inning when Perry Hayden bought the adjoining farm from
the heirs of Shakespeare Ely, deceased, and moved in.

To be sure, Perry Hayden, poor fellow, did not bother Harrington much,
for he died of pneumonia a month after he came there, but his widow
carried on the farm with the assistance of a lank hired boy. Her own
children, Charles and Theodore, commonly known as Bobbles and Ted,
were as yet little more than babies.

The real trouble began when Mary Hayden's pigs, fourteen in number and
of half-grown voracity, got into Harrington's garden. A railing, a fir
grove, and an apple orchard separated the two establishments, but
these failed to keep the pigs within bounds.

Harrington had just got his garden planted for the season, and to go
out one morning and find a horde of enterprising porkers rooting about
in it was, to put it mildly, trying. He was angry, but as it was a
first offence he drove the pigs out with tolerable calmness, mended
the fence, and spent the rest of the day repairing damages.

Three days later the pigs got in again. Harrington relieved his mind
by some scathing reflections on women who tried to run farms. Then he
sent Mordecai, his hired man, over to the Hayden place to ask Mrs.
Hayden if she would be kind enough to keep her pigs out of his garden.
Mrs. Hayden sent back word that she was very sorry and would not let
it occur again. Nobody, not even John Harrington, could doubt that she
meant what she said. But she had reckoned without the pigs. They had
not forgotten the flavour of Egyptian fleshpots as represented by the
succulent young shoots in the Harrington domains. A week later
Mordecai came in and told Harrington that "them notorious pigs" were
in his garden again.

There is a limit to everyone's patience. Harrington left Mordecai to
drive them out, while he put on his hat and stalked over to the
Haydens' place. Ted and Bobbles were playing at marbles in the lane
and ran when they saw him coming. He got close up to the little low
house among the apple trees before Mordecai appeared in the yard,
driving the pigs around the barn. Mrs. Hayden was sitting on her
doorstep, paring her dinner potatoes, and stood up hastily when she
saw her visitor.

Harrington had never seen his neighbour at close quarters before. Now
he could not help seeing that she was a very pretty little woman, with
wistful, dark blue eyes and an appealing expression. Mary Hayden had
been next to a beauty in her girlhoo