rinkles wandered over his tanned and sun-dried
skin. Upon his features, too, dwelt that look of patient tolerance that
is not indifference, that only the "wise years" can bring; and on his
face as well as his brother's certain lines about the puckered mouth
went far to contradict it. If one saw only one of the old men, there was
nothing grim in the spectacle--that of a weary farmer looking out upon
the highroad from the shelter of his own doorway; but the sight of them
both together took on suddenly a forbidding air, a suggestion of
sullenness, of dogged resolution; they were so precisely alike, and they
sat so near one another on thresholds of the same long, low building,
and they seemed so unconscious the one of the other. It was impossible
not to believe the unconsciousness wilful and deliberate. A heavily
freighted and loose-jointed wagon rattled noisily but slowly along the
road.

"Howaryer?" called out one of its occupants.

"'Are yer?" returned Stephen Granger.

Reuben had opened his mouth to speak, but closed it in silence, while he
gazed straight before him, unseeing, apparently, and unheeding. The
leisurely driver checked his horse, which responded instantly to the
welcome indication. Behind him in the wagon two calves looked somewhat
perplexedly forth, their mild eyes, with but slightly accentuated
curiosity, surveying the Grangers and the landscape from the durance of
the cart.

"Been tradin'?" asked Stephen.

"Wal, yes, I have," answered the other, with that lingering intonation
that seems to modify even the most unconditional assent.

"Got a good bargain?"

"Wal, so-so."

"Many folks down to the store this evenin'?"

"Wal, considerable."

"Ain't any news?"

"Not any as I know on."

Stephen nodded his acceptance of this state of things. The other nodded,
too. There was a pause.

"G'long," said the trader, as if he would have said it before if he had
thought of it. But the horse had taken but a few steps when another
voice greeted him.

"Howaryer, Monroe?" said Reuben Granger.

"Whoa," said Monroe. "Howaryer?"

"Been down to the Centre?" asked Reuben.

"Yare."

"Got some calves in there, I see."

"Wal, yes; been doin' some tradin'."

Reuben nodded. "Ain't any news, I take it?"

"None in partickler." Another exchange of nods followed.

"G'long," said Monroe, after a short silence, during which the calves
looked more bored than usual. But the shaky wheels had made but a few
revo