ance his book of life would show a wide margin on
the credit side.

CHAPTER III

TWO ORPHANS

A stranger visiting Sandgate on a summer afternoon would inevitably
conclude the town was asleep. Often not a person would be visible the
entire length of its main street, cooled by three rows of maples, one
dividing it, and one shading each of the two sidewalks formed of narrow
strips of weather-stained marble. Under some of these trees that almost
touch branches for half a mile one or two cows might be grazing or
taking a siesta while chewing the cud of content. On the vine-hid porch
of the village tavern landlord Pell would quite likely be dozing in an
arm-chair tilted back, and across the way Mr. Hobbs, who keeps the one
general store, would as likely be napping on a counter, his head
pillowed upon a pile of calico. A little further up the street and near
the one tall-spired white church Mrs. Mears, the village gossip, may be
sitting on the veranda of a small house almost hid by luxuriantly
growing Norway spruce, and idly rocking while she chats with the widow
Sloper, who lives there, and whose mission in life is to cut and fit
the best "go to meetin'" gowns of female Sandgate. Both dearly love to
talk over all that's going on, and whether this or that village swain is
paying especial attention to any one rosy cheeked lass, and if so
"what's likely to come on't." Both mean well by this neighborly
interest, and especially does Mrs. Sloper, who always advises plaits for
stout women, "with middlin' fulness in the bust" for thin ones.

One or two men may be at work haying in the broad meadows west of the
village, through which the slow current of a small river twists and
turns, or others wielding hoes on a hillside field of corn to the east,
but so far as moving life in the village street goes there will be none.
On either side of the Sandgate valley two spurs of the Green Mountain
Range, forest-clad, stand guard as if to isolate from all the world this
peaceful dale, whose dwellers' sole ambition in life may be summed up
in--to plow, plant, reap, and go to meeting.

On the north end of this park-like highway, and beyond the last house,
it narrows to an ordinary roadway and divides. One fork turns to the
right, following up the banks of a winding stream to an old grist-mill
with moss-covered wheel and lily-dotted pond above. The other turns to
the left, crosses the narrow Sandgate valley, and bears south past the