is moment of withdrawal to
his own bedroom before finally leaving his home had become his friend's
invariable custom since the death of his second wife, Emily, five years
before.

In his bedroom the elderly man was standing before his bureau, where to
one side hung the daguerreotype of a young woman.

"It's mortal queer, honey," he said aloud, "how I ain't ever able to go
places or to do things 'thout expectin' you to come along, yet there's
times when it feels like you'd been gone from me forever and then agen
when it don't seem more'n a few weeks."

He was afterward leaving the room with his head bent and his eyes misty
with tears when suddenly a smile twitched the end of his nose and the
corners of his mouth lifted as he turned once more toward his picture.

"Lord, Em'ly darlin', wouldn't you laugh if three old codgers was to get
into the race after the widow instid of two? I would admire to see them
sure winners beaten by a dark horse!"

Five minutes later, Uncle Ambrose Thompson as he was now called by
almost everybody in Pennyroyal, with every trace of lamentation removed
clean from his face, was walking toward the new red brick church,
having Miner's arm through his after their custom of more than thirty
years. Moses could no longer accompany them, but was resting somewhat
deeper under the apple tree than had been his habit in life.

While in the course of their walk Miner never once lifted his hat,
Ambrose's was seldom allowed to rest for a moment on his head, for women
of all ages smiled upon him and children breaking away from grown up
hands came to be tossed in the air by his long arms. Uncle Ambrose had
grown very popular with the children of Pennyroyal since the death of
his and Emily's only child twenty years before, since it was then that
he began bringing home to Emily for repairs all the crying babies he
could steal, the boys who had stumped their toes and the girls with torn
frocks and feelings.

In the Sunday-school room he immediately sailed up to the widow as
gallantly as though his ship had not failed to enter her port in nearly
forty years, and this when she was sheltered between the law and the
gospel. But before Uncle Ambrose could speak a large soft hand grasped
his lean and vital one.

"Welcome!" said the minister with unction.

Three years before, the Rev. Elias Tupper had entered Pennyroyal and
with this same soft hand had since patted and soothed his congregation
into following w