his routine. Plainly it had happened again. Well, away out here off the
beat of travel such upsettings must be endured.

He arranged the papers upon their proper shelf and in their proper
order; then, as was his wont, he turned to the letters and read them
one by one. To another they might have seemed stiff and precise in their
language; almost formal, faintly breathing as they did the restrained
affections of a woman no longer young and coming of a breed of women who
almost from the cradle are by precept and example taught how to cloak
the deeper and the more constant emotions beneath the ice skim of a
ladylike reserve. But they satisfied their reader; they were as they
always had been and as they always would be. His only complaint,
mentally registered, was that the last one should bear the date of March
twenty-ninth.

Having read them all he filed them away in a safe place, then brought
the topmost copy of his just-received file of newspapers out upon the
veranda and sat himself down to read it.

The first column always contained local news. He read of the wand drill
given by the graduating class of the South New Medford Girls' High
School; of a demonstration of Wheat-Sweet Breakfast Food in the show
window of Cody's drug store; of a fire from unknown causes in Lawyer
Horace Bartlett's offices upstairs over G. A. R. Hall, damage eighty
dollars; of the death of Aunt Priscilla Lyon, aged ninety-two; of a
bouncing, ten-pound boy born to Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Purdy, mother and
child doing well--all names familiar to him. He came to the department
devoted to weddings. There was but one notice beneath the single-line
head; it made a single paragraph.

He read it and as he read the words of it burned into his brain like a
fiery acid. He read it, and it ran like this:

"We are informed that a surprise marriage took place this morning at
Rutland. In that city Miss Hetty Stowe, of near this place, was united
in the holy bonds of wedlock to Mr. Gabriel Eno, of Vergennes. We did
not get the name of the officiating minister. The bride is an estimable
lady who for years past has taught District School Number Four in the
county. We have not the pleasure of the happy bridegroom's acquaintance
but assume he is in every way worthy of the lady he has won for a wife.
Ye Editor extends congratulations to the happy pair and will print
further details when secured."

He read it through again, to the last blurred word. And as he reread