driver looked down, as he drove safely off the bridge, and shook
his head at the swirl of water that rushed and eddied, dark and muddy,
close up under the rotten planking; then he cracked his whip, and the
horses sturdily attacked the little hill.

Thick, overhanging trees on either side now dimmed the light again,
and the two plump matrons once more glared past the opposite
shoulders, profoundly unaware of each other. The husbands took on the
politely surly look required of them. The blonde son's eyes still
sought the brunette daughter, but it was furtively done and quite
unsuccessfully, for the daughter was now doing a little glaring on her
own account. The blonde matron had just swept her eyes across the
daughter's skirt, estimating the fit and material of it with contempt
so artistically veiled that it could almost be understood in the dark.

II

The big bays swung to the brow of the hill with ease, and dashed into
a small circular clearing, where a quaint little two-story building,
with a mossy watering-trough out in front, nestled under the shade of
majestic old trees that reared their brown and scarlet crowns proudly
into the sky. A long, low porch ran across the front of the structure,
and a complaining sign hung out announcing, in dim, weather-flecked
letters on a cracked board, that this was the "Tutt House." A
gray-headed man, in brown overalls and faded blue jumper, stood on the
porch and shook his fist at the stage as it whirled by.

"What a delightfully old-fashioned inn!" exclaimed the pretty
daughter. "How I should like to stop there over night!"

"You would probably wish yourself away before morning, Evelyn,"
replied her mother indifferently. "No doubt it would be a mere siege
of discomfort."

The blonde matron turned to her husband. The pretty daughter had been
looking at the picturesque "inn" between the heads of this lady and
her son.

"Edward, please pull down the shade behind me," she directed. "There
is quite a draught from that broken window."

The pretty daughter bit her lip. The brunette matron continued to
stare at the shade in the exact spot upon which her gaze had been
before directed, and she never quivered an eyelash. The young man
seemed very uncomfortable, and he tried to look his apologies to the
pretty daughter, but she could not see him now, not even if her eyes
had been all corners.

They were bowling along through another avenue of trees when the
driver suddenly s