here was no conversation. The spring flood of the Noda tumbled past the
village in a series of falls, and the earth was jarred, and there was an
everlasting grumble in the air. The loungers stared with great interest
when the drive master and the girl went picking their way along the
muddy road.

The volunteer squire delivered the traveling bag into the hand of Martin
Brophy, who was on the porch of the tavern, his eye cocked to see what
guests the train had delivered into his net. Mr. Brophy handled the bag
gingerly and was greatly flustered when the self-possessed young lady
demanded a room with a bath.

Latisan did not wait to listen to Brophy's apologies in behalf of his
tavern's facilities. He touched his cap to the discomposing stranger and
marched up to the big house on the ledges; he was not approaching with
alacrity what was ahead of him.

He had arrived in Adonia from headwaters the previous evening, and had
spent as much of that evening as his endurance would allow, listening to
Echford Flagg, sitting in his big chair and cursing the fetters of fate
and paralysis. Unable to use his limbs, he exercised his tongue all the
more.

That forenoon and again in the afternoon Latisan had gone to the big
house and had submitted himself to unreasonable complaints when he
reported on what was going forward at headwaters. He had ventured to
expostulate when the master told him how the thing ought to be done.

"No two drive bosses operate the same, sir. And the whole situation is
different this season."

"It was your offer to be my right hand, young Latisan--and I'm drive
boss still! You move as I order and command."

Ward was wondering how long the Latisan temperament could be restrained.
In the matter of Craig at the tavern the scion of old John had been
afforded disquieting evidence that the temperament was not to be trusted
too far.

He entered the mansion without knocking; it was the custom.

Flagg was reading aloud from a big Bible for which Rickety Dick had
rigged props on the arm of the chair. Dick was sitting on a low stool,
the sole auditor of the master's declamation. The old servitor was
peeling onions from a dish between his knees; therefore, his tears of
the moment were of questionable nature.

The caller stood for a time outside the open door of the room, averse to
tempting the hazard of Flagg's temper by an interruption of what seemed
to be absorbing all the attention of the old man.

"'My fle