"that there's where he's goin' now--only he don't
want us to know he's give in."

"Shet your fool mouth, Hiram!" cautioned Walt Perkins, the proprietor of
the Congress Hotel. "He kin hear you."

"Get out!" retorted Mr. Higgins. "No, he can't neither. He ain't feelin'
no ways perky, any one can see that, an' I'm tickled most to pieces that
he's come 'round--I've took up with him consid'rable, I have.
Patriarch'll just make a new-born critter outer him--you watch through
the window where he goes. Bet you a quarter that's what he's up to!"

John Garfield Madison, outside on the veranda of the Congress Hotel,
smiled at the words, as he lighted his cigar and turned up his coat
collar. He stepped off the veranda, crossed the little lawn to the
village street, and began to saunter nonchalantly and indifferently
oceanwards. He did not look around--he had no desire to bring
consternation to the massed faces of the leading citizens flattened
against the window panes--but he chuckled inwardly as he pictured them.
There would be Hiram Higgins, postmaster and town constable, Walt
Perkins, hotel man and town moderator, Lem Hodges, selectman, assessor
and overseer of the poor, Nathan Elmes, likewise selectman, assessor and
overseer of the poor, and Cale Rodgers, school committee-man and
proprietor of the general store.

Madison sauntered slowly along.

"I have arrived," he said, "not at a cemetery, but at an El Dorado and a
land flowing with milk and honey."

There was a humorous pucker around the corners of Madison's eyes, as he
reviewed his two days' sojourn in Needley--spent mostly in the "office"
of the Congress Hotel beside the stove with his feet up on the wood-box.
He had never lacked company--the office stove and the spitbox filled
with sawdust was the admitted rendezvous of the chosen spirits who were
still gazing after him from the window. Morning, afternoon and evening
they congregated there, and he had been promptly admitted to membership
in the select circle. At each sitting they had discussed the spring
planting and the weather, and then inevitably, led by Hiram Higgins, had
resolved themselves into an "experience" meeting on the Patriarch--he,
Madison, as a minority leader of one, grudgingly conceding an occasional
point. The sessions had invariably ended the same way--Hiram Higgins,
with the back of his hand underneath his chin, would stroke earnestly
at his chin-whiskers, and remark:

"Well, now, Mr. Madison,