that?"

Nance pushed her chair back from the table.

"Want to see all kinds, I s'pose," she said, slyly. "Guess I'll try it
myself, another Sunday!"

"Anybody to home?" came a very high and wheezy voice from the doorway.
Dorcas knew that also, and so did Nance Pete.

"It's that old haddock't lives up on the mountain," said the latter,
composedly, searching in her pocket, and then pulling out a stray bit
of tobacco and pressing it tenderly into her pipe.

An old man, dressed in a suit of very antique butternut clothes, stood
at the sill, holding forward a bunch of pennyroyal. He was weazened and
dry; his cheeks were parchment color, and he bore the look of an active
yet extreme old age. He was totally deaf. Dorcas advanced toward him,
taking a bright five-cent piece from her pocket. She held it out to
him, and he, in turn, extended the pennyroyal; but before taking it,
she went through a solemn pantomime. She made a feint of accepting the
herb, and then pointed to him and to the road.

"Yes, yes!" said the old man, irritably. "Bless ye! of course I'm goin'
to meetin'. I'll set by myself, though! Yes, I will! Las' Sunday, I set
with Jont Marshall, an' every time I sung a note, he dug into me with
his elbow, till I thought I should ha' fell out the pew-door. My voice
is jest as good as ever 'twas, an' sixty-five year ago come spring, I
begun to set in the seats."