abrupt, and meagre, but I trust it will prove as satisfactory to the
reader as it has to me.

A. H. L.
New York, May 15,1897.






CHAPTER I.

WOLFVILLE'S FIRST FUNERAL.


"These yere obsequies which I'm about mentionin'," observed the Old
Cattleman, "is the first real funeral Wolfville has."

The old fellow had lighted a cob pipe and tilted his chair back in a
fashion which proclaimed a plan to be comfortable. He had begun to
tolerate--even encourage--my society, although it was clear that as
a tenderfoot he regarded me with a species of gentle disdain.

I had provoked the subject of funeral ceremonies by a recurrence to
the affair of the Yellowhouse Man, and a query as to what would have
been the programme of the public-spirited hamlet of Wolfville if
that invalid had died instead of yielding to the nursing of Jack
Moore and that tariff on draw-poker which the genius of Old Man
Enright decreed.