orch in her muslin
morning panoply.

"He is the gentleman who is to marry the eldest daughter of Captain
Carroll," replied Anderson.

"Do you know him?"

"No."

"He bowed."

"I suppose he thought he recognized me."

"He looks old enough to be her grandfather, but he looks like a fine
man. I hope she will make him a good wife. It is a risk for a man of
his age, marrying a little young thing. I wonder why Samson Rawdy was
bringing him from the station. Strange the Carroll carriage didn't
meet him, wasn't it?"

"Perhaps they were not expecting him," replied Randolph, which was
true.

The carriage occupied by Major Arms and Samson Rawdy overtook Ina and
Charlotte before they had walked far, in front of Drake's drug-store.
They had stopped in there for soda, in fact, and were just coming out.

"Why, there's Major Arms!" cried Charlotte, so loudly that some
lounging men in the drug-store heard her. Drake, Amidon, and the
postmaster, who had just stopped, stood in the doorway, with no
attempt to disguise their interest, and watched Major Arms spring out
of the carriage like a boy, kiss his sweetheart, utterly unmindful of
their observance, then assist the sisters to the back seat, and
spring to the front himself.

"Pretty spry for an old boy," remarked the postmaster as the carriage
rolled away.

"Oh, he's Southern," returned Amidon, easily. "That is why. Catch a
Yankee his age with joints as limber. The cold winters here stiffen
folk up quick after they get middle-aged."

"You don't seem very stiff in the joints," said Drake, jocularly.
"Guess you are near as old as that man."

"I'm a right smart stiffer than I'd been ef I'd stayed South,"
replied Amidon.

Then the postmaster wondered, as Mrs. Anderson had done, why Major
Arms was driving up with Samson Rawdy rather than in the Carroll
carriage, and the others opined, as Randolph had done, that they had
not expected him.

"I don't see, for my part, what they get to feed him on when he
comes," said Amidon, wisely.

The postmaster and Drake looked at him with expressions like
hunting-dogs, although a certain wisdom as to his meaning was evident
in both faces.

"I suppose it's getting harder and harder for them to get credit,"
said Drake.

"Harder," returned Amidon. "I guess it is. I had it from Strauss this
morning, that he wouldn't let them have a pound of beef without cash,
and I know that Abbot stopped giving them anything some time ago."

"How