects that in fest the island, a praying Mantis. Raised up against the candle, with its fore-legs in the attitude of supplication that gives it the name, its long green body relieved on the white stearin, it was eyeing Jackson, with its head turned first on one side and then on the other, in the most elvish, and preternatural way. Presently it moved upward, stuck one of its fore-legs cautiously into the flame, burnt it of course and drew it back, eyed it, first