As soon as he goes in, I takes Old Clay to the barn, for it's a maxim of mine always to look out arter number one, opens the door, and pulls out sheaf arter sheaf of grain as fast as I could, and throws it out, till I got a place big enough for him to crawl in.
"'Now,' sais I, 'old boy,' as I shot to the door arter him, 'if that hole ain't big enough for you, eat away till it is, that's all.' "I had hardly got to the house afore the rain, that had threatened all day, came down like smoke, and the wind got up, and it blew like a young hurricane, and the lake roared dismal; it was an awful night, and it was hard to say which was wus, the Storm or the shelter.
"'Of two evils,' sais I to the lawyer, 'choose the least.

It ain't a bad thing to be well housed in a night like this, is it ?' "The critter groaned, for both cases was so 'bad he didn't know which to take up to defend, so he grinned horrid and said nothin'; and it was enough to make him grin too, that's a fact.

He looked as if he had got hold on a bill o' pains and penalties instead of a bill of costs that time, you may depend.
"Inside of the house was three rooms, the keepin' room, where we was all half circled round the fire, and two sleepin' rooms off of it.

One of these Obi had, who was a-bed, groanin', coughin', and turnin' over and over all the time on the creakin' bedstead with pleurisy; t'other was for the judge.

The loft was for the old woman, his mother, and the hearth, or any other soft place we could find, was allocated for lawyer and me.
"What a scarecrow lookin' critter old aunty was, warn't she?
She was all in rags and tatters, and though she lived 'longside of the lake the best part of her emigrant life, had never used water since she was christened.