"don't stand on the order of your going, but go at once," and he sat down
on the steps with his back to the boy, who heard these strange terms of
command with a face of vague envy.

The noonday sunshine lay in a thin, silvery glister on the slopes of the
mountain before them, and in the brilliant light the colossal forms of
the Lion's Head were prismatically outlined against the speckless sky.
Through the silvery veil there burned here and there on the densely
wooded acclivities the crimson torch of a maple, kindled before its time,
but everywhere else there was the unbroken green of the forest, subdued
to one tone of gray. The boy heard the stranger fetch his breath deeply,
and then expel it in a long sigh, before he could bring himself to obey
an order that seemed to leave him without the choice of disobedience. He
came back and found the stranger as he had left him. "Come on, if you
want your dinner," he said; and the stranger rose and looked at him.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Thomas Jefferson Durgin."

"Well, Thomas Jefferson Durgin, will you show me the way to the pump and
bring a towel along?"

"Want to wash?"

"I haven't changed my mind."

"Come along, then." The boy made a movement as if to lead the way
indoors; the stranger arrested him.

"Here. Take hold of this and put it out of the rush of travel somewhere."
He lifted his burden from where he had dropped it in the road and swung
it toward the boy, who ran down the steps and embraced it. As he carried
it toward a corner of the porch he felt of the various shapes and
materials in it.

Then he said, "Come on!" again, and went before the guest through the dim
hall running midway of the house to the door at the rear. He left him on
a narrow space of stone flagging there, and ran with a tin basin to the
spring at the barn and brought it back to him full of the cold water.

"Towel," he said, pulling at the family roller inside the little porch at
the door; and he watched the stranger wash his hands and face, and then
search for a fresh place on the towel.

Before the stranger had finished the father and the elder brother came
out, and, after an ineffectual attempt to salute him, slanted away to the
barn together. The woman, in-doors, was more successful, when he found
her in the dining-room, where the boy showed him. The table was set for
him alone, and it affected him as if the family had been hurried away
from it that he might have it to himse