grocery store, it had been decided without a dissenting vote that "the
minister's son was a lazy 'good-for-nothing', and that he wanted the
money more than he did the gal." The village schoolhouse stood a short
distance eastward from the church. The teacher, Miss Seraphina Cotton, a
maiden lady of uncertain age, who boasted that the city of Cottonton was
named after her grandfather, boarded at the Rev. Mr. Howe's, and was
ardently attached to the minister's wife, who was an invalid and rarely
seen outside of her home.

On the upper road, about half a mile to the west of Deacon Mason's,
lived Mr. and Mrs. Silas Putnam. They owned the largest house and best
farm at Mason's Corner. They were reputed to be quite wealthy and it was
known for a sure fact that their only daughter, Lindy, was worth one
hundred thousand dollars in her own right, it having been left to her by
her only brother, J. Jones Putnam, who had died in Boston about five
years before.

Mrs. Hawkins had a large house, but it was always full of boarders, all
of the masculine gender. Mrs. Hawkins had declared on several occasions
that she'd "sooner have the itch than a girl boarder." She was a
hard-working woman and had but one assistant, a young girl named Betsy
Green, one of whose sisters was "working-out" up at Mrs. Putnam's. Mrs.
Hawkins's husband, his wife declared, was "no account nohow," and for
the present her estimate of him must be accepted without question.

Among Mrs. Hawkins's twelve boarders were Robert Wood and Benjamin
Bates, two young men who were natives of Montrose. Bates was a brick and
stone mason, and Wood was a carpenter, and they had been quite busily
employed during the two years they had lived at Mason's Corner.