The Project Gutenberg EBook of Strangers and Wayfarers, by Sarah Orne Jewett

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Title: Strangers and Wayfarers

Author: Sarah Orne Jewett

Release Date: April 1, 2010 [EBook #31857]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STRANGERS AND WAYFARERS ***

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Archive: American Libraries.

STRANGERS AND WAYFARERS

by

SARAH ORNE JEWETT

Boston and New York

Houghton, Mifflin and Company

_The Riverside Press, Cambridge_

Copyright, 1890,

By SARAH ORNE JEWETT.

All rights reserved.

The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.

Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.

_TO_

S. W.

_PAINTER OF NEW ENGLAND MEN AND WOMEN_

_NEW ENGLAND FIELDS AND SHORES_

CONTENTS.

A Winter Courtship

The Mistress of Sydenham Plantation

The Town Poor

The Quest of Mr. Teaby

The Luck of the Bogans

Fair Day

Going to Shrewsbury

The Taking of Captain Ball

By the Morning Boat

In Dark New England Days

The White Rose Road

STRANGERS AND WAYFARERS.

A WINTER COURTSHIP.

The passenger and mail transportation between the towns of North Kilby
and Sanscrit Pond was carried on by Mr. Jefferson Briley, whose
two-seated covered wagon was usually much too large for the demands of
business. Both the Sanscrit Pond and North Kilby people were
stayers-at-home, and Mr. Briley often made his seven-mile journey in
entire solitude, except for the limp leather mail-bag, which he held
firmly to the floor of the carriage with his heavily shod left foot.
The mail-bag had almost a personality to him, born of long
association. Mr. Briley was a meek and timid-looking body, but he held
a warlike soul, and encouraged his fancies by reading awful tales of
bloodshed and lawlessness, in the far West. Mindful of stage robberies
and train thieves, and of express messengers who died at their posts,
he was prepared for anything; and although he had trusted to his own
strength and bravery these many years, he carried a heavy pistol under
his front-seat cushion for better defense. This awful w