top of a pine wood; and it seemed
appropriate. Emerson would have liked it himself."

The sheet-iron stove had grown red hot and Harwood flung open the door.
The glow from the fire fell full upon the dark, rugged face and the
white hair of the minister, who was sitting on a soap-box with his
elbows on his knees. In a gray flannel shirt he looked like a lumberman
of the North. An unusual tenderness had stolen into his lean,
Indian-like face.

"That was a long while after that ride in the Sierras. Let me see, it
was more than twenty years ago,--I can't just place the year; no
difference. I'd gone up into the Adirondacks to see my folks. I told you
about our farm once, Allen,--not far from John Brown's old place. It
isn't as lonesome up there now as it was when I was a boy; there were
bully places to hide up there; I used to think of that when I was
reading Scott and Cooper. Brown could have hid there forever if he'd got
out of Virginia after the raid. Nowadays there are too many hotels, and
people go canoeing in ironed collars. No good. My folks were all gone
even then, and strangers lived in my father's house. From the old place
I moved along, walking and canoeing it. Stopped on Saturday in a
settlement where there was a church that hadn't been preached in since
anybody could remember. Preached for 'em on Sunday. An old Indian died,
while I was there, and I baptized and buried him. But that wasn't what
kept me. There was a young woman staying at the small boarding-house
where I stopped--place run by a man and his wife. Stranger had brought
her there early in the summer. City people--they told the folks they
came from New York. They were young, well-appearing folks--at least the
girl was. The man had gone off and left her there, and she was going to
have a child soon and was terribly ill. They called me in one day when
they thought the woman was dying. The country doctor wasn't much
good--an old fellow who didn't know that anything particular had
happened in his profession since Harvey discovered the circulation of
the blood. I struck off to Saranac and got a city doctor to go and look
at the woman. Nice chap he was, too. He stayed there till the woman's
troubles were over. Daughter born and everything all right. She never
mentioned the man who had left her there. Wouldn't answer the doctor's
questions and didn't tell me anything either. Strange business, just to
drop in on a thing like that."

It occurred to Harwood