g the window, he
scattered a bunch of handbills among them, which set them all to
scrambling, and, when they had caught the bills, to struggling with
large and small type which announced that an unrivalled photographer
would be in that vicinity in a very few days with his beautiful
travelling-car, giving everybody an opportunity of securing such
tin-types and photographs as only the large cities turned out, and at
the lowest possible prices.

Presently the photographer appeared at his own door and looked abroad.
The tender spring morning, though it glorified surrounding woods and
rich farming-lands, could do little for this dilapidated village, which
consisted of one lane of rickety dwellings crossed at right angles by
the Peru Railroad, a stern brick building, a wooden elevator and a mill.
It was a squalid sight, though the festive season of the year and that
glamourous air peculiar to Indiana brooded it. The photographer surveyed
his new field with an amused sneer, and descended the steps to go to his
breakfast at the tavern, a peak-roofed white frame set among locust
trees--the best house on the street. Before it stood that lozenge-shaped
sign on a fat post which stands before all country taverns, making a
vague, lonesome appeal to the traveller.

The loungers moved in groups on the station-platform, their hands in
their pockets and their necks stretched forward, eying the stranger.

Out of the blue distance on the railroad two plumes of steam rose
suddenly: then a black object stood up on the track and gave two calls
at a crossing. Double-shuffles were danced on the platform, as if the
approaching train charged these vagabonds with some of its own strength.
It screamed, and bore down upon this dilapidated station to stop for
one brief minute, change mail-sacks and gaze pityingly out of its one
eye at the howling crew which never failed to greet it there. People in
the cars also looked out as if glad they were not stopping, and a few
with long checks in their hats, who appeared to be travelling to the
earth's ends, were envied by a girl approaching the post-office in the
brick block.

She waited near the photographic car until the train passed, her lip
curling at this blue van and the pretensions of its owner.

Later she came out of the post-office by a back hall, and, darting a
fierce look at Jim Croddy, who ran against her in his performance of the
double-shuffle, took her way across the common, crushing her l