away.

"Oh, can't we go up street and see her, this afternoon?" said one of
the children.

"Who can that be?" said the mother, as an elderly,
half-official-looking man stopped his horse at the front gate and
alighted. The man left the horse unchecked to browse by the road-side,
and came to the door.

"Oh, it's you, Captain Nourse," said Wood, rising to open the netting
door, and holding out his hand. "Come to summons me as a witness in
something about the bank case, I suppose. Let me introduce Captain
Nourse, Mary," he said, "deputy sheriff. Sit down, Captain, and have
some dinner with us."

"No, I guess I won't set," said the captain. "I cal'lated not to eat
till I got home, in the middle o' the arternoon. No, I'll set down in
eye-shot of the mare, and read the paper while you eat."

"I hope they don't want me to testify anywhere to-day," said Wood;
"because my boat's half verdigris'd, and I want to finish her this
afternoon."

"No testimony to-day," said the captain. "Hi! hi! Kitty!" he called to
the mare, as she began to meander across the road; and he went out to
a tree by the front fence, and sat down on a green bench, beside a
work-basket and a half-finished child's dress, and read the country
paper which he had taken from the office as he came along.

After dinner Wood went out bare-headed, and leaned on the fence by the
captain. His wife stood just inside the door, looking out at them.

The "bank case" was the great sensation of the town, and Wood was one
of the main witnesses, for he had been taking the place of the absent
cashier when the safe was broken open and rifled, to the widespread
distress of depositors and stock-holders and the ruin of Hon. Edward
Clark, the president. Wood had locked the safe on the afternoon before
the eventful night, and had carried home the key with him, and he was
to testify to the contents of the safe as he had left it.

"I guess they're glad they've got such a witness as John," said his
wife to herself, as she looked at him fondly, "and I guess they think
there won't be much doubt about what he says."

"Well, Captain," said Wood, jocosely, breaking a spear of grass to
bits in his fingers, "I didn't know but you'd come to arrest me."

The captain calmly smiled as only a man can smile who has been
accosted with the same humorous remark a dozen times a day for twenty
years. He folded his paper carefully, put it in his pocket, took off
his spectacles and put them in t