built the house. I wonder the looks of things here now don't bring them
two up out of their graves. Do you remember young Cy--'Whit' we used to
call him--or 'Reddy Whit,' 'count of his red hair? I don't know's you
do, though; guess you'd gone to sea when he run away from home."

Mr. Tidditt shook his head.

"No, no!" he said. "I was to home that year. Remember 'Whit'? Well, I
should say I did. He was a holy terror--yes, sir! Wan't no monkey shines
or didos cut up in this town that young Cy wan't into. Fur's that goes,
you and me was in 'em, too, Bailey. We was all holy terrors then. Young
ones nowadays ain't got the spunk we used to have."

His friend chuckled.

"That's so," he declared. "That's so. Whit was a good-hearted boy, too,
but full of the Old Scratch and as sot in his ways as his dad, and if
Cap'n Cy wan't sot, then there ain't no sotness. 'You'll go to college
and be a parson,' says the Cap'n. 'I'll go to sea and be a sailor, same
as you done,' says Whit. And he did, too; run away one night, took the
packet to Boston, and shipped aboard an Australian clipper. Cap'n Cy
didn't go after him to fetch him home. No, sir--ee! not a fetch. Sent
him a letter plumb to Melbourne and, says he: 'You've made your bed; now
lay in it. Don't you never dast to come back to me or your ma,' he says.
And Whit didn't, he wan't that kind."

"Pretty nigh killed the old lady--Whit's ma--that did," mused Asaph.
"She died a little spell afterwards. And the old man pined away, too,
but he never give in or asked the boy to come back. Stubborn as all
get-out to the end, he was, and willed the place, all he had left, to