ght intended with humor, for Bowlder accompanied it
with the loud laughter of sylvan timidity, risking a joke. Harkless
nodded without the least apprehension of his meaning, and waved farewell
as Bowlder finally turned his attention to the mare. When the flop,
flop of her hoofs had died out, the journalist realized that the day was
silent no longer; it was verging into evening.

He dropped from the fence and turned his face toward town and supper. He
felt the light and life about him; heard the clatter of the blackbirds
above him; heard the homing bees hum by, and saw the vista of white road
and level landscape, framed on two sides by the branches of the grove,
a vista of infinitely stretching fields of green, lined here and there
with woodlands and flat to the horizon line, the village lying in their
lap. No roll of meadow, no rise of pasture land, relieved their serenity
nor shouldered up from them to be called a hill. A second great flock of
blackbirds was settling down over the Plattville maples. As they hung
in the fair dome of the sky below the few white clouds, it occurred to
Harkless that some supping god had inadvertently peppered his custard,
and now inverted and emptied his gigantic blue dish upon the earth,
the innumerable little black dots seeming to poise for a moment, then
floating slowly down from the heights.

A farm-bell rang in the distance, a tinkling coming small and mellow
from far away, and at the lonesomeness of that sound he heaved a long,
mournful sigh. The next instant he broke into laughter, for another bell
rang over the fields, the court-house bell in the Square. The first
four strokes were given with mechanical regularity, the pride of
the custodian who operated the bell being to produce the effect of a
clock-work bell such as he had once heard in the court-house at Rouen;
but the fifth and sixth strokes were halting achievements, as, after
four o'clock, he often lost count on the strain of the effort for
precise imitation. There was a pause after the sixth, then a dubious and
reluctant stroke--seven--a longer pause, followed by a final ring with
desperate decision--eight! Harkless looked at his watch; it was twenty
minutes of six.

As he crossed the court-house yard to the Palace Hotel, he stopped to
exchange a word with the bell-ringer, who, seated on the steps, was
mopping his brow with an air of hard-earned satisfaction.

"Good-evening, Schofields'," he said. "You came in strong on