parsonage. I can't do much more'n look at the cobwebs to-night, but
to-morrow those spiders had better put on their ascension robes. The
end of the world's comin' for them, even though it missed fire for the
Millerites when they had their doin's a few years ago. You can stay
here and wait, if 'twon't be too lonesome. We'll have supper when I get
back."

Grace looked tempted.

"I've a good mind to go with you," she said. "I want to be with you as
much as I can, and HE isn't there yet. I'm afraid uncle might not like
it, but--"

"Sho! Come along. Eben Hammond may be a chronic sufferer from acute
Come-Outiveness, but he ain't a ninny. Nobody'll see you, anyway. This
fog's like charity, it'll cover a heap of sins. Do come right along.
Wait till I get on my things."

She threw a shawl over her shoulders, draped a white knitted "cloud"
over her head, and took from a nail a key, attached by a strong cord to
a block of wood eight inches long.

"Elkanah left the key with me," she observed. "No danger of losin' it,
is there. Might as well lose a lumber yard. Old Parson Langley tied it
up this way, so he wouldn't miss his moorin's, I presume likely. The
poor old thing was so nearsighted and absent-minded along toward the
last that they say he used to hire Noah Myrick's boy to come in and look
him over every Sunday mornin' before church, so's to be sure he hadn't
got his wig on stern foremost. That's the way Zeb Mayo tells the yarn,
anyhow."