days, and I regret to
add that Roving Kate was on many roads. The case of Amos Grimshaw bears
a striking resemblance to that of young Bickford, executed long ago in
Malone, for the particulars of which case I am indebted to my friend,
Mr. H.L. Ives of Potsdam.

THE AUTHOR.

CONTENTS

BOOK ONE

WHICH IS THE STORY OF THE CANDLE AND COMPASS

CHAPTER
I The Melon Harvest
II I Meet the Silent Woman and Silas Wright, Jr.
III We Go to Meeting and See Mr. Wright Again
IV Our Little Strange Companion
V In the Light of the Candles
VI The Great Stranger
VII My Second Peril
VIII My Third Peril

BOOK TWO

WHICH IS THE STORY OF THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS

IX In Which I Meet Other Great Men
X I Meet President Van Buren and Am Cross-Examined by Mr. Grimshaw
XI A Party and--My Fourth Peril?
XII The Spirit of Michael Henry and Others
XIII The Thing and Other Things
XIV The Bolt Falls

BOOK THREE

WHICH IS THE STORY OF THE CHOSEN WAYS

XV Uncle Peabody's Way and Mine
XVI I Use My Own Compass at a Fork in the Road
XVII The Man with the Scythe
XVIII I Start in a Long Way
XIX On the Summit
Epilogue

BOOK ONE

Which is the Story of the Candle and the Compass

CHAPTER I

THE MELON HARVEST

Once upon a time I owned a watermelon. I say once because I never did it
again. When I got through owning that melon I never wanted another. The
time was 1831; I was a boy of seven and the melon was the first of all
my harvests. Every night and morning I watered and felt and surveyed my
watermelon. My pride grew with the melon and, by and by, my uncle tried
to express the extent and nature of my riches by calling me a
mellionaire.

I didn't know much about myself those days except the fact that my name
was Bart Baynes and, further, that I was an orphan who owned a
watermelon and a little spotted hen and lived on Rattle road in a
neighborhood called Lickitysplit. I lived with my Aunt Deel and my
Uncle Peabody Baynes on a farm. They were brother and sister--he about
thirty-eight and she a little beyond the far-distant goal of forty.

My father and mother died in a scourge of diphtheria that swept the
neighborhood when I was a boy of five. For a time my Aunt Deel seemed to
blame me for my loss.

"No wonder they're dead," she used to say, when out of patience with me
and--well I suppose that I must have had an unusual talent for all the
noisy arts of child