bank of the distant river.

Dotted here and there about the farming country lying before
the youth as he looked westward were cottages, or the more
important-looking homesteads on the larger farms; and in the
distance a white church spire behind the trees marked the tiny
settlement of Blaine's Smithy.

A Sabbath calm lay over the fields and woods. It was
mid-afternoon of an early February Sunday--the time of the
mid-winter thaw, that false prophet of the real springtime.

Although not a furrow had been turned as yet in the fields, and
the snow lay deep in some fence corners and beneath the hedges,
there was, after all, a smell of fresh earth--a clean, live
smell--that Hiram Strong had missed all week down in Crawberry.

"I'm glad I came up here," he muttered, drawing in great breaths
of the clean air. "Just to look at the open fields, without any
brick and mortar around, makes a fellow feel fine!"

He stretched his arms above his head and, standing alone there on
the upland, felt bigger and better than he had in weeks.

For Hiram Strong was a country boy, born and bred, and the town
stifled him. Besides, he had begun to see that his two years in
Crawberry had been wasted.

"As a hustler after fortune in the city I am not a howling
success," mused Hiram. "Somehow, I'm cramped down yonder," and