afters--a relic of the preceding summer....

* * * * *

"Gosh a'mighty, what's this a-comin!"...

Everybody stopped working. Two neighbour farmers, who had come over for
a bit of gossip, stooped, their hands on their knees, bowed with
astonishment, as if they had beheld an apparition.

One of the "boys" told me the two held silence for a long time--till I
was entirely out of sight again, and after.

Then one exclaimed, "air they any more luny fellers like thet, back at
them Artwork shops?"

The incident gave birth to the legend of a crazy man under Spalton's
care, whose chief insanity was running naked through snowdrifts.

Spalton had three sons. Roderick was the eldest: named after his father.
Level-headed and businesslike, he followed his father's vagaries because
he saw the commercial possibilities in them ... though he did so more as
a practical man with a sense of humour than as a man who was on the
make. Spalton, who knew men thoroughly and quickly appraised their
individual natures, had installed Roderick in the managing end of
things,--there with the aid of an older head--one Alfoxden, of whom
Spalton made too much of a boast, telling everyone he had rescued him
from a life of crime; Alfoxden, when younger, forged a check and had
served his term for it. Coming out into the world again, no one would
trust him because of that one mistake, Spalton, at this juncture, took
him in and gave him a new chance--but--as I said unkindly, in my mind,
and publicly, he made capital of his generous action.

But Alfoxden was a soul of rare quality. He never seemed to resent
"John's" action. He was too much of a gentleman and too grateful for the
real help Spalton had extended to him.

Alfoxden was a slight, Mephistophelian man ... with bushy, red eyebrows.
And he was totally bald, except for the upper part of his neck, which
was fiery with red hair. He had a large knowledge of the Rabelaisan in
literature ... had in his possession several rather wild effusions of
Mark Twain in the original copy, and a whole MSS. volume of Field's
smutty casual verse....

* * * * *

But I was in the lumber camp, cooking for the "boys."...

"Hank," Spalton's youngest son (there was a second son, whose name I
forget ... lived with his mother, Spalton's divorced wife, in Syracuse,
and was the conventional, well-brought-up, correct youth)--Hank worked
in the camp, along with