other or sister, maybe?"

"No," answered Wallingford, smiling. "A bedroom and sitting-room and a
bath for myself."

"Sitting-room?" repeated the proprietor. "You know, you can sit in
this office till the 'leven-ten's in every night, and then the
parlor's--" He hesitated, and, seeing the unresponsive look upon his
guest's face, he added hastily: "Oh, well, I reckon I can fix it. We
can move a bed out of number five, and I'll have the bath-tub and the
water sent up as soon as you need it. This is wash-day, you know, and
they've got the rinse water in it. I reckon you won't want it before
to-night, though."

"No," said J. Rufus quietly, and sighed.

Immediately after lunch, J. Rufus, inquiring again for the proprietor,
was told by Molly that he was in the barn, indicating its direction
with a vague wave of her thumb. Wallingford went out to the enormous
red barn, its timbers as firm as those of the hotel were flimsy, its
lines as rigidly perpendicular as those of the hotel were out of
plumb, its doors and windows as square-angled as those of the hotel
were askew. Across its wide front doors, opening upon the same wide,
cracked old stone sidewalk as the hotel, was a big sign kept fresh and
bright: "J. H. Ranger, Livery and Sales Stable." Here Wallingford
found the proprietor and the brawny boy in the middle of the wide barn
floor, in earnest consultation over the bruised hock of a fine, big,
draft horse.

"I'd like to get a good team and a driver for this afternoon,"
observed Wallingford.

"You've come to the right place," declared Jim Ranger heartily, and
when he straightened up he no longer looked awkward and out of place,
as he had in the hotel office, but seemed a graceful part of the
surrounding picture. "Bob, get out that little sorrel team and hitch
it up to the new buggy for the gentleman," and as Bob sprang away with
alacrity he turned to Wallingford. "They're not much to look at, that
sorrel team," he explained, "but they can go like a couple of rats,
all day, at a good, steady clip, up hill and down."

"Fine," said Wallingford, who was somewhat of a connoisseur in horses,
and he surveyed the under-sized, lithe-limbed, rough-coated sorrels
with approval as they were brought stamping out of their stalls,
though, as he climbed into his place, he regretted that they were not
more in keeping with the handsome buggy.

"Which way?" asked Bob, as he gathered up the reins.

"The country just outside of town, i