“Jonas he whipped up the horse and we got there pretty quick, and I’ll be bound if the Ashby house hadn’t got stuck fast right on the track, and stir it one way or another they couldn’t.  They’d been there since quarter-past one, pulling and hauling,—­and the men was all hoarse with yelling, and the cars had come from both ways and met there,—­one each side of the crossing,—­and the passengers was walking about, scolding and swearing,—­and somebody’d gone and lit up a gre’t bonfire.  You never see such a sight in all your life!  I happened to look up at the old house, and there were them two top windows that used to look over to our place, and they had caught the shine of the firelight, and made the poor old thing look as if it was scared to death.  The men was banging at it with axes and crowbars, and it was dreadful distressing.  You pitied it as if it was a live creatur’.  It come from such a quiet place, and always looked kind of comfortable, though so much war had gone on amongst the Ashbys.  I tell you it was a judgment on John, for they got it shoved back after a while, and then wouldn’t touch it again,—­not one of the men,—­nor let their oxen.  The plastering was all stove, and the outside walls all wrenched apart,—­and John never did anything more about it; but let it set there all summer, till it burnt down, and there was an end, one night in September.  They supposed some traveling folks slept in it and set it afire, or else some boys did it for fun.  I was glad it was out of the way.  One day, I know, I was coming by with mother, and she said it made her feel bad to see the little strips of leather by the fore door, where Mis’ Ashby had nailed up a rosebush once.  There! there ain’t an Ashby alive now of the old stock, except young John.  Joe’s son went off to sea, and I believe he was lost somewhere in the China seas, or else he died of a fever; I seem to forget.  He was called a smart boy, but he never could seem to settle down to anything.  Sometimes I wonder folks is as good as they be, when I consider what comes to ’em from their folks before ’em, and how they’re misshaped by nature.  Them Ashbys never was like other folks, and yet some good streak or other there was in every one of ’em.  You can’t expect much from such hindered creator’s,—­it’s just like beratin’ a black and white cat for being a poor mouser.  It ain’t her fault that the mice see her quicker than they can a gray one.  If you get one of them masterful dispositions put with a good strong will towards the right, that’s what makes the best of men; but all them Ashbys cared about was to grasp and get, and be cap’ns.  They liked to see other folks put down, just as if it was going to set them up.  And they didn’t know nothing.  They make me think of some o’ them old marauders that used to hive up into their castles, in old times, and then go out a-over-setting and plundering.  And I tell you that same sperit was in ’em.  They was born a couple o’ hundred years too late.  Kind of left-over folks,