It just sits there in the far corner. It is older than I am. I'm guessing it was installed about the time Eisenhower died, or perhaps longer ago, perhaps when Trotsky was murdered in Mexico or when Bonnie and Clyde were gunned down on that dusty road down in Bienville Parish.

Yes, that kind of old.

It is my ancient boiler, my aging furnace, my friend who has, so far, not let me down. I pet it and feed it much as I do my dog , except it consumes more and at a higher price.

Ahhh. It just went on with a rumble, and I can see the flame in its belly like a smile, a comforting smile like one from someone I know and trust.

I hope it understands that without its rumble, the end would come soon. We could, I guess, get a new one. It would save us money, they say. "You'll see the difference in five years." In five years I'll be lucky to see the stairs. What difference will it make in five years?

She waits upstairs for the heat to climb. Winter evenings with her is like dining with one of the Sherpas at Edmund Hillary's base camp. Cold is her natural condition. She has a master's degree in evening layering. Sometimes, if one focuses, one can actually see her curly hair popping up out from under the big robe and the L.L. Bean fleece vest.

She could be warmer if only she kept the thermostat at a decent number, but that's not going to happen. She has the rigid frugality of the ancient French. This new thermostat, a digital one, has never seen 70. And only once, to my recollection, has it seen 65, and that was when it was 20 below in the garden.

Yes, this is an October column, and it will probably be the last one I write without those little gloves with the fingers cut out. Sometimes I turn it a bit higher when she is away and then quickly turn it down when I hear her at the door. I know she will touch the baseboards upon entering to check on me.

Someone once told me that Alcatraz prison had more lenient rules ... and it was warmer.

There are times when, in the course of an evening, she nods off in her reading chair. I move quickly to turn the heat up a notch. This is rarely successful, as there are three things that will awaken her from the dead: the opening of the fridge door, the popping of the wine cork from the second bottle and the furnace clicking on.

Sometimes, Jack the sheepdog, who respects me but adores her, will nudge her when he sees me move toward the thermostat. Man's best friend? Not when there is a woman involved.

It's not her fault, of course. She wasn't always stringent. She's been driven to this by four decades with a writer whose natural condition is penury.

But this, as Michael Corelone famously said, is my life. It is the life I chose, and there is, at this late stage, no going back. I've decided to find her wisdom charming, if not entertaining. I wonder if Bonnie was as hard on Clyde?

J.P. Devine is a Waterville freelance writer.