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In March of the fifth year after grandsir Cranston died, Willis and Ben Murch wrote to one of the Cranston heirs, and got permission to tap the maples in the wood-lot at the foot of the ledge and to make sugar there. They tapped two hundred trees, three spiles to the tree, and had a great run of sap. Addison and I went over one afternoon to see them "boil down."
Yet when pinned down to it the old Squire admitted that he was with Grandsir Billy on that night and that they did have an alarming experience with an animal that beyond doubt was a large and hungry panther. I must have heard the story ten or twelve times in all, and I recollect many of Grandsir Billy's words and expressions.
He loved those big old-growth maples, loved them so well that he would not tap them in the spring for maple sugar. It shortened the lives of trees, he said, to tap them, particularly large old trees. It was therefore distressing to see how, after grandsir Cranston died, the farm was allowed to run down and go to ruin.
We may now suppose Grandsir Dolliver to have finished his breakfast, with a better appetite and sharper perception of the qualities of his food than he has generally felt of late years, whether it were due to old Martha's cookery or to the cordial of the night before.
The scene faded away; the music was a far-off echo, the barn was gone. Job was back, a lad, in the old New England church; grandsir was there, and mother, and the old, old friends, and Ned Winthrop was poking him with a pin. That song! how it brought them all back! Just then be heard a murmur behind him, and looked up to see, near the front, a trembling old man rise and begin to speak.
On the other hand, his is a far richer and less debased nature than that of Portsoaken. Hawthorne appears subsequently to have divided him, straining off from the rank sediments which settle into the character of Dr. Portsoaken the clear sweetness of good Grandsir Dolliver.
"I don't know's it's much of a day to anybody but me," he added, discovering a twinkle in her black eyes that was more sympathetic than usual. "I expected to stop an' see you last night; but I had to go round and see all our folks, and when I got back 't was late and the tide was down, an' I knew that grandsir couldn't git the boat up all alone to our lower landin'."
Swinnerton's, his shrunken, frosty figure, and its feeble movement, all these characteristics had a wholeness and permanence in the public recognition, like the meeting-house steeple or the town-pump. All the younger portion of the inhabitants unconsciously ascribed a sort of aged immortality to Grandsir Dolliver's infirm and reverend presence. But, alas! it was a terrible mistake.
And thus it happened with poor Grandsir Dolliver, who often awoke from an old man's fitful sleep with a sense that his senile predicament was but a dream of the past night; and hobbling hastily across the cold floor to the looking-glass, he would be grievously disappointed at beholding the white hair, the wrinkles and furrows, the ashen visage and bent form, the melancholy mask of Age, in which, as he now remembered, some strange and sad enchantment had involved him for years gone by!
You fetch a person down to the bedrock, as Grandsir Penlyn used to say, and then they know where they be. And ef the Lord is really the Lord of all, I expect He'll take care of all; 'nd I don't doubt but what He is and does. So I can fetch up on that." Parson Everett heaved a deep sigh, put on his cocked hat, and blew his nose ceremonially with the silk handkerchief.
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