moved away bodily. The village grew, as hundreds of other frontier
villages had grown, in the flush times; it died, as so many others died,
of the financial crash which was the inevitable sequel and retribution
of speculative madness. Its history resembles the history of other
Western towns of the sort so strongly, that I should not take the trouble
to write about it, nor ask you to take the trouble to read about it, if
the history of the town did not involve also the history of certain human
lives--of a tragedy that touched deeply more than one soul. And what is
history worth but for its human interest? The history of Athens is not of
value on account of its temples and statues, but on account of its men
and women. And though the "Main street" of Metropolisville is now a
country road where the dog-fennel blooms almost undisturbed by comers and
goers, though the plowshare remorselessly turns over the earth in places
where corner lots were once sold for a hundred dollars the front foot,
and though the lot once sacredly set apart (on the map) as "Depot Ground"
is now nothing but a potato-patch, yet there are hearts on which the
brief history of Metropolisville has left traces ineffaceable by sunshine
or storm, in time or eternity.




CHAPTER I.

THE AUTOCRAT OF THE STAGECOACH.


"Git up!"

No leader of a cavalry charge ever put more authority into his tones than