your young people see this volume,"
Mr. Clement said; "I trust you read it yourself, however, and found
something to please you in it. I am sure you are safe from being harmed
by any such book. Didn't you have to finish it, Deacon, after you had
once begun?"

"Well,--I--I--perused a consid'able portion of the work," the Deacon
answered, in a way that led Mr. Clement to think he had not stopped much
short of _Finis_. "Anything new in the city?"

"Nothing except what you've all had,--Confederate States establishing an
army and all that,--not very new either. What has been going on here
lately, Deacon?"

"Well, Mr. Lindsay, not a great deal. My new barn is pretty nigh done.
I've got as fine a litter of pigs as ever you see. I don't know whether
you're a judge of pigs or no. The Hazard gal's come back, spilt, pooty
much, I guess. Been to one o' them fashionable schools,--I've heerd that
she's learnt to dance. I've heerd say that that Hopkins boy's round the
Posey gal,--come to think, she's the one you went with some when you was
here,--I'm gettin' kind o' forgetful. Old Doctor Hurlbut's pretty
low,--ninety-four year old,--born in '67,--folks ain't ginerally very
spry after they're ninety, but he held out wonderful."

"How's Mr. Bradshaw?"

"Well, the young squire, he's off travellin' somewhere in the West, or
to Washin'ton, or somewhere else,--I don't jestly know where. They say
that he's follerin' up the courts in the business about old Malachi's
estate. I don' know much about it."

* * * * *

The news got round Oxbow Village very speedily that Mr. Clement Lindsay,
generally considered the accepted lover of Miss Susan Posey, had arrived
in that place. Now it had come to be the common talk of the village that
young Gifted Hopkins and Susan Posey were getting to be mighty thick
with each other, and the prevailing idea was that Clement's visit had
reference to that state of affairs. Some said that Susan had given her
young man the mitten, meaning thereby that she had signified that his
services as a suitor were dispensed with. Others thought there was only
a wavering in her affection for her lover, and that he feared for her
constancy, and had come to vindicate his rights.

Some of the young fellows, who were doubtless envious of Gifted's
popularity with the fair sex, attempted in the most unjustifiable manner
to play upon his susceptible nature. One of them informed him that he
had se