a," he waved a hand behind him.
"And--you look a little warm and tired. If your business is not of too
pressing a nature--have you----" he broke off, amazed at his helpless
formality in the matter--"have you come far?"

And he wondered immediately how the boy would receive that suggestion
that he hesitate, there with the "city" in front of him, a fairy-tale
to be explored. And again he was allowed to catch a glimpse of age-old
spirit--a glimpse of a man-sized self-discipline--beneath the childish
exterior.

The boy hesitated a moment, but it was his uncertainty as to just what
Caleb's invitation had offered, and not the lure of the town which made
him pause. He took one step forward.

"I been comin' since last Friday," he explained. "I been comin' daown
river for three days naow--and I been comin' fast!"

Again that measuring, level glance.

"An' I ain't got no business--yit," he went on. "Thet's what I aim to
locate, after I've hed a chance to look around a trifle. But I am
tired a little, an' so if you mean thet you're askin' me to stop for a
minit--if you mean thet you're askin' me that--why, then . . . then, I
guess I don't mind if I do!"

"That's what I mean," said Caleb.

And the little figure preceded him across his soft, cropped lawn.

CHAPTER II

THE LOGICAL CUSTODIAN

Caleb Hunter had never married, and even now, at the age of forty and
odd, in particularly mellow moments he was liable to confess that,
while matrimony no doubt offered a far wider field for both general
excitement and variety, as far as he himself was concerned, he felt
that his bachelor condition had points of excellence too obvious to be
treated with contumely. Perhaps the fact that Sarah Hunter, four years
his senior, had kept so well oiled the cogs of the domestic machinery
of the white place on the hill that their churnings had never been
evidenced may have been in part an answer to his contentment.

For Sarah Hunter, too, had never married. To the townspeople who had
never dared to try to storm the wall of her apparent frigidity, or been
able quite to understand her aloof austerity, she was little more than
a weekly occurence as dependable as the rising and setting of the sun
itself. Every Sunday morning a rare vision of stately dignity for all
her tininess, assisted by Caleb, she descended from the Hunter equipage
to enter the portals of the Morrison Baptist church. After the service
she reappeared and, havi