r new to the boy. "Come," said the wearer
of it, "don't stand on the order of your going, but go at once," and he
sat down on the steps with his back to the boy, who heard these strange
terms of command with a face of vague envy.

The noonday sunshine lay in a thin, silvery glister on the slopes of the
mountain before them, and in the brilliant light the colossal forms of
the Lion's Head were prismatically outlined against the speckless sky.
Through the silvery veil there burned here and there on the densely
wooded acclivities the crimson torch of a maple, kindled before its
time, but everywhere else there was the unbroken green of the forest,
subdued to one tone of gray. The boy heard the stranger fetch his breath
deeply, and then expel it in a long sigh, before he could bring
himself to obey an order that seemed to leave him without the choice of
disobedience. He came back and found the stranger as he had left him.
"Come on, if you want your dinner," he said; and the stranger rose and
looked at him.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Thomas Jefferson Durgin."

"Well, Thomas Jefferson Durgin, will you show me the way to the pump and
bring a towel along?"

"Want to wash?"

"I haven't changed my mind."

"Come along, then." The boy made a movement as if to lead the way
indoors; the stranger arrested him.

"Here. Take hold of this and put it out of the rush of travel
somewhere." He lifted his burden from where he had dropped it in the
road and swung it toward the boy, who ran down the steps and embraced
it. As he carried it toward a corner of the porch he felt of the various
shapes and materials in it.

Then he said, "Come on!" again, and went before the guest through the
dim hall running midway of the house to the door at the rear. He left
him on a narrow space of stone flagging there, and ran with a tin basin
to the spring at the barn and brought it back to him full of the cold
water.

"Towel," he said, pulling at the family roller inside the little porch
at the door; and he watched the stranger wash his hands and face, and
then search for a fresh place on the towel.

Before the stranger had finished the father and the elder brother came
out, and, after an ineffectual attempt to salute him, slanted away to
the barn together. The woman, in-doors, was more successful, when he
found her in the dining-room, where the boy showed him. The table was
set for him alone, and it affected him as if the family had been h