the
professional convention was that they were Elbridge's), clothed them
with fond curses as with a garment. He was himself, more literally
speaking, clothed in an old ulster, much frayed about the wrists and
skirts, and polished across the middle of the back by rubbing against
counters and window-sills. He was bearded like a patriarch, and he wore
a rusty fur cap pulled down over his ears, though it was not very cold;
its peak rested on the point of his nose, so that he had to throw his
head far back to get Elbridge in the field of his vision. Elbridge had
on a high hat, and was smoothly buttoned to his throat in a plain
coachman's coat of black; Northwick had never cared to have him make a
closer approach to a livery; and it is doubtful if Elbridge would have
done it if he had asked or ordered it of him. He deferred to Northwick
in a measure as the owner of his horses, but he did not defer to him in
any other quality.

"Say, Elbridge, when you goin' to give me that old hat o' your'n?" asked
the hackman in a shout that would have reached Elbridge if he had been
half a mile off instead of half a rod.

"What do you want of another second-hand hat, you ---- ---- old fool,
you?" asked Elbridge in his turn.

The hackman doubled himself down for joy, and slapped his leg; at the
sound of a whistle to the eastward, he pulled himself erect again, and
said, as if the fact were one point gained, "Well, there she blows, any
way." Then he went round the corner of the station to be in full
readiness for any chance passenger the train might improbably bring him.

No one alighted but Mr. Gerrish and Northwick. Mr. Gerrish found it most
remarkable that he should have come all the way from Boston on the same
train with Northwick and not known it; but Northwick was less disposed
to wonder at it. He passed rapidly beyond the following of Mr. Gerrish,
and mounted to the place Elbridge made for him in the cutter. While
Elbridge was still tucking the robes about their legs, Northwick drove
away from the station, and through the village up to the rim of the
highland that lies between Hatboro' and South Hatboro'. The bare line
cut along the horizon where the sunset lingered in a light of liquid
crimson, paling and passing into weaker violet tints with every moment,
but still tenderly flushing the walls of the sky, and holding longer the
accent of its color where a keen star had here and there already pierced
it and shone quivering through