as it were.”  And Miss Debby indulged in a quiet chuckle as she bent over her work.  “John he got captured by his wife,—­she carried too many guns for him.  I believe he died very poor and her own son wouldn’t support her, so she died over in Freeport poor-house.  And Joe got along better; his wife was clever but rather slack, and it took her a good while to see through things.  She married again pretty quick after he died.  She had as much as seven or eight thousand dollars, and she was taken just as she stood by a roving preacher that was holding meetings here in the winter time.  He sold out her place here, and they went up country somewheres that he come from.  Her boy was lost before that, so there was nothing to hinder her.  There, don’t you think I’m always a-fault-finding!  When I get hold of the real thing in folks, I stick to ’em,—­but there’s an awful sight of poor material walking about that ain’t worth the ground it steps on.  But when I look back a little ways, I can’t blame some of ’em; though it does often seem as if people might do better if they only set to work and tried.  I must say I always do feel pleased when I think how mad John was,—­this John’s father,—­when he couldn’t do just as he’d a mind to with the pore old house.  I couldn’t help thinking of Joe’s mansion, that he and his father hauled down to the heater piece in the fork of the roads.  Sometimes I wonder where them Ashbys all went to.  They’d mistake one place for the other in the next world, for ’twould make heaven out o’ hell, because they could be disagreeing with somebody, and—­well, I don’t know,—­I’m sure they kep’ a good row going while they was in this world.  Only with mother;—­somehow she could get along with anybody, and not always give ’em their way either.”