began to cry like a baby. 'O, dear me,' says he, 'they've hung
him,--hung him right up to the yard-arm! O, they oughtn't to have done
it; cut him down quick! he didn't think; he means well, Ben does; he was
hasty. O my God, I can't bear to see him swing round by the neck! It's
poor Ben hung up to the yard-arm. Let me alone, I say!' Andrew and
Moses, they were holding him with all their might, and they were both
hearty men, but he 'most got away from them once or twice, and he
screeched and howled like a mad creatur', and then he would cry again
like a child. He was worn out after a while and lay back quiet, and said
over and over, 'Poor Ben!' and 'hung at the yard-arm'; and he told the
neighbors next day, but nobody noticed him much, and he seemed to forget
it as his mind come back. All that summer he was miser'ble, and towards
cold weather he failed right along, though he had been a master strong
man in his day, and his timbers held together well. Along late in the
fall he had taken to his bed, and one day there came to the house a
fellow named Sim Decker, a reckless fellow he was too, who had gone out
in the same ship with Ben. He pulled a long face when he came in, and
said he had brought bad news. They had been taken prisoner and carried
into port and put in jail, and Ben Dighton had got a fever there and
died.

"'You lie!' says the old man from the bedroom, speaking as loud and
f'erce as ever you heard. 'They hung him to the yard-arm!'

"'Don't mind him,' says Andrew; 'he's wandering-like, and he had a bad
dream along back in the spring; I s'posed he'd forgotten it.' But the
Decker fellow he turned pale, and kept talking crooked while he listened
to old Peletiah a-scolding to himself. He answered the questions the
women-folks asked him,--they took on a good deal,--but pretty soon he
got up and winked to me and Andrew, and we went out in the yard. He