The affair did not much concern us
young folks at the old Squire's. Indeed, we did not much care for the
school that winter. Master Brench's attention was chiefly directed to
keeping order and devising punishments for violations of school
discipline. School studies appeared to be of minor importance with him.
It was on Tuesday of that week, while we were at home, that the
following incident occurred.
Owing to our long winters, sheep raising, in Maine, has often been an
uncertain business. But at the old Squire's we usually kept a flock of
eighty or a hundred. They often brought us no real profit, but
grandmother Ruth was an old-fashioned housewife who would have felt
herself bereaved if she had had no woolen yarn for socks and bed
blankets.
The sheep were already at the barn for the winter; it was the 12th of
December, though as yet we had had no snow that remained long on the
ground. We were cutting firewood out in the lot that day and came in at
noon with good appetites, for the air was sharp.
While we sat at table a stranger drove up. He said that his name was
Morey, and that he was stocking a farm which he had recently bought in
the town of Lovell, nineteen or twenty miles west of our place.
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