Near this split of the "coombe" stood the very last house at the bottom of the village, built of white stone and neatly thatched, with a garden running to the edge of the mountain stream, which at this point rattled its way down to the sea with that usual tendency to haste exhibited by everything in life and nature when coming to an end.

A small square board nailed above the door bore the inscription legibly painted in plain black letters:-- ABEL TWITT, Stone Mason, N.B.Good Grave-Work Guaranteed.
The author of this device, and the owner of the dwelling, was a round, rosy-faced little man, with shrewd sparkling grey eyes, a pleasant smile, and a very sociable manner.

He was the great "gossip" of the place; no old woman at a wash-tub or behind a tea-tray ever wagged her tongue more persistently over the concerns of he and she and you and they, than Abel Twitt.

He had a leisurely way of talking,--a "slow and silly way" his wife called it,--but he managed to convey a good deal of information concerning everybody and everything, whether right or wrong, in a very few sentences.

He was renowned in the village for his wonderful ability in the composition of epitaphs, and by some of his friends he was called "Weircombe's Pote Lorit." One of his most celebrated couplets was the following:-- "_This Life while I lived it, was Painful and seldom Victorious, I trust in the Lord that the next will be Pleasant and Glorious!_" Everybody said that no one but Abel Twitt could have thought of such grand words and good rhymes.