flags and bunting it
had held in '61, Ephraim thought that city crueller than war itself. And
Cynthia thought so too, as she clung to Jethro's arm between the
carriages and the clanging street-cars, and looked upon the riches and
poverty around her. There entered her soul that night a sense of that
which is the worst cruelty of all--the cruelty of selfishness. Every man
going his own pace, seeking to gratify his own aims and desires,
unconscious and heedless of the want with which he rubs elbows. Her
natural imagination enhanced by her life among the hills, the girl
peopled the place in the street lights with all kinds of strange
evil-doers of whose sins she knew nothing, adventurers, charlatans, alert
cormorants, who preyed upon the unwary. She shrank closer to Ephraim from
a perfumed lady who sat next to her in the car, and was thankful when at
last they found themselves in the corridor of the Astor House standing
before the desk.

Hotel clerks, especially city ones, are supernatural persons. This one
knew Jethro, greeted him deferentially as Judge Bass, and dipped the pen
in the ink and handed it to him that he might register. By half-past nine
Cynthia was dreaming of Lem Hallowell and Coniston, and Lem was driving a
yellow street-car full of queer people down the road to Brampton.

There were few guests in the great dining room when they breakfasted at
seven the next morning. New York, in the sunlight, had taken on a more
kindly expression, and those who were near by smiled at them and seemed
full of good-will. Persons smiled at them that day as they walked the
streets or stood spellbound before the shop windows, and some who saw
them felt a lump rise in their throats at the memories they aroused of
forgotten days: the three seemed to bring the very air of the hills with
them into that teeming place, and many who, had come to the city with
high hopes, now in the shackles of drudgery; looked after them. They were
a curious party, indeed: the straight, dark girl with the light in her
eyes and the color in her cheeks; the quaint, rugged figure of the
elderly man in his swallow-tail and brass buttons and square-toed,
country boots; and the old soldier hobbling along with the aid of his
green umbrella, clad in the blue he had loved and suffered for. Had they
remained until Sunday, they might have read an amusing account of their
visit,--of Jethro's suppers of crackers and milk at the Astor House, of
their progress along