ved with great wonder in Pinetucky; but there
was not one among the Pinetuckians who did not believe that Bradley
Gaither was a better man at bottom than his life had shown him to be,
not one, indeed, who did not believe that his grievous errors were
among the dispensations which an all-wise Providence employs to chasten
the proud and humble the vainglorious.

When Jack Carew returned to his friends, he made his way straight to
Squire Inchly's. He was not much changed, but the sight of him gave
Miss Jane the cue for tears. These, however, she dried immediately,
and, with a smile that Jack remembered long, motioned towards the
little sitting-room.

"Go in there, Jack. A man oughtn't to grumble at waitin' for his
dinner, if he knows he'll git pie."

In the little sitting-room Rose Gaither was waiting for him.

BLUE DAVE

I.

THE atmosphere of mystery that surrounds the Kendrick Place in Putnam
County is illusive, of course; but the illusion is perfect. The old
house, standing a dozen yards from the roadside, is picturesque with
the contrivances of neglect and decay. Through a door hanging loose
upon its hinges the passer-by may behold the evidences of loneliness
and gloom,--the very embodiment of desolation,--a void, a silence, that
is almost portentous. The roof, with its crop of quaint gables, in
which proportion has been sacrificed to an effort to attain
architectural liveliness, is covered with a greenish-grey moss on the
north side, and has long been given over to decay on all sides. The
cat-squirrels that occasionally scamper across the crumbling shingles
have as much as they can do, with all their nimbleness, to find a
secure foot-hold. The huge wooden columns that support the double
veranda display jagged edges at top and bottom, and no longer make even
a pretence of hiding their grim hollowness. The well, hospitably placed
within arm's reach of the highway, for the benefit of the dead and
buried congregation that long ago met and worshipped at Bethesda
meeting-house, is stripped of windlass, chain, and bucket. All the
outhouses have disappeared, if they ever had an existence; and nothing
remains to tell the story of a flourishing era, save a fig-tree, which
is graciously green and fruitful in season. This fig-tree has grown to
an extraordinary height, and covers a large area with its canopy of
limbs and leaves, giving a sort of Oriental flavour to the illusion of
mystery and antiquity. It is said of t