“Then I guess I have seen him,” remarked Charlie, recalling the drunkard he had watched the afternoon of his severe sickness, and remembering, too, Aunt Stanshy’s singular conduct.

“Tim looks poorly enough now, but it wasn’t so once.  Straight and smart, and bright as the blades of a new jack-knife, was Tim.  His face was blushin’ like a posy, and his beard was long and handsome, like Moses the prophet’s.  He was nice as a pictur till rum got the better of him, and then he changed, I tell ye.  For many years he had the privilege of fishin’ from this barn.  From the stairs on the ’tother side of that door, he would get down into his fishin’ boat in the dock.  He would bring his fish in here, split ’em and prepare ’em for market.  Sometimes Stanshy kept a horse and cow below, and then Tim would hist his fare into the upper window and clean his fish there.  But one day Aunt Stanshy cleaned him out, and when Stanshy starts on a cleanin’ tour, she makes thorough work of it, and puts things through promptly.  And she did clean out old Tim!  But I must go back and hitch the horse into the cart, and say what you know as well as I, that your Aunt Stanshy is a great teetotaler, a leetle too much I think.” [Simes liked his nip.] “But seein’ how her minister’s in favor of it, she is wuss than ever.  Now to go on.  Your father, boy, let me say, had a hand in this trouble, though not meaningly, and it was this way.  Tour father came to live with your Aunt Stanshy, and one day Tim took him out a-fishin’, and not only tipped a jug to his own lips, but sot it to your father’s also.  When they came back home, it was plain they had been up to suthin’ besides fishin’.  Well, Tim might as well have touched a lion’s whip—­what do you call it?”

“Whelp.  I was reading about lions to-day.”

“Yes, touched a lion’s whelp as touched your father; for didn’t Aunt Stanshy pitch into him!  I heard it all.  It was when he was a-splittin’ fish, and Aunt Stanshy came out, and didn’t she walk into Tim!  I never see an eel skinned more purtily than she dressed Tim for temptin’ a poor, motherless boy, as she called your father.  ‘Don’t!’ your father would go, tryin’ to pacify her; ‘don’t!’ It had no more effect than tryin’ to fan out of the way a tornader.  Indeed, jest because she and Tim had been on good terms with one another and understood one another so well, I think for that reason she was all the hotter.  You know when brothers do quarrel, they go it wuss than other folks.  Well, Tim at fust would say nothing but he was orful mad.  He was that kind of mad that you see in the sky when a thunder-storm is brewin’, and yet no rain has fallen; only the flash is there, and the thunder is there a-rumblin’, and the lightnin’ is there a sawin’ up and down, but nary a drop of rain!  At last Tim spoke, and he declared it was the last he’d ever have to do with her, and afore he’d ask a favor of her, he took a horrid oath, he’d see hisself a-drownin’ in that dock fust.  I