f the gorge, adown the trough of which a stream
unknown to the dry weather was tumbling with a suggestion of flight
and trouble and fear in its precipitancy. "I'm well, well as a bear;
and I'm getting fat as a bear, doing nothing. Feel my arm. I'm just
following the example of the bears about this time of the
year,--hibernating, going into winter quarters. I'm going to get this
place into good shape to sell some day. I have bought that land over
there all down the gorge from Squire Helm; and last July I bought all
that slope at the tax sale, but that is subject to redemption; and
then I am trying to buy in the rear of my wigwam, too,--a thousand
acres."

"Ye kin sell it higher ef the road goes through," said Hanway
doubtfully.

It seemed very odd that the man who protested that his stay in the
mountains was so temporary, and whose stay in the world was evidently
so short, should spend his obviously scanty substance in purchase
after purchase of the worthless mountain wilderness. To be sure, the
land was cheap, but it cost something. And Hanway looked again at the
frayed cuffs and elbows of the red smoking-jacket. In his infrequent
visits to Colbury, he had noted the variance of the men's costumes
with the mountain standard of dress. He saw naught like this, but he
knew that if ever the sober burghers lent themselves to this sort of
fantastic toggery, it was certainly whole.

"Say, my friend, what day does the jury of view hold forth?" Selwyn
called out after the slouching figure, striped with the diagonal lines
of rain and flouted by the wind, tramping across the weeds of the yard
to his horse.

"Nex' Chewsday week," Hanway responded hoarsely.

"Well, if this weather holds out, it is to be hoped that the gentlemen
of the jury are web-footed!" Selwyn exclaimed.

He shut the door, and as he went back to his lonely hearth his eyes
fell upon the letter lying on the table.

"Now," he said as he took it again in his hand, "if fate should truly
cut such a caper as to make my fortune in this forlorn exile, I could
find it in my heart to laugh the longest and the loudest at the joke."

VI.

If it had been within the power of the worshipful Quarterly County
Court to issue a mandamus to compel fair weather on that notable
Tuesday when the jury of view were to set forth, the god of day could
scarcely have obeyed with more alacrity that peremptory writ once
poetically ranked as "one of the flowers of the crown." The bu