--IV--

THE PATRIARCH


"Bet you a cookie," shrilled Hiram Higgins, in what he meant to be a
breathless whisper, "that there's where he's goin' now--only he don't
want us to know he's give in."

"Shet your fool mouth, Hiram!" cautioned Walt Perkins, the proprietor of
the Congress Hotel. "He kin hear you."

"Get out!" retorted Mr. Higgins. "No, he can't neither. He ain't feelin'
no ways perky, any one can see that, an' I'm tickled most to pieces that
he's come 'round--I've took up with him consid'rable, I have.
Patriarch'll just make a new-born critter outer him--you watch through
the window where he goes. Bet you a quarter that's what he's up to!"

John Garfield Madison, outside on the veranda of the Congress Hotel,
smiled at the words, as he lighted his cigar and turned up his coat
collar. He stepped off the veranda, crossed the little lawn to the
village street, and began to saunter nonchalantly and indifferently
oceanwards. He did not look around--he had no desire to bring
consternation to the massed faces of the leading citizens flattened
against the window panes--but he chuckled inwardly as he pictured them.
There would be Hiram Higgins, postmaster and town constable, Walt