of him for a different reason, and this I know now was because he
possessed the penetration to discern the flaws in my youthful
character,--flaws that persisted in manhood. None so quick as Cousin
Robert to detect deceptions which were hidden from my mother.

His hobby was carpentering, and he had a little shop beside the stable
filled with shining tools which Willie and I, in spite of their
attractions, were forbidden to touch. Willie, by dire experience, had
learned to keep the law; but on one occasion I stole in alone, and
promptly cut my finger with a chisel. My mother and Cousin Jenny accepted
the fiction that the injury had been done with a flint arrowhead that
Willie had given me, but when Cousin Robert came home and saw my bound
hand and heard the story, he gave me a certain look which sticks in my
mind.

"Wonderful people, those Indians were!" he observed. "They could make
arrowheads as sharp as chisels."

I was most uncomfortable....

He had a strong voice, and spoke with a rising inflection and a marked
accent that still remains peculiar to our locality, although it was much
modified in my mother and not at all noticeable in my father; with an odd
nasal alteration of the burr our Scotch-Irish ancestors had brought with
them across the seas. For instance, he always called my father Mr.
Par-r-ret. He had an admiration and respect for him that seemed to forbid
the informality of "Matthew." It was shared by others of my father's
friends and relations.

"Sarah," Cousin Robert would say to my mother, "you're coddling that boy,