In the garret I came across the moose-skull with one horn.  It made me feel queer to think what a part it had played in the development of my grandfather’s honorable and tender old soul.  There were a few sticks of furniture, some daguerrotypes and silhouettes, and a drawerful of yellow papers.  The first I sent home to Hillsboro to grandmother.  I took the papers back to the town where I was teaching, to look over them.

Among other things was a quaint old diary of my grandmother’s great-aunt, she that was the buxom widow of Jed’s story.  It was full of homely items of her rustic occupations; what day she had “sett the broune hen,” and how much butter was made the first month she had the “party-colored cowe from over the mount’n.”  I glanced idly at these faded bits of insignificant news, when I was electrified by seeing the following entry: 

#This day came to my Bro.  Amos and Me, a sea-man, bringeing news of my Bro.  Elijah’s the capt’n’s dethe, and allso mutch monie in gold, sent to us by our Bro.  The sea-man is the greatest in size aver I saw.  No man in towne his bed can reach so mutch as to his sholder.  And comely withal#.

The words fairly whirled on the page before my astonished eyes.  Where was the image of the ill-favored little old Jed, so present to my imagination?  I read on breathlessly, skipping news of the hen-house and barnyard, until I came upon this, the only other reference, but quite sufficient: 

This day the sea-man, Samuel Harden, left us.

The self-restrained woman had said nothing of any disappointment she might have felt.  The item stood quite alone, however, in a significant isolation.  At least on that day she had not noticed the number of eggs.

I doubt if grandfather himself had been more excited when he saw the birch-wood club than I was to read those few words.  I could hardly wait till the next Saturday to rush back to Hillsboro, and relieve the poor old man of the burden of remorse he had carried so faithfully and so mistakenly all these years, and to snatch the specious crown of martyrdom from that shameless thief of another man’s exploits.

And yet, when I finally arrived at Hillsboro, I found it not so easy to begin.  Some strange spell, exhaled from the unchanging aspect of the old house and the old people, fell on me, and, though I tried several times, I could not find a suitable opening.  On Sunday morning grandfather asked me if I would help him to get out to Jed’s grave.  The peonies and syringas were in bloom, and grandmother had the bouquet made up ready.  Drawing me aside, she to me that grandfather was really too infirm to try to make the expedition at all, and certainly could not go alone.  Even then I could find no words to tell her.  I thought it might be easier to do so out of doors.

It was the middle of a bright spring morning, when we started off, grandfather leaning on his cane and holding to my arm, while I carried the great clump of red peonies and white syringas.  The sun was warm, but a cool breeze blew down from the mountains, and grandfather hobbled along bravely.