office in fear of an argument. Still he was cheerful, and being only
in his early thirties, looked at the green hills afar from his pasture
and was happy. The Thayer House was filled with guests, and the
Fernalds had money in the bank; Mary Murphy and Gabriel Carnine were
living happily ever after, and Nellie Logan was clerking in Dorman's
Dry Goods store and making Watts McHurdie understand that she had her
choice between a preacher and a drummer. Other girls in the dining
room of the Thayer House were rattling the dinner dishes and singing
"Sweet Belle Mahone" and "Do you love me, Molly Darling?" to ensnare
the travelling public that might be tilted back against the veranda in
a mood for romance. And as John and Bob that hot September afternoon
made the round of the stores and offices bidding the town good-by, it
seemed to them that perhaps they were seizing the shadow and letting
the substance fade. For it was such a good-natured busy little place
that their hearts were heavy at leaving it.

But that evening John in his gorgeous necktie, his clean paper collar,
his new stiff hat, his first store clothes, wearing proudly his
father's silver watch and chain, set out to say good-by to Ellen
Culpepper, and his mother, standing in the doorway of their home,
sighed at his limp and laughed at his strut--the first laugh she had
enjoyed in a dozen days.

John and Bob together went up the stone walk leading across a yard,
still littered with the debris of building, to the unboxed steps that
climbed to the veranda of the Culpepper house. There they met Colonel
Culpepper in his shirt-sleeves, walking up and down the veranda
admiring the tall white pillars. When he had greeted the boys, he put
his thumbs in his vest holes and continued his parade in some pomp.
The boys were used to this attitude of the colonel's toward themselves