mine host tapped his forehead and winked. Curious chap, Weston. Elmer
had seen a heap of men in his time and never met the like. There's no
way to get to see men and understand them like keeping a hotel. When
you've "kept" for about forty years, there's hardly a man comes along
that you can't set right down in his particular class before he's even
registered. But Weston had blocked him at every turn. Elmer knew no
more of the man now than on the day he came. In fact, he was getting
more and more tangled up about him all the time. For instance, why
should one who could read Goth and understand the "Sorrows," want to
set around the store and argue with such-like ignoramuses as Ike Bolum
and Hen Holmes? Spiker was willing to bet that right now Weston was
over the way trying to prove to them that two and two was four.

The suggestion seemed a likely one, so I interrupted the flow of
Elmer's troubled thoughts to say good-night, and went out. I paused a
moment on the porch. A lamp was blazing in the store and I could
plainly see everyone gathered along the counter. Henry Holmes was
standing with his back to the stove, one hand wagging up and down at
the solemn line of figures on the bench. But Weston was not there.
And in our valley, when a man is not at home o'night he should be at
the store, else there is a mystery to be solved. To solve this one I
stopped on the tavern steps, leaned against a pillar, and gazed through
the dozing village.

At the head of the street where our house stood a bright light burned.
There Tim was and there I should be also. A hundred times down South
on my post at night, with my back on the rows and rows of white tents,
I had sought to pierce the black gloom before me as if there I could
see that same light--the home light. Often I fancied I saw it, and in
its bright circle Tim was bending over his book. Here it was in truth,