ampering things when a man
is in a tight place. The servants gossiped, were insolent at times,
but in such a household there were many pickings. The Middleton
people, driving by at night within sound of the noise when the Four
Corners was garishly lit, would repeat the family story and recall old
Roper Ellwell, who lay in a green mound near his first church. But the
broker, the "village magnate," as his daughters called him, was
generous and free-handed in the parish. A "high liver" but "a good
fellow" was his reputation; so it was considered a good thing for
Middleton that the Ellwells had returned to the Four Corners.

From the serene frugal household of Roper Ellwell where the wife had
fitted boys "in the classical tongues" for Camberton, the family had
come to this uncertain state, feverish, like the fickle fluctuations
of the stock market; now prodigal and easy, again in a panicky
distress with dire fear of unknown depths of poverty and humiliation.
Whatever happened--reckless, with a philosophy that did not embrace
the morrow.

III

Roper second's set dined at Tony Lamb's in Camberton. For the most
part they belonged to the same club, the A. O., and were
congenial souls--young men, rich, from the great cities, who were
taking the Camberton degree as a brevet in the social profession. In
winter they could be found at the New York and the Boston hotels; in
summer at the Bar Harbor hotels.

A few men of different stamp were left over from a previous college
generation of A. O.'s, such as Jarvis Thornton, who had begun
when a boy out of school to dine with his old schoolfellows at Tony
Lamb's, and had kept it up from inertia and the loose liking of
college fellowship, long after his way had parted from that of the
present A. O.'s. Thornton had entered Camberton with all the
distinction that a well-connected Massachusetts family, easy
circumstances, and distinct scholarship would give. His course had
been a gentle current of prosperity. He took first a high degree in
the college, then a good degree in medicine. Now he was engaged in
pushing forward some biological work on which he had already published
a monograph and which had brought him membership in some learned
societies.

One day at the beginning of the long vacation, Roper Ellwell and he
found themselves alone at dinner. Young Ellwell was bored with the
prospect of his own companionship for a lonely drive to the country.

"I say, Thornton," he t