have seen in it vast reaching plots, the skeletons of a dozen dynastic
cupboards, the guarded mysteries of half a century's international
diplomacy. The amateurs would have been wrong again. There was nothing
behind Mr. Pierce's juiceless countenance more weighty than a general
determination to exact seven per cent for his money, and some specific
notions about capturing certain brickyards which were interfering with
his quarry-sales. But Octavius watched him shamble along its sidewalks
quite as the Vienna of dead and forgotten yesterday might have watched
Metternich.

Erastus Winch was of a breezier sort--a florid, stout, and sandy man,
who spent most of his life driving over evil country roads in a buggy,
securing orders for dairy furniture and certain allied lines of farm
utensils. This practice had given him a loud voice and a deceptively
hearty manner, to which the other avocation of cheese-buyer, which he
pursued at the Board of Trade meetings every Monday afternoon, had added
a considerable command of persuasive yet non-committal language. To
look at him, still more to hear him, one would have sworn he was a good
fellow, a trifle rough and noisy, perhaps, but all right at bottom.
But the County Clerk of Dearborn County could have told you of
agriculturists who knew Erastus from long and unhappy experience, and
who held him to be even a tighter man than Loren Pierce in the matter of
a mortgage.

The third trustee, Levi Gorringe, set one wondering at the very first
glance what on earth he was doing in that company. Those who had known
him longest had the least notion; but it may be added that no one knew
him well. He was a lawyer, and had lived in Octavius for upwards of ten
years; that is to say, since early manhood. He had an office on the main
street, just under the principal photograph gallery. Doubtless he was