description of the arrangement of seats, and another deep sigh escaped
him; but this time there were no leafless trees and winter wind to
supply an echo.

The Professor's half-awakened mind travelled in very different channels.
He imagined himself engaged in several verbal disputes with a number of
fisticuff encounters in which he invariably proved to be too much for
the city fellow. Just before he sank again into a deep sleep he imagined
that the entire population of Mason's Corner escorted a certain young
man forcibly to the railroad station at Eastborough Centre and put him
in charge of the expressman, to be delivered in Boston. And that young
man, in the Professor's dream, had a tag tied to the lapel of his coat
upon which was written, "Quincy Adams Sawyer."




CHAPTER II.

MASON'S CORNER FOLKS.


In 186-- the town of Eastborough was located in the southeastern part of
Massachusetts, in the county of Normouth. It was a large town, being
fully five miles wide from east to west and from five to seven miles
long, the northern and southern boundaries being very irregular.

The town contained three villages; the western one being known as West
Eastborough, the middle one as Eastborough Centre, and the easterly one
as Mason's Corner. West Eastborough was exclusively a farming section,