would echo hollow on the warped and mellowing boards
of a tiny bridge, and there would be a momentary slip and gurgle of
water underneath, on down through the ferns. Joe felt steeped in calm.

Mr. Montgomery was not at home. Nor were the horses. They found they
were a week late. An old Negro whom they encountered just within the
paddock gate so informed them: "Yessuh. They done took 'em down t'
Louisville, las' Monday."

They left him scratching his kinky gray pate in meditation.

Uncle Buzz was disappointed. The little excursion was thus deprived
of its sparkle. There was a something about going out to see
racehorses----Well, at any rate, Uncle Buzz was disappointed. He
showed it on the way home. Perhaps the fading sunlight, the
lengthening shadows, had something to do with it. And the wind, too,
that had come with the morning and kept up its bluster all day, had
died to a whisper, so that a cluster of last year's corn-stalks
standing in a fence corner were merely indifferently waggling. It may
have been just a reflection of mood, but as they were rounding the
brow of the hill above Bloomfield and could see the dip of the meadows
to the creek and the white fences and outbuildings of the Fair Grounds
away off to the right, the old horse stopped and gently switched his
tail. And Uncle Buzz let him stop.

"Do you know," he said, and his voice was reminiscent and uncertain,
"I've been thinking lately we ought to sell the place and move to
town."

Joe looked up at him curiously. "Why do you think that, Uncle Buzz?"

Mr. Mosby pondered, as the horse, feeling perhaps the slight pricks of
conscience, resumed his way at an imperceptible walk. "Well," he said,
"this country is not what it used to be. All the other towns, Guests,
Fillmore--all the rest of them--are on the railroad or interurban.
They have the advantage of us."

Joe was watching him unperceived. The old man's face had lost its
aggressive jauntiness. There was an odd pucker about the brows. His
mouth, above the well-trimmed goatee, seemed small and indecisive. Joe
could see the clear blue veins on the back of the hand as it
listlessly held the lines.

"Business has been a bit slack this past year. Seems like it never got
over the war. And prices are high, too. Can't get a nigger to do a
day's work for you for less than three dollars now," he added
fiercely. And then lapsing into his former vein again, "I wonder----"

Joe waited. "Wonder what, Uncle Buzz?