ssing, closed when their owners (more tactful than Mr.
Bardlock) looked a second time.

Old Tom Martin, still perched alone On his high seat, saw them standing
by the tent-pole, and watched them from under his rusty hat brim. "I
reckon it's be'n three or four thousand years since I was young," he
sighed to himself; then, pushing his hat still further down over his
eyes: "I don't believe I'd ort to rightly look on at that." He
sighed again as he rose, and gently spoke the name of his dead wife:
"Marjie,--it's be'n lonesome, sometimes. I reckon you're mighty tired
waitin' for me, ever since sixty-four--yet maybe not; Ulysses S. Grant's
over on your side now, and perhaps you've got acquainted with him; you
always thought a good deal more of him than you did of me."

"Do you see that tall old man up there?" said Helen, nodding her head
toward Martin. "I think I should like to know him. I'm sure I like him."

"That is old Tom Martin."

"I know."

"I was sorry and ashamed about all that conspicuousness and shouting.
It must have been very unpleasant for you; it must have been so, for a
stranger. Please try to forgive me for letting you in for it."

"But I liked it. It was 'all in the family,' and it was so jolly and
good-natured, and that dear old man was so bright. Do you know," she
said softly, "I don't think I'm such a stranger--I--I think I love all
these people a great deal--in spite of having known them only two days."

At that a wild exhilaration possessed him. He wanted to shake hands
with everybody in the tent, to tell them all that he loved them with
his whole heart, but, what was vastly more important, _she_ loved them a
great deal--in spite of having known them only two days!

He made the horses prance on the homeward drive, and once, when she
told him that she had read a good many of his political columns in the
"Herald," he ran them into a fence. After this it occurred to him that
they were nearing their destination and had come at a perversely sharp
gait; so he held the roans down to a snail's pace (if it be true that a
snail's natural gait is not a trot) for the rest of the way, while they
talked of Tom Meredith and books and music, and discovered that they
differed widely about Ibsen.

They found Mr. Fisbee in the yard, talking to Judge Briscoe. As they
drove up, and before the horses had quite stopped, Helen leaped to the
ground and ran to the old scholar with both her hands outstretched to
him. He