onform to
an exaggerated, passing fashion, a flaring china silk tie with a broadly
displayed handkerchief to match, yellow-red shoes with wide ribbands, and
a stiff, claret-colored felt hat.

Gordon Makimmon, with secret dissatisfaction, compared himself with this
sartorial model. Gordon's attire, purely serviceable, had apparently taken
on a protective coloring from the action of time and the elements; his
shirt had faded from a bright buff to a nondescript shade which blended
with what had once been light corduroy trousers; his heavy shoes, treated
only the evening before to a coat of preservative grease, were now covered
with muck; and, pulled over his eyes, a shapeless canvas hat completed the
list of the visible items of his appearance.

He swore moodily to himself as he considered the picture he must present
to the dapper youth and immaculate girl behind him. He should have
remembered that Lettice Hollidew would be returning from school to-day,
and at least provided an emergency collar. His sister Clare was always
scolding him about his clothes ... but Clare's was very gentle scolding.

A species of uncomfortable defiance, a studied contempt for appearance,
possessed him: he was as good any day as Buckley Simmons, the clothes on
whose back had probably been stripped from the desperate need of some lean
mountain inhabitant trading at the parental Simmons' counter. The
carefully cherished sense of injury grew within him; he suspected
innuendoes, allusions to his garb, in the half-heard conversation behind
him; he spoke to his horses in hard, sharp tones, and, without reason,
swept the whip across their ears.

III

Meanwhile, they drew steadily over the plain; the mountains before them
gradually lost their aspect of mere silhouette; depths were discernible;
the blue dissolved to green, to towering slopes dense with foliage.
Directly before them a dark shadow steadily grew darker, until it was
resolved into a cleft through the range. They drew nearer and nearer to
the pierced barrier, the road mounted perceptibly, the trees thickened by
the wayside. A covey of dun partridge fluttered out of the underbrush.

The sun was high in a burning grey vault, and flooded the plain with
colorless, bright light. The stage paused before entering the opening in
the rocky wall; the stranger in the rear seat turned for a comprehensive,
last survey. Simmering in a calorific envelope the distant roofs and
stacks of Stenton