But the house he constructed was the wonder of the
country-side in its day. It was a big, two-story building, the lower
half being "jest cobblestones," as the neighbors sneeringly remarked,
while the upper half was "decent pine lumber." The lower floor of this
main building consisted of a single room with a great cobble-stone
fireplace in the center of the rear wall and narrow, prison-like windows
at the front and sides. There was a small porch in front, with a great
entrance door of carved dark wood of a foreign look, which the Captain
had brought from some port in Massachusetts. A stair in one corner of
the big living room led to the second story, where four large
bed-chambers were arranged. These had once been plastered and papered,
but the wall-paper had all faded into dull, neutral tints and in one of
the rooms a big patch of plaster had fallen away from the ceiling,
showing the bare lath. Only one of the upstairs rooms had ever been
furnished, and it now contained a corded wooden bedstead, a cheap pine
table and one broken-legged chair. Indeed, the main building, which I
have briefly described, had not been in use for many years. Sometimes,
when Captain Wegg was alive, he would build a log fire in the great
fireplace on a winter's evening and sit before it in silent mood until
far into the night.
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