st and relief with which
he turned to the stranger descending from the stage.

"Mr. Hollidew?" the latter inquired, with ill-concealed surprise.

Pompey Hollidew, the richest man in Greenstream, wore--as was customary
with him--a crumpled yellow shirt, open at his stringy throat, and
innocent of tie; his trousers, one time lavender, had faded to a
repulsive, colorless hue, and hung frayed about cheap, heavy shoes
fastened by copper rivets. An ancient cutaway of broadcloth, spotted and
greenish, with an incomplete mustering of buttons, drooped about his
heavy, bowed shoulders; while a weather-beaten derby, seemingly unbrushed
for countless, grimy years, completed his forlorn adornment.

His face was long, with vertical, pallid folds gathered loosely into a
chin frosted with unkempt silver; his mouth was lipless, close, shadowed
by an overhanging, swollen nose; and, from beneath deep, troubled brows,
pale blue eyes set close together regarded life skeptically, intently,
with appalling avidity, veiled yet discernible.

He disappeared, clutching the stranger's sleeve, with an effort at
geniality. Simmons' clerk ruefully tested the weight of a small, heavily
nailed box.

Lettice Hollidew slowly assembled her traveling effects. It was evident
that she wished to say something to Gordon, for she lingered, patently
playing with her gloves, directing at him bright, nervous glances from
under the straw brim of her hat. But she was forced to depart in silence,
for Buckley Simmons, in reply to the queries of the cause of his accident,
launched upon a loud, angry explanation of the obvious aspect of the
incident.

"The clumsy yap!" he pointedly exclaimed.

Gordon entered the group of which Buckley was the hub. "It was too bad to
spoil Buck for the girls," he pronounced coolly; "but he'll be after them
again in a couple of weeks."

He gazed with level disdain into the tempest gathering in Simmons' eyes
above the dark, spotted handkerchief. He paused, deliberately insolent,
challenging a rejoinder, until, none breaking the strained silence, he
swung about, and, at the horses' heads, led them to their stabling at
Peterman's Hotel. He passed the unpainted, wooden front of the office of
the _Greenstream Bugle_; the house of Senator Themeny in its lindens on a
spreading lawn; on the opposite side the mellow brick face of the
Courthouse under towering poplars, and Valentine Simmons' store.

Gordon stopped at the latter on his way