re's plenty of time yet," he added, with a slight
laugh; "it's only three o'clock now."

There was a dead silence. Even the rain withheld its continuous patter,
a dumb, gray film covered the ashes of the hushed hearth. For the first
time the Right Bower exhibited some slight embarrassment.

"I reckon it's held up for a spell," he said, ostentatiously examining
the weather, "and we might as well take a run round the claim to see if
we've forgotten nothing. Of course, we'll be back again," he added
hastily, without looking at the Old Man, "before we go, you know."

The others began to look for their hats, but so awkwardly and with such
evident preoccupation of mind that it was not at first discovered that
the Judge had his already on. This raised a laugh, as did also a clumsy
stumble of Union Mills against the pork barrel, although that gentleman
took refuge from his confusion and secured a decent retreat by a gross
exaggeration of his lameness, as he limped after the Right Bower. The
Judge whistled feebly. The Left Bower, in a more ambitious effort to
impart a certain gayety to his exit, stopped on the threshold and said,
as if in arch confidence to his companions, "Darned if the Old Man
don't look two inches higher since he became a proprietor," laughed
patronizingly, and vanished.

If the newly-made proprietor had increased in stature, he had not
otherwise changed his demeanor. He remained in the same attitude until
the last figure disappeared behind the fringe of buckeye that hid the
distant highway. Then he walked slowly to the fireplace, and, leaning
against the chimney, kicked the dying embers together with his foot.
Something dropped and spattered in the film of hot ashes. Surely the
rain had not yet ceased!

His high color had already fled except for a spot on either cheekbone
that lent a brightness to his eyes. He glanced around the cabin. It
looked familiar and yet strange. Rather, it looked strange _because_
still familiar, and therefore incongruous with the new atmosphere that
surrounded it--discordant with the echo of their last meeting, and
painfully accenting the change. There were the four "bunks," or
sleeping berths, of his companions, each still bearing some traces of
the individuality of its late occupant with a dumb loyalty that seemed
to make their light-hearted defection monstrous. In the dead ashes of
the Judge's pipe, scattered on his shelf, still lived his old fire; in
the whittled and carve