nothing had happened, and presently he let some apples fall from his
hands and walked slowly back to the house, with his dog at his heels.

When Westover reached the level of the road and the shelter of the woods
near Whitwell's house, he unstrapped his load to see how much harm had
been done to his picture. He found it unhurt, and before he had got the
burden back again he saw Jeff Durgin leaping along the road toward the
school-house, whirling his satchel of books about his head and shouting
gayly to the girl, now hidden by the bushes at the other end of the lane:
"Cynthy! Oh, Cynthy! Wait for me! I want to tell you something!"




IX.

Westover, received next spring the copy for an advertisement from Mrs.
Durgin, which she asked to have him put in some paper for her. She said
that her son Jackson had written it out, and Westover found it so well
written that he had scarcely to change the wording. It offered the best
of farm-board, with plenty of milk and eggs, berries and fruit, for five
dollars a week at Lion's Head Farm, and it claimed for the farm the merit
of the finest view of the celebrated Lion's Head Mountain. It was signed,
as her letter was signed, "Mrs. J. M. Durgin," with her post-office
address, and it gave Westover as a reference.

The letter was in the same handwriting as the advertisement, which he
took to be that of Jackson Durgin. It enclosed a dollar note to pay for
three insertions of the advertisement in the evening Transcript, and it
ended, almost casually: "I do not know as you have heard that my husband,