er to
be urged. Settlers, gloomily acquiescent in an unjust fate, brightened
at his heralding. The ghost was the thing. It took the popular fancy;
and everybody wondered, as after all illuminings of genius, why nobody
had thought of it before. Brad Freeman was unanimously elected to act
the part, as the only living man likely to manage a supplementary head
without rehearsal; and Pillsbury's white colt was hastily groomed for
the onslaught. Brad had at once seen the possibilities of the situation
and decided, with an unerring certainty, that as a jack-o'-lantern is
naught by day, the pumpkin face must be cunningly veiled. He was a busy
man that morning; for he not only had to arrange his own ghostly
progress, but settle the elephant on its platform, to be dragged by
vine-wreathed oxen, and also, at the doctor's instigation, to make the
sledge on which the first Nicholas Oldfield should draw his wife into
town. The doctor sought out Young Nick, and asked him to undertake the
part, as tribute to his illustrious name; but he was of a prudent nature
and declined. What if the town should laugh! "I guess I won't," said he.

But Mary, regardless of maternal cacklings, sped after the doctor as he
turned his horse.

"O doctor!" she besought, "let me be the first settler's wife! Please,
_please_ let me be Mary Oldfield!"

The doctor was glad enough. All the tides of destiny were surging his
way. Even when he paused, in his progress, to pull the Crane boy's
tooth, it seemed to work out public harmony. For the victim, cannily
anxious to prove his valor, insisted on having the operation conducted
before the front window; and after it was accomplished, the squads of
boys waiting at the gate for his apotheosis or down-fall, gave an
unwilling yet delighted yell. He had not winced; and when, with the fire
of a dear ambition still shining in his eyes, he held up the tooth to
them, through the glass, they realized that he, and he only, could with
justice take the crown of that most glorious day. He must ride inside
the elephant.

So it came to pass that when the procession wound slowly up from the
cross-road, preceded by the elephant, lifting his trunk at rhythmic
intervals, Nicholas Oldfield saw his little Mary, her eyes shining and
her cheeks aglow, sitting proudly upon a sledge, drawn by the handsomest
young man in town. A pang may have struck the old man's heart, realizing
that Phil Marden was so splendid in his strength, and that