[Written for The Flag of our Union]

Hearthstone Tales

The Old Lady’s Story

by Charles Cutterfield

When I went to visit my aunt, in the summer of 18—, she invited me to spend an evening with her, at the house of a neighbor, an old lady who lived alone. The old lady saw little company, and was pleased accordingly. After conversing in the ordinary manner for a considerable length of time, she lighted her tallow candle, hitched up to a corner of the stone fireplace, and related the following incident of her life.

“When we were first married we lived in a tavern. It wasn’t much of a tavern neither, but it served for accommodating the public with meals and lodgings, and served to bring a little pin money to myself. It was in the woods, almost, with just a store a little above it, and a mill on the river below it. There wasn’t but one house in the village, then, because we lived in the tavern, and Mr. Benson’s folks lived in the upper part of their store. But Briggs didn’t live in the mill—they had a house. It was a good house too, for them times.

“My husband, he was always a driving cattle. He’d go out Monday and sometimes a Sunday, and not get back till—well, I never knew when he would come back. Sometimes he had a good deal of money in the house, not often though, when he wasn’t there himself. But the night I speak of, he left a large sum of money which I put away in the little drawer on top of the bureau. My niece was living with me then, as a kind of hired girl. Her name was Sally Whitcher, and she was a pert and pretty little body as you commonly see.

“We didn’t have much custom; my husband built the tavern to be ready to catch the business when the place should grow, and it never grew as much as he calculated. Once in a while somebody came along and asked for a dinner or lodging,… Read More