of winter. And yet there are places where Time
seems to linger lovingly long after youth has
departed, and to which he seems loath to bring the
evil day. Who has not known some even-tempered
old man or woman who seemed to have
drunk of the fountain of youth? Who has not
seen somewhere an old town that, having long
since ceased to grow, yet held its own without
perceptible decline?

Some such trite reflection--as apposite to the
subject as most random reflections are--passed
through the mind of a young man who came out
of the front door of the Patesville Hotel about
nine o'clock one fine morning in spring, a few years
after the Civil War, and started down Front Street
toward the market-house. Arriving at the town
late the previous evening, he had been driven up
from the steamboat in a carriage, from which he
had been able to distinguish only the shadowy
outlines of the houses along the street; so that this
morning walk was his first opportunity to see the
town by daylight. He was dressed in a suit of
linen duck--the day was warm--a panama straw
hat, and patent leather shoes. In appearance he
was tall, dark, with straight, black, lustrous hair,
and very clean-cut, high-bred features. When he
paused by the clerk's desk on his way out, to light
his cigar, the day clerk, who had just come on duty,
glanced at the register and read the last entry:--