d a
town-hall, about five years back, and the first meeting they held in it
they voted to change the name,--Lumberville WA'N'T a name,--and it's
Lapham now."

"Isn't it somewhere up in that region that they get the old Brandon
red?" asked Bartley.

"We're about ninety miles from Brandon. The Brandon's a good paint,"
said Lapham conscientiously. "Like to show you round up at our place
some odd time, if you get off."

"Thanks. I should like it first-rate. WORKS there?"

"Yes; works there. Well, sir, just about the time I got started, the
war broke out; and it knocked my paint higher than a kite. The thing
dropped perfectly dead. I presume that if I'd had any sort of
influence, I might have got it into Government hands, for gun-carriages
and army wagons, and may be on board Government vessels. But I hadn't,
and we had to face the music. I was about broken-hearted, but m'wife
she looked at it another way. 'I guess it's a providence,' says she.
'Silas, I guess you've got a country that's worth fighting for. Any
rate, you better go out and give it a chance.' Well, sir, I went. I
knew she meant business. It might kill her to have me go, but it would
kill her sure if I stayed. She was one of that kind. I went. Her
last words was, 'I'll look after the paint, Si.' We hadn't but just one
little girl then,--boy'd died,--and Mis' Lapham's mother was livin'
with us; and I knew if times DID anyways come up again, m'wife'd know
just what to do. So I went. I got through; and you can call me
Colonel, if you want to. Feel there!" Lapham took Bartley's thumb and
forefinger and put them on a bunch in his leg, just above the knee.
"Anything hard?"

"Ball?"

Lapham nodded. "Gettysburg. That's my thermometer. If it wa'n't for
that, I shouldn't know enough to come in when it rains."

Bartley laughed at a joke which betrayed some evidences of wear. "And
when you came back, you took hold of the paint and rushed it."

"I took hold of the paint and rushed it--all I could," said Lapham,
with less satisfaction than he had hitherto shown in his autobiography.
"But I found that I had got back to another world. The day of small
things was past, and I don't suppose it will ever come again in this
country. My wife was at me all the time to take a partner--somebody
with capital; but I couldn't seem to bear the idea. That paint was
like my own blood to me. To have anybody else concerned in it was
like--well, I don't know