more gentle birth there was little question of their
reception of him after once he had ridden to their doors, making the
first visit, as in the old country. To be sure, he had appeared astride
a mule, but neither his mount nor his dress could conceal a soldierly
bearing that made him the envy of every man who saw him. And he had but
to click his heels together and make his queer foreign bow that
displayed the top of his fair head, and to kiss the fingers of the
"gnaedige Frau," to win the hearts of all the women. His English, in
itself, was no small charm, for, though he had conquered his w's and
th's, his use of idiom was ever new.

It was of the Baron that Dr. Morgan and his wife were talking as they
drove towards home at sunset of a late March day.

"Hanged if Ah know how the fellow gets on," said the Doctor. "It was
fall when he came here, and that farm he bought from Ben Frady hadn't
any crop on it but a mahty little corn. He did his winter ploughing and
killed the pig he took with the place, but how he's pulling through Ah
don't know."

The Doctor spat in a practised and far-reaching manner into the red
clay mud, and shook the reins over the backs of the horse and mule,
which plodded on unheeding.

"This is 'starvation time,' too. Ah noticed yesterday our bacon was
getting low," returned Mrs. Morgan, with the application to self that a
country life induces. "The Baron never did tell any one about his money
affairs, did he, Henry?"

It would be hard to say why she asked, unless for the sake of
continuing the conversation, for, had there been any such bit of
gossip, it would have been the Doctor's exclusive property only so long
as it took him to drive from the place where he had heard it to his own
house.

"Not a word," he replied. "Hi, Pete, what are you doing?"

Always a careless driver, the Doctor was more than ever so when the
state of the roads precluded travelling faster than a walk. He had not
noticed the mud-hole which the mule had tried to jump. In his
harnesses, twine, rope, and wire played as prominent a part as leather.
In fact, most of the points of responsibility were guarded by those
materials rather than by the original. Pete's jump and his mate's
consequent shy proved too much for long-worn traces, and two of them
snapped.

"Hang those things! That outside one popped just yesterday, Sophy,"
said the Doctor, in a tone of grievance, as if the fact of its having
broken yesterday ought to