ven hundred
dollars, the hotel site had been Mason's cow-yard! Old man Sark had
lived there, and had refused to put black on his house when Lincoln was
assassinated.

"And didn't he go to jail for that, Pa?"

"Yes, ma'am, he did!"

"But YOU--"

"I was in jail, too." Malcolm Monroe would chuckle under his now gray
moustache that was yellowed with tobacco stains. "Yes, sir, I rounded
up some of the boys, the Twentyonesters, we called ourselves, and we
led a riot 'round this town! The ringleaders were arrested, but that
was merely a form--merely a form!"

"You must have been a terror, Pa."

"Well--well, I had a good deal of your grandmother's spirit! And I
suppose they rather looked to me to set the pace--"

Smiling, they would go along in the sunlight, past the little homes
where babies had been turned out into grassy yards, past the straggling
stables and the smithy, and the fire-house, and the office of the
weekly Zeus. There was more than one garage in Monroe now and the
squared noses of Ford cars were at home everywhere. Mallon's Hardware
Emporium, the Five-and-Ten-Cent Store, still with its pillars of
twisted handkerchiefs, Mason and White's--how familiar they were! And
the old Bank, with its wide windows and double roller shades was
familiar, too. Martie learned that the Bank had duly worn black a year
or two ago for kindly old Colonel Frost; his name had been obliterated
from the big window, and Clifford Frost was vice-president now.

"One death is two deaths, they say," Lydia had sighed, telling Martie
of the Colonel's death. "You know Cliff's wife died only two months
before his father did. That was a terrible thing! Her little girl was
seven years old, and she was going to have another--"

When Martie, in the early afternoon of a warm sweet day on
mid-February, had stepped from the train, with Teddy's little fingers
held tight in hers, Sally's face, running over with tears and smiles,
had been the first she found. Curiously changed, yet wonderfully
familiar, the sisters had clung together, hardly knowing how to begin
their friendship again after six long years. There were big things to
say, but they said the little things. They talked about the trip and
the warm weather that had brought the buttercups so soon, and the case
that had kept Pa on jury duty in Pittsville.

Len--rather pompous, and with a moustache!--explained why his wife
could not be there: the two-year-old daughter was not very well. M