aymates, they gave no present indications. I found the
girls considerably older than I expected, the boys less
interesting than I hoped; but they all welcomed me with that
grave, unemotional hospitality of the village, and we talked, far
into the shadows, of our schooltime, the day that is never dead
while memory endures.

And so it came about that at the close of day I found myself
standing at the garden gate of the Eastmann cottage. Peleg
Eastmann had been our village postmaster, a grave, shy man, who
had received the federal office because the thrifty neighbors
agreed, irrespective of political feeling, that it was much less
expensive to give him the office than to support him and his two
daughters, the prettiest girls in our school. For they further
agreed that Peleg was a "shif'less sort o' critter" and never
could make a living, though he was a model postmaster and an
excellent citizen and neighbor. Hence, when it came Peleg's turn
to make the journey to the burying-ground in the village hearse,
the whole community of Meadowvale was scandalized by the
discovery that he had left his girls a comfortable little
fortune, enough to keep them in modest wealth. Meadowvale never
recovered from this shock. It felt that it had been victimized,
and that its tenderest sensibility had been violated, and when
his disconsolate daughters put up the granite shaft to their
father's memory, relating that he had been faithful and just, the
indignant political leader of the village remarked that it was
"profanation of Scriptur'."

Thirty years ago I had stood at this little gate with one of the
Eastmann girls, escorting her home from Stella Perkins's party. I
had attempted to kiss her good-night, and she had boxed my ears,
thus contributing a disagreeable finale to an otherwise pleasant
evening. Time is a great healer and I cherished no resentment at
this late day toward the repudiator of my caresses. In fact I
smiled in recollection of the incident as I walked up the
gravelled path and knocked at the door. I wondered if the same
vivacious, rosy-cheeked girl would come to meet me, and if I
should feel in duty bound to make honorable amends. The door was
opened by a tall, spare woman, who carried a lamp. The light
reflected directly on her features, showed a face that in any
other part of the world would be called hard; in New England it
is merely resolute. It was the face of a woman fifty years of
age, with massive chin, slightly