dear, good, stern, forbidding Dominie and go over to Number 37 and ask
him what he means by it, anyway, and tell him he's got to stop it."

Now, the Bonnie Lassie holds the power of the high, the middle, and the
low justice over all Our Square by the divine right of loveliness and
kindliness. So that evening I went while the Little Red Doctor, as a
self-constituted Committee in Waiting, sat on my bench. Stepfather Time
himself opened the door to me.

"What might they call you, sir, if I may ask?" he inquired with timid
courtesy.

"They might call me the Dominie hereabouts. And they do."

"I have heard of you." He motioned me to a seat in the bare little room,
alive with tickings and clickings. "You have lived long here, sir?"

"Long."

From some interminable distance a voice of time mocked me with a subtle
and solemn mockery: "_Long. Long. Long_."

My host waited for the clock to finish before he spoke again. As I
afterward discovered, this was his invariable custom.

"I, too, am an old man," he murmured.

"A hardy sixty, I should guess."

"A long life. Might I ask you a question, sir,' as to the folk in this