spite of his being so sharp, but he let out the best of the farm on shares, and bought a mis’able sham-built little house down close by the mills,—­and then some idea or other got into his head to fit that up to let and move it to one side of the lot, and haul down the old house from the farm to live in themselves.  There wa’n’t no time to lose, else the snow would be gone; so he got a gang o’ men up there and put shoes underneath the sills, and then they assembled all the oxen they could call in, and started.  Mother was living then, though she’d got to be very feeble, and when they come for our yoke she wouldn’t have Jonas let ’em go.  She said the old house ought to stay in its place.  Everybody had been telling John Ashby that the road was too hilly, and besides the house was too old to move, they’d rack it all to pieces dragging it so fur; but he wouldn’t listen to no reason.

“I never saw mother so stirred up as she was that day, and when she see the old thing a moving she burst right out crying.  We could see one end of it looking over the slope of the hill in the pasture between it and our house.  There was two windows that looked our way, and I know Mis’ Ashby used to hang a piece o’ something white out o’ one of ’em when she wanted mother to step over for anything.  They set a good deal by each other, and Mis’ Ashby was a lame woman.  I shouldn’t ha’ thought John would had ’em haul the house right over the little gardin she thought so much of, and broke down the laylocks and flowering currant she set everything by.  I remember when she died I wasn’t more’n seven or eight year old, it was all in full bloom and mother she broke off a branch and laid into the coffin.  I do’ know as I’ve ever seen any since or set in a room and had the sweetness of it blow in at the windows without remembering that day,—­’twas the first funeral I ever went to, and that may be some reason.  Well, the old house started off and mother watched it as long as she could see it.  She was sort o’ feeble herself then, as I said, and we went on with the work,—­’twas a Saturday, and we was baking and churning and getting things to rights generally.  Jonas had been over in the swamp getting out some wood he’d cut earlier in the winter—­and along in the afternoon he come in and said he s’posed I wouldn’t want to ride down to the Corners so late, and I said I did feel just like it, so we started off.  We went the Birch Ridge road, because he wanted to see somebody over that way,—­and when we was going home by the straight road, Jonas laughed and said we hadn’t seen anything of John Ashby’s moving, and he guessed he’d got stuck somewhere.  He was glad he hadn’t nothing to do with it.  We drove along pretty quick, for we were some belated, and we didn’t like to leave mother all alone after it come dark.  All of a sudden Jonas stood up in the sleigh, and says he, ‘I don’t believe but the cars is off the track;’ and I looked and there did seem to be something the matter with ’em.  They hadn’t been running more than a couple o’ years then, and we was prepared for anything.