Madison's replies had been equally void of versatility--he would shake
his head doubtfully, while his cigar-case circulated around the group.

Madison sniffed luxuriously at his thoroughbred Havana. He had passed
out of sight of the hotel window now, and he swung into a brisk walk. It
was a mile to the Patriarch's by a wagon track through the woods, that
led off from the road to the left just across the bridge. He had not
needed to ask directions. With magnificent inadvertence Hiram Higgins
had mentioned the exact way to reach the Patriarch's a dozen times, if
he had once. Also, by now, Madison had learned all that the town knew
about the Patriarch--which after all, he reflected with some
satisfaction, wasn't much. The Patriarch was over eighty years of age,
and he had come, deaf and dumb, to Needley sixty years ago--nobody knew
from where, nor his previous history, nor his name. They had called him
the Hermit at first, for immediately on his arrival he had gone out to
the shore of the ocean, away from the village, and built a crude hut
there for himself--which, in the after years, he had made into a more
pretentious dwelling. The cures had come "kinder gradual-like an' took
the folks mabbe forty years to get around to believin' in him real
serious," as Hiram Higgins put it; and then, as the Hermit grew old, and
the local reverence for him had become more deep-seated, they had
changed his name to the Patriarch. That was about all--but it seemed to
suit Madison, for his smile broadened.

"I wonder," said he to himself, as he stepped onto the bridge to cross
the little river, "if I'm not dreaming--this is like being let loose in
the U.S. Treasury with nobody looking!"

"Hullo, mister!" piped a young voice suddenly out of the dusk.