The latter place
was perhaps the favorite for Riverboro talkers. It was a large,
two-story, square, brick building with a big-mouthed chimney and
an open fire. When every house in the two villages had six feet
of snow around it, roads would always be broken to the brick
store, and a crowd of ten or fifteen men would be gathered there
talking, listening, betting, smoking, chewing, bragging, playing
checkers, singing, and "swapping stories."
Some of the men had been through the War of 1812 and could
display wounds received on the field of valor; others were still
prouder of scars won in encounters with the Indians, and there
was one old codger, a Revolutionary veteran, Bill Dunham by name,
who would add bloody tales of his encounters with the "Husshons."
His courage had been so extraordinary and his slaughter so
colossal that his hearers marvelled that there was a Hessian left
to tell his side of the story, and Bill himself doubted if such
were the case.
"'T is an awful sin to have on your soul," Bill would say from
his place in a dark corner, where he would sit with his hat
pulled down over his eyes till the psychological moment came for
the "Husshons" to be trotted out. "'T is an awful sin to have on
your soul,--the extummination of a race o' men; even if they
wa'n't nothin' more 'n so many ignorant cockroaches.
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