side somewhere. And just
keep a stiff upper lip about the gas, and don't you let them jew you
down a solitary cent on that sidewalk."

"All right," said Theron, again, and moved reluctantly toward the hall
door.

CHAPTER III

When the three trustees had been shown in by the Rev. Mr. Ware, and had
taken seats, an awkward little pause ensued. The young minister looked
doubtingly from one face to another, the while they glanced with
inquiring interest about the room, noting the pictures and appraising
the furniture in their minds.

The obvious leader of the party, Loren Pierce, a rich quarryman, was an
old man of medium size and mean attire, with a square, beardless face as
hard and impassive in expression as one of his blocks of limestone. The
irregular, thin-lipped mouth, slightly sunken, and shut with vice-like
firmness, the short snub nose, and the little eyes squinting from
half-closed lids beneath slightly marked brows, seemed scarcely to
attain to the dignity of features, but evaded attention instead, as if
feeling that they were only there at all from plain necessity, and ought
not to be taken into account. Mr. Pierce's face did not know how to
smile--what was the use of smiles?--but its whole surface radiated
secretiveness. Portrayed on canvas by a master brush, with a ruff or a
red robe for masquerade, generations of imaginative amateurs would
have seen in it vast reaching plots, the skeletons of a dozen dynastic
cupboards, the guarded mysteries of half a century's international
diplomacy. The amateurs would have been wrong again. There was nothing
behind Mr. Pierce's juiceless countenance more weighty than a general
determination to exact seven per cent for his money, and some specific
notions about capturing certain brickyards which were interfering with
his quarry-sales. But Octavius watched him shamble along its sidewalks
quite as the Vienna of dead and forgotten yesterday might have watched
Metternich.

Erastus Winch was of a breezier sort--a florid, stout, and sandy man,
who spent most of his life driving over evil country roads in a buggy,
securing orders for dairy furniture and certain allied lines of farm
utensils. This practice had given him a loud voice and a deceptively
hearty manner, to which the other avocation of cheese-buyer, which he
pursued at the Board of Trade meetings every Monday afternoon, had added
a considerable command of persuasive yet non-committal language. To
look at him