their first tea in the brown-carpeted, white-shaded little corner
room in the old "Rankin house;" a bigger place than they really
wanted yet, and not all to be used at first; but rented
"reasonable," central, sunshiny, and convenient; a place that they
hoped they should buy sometime; facing on the broad sidegreen of the
village street, and running back, with its field and meadow
belongings, away to the foot of great, gray, sheltering Mile Hill.

And the vast, solemn globe, heedless of what lit here or there upon
its breadth, or took up this or that life in its little freckling
cities, or between the imperceptible foldings of its hills,--only
carrying way-passengers for the centuries,--went plunging on its
track, around and around, and swept them all, a score of times,
through its summer and its winter solstices.




IV.

AFTERWARDS IS A LONG TIME.


Old Mr. Marmaduke Wharne had come down from Outledge, in the
mountains, on his way home to New York. He had stopped in Boston to
attend to some affairs of his own,--if one can call them so, since
Marmaduke Wharne never had any "own" affairs that did not chiefly
concern, to their advantage, somebody else,--in which his friend Mr.
Titus Oldways was interested, not personally, but Wharne fashion.
Now, reader, you know something about Mr. Titus Oldways, which up to