nearly one hundred years having elapsed since the solid foundation was
laid to a portion of the building. Unquestionably, it was the oldest
house in Silverton, for on the heavy, oaken door of what was called the
back room was still to be seen the mark of a bullet, left there by some
marauders who, during the Revolution, had encamped in that neighborhood.
George Washington, too, it was said, had once spent a night beneath its
roof, the deacon's mother pouring for him her Bohea tea and breaking her
home-made bread. Since that time several attempts had been made to
modernize the house. Lath and plaster had been put upon the rafters and
paper upon the walls, wooden latches had given place to iron, while in
the parlor, where Washington had slept, there was the extravagance of a
knob, a genuine porcelain knob, such, as Uncle Ephraim said, was only
fit for the gentry who could afford to be grand. For himself, he was
content to live as his father did; but young folks, he supposed, must in
some things have their way, and so when his pretty niece, who had lived
with him from childhood to the day of her marriage, came back to him a
widow, bringing her two fatherless children and a host of new ideas, he
good-humoredly suffered her to tear down some of his household idols
and replace them with her own. And thus it was that the farmhouse
gradually changed its appearance both outwardly and in, for young
womanhood which had but one glimpse of the outer world will not settle
down quietly amid fashions a century old. And Lucy Lennox, when she
returned to the farmhouse, was not quite the same as when she went away.
Indeed, Aunt Betsy in her guileless heart feared that she had actually
fallen from grace, imputing the fall wholly to Lucy's predilection for
a certain little book on whose back was written "Common Prayer," and at
which Aunt Betsy scarcely dared to look, lest she should be guilty of
the enormities practiced by the Romanists themselves. Clearer headed
than his sister, the deacon read the black-bound book, finding therein
much that was good, but wondering why, when folks promised to renounce