g at
the gate.

"There is Leon now; I will ask him to walk part way home with me. It
is growing dark, and you know," she added, laughing, "how timid I
am!"

Mrs. Davitt smiled in answer to the laugh, for Winifred's daring was
the talk of the countryside. She dried her eyes, and peered over her
spectacles at her visitor as she picked her way among the chickens,
feathered and human, who thronged about the doorstep, to the spot
where Leonard stood, listlessly hanging over the gate gazing idly up
and down the road.

Mrs. Davitt's heart beat anxiously as she marked the girl stop to
speak to him, and when at last she saw him turn and walk beside her up
the road, followed suspiciously by Paddy with the basket in his mouth,
she burst out into a tearful torrent of joy and thanksgiving.

CHAPTER V

THE OLD SHOP

"Ah! poor Real Life, which I love, can I make others share
the delight I find in thy foolish and insipid face?"

The sun was already low in the west, when Flint and Brady, having
supped heartily on boiled lobster and corn bread, lighted their pipes
and strolled toward the door of the tiny shop which leaned up against
the inn as if for support. A bird, looking down upon it in his flight,
might have mistaken it for some great mud-turtle, so close did it
sprawl along the ground.

For some years it had served as a turkey-house on the farm; but as
Marsden had begun to discover possibilities of profit in a shop which
should both draw custom to the inn, and find customers in the chance
guests of the tavern, he had turned his attention to the work of
transforming the poultry-house into a village store, and had been
surprised to find how well it adapted itself to its new purpose. True,
the beams ran across only a few inches above Marsden's head; but that
was rather an advantage than otherwise, for they thus made an
excellent substitute for counters, and the wares were well displayed
and within easy reach. Along one beam hung a row of boots of every
style and size,--from giant rubbers, reaching to the thighs, in which
the Nepaug farmers went wading for seaweed fertilizer, to the clumsy
baby shoes, jauntily set off with a scarlet tassel at the top, in that
pathetic effort of the poor to express in their children's dress the
poetry so scantily supplied in their own lives. Another beam was hung
with wooden pails, and a third gleamed with the ref