rolled round to that period when the Nautilus Bank gave Edward Lynde a
three weeks' vacation, and he set forth, as we have seen, on Deacon
Twombly's mare, in search of the picturesque and the peculiar, if they
were to be found in the northern part of New Hampshire.




III

IN WHICH MARY TAKES A NEW DEPARTURE


It was still dark enough the next morning to allow the great chimneys to
show off their colored fires effectively, when Lynde passed through the
dingy main street of K---and struck into a road which led to the hill
country. A short distance beyond the town, while he was turning in the
saddle to observe the singular effect of the lurid light upon the
landscape, a freight-train shot obliquely across the road within five
rods of his horse's head, the engine flinging great flakes of fiery
spume from its nostrils, and shrieking like a maniac as it plunged into
a tunnel through a spur of the hills. Mary went sideways, like a crab,
for the next three quarters of a mile.

To most young men the expedition which Edward Lynde had undertaken would
have seemed unattractive and monotonous to the last degree; but Lynde's
somewhat sedentary habits had made him familiar with his own company.
When one is young and well read and amiable, there is really no better
company than one's self--as a steady thing. We are in a desperate strait
indeed if we chance at any age to tire of this invisible but ever-