chicken."

The following Sunday Mr. Anthony drew up his daintily-stepping chestnut
at the fruit-peddler's gate. Before he had descended from his shining
road-wagon, his host ran down the walk, pulling on his shabby coat.

"Well, now, this is something like!" he exclaimed. "Got a
hitching-strap? Just wait till I open the gate; I believe I'd better
take your horse inside. There's a post by the kitchen door. My, ain't he
a beauty!"

Burson led the roadster through the gate, and Mr. Anthony walked by his
side. When the horse was tied, the two men went about the place, and
Erastus showed his guest the poultry and fruit trees, commenting on the
merits of Plymouth Rocks and White Leghorns as layers, and displaying
modest pride in the condition of the orchard.

"I've kep' it up better this year. The rains come along more favorable
and the weeds didn't get ahead of me the way they did last winter. Look
out, there!" he cried, as Mr. Anthony laid his hand on the head of a
Jersey calf that backed awkwardly from under his grasp. "Don't let her
get a hold of your coat-tail; she chawed mine to a frazzle the other
day; the girls pet her so much she has no manners."

When the tour of the little farm was finished the two men came back to
the veranda, and Erastus drew a rocking-chair from the front room for
his guest. It was hung with patchwork cushions of "crazy" design, but
Mr. Anthony leaned his tired head against them in the sanest content.

"Now you just sit still a minute," Erastus said, "and I'm a-going to
bring you something you hain't tasted for a long time."

He darted into the house, and returned with a pitcher and two glasses.

"Sweet cider!" he announced, with a triumphant smile. "I had a lot of
apples in the fall, not big enough to peddle,--you know our apples ain't
anything to brag of,--and I just rigged up a kind of hand-press in the
back yard, and now and then I press out a pitcher of cider for Sunday. I
never let it get the least bit hard; not that I don't like a little tang
to it myself, but mother belongs to the W.C.T.U., and it'd worry her."

He darted into the house again, and emerged with a plate of brown
twisted cakes.

"Mother usually makes cookies on Saturday, but I can't find anything but
these doughnuts. Maybe they won't go bad with the cider."

He poured his guest a glass, and Mr. Anthony drank it, holding a
doughnut in one hand, and partaking of it with evident relish.

"It's good, Burson," he sa