. He liked, so easily, to
play oracle and wiseman; he liked the admiration called forth by a certain
theatrical prowess with the reins and whip.

On the occasions when he was too drunk to drive--not over often--a
substitute was quietly found until he recovered and little was said.
Gordon Makimmon was invaluable in a public charge, a trust--he had never
lost a penny of the funds he continually carried for deposit in the
Stenton banks; no insult had been successfully offered to any daughter of
Greenstream accompanying him without other care in the stage.

V

They rose steadily, crossing the roof of a ridge, and descended abruptly
beyond. Green prospects opened before them--a broad valley was disclosed,
with a broad, shallow stream dividing its meadows; scattered farmhouses,
orderly, prosperous, commanded their shorn acres. A mailbag was detached
and left at a crossroad in charge of two little girls, primly important,
smothered in identical, starched pink sunbonnets. The Greenstream stage
splashed through the shallow, shining ford; the ascent on the far side of
the valley imperceptibly began.

The sun was almost at the zenith; the shadow of the stage fell short and
sharp on the dry, loamy road; a brown film covered the horses and vehicle;
it sifted through the apparel of the passengers and coated their lips. The
rise to the roof of the succeeding range seemed interminable; the road
looped fields blue with buckwheat, groves of towering, majestic chestnut,
a rocky slope, where, by a crevice, a swollen and sluggish rattlesnake
dropped from sight.

At last, in the valley beyond, the half-way house, dinner and a change of
horses were reached. The forest swept down in an unbroken tide to the
porch of the isolated roadside tavern; a swift stream filled the wooden
structure with the ceaseless murmur of water. In the dusty, gold gloom of
a spacious stable Gordon unhitched his team. Outside, in a wooden trough,
he splashed his hands and face, then entered the dining-room.

A long table was occupied by an industrious company that broke the
absorbed silence only by explosive requests for particularized dishes.
Above the table hovered the wife of the proprietor, constantly waving a
fly brush--streamers of colored paper fastened to a slender stick--above
the heads of her husband and guests.

Gordon Makimmon ate largely and rapidly, ably seconded by the strange
passenger and Buckley Simmons. The priest, Merlier, ate sparin