nd looked slightly mysterious, as
he answered:

"I never inquire about the business of a guest. My calling is to
entertain strangers. If they are pleased with my house, and pay my
bills on presentation, I have no right to seek further. As a miller, I
never asked a customer, whether he raised, bought, or stole his wheat.
It was my business to grind it, and I took care to do it well. Beyond
that, it was all his own affair. And so it will be in my new calling. I
shall mind my own business and keep my own place."

Besides young Hammond and this Harvey Green, there were in the
bar-room, when I entered, four others besides the landlord. Among these
was a Judge Lyman--so he was addressed--a man between forty and fifty
years of age, who had a few weeks before received the Democratic
nomination for member of Congress. He was very talkative and very
affable, and soon formed a kind of centre of attraction to the bar-room
circle. Among other topics of conversation that came up was the new
tavern, introduced by the landlord, in whose mind it was, very
naturally, the uppermost thought.

"The only wonder to me is," said Judge Lyman, "that nobody had wit
enough to see the advantage of a good tavern in Cedarville ten years
ago, or enterprise enough to start one. I give our friend Slade the
credit of being a shrewd, far-seeing man; and, mark my word for it, in
ten years from to-day he will be the richest man in the county."

"Nonsense--Ho! ho!" Simon Slade laughed outright. "The richest man! You
forget Judge Hammond."

"No, not even Judge Hammond, with all deference for our clever friend
Willy," and Judge Lyman smiled pleasantly on the young man.

"If he gets richer, somebody will be poorer!" The individual who
tittered these words had not spoken before, and I turned to look at him
more closely. A glance showed him to be one of a class seen in all
bar-rooms; a poor, broken-down inebriate, with the inward power of
resistance gone--conscious of having no man's respect, and giving
respect to none. There was a shrewd twinkle in his eyes, as he fixed
them on Slade, that gave added force to the peculiar tone in which his
brief but telling sentence was uttered. I noticed a slight contraction
on the landlord's ample forehead, the first evidence I had yet seen of
ruffled feelings. The remark, thrown in so untimely (or timely, some
will say), and with a kind of prophetic malice, produced a temporary
pause in the conversation. No one answere