"I guess that must be a suck-cuss hoss," remarked Mr. Sewell, resting
his loosely jointed figure against the rail fence as he watched his
departing guest.

Mary backed to the ridge of the hill up which the turnpike stretched
from the ancient tavern, then recovered herself and went on.

"I never saw such an out-and-out wilful old girl as you are, Mary!"
ejaculated Lynde, scarlet with mortification. "I begin to admire you."

Perhaps the covert reproach touched some finer chord of Mary's nature,
or perhaps Mary had done her day's allowance of backing; whatever the
case was, she indulged no further caprice that afternoon beyond shying
vigorously at a heavily loaded tin-pedler's wagon, a proceeding which
may be palliated by the statement of the fact that many of Mary's
earlier years were passed in connection with a similar establishment.

The afterglow of sunset had faded out behind the serrated line of hills,
and black shadows were assembling, like conspirators, in the orchards
and under the spreading elms by the roadside, when Edward Lynde came in
sight of a large manufacturing town, which presented a sufficiently
bizarre appearance at that hour.

Grouped together in a valley were five or six high, irregular buildings,
illuminated from basement to roof, each with a monstrous chimney from
which issued a fan of party-colored flame. On one long low structure,
with a double row of windows gleaming like the port-holes of a man-of-
war at night, was a squat round tower that now and then threw open a
vast valve at the top, and belched forth a volume of amber smoke, which