house and entered a bedroom adjoining the kitchen, on the ground-floor.
Here slept "Old-man Barton," as he was generally called,--Alfred's
father, by name Abiah, and now eighty-five years of age. For many years
he had been a paralytic, and unable to walk, but the disease had not
affected his business capacity. He was the hardest, shrewdest, and
cunningest miser in the county. There was not a penny of the income and
expenditure of the farm, for any year, which he could not account
for,--not a date of a deed, bond, or note of hand, which he had ever
given or received, that was not indelibly burnt upon his memory. No one,
not even his sons, knew precisely how much he was worth. The old lawyer
in Chester, who had charge of much of his investments, was as shrewd as
himself, and when he made his annual visit, the first week in April, the
doors were not only closed, but everybody was banished from hearing
distance so long as he remained.

Giles assisted in washing and dressing the old man, then seated him in a
rude arm-chair, resting on clumsy wooden castors, and poured out for him
a small wine-glass full of raw brandy. Once or twice a year, usually
after the payment of delayed interest, Giles received a share of the
brandy; but he never learned to expect it. Then a long hickory staff was
placed in the old man's hand, and his arm-chair was rolled into the
kitchen, to a certain station between the fire and the southern window,
where he would be out of the way of his daughter Ann, yet could measure
with his eye every bit of lard she put into the frying-pan, and every
spoonful of molasses that entered into the composition of her pies.

She had already set the table for breakfast. The bacon and sliced
potatoes were frying in separate pans, and Ann herself was lifting the
lid of the tin coffee-pot, to see whether the beverage had "come to a
boil," when the old man entered, or, strictly speaking, _was_ entered.