want of bodily movement and fresh air, had so injured his health as to
make him tenfold more nervous and sensitive than ever. But his faintings
and hysterics and epileptic paroxysms were taken more and more as
evidences of his lofty mission. His father and mother regarded him as an
oracle, for the simple reason that he always answered just as they
expected. A curious or superstitious neighbor was added from time to time
to the circle, and their reports heightened the half-uncanny interest with
which the Chaney house was regarded.

It was on a moist and steamy evening of spring that Allen Golyer, standing
by his gate, saw Saul Chaney slouching along in the twilight, and hailed
him: "What news from the sperrits, Saul?"

"Nothing for you, Al Golyer," said Saul, gloomily. "The god of this world
takes care of the like o' you."

Golyer smiled, as a prosperous man always does when his poorer neighbors
abuse him for his luck, and rejoined: "I ain't so fortunate as you think
for, Saul Chaney. I lost a Barksher pig yesterday: I reckon I must come up
and ask Gershom what's come of it."

"Come along, if you like. It's been a long while sence you've crossed my
sill. But I'm gitting to be quite the style. Young Lawyer Marshall is
a-coming up this evening to see my Gershom."

Before Mr. Golyer started he filled a basket, "to make himself welcome and
pay for the show," with the reddest and finest fruit of his favorite apple
tree. His wife followed him to the gate and kissed him--a rather unusual
attention among Western farmer-people. Her face, still rosy and comely,
was flushed and smiling: "Al, do you know what day o' the year it is?"