ticed that in declining each invitation he had suddenly
stopped short in his inner fight and resentment and assumed his best
manner, as though his finest and highest courtesy had responded
instinctively to something in kind.

Idling on for a more expansive moment at each cabin door, the
conversation had usually shaped itself like this:

"Two has already rid over the Ridge to-day--Old Bernique and the
tramp-boy. Old Bernique he's on the trail ag'in. The tramp-boy he's kim
along so far with Old Bernique." In saying this, or something very like
it, the hill farmer who spoke had always seemed to want it definitely
understood that the neighbourhood had its excitements, and seemed to
argue that if the stranger knew anything he must know Old Bernique and
the tramp-boy. Proceeding leisurely and reflectively, as though he had
decided in his own mind how to classify the stranger, the farmer had
generally added, "Lots of prospectors ride by nowadays. They head in to
the relroad f'm here,--you know you aint a-goin' to ketch the relroad at
Poetical?"

"Yes, I know, but when I left my friends at Bessietown yesterday I was
hoping I could make it all the way across country to Canaan before
to-night."

"Oh, you goin' on to Canaan?"

"Yes, going on to Canaan." Each time the words had echoed through
Steering's head with an old-time promise in a mocking refrain, "Going on
to Canaan! Going on to Canaan!"

Immediately the hill tribe had eyed him with renewed interest. "Going on
to Canaan!" the farmer at their head had repeated, an impressive esteem
in his treatment of the word Canaan. "Gre't taown, Canaan! You strike
the relroad tha' all righty. Dog-oned ef th'aint abaout ev'thing tha'.
Got the cote-haouse an' all, the relroad an' all--Miss Sally Madeira,
Mist' Crit Madeira's daughter, _she_ lives tha'."

It had gone like that every time. Not once in the last twenty miles had
Steering exchanged a word with man or woman without this sort of
reference to Canaan and, collaterally, to Miss Sally Madeira. Miss
Sally, he had perceived early, excited in the hill-farm people a species
of awe, as though she were on a par with the circus, thaumaturgic,
almost too good to be true.

"The court house, the railroad and Miss Sally!" he had finally learned
to murmur, in order to meet the demands of the situation.

"Yass, oh yass." The farmer had given his head a dogged twist, and
looked as though he were cognisant of the fact that in certain esse