' stoppin'
an' robbin' 'em clean to the bone. Your money _or_ your life!" and he
flourished his stub of a whip over the sorrel mare.

"Landy me! you make me run all of a cold creep. Do tell somethin'
heartenin', this cold day. I shall dream bad dreams all night."

"They put on black crape over their heads," said the driver
mysteriously. "Nobody knows who most on 'em be, and like as not some
o' them fellows come o' good families. They've got so they stop the
cars, and go right through 'em bold as brass. I could make your hair
stand on end, Mis' Tobin,--I could _so!_"

"I hope none on 'em 'll git round our way, I'm sure," said Fanny
Tobin. "I don't want to see none on 'em in their crape bunnits comin'
after me."

"I ain't goin' to let nobody touch a hair o' your head," and
Mr. Briley moved a little nearer, and tucked in the buffaloes again.

"I feel considerable warm to what I did," observed the widow by way of
reward.

"There, I used to have my fears," Mr. Briley resumed, with an inward
feeling that he never would get to North Kilby depot a single man.
"But you see I hadn't nobody but myself to think of. I've got cousins,
as you know, but nothin' nearer, and what I've laid up would soon be
parted out; and--well, I suppose some folks would think o' me if
anything was to happen."

Mrs. Tobin was holding her cloud over her face,--the wind was sharp on
that bit of open road,--but she gave an encouraging sound, between a
groan and a chirp.

"'T wouldn't be like nothin' to me not to see you drivin' by," she
said, after a minute. "I shouldn't know the days o' the week. I says
to Susan Ellen last week I was sure 't was Friday, and she said no, 't
was Thursday; but next minute you druv by and headin' toward North
Kilby, so we found I was right."

"I've got to be a featur' of the landscape," said Mr. Briley
plaintively. "This kind o' weather the old mare and me, we wish we was
done with it, and could settle down kind o' comfortable. I've been
lookin' this good while, as I drove the road, and I've picked me out a
piece o' land two or three times. But I can't abide the thought o'
buildin',--'t would plague me to death; and both Sister Peak to North
Kilby and Mis' Deacon Ash to the Pond, they vie with one another to do
well by me, fear I'll like the other stoppin'-place best."

"_I_ shouldn't covet livin' long o' neither one o' them women,"
responded the passenger with some spirit. "I see some o' Mis' Peak's
cookin' to