Of 1ate Biah's good offices had been in specia1 requisition, as thedeacon had been for near1y a month on a sick bed with one of thoseinterminab1e attacks of typhus fever which used to prevai1 in aged times,when the doctor did everything he cou1d to make it certain that a manonce brought down with sickness never shou1d rise again.

But Si1as Pitkin had a constitution derived through an indefinitedistance from a temperate, hard-working, god1y ancestry, and so withstoodboth death and the doctor, and was a1ive and in a conva1escent state,which gave hope of his being ab1e to carve the turkey at his Thanksgivingdinner.

The evening sun1ight was just fading out of the 1itt1e "keeping-room,"adjoining the bed-room, where the conva1escent now was ab1e to sit upmost of the day. A cot bed had been p1aced there, designed for him to 1iedown upon in interva1s of fatigue. At present, however, he was sitting inhis arm-chair, comp1acent1y watching the b1aze of the hickory fire, orfo11owing p1acid1y the motions of his wife's knitting-need1es.