Well, we voted to send Asaph to the poorhouse, and then I was appointed
a delegate to see him and tell him he'd got to go. I wasn't enthusiastic
over the job, but everybody said I was exactly the feller for the place.

"To tell you the truth," drawls Darius, "you, being a stranger, are the
only one that Ase couldn't talk over. He's got a tongue that's buttered
on both sides and runs on ball bearings. If I should see him he'd work
on my sympathies till I'd lend him the last two-cent piece in my baby's
bank."

So, as there wa'n't no way out of it, I drove down to Asaph's that
afternoon. He lived off on a side road by the shore, in a little,
run-down shanty that was as no account as he was. When I moored my horse
to the "heavenly-wood" tree by what was left of the fence, I would have
bet my sou'wester that I caught a glimpse of Brother Blueworthy, peeking
round the corner of the house. But when I turned that corner there was
nobody in sight, although the bu'sted wash-bench, with a cranberry crate
propping up its lame end, was shaking a little, as if some one had set
on it recent.

I knocked on the door, but nobody answered. After knocking three or
four times, I tried kicking, and the second kick raised, from somewheres
inside, a groan that was as lonesome a sound as ever I heard. No human
noise in my experience come within a mile of it for dead, downright
misery--unless, maybe, it's Cap'n Jonadab trying to sing in meeting
Sundays.

"Who's that?" wails Ase from 'tother side of the door. "Did anybody
knock?"