wed, casting furtive looks backward over their
shoulders. Under a tree at the back of the lot they conferred together,
all the while shooting quick diffident glances toward where he stood. It
was plain something had put a blight upon their spirits; also, even at
this distance, they radiated a sort of inarticulate suspicion--a
suspicion of which plainly he was the object.

For long years Mr. Stackpole's faculties for observation of the motives
and actions of his fellows had been sheathed. Still, disuse had not
altogether dulled them. Constant introspection had not destroyed his
gift for speculation. It was rusted, but still workable. He had read
aright Squire Jonas' stupefaction, the watchmaker's ludicrous alarm. He
now read aright the chill which the very sight of his altered
mien--cheerful and sprightly where they had expected grim aloofness--had
thrown upon the spirits of the ball players. Well, he could understand
it all. The alteration in him, coming without prior warning, had
startled them, frightened them, really. Well, that might have been
expected. The way had not been paved properly for the transformation. It
would be different when the _Daily Evening News_ came out. He would go
back home--he would wait. When they had read what was in the paper
people would not avoid him or flee from him. They would be coming into
his house to wish him well, to reestablish old relations with him. Why,
it would be almost like holding a reception. He would be to those of his
own age as a friend of their youth, returning after a long absence to
his people, with the dour stranger who had lived in his house while he
was away now driven out and gone forever.

He turned about and he went back home and he waited. But for a while
nothing happened, except that in the middle of the afternoon Aunt Kassie
unaccountably disappeared. She was gone when he left his seat on the
front porch and went back to the kitchen to give her some instruction
touching on supper. At dinnertime, entering his dining room, he had
without conscious intent whistled the bars of an old air, and at that
she had dropped a plate of hot egg bread and vanished into the pantry,
leaving the spilt fragments upon the floor. Nor had she returned. He had
made his meal unattended. Now, while he looked for her, she was hurrying
down the alley, bound for the home of her preacher. She felt the need of
his holy counsels and the reading of scriptural passages. She was used
to queer