burning his shining talents in a grazing district, however tall its grass
might grow. His business was not with these stiff-jointed, slow-witted
graziers, but with the supple, dangerous, far-seeing men who sit scheming
by the gas-light in the great cities, after all the lamps and candles are
out from the Merrimac to the Housatonic. Every strong and every weak
point of those who might probably be his rivals were laid down on his
charts, as winds and currents and rocks are marked on those of a
navigator. All the young girls in the country, and not a few in the
city, with which, as mentioned, he had frequent relations, were on his
list of possible availabilities in the matrimonial line of speculation,
provided always that their position and prospects were such as would make
them proper matches for so considerable a person as the future Hon.
William Murray Bradshaw.

Master Gridley had made a careful study of his old pupil since they had
resided in the same village. The old professor could not help admiring
him, notwithstanding certain suspicious elements in his character; for
after muddy village talk, a clear stream of intelligent conversation was
a great luxury to the hard-headed scholar. The more he saw of him, the
more he learned to watch his movements, and to be on his guard in talking
with him. The old man could be crafty, with all his simplicity, and he
had found out that under his good-natured manner there often lurked some
design more or less worth noting, and which might involve other interests
deserving protection.

For some reason or other the old Master of Arts had of late experienced a
certain degree of relenting with regard to himself, probably brought
about by the expressions of gratitude from worthy Mrs. Hopkins for acts
of kindness to which he himself attached no great value. He had been
kind to her son Gifted; he had been fatherly with Susan Posey, her