The following Friday Abel drove Blossom in his gig to the house of her school friend in Applegate, where she was to remain for a week.  On his way home he stopped at the store for a bottle of harness oil, and catching the red glow of the fire beyond the threshold of the public room, he went in for a moment to ask old Adam Doolittle about a supply of hominy meal he had ready for him at the mill.  As the ancient man crouched over the fire, with his bent hands outstretched and his few silvery hairs rising in the warmth, his profile showed with the exaggeration of a twelfth century grotesque, the features so distorted by the quivering shadows that his beaked nose appeared to rest in the crescent-shaped silhouette of his chin.  His mouth was open, and from time to time he shook his head and muttered to himself in an undertone—­a habit he had fallen into during the monotonous stretches of Mr. Mullen’s sermons.  Across from him sat Jim Halloween, and in the middle of the hearth, Solomon Hatch stood wiping the frost from his face with a red cotton handkerchief.

“It’s time you were thinkin’ about goin’ home, I reckon, old Adam,” remarked Mrs. Bottom.  “You’ve had yo’ two glasses of cider an’ it ain’t proper for a man of yo’ years to be knockin’ around arter dark.  This or’nary is goin’ to be kept decent as long as I keep it.”

“To be sure, to be sure,” replied old Adam, nodding cheerfully at the fire, “I ain’t all I once was except in the matter or corn-shuckin’—­an’ a cold-snap like this goes clean to the bones when they ain’t covered.”

“Did you carry any of yo’ winesaps into Applegate, Abel?” inquired Jim Halloween.  “I’m savin’ mine till Christmas, when the prices will take a jump.”

“No, I only drove Blossom over.  She’s to spend a few days in town.”

“Mr. Jonathan’s gone off, too, I see,” observed Solomon.  “He went by at the top of his speed while I was haulin’ timber this mornin’.  Thar’s bad blood still betwixt you an’ him, aint’ thar, Abel?”

“Oh, I’m not seekin’ a quarrel.  The trouble is in Archie’s hands an’ he’ll have to keep it there.”

“Well, he’s a fine shape of a man,” declared Betsey Bottom.  “Some women try to make out that they ain’t got an eye for the shape as long as the sense is all square and solid—­but I ain’t never been one of ’em.  Sense is all right in its place, no doubt, but thar’re times when a fine figger is mo’ convincin’ than any argyment that ever was uttered.”

“It’s a thing that beats me,” pondered Solomon Hatch, “why a sensible woman should care how a man is made on the outside so long as the proper stuffin’ is inside of him.  With a man now, of course, it is different, seein’ as natur made ’em with a sharp eye for the beauty in the opposite sex, an’ they’re all for natur an’ al’ays have been.  But I’ll be blest if I can understand it in women.”

“Well, I’ve noticed that they have a particular likin’ for the worthless over the hardworkin’ sort,” remarked old Adam, “an’ when it comes to that, I’ve known a woman to git clear set against a man on o’count of nothin’ bigger than a chaw of tobaccy.”