you ricolleck? Name's Corrie, no, Craney, no, that's not it
neither--A-ah!" trying hard to think a little.

"Carey. Don't you remember?" the first speaker broke in, "Doc Carey. They
say he doctored Miss Jane in Philadelphia, an' got in good with her,
more'n a dozen years ago."

"Well," drawled the second watcher of affairs, "if he thinks he can get
anything out'n o' her by hangin' round Cloverdale, he's barkin' up the
wrong saplin'. Miss Jane, she's close, an' too set in her ways now. She
must be nigh forty."

"That's right. But, I'll bet he's goin' there now. Let's see."

The two moved to the end of the station, from which strategic point both
the main street, the National pike road, of course, and the new street
running "cat-i-cornered" from the station to the creek bridge could be
commanded.

"Darned fool! is what he is! hikin' straight as a plumbline fur the crick.
If he was worth it, I'd foller him."

"Oh, the ornery pup will be back all right. Lazy fellers waitin' to marry
rich old maids ain't worth follerin'. Darn 'em! Slick skeezicks, tryin' to
git rich jes' doin' nothin'."

So the two citizens agreed while they consigned a perfect stranger to a
mild purgatory. His brisk wholesomeness offended them, and the narrowness
of their own daily lives bred prejudice as the marshes breed mosquitoes.

Dr. Carey walked away with springing step. He was glad to be at his
journey's end; glad to be off the slow little train, and glad to see again
the October woods of the Alleghany foothills. To the eastern-bred man,
nothing in the grandeur of the prairie landscape can quite meet the
craving for the autumn beauty of the eastern forests. The slanting rays of
the late afternoon sun fell athwart the radiant foliage of the woods as
Dr. Carey's way led him between the two lines of flaming glory. When he
had cleared the creek valley, his pace slackened. Something of the old
boyhood joy of living, something of the sorrowful-sweet memory, the tender
grace of a day that is dead, but will never be forgotten, came with the
pensive autumn mood of Nature to make the day sweet to the pensive mind.

Jane Aydelot sat on the veranda of the Aydelot home, looking eagerly
toward Cloverdale, when she discovered Dr. Carey coming leisurely up the
road. She was nearly forty years old, as the railroad station loafers had
declared, but there was nothing about her to indicate the "old maid, set
in her ways." She might have passed for Asher's sis