Chapter 9

Grandma Bisnette came from Canada to work for the Browers. She
was a big, cheerful woman, with a dialect, an amiable disposition
and a swarthy, wrinkled face. She had a loose front tooth that
occupied all the leisure of her tongue. When she sat at her knitting
this big tooth clicked incessantly. On every stitch her tongue went
in and out across it' and I, standing often by her knees, regarded the
process with great curiosity.

The reader may gather much from these frank and informing
words of Grandma Bisnette. 'When I los' my man, Mon Dieu! I
have two son. An' when I come across I bring him with me. Abe he
rough; but den he no bad man.'

Abe was the butcher of the neighbourhood - that red-handed,
stony-hearted, necessary man whom the Yankee farmer in that
north country hires to do the cruel things that have to be done. He
wore ragged, dirty clothes and had a voice like a steam whistle.
His rough, black hair fell low and mingled with his scanty beard.
His hands were stained too often with the blood of some creature
we loved. I always crept under the bed in Mrs Brower's room
when Abe came - he was such a terror to me with his bloody work
and noisy oaths. Such men were the curse of the cleanly homes in
that country. There was much to shock the ears and eyes of
children in the life of the farm. It was a fashion among the help to
decorate their speech with profanity for the mere sound of it' and
the foul mouthings of low-minded men spread like a pestilence in
the fields.

Abe came always with an old bay horse and a rickety buckboard.
His one foot on the dash, as he rode, gave the picture a dare-devil
finish. The lash of his bull-whip sang around him, and his great
voice sent its blasts of noise ahead. When we heard a fearful yell
and rumble in the distance, we knew Abe was coming.

'Abe he come,' said Grandma Bisnette. 'Mon Dieu! he make de
leetle rock fly.'

It was like the coming of a locomotive with roar of wheel and
whistle. In my childhood, as soon as I saw the cloud of dust, I put
for the bed and from its friendly cover would peek out' often, but
never venture far until the man of blood had gone.

To us children he was a marvel of wickedness. There were those
who told how he had stood in the storm one night and dared the
Almighty to send the lightning upon him.

The dog Fred had grown so old and infirm that one day they sent
for Abe to come and put an end to his misery. Every man on the
farm loved the old dog and not one of them would raise a hand to
kill him. Hope and I heard what Abe was coming to do, and when
the men had gone to the fields, that summer morning, we lifted
Fred into the little wagon in which he had once drawn me and
starting back of