ter of the river, -- he
noted without noting, he saw without dwelling upon it. It was
the depth of the picture, and his mind chose the stronger
outlines. And then the water ruffled, and the reflection was
lost.

The ride was in dull silence, till after some hours the
coachman stopped to give his horses water; though he remarked,
"it was contrary in them to want it." But after that his
tongue seemed loosed.

"Dampish!" he remarked to his fellow-traveller, as he climbed
up to his place again and took the reins.

"Can you stand it?" said Winthrop.

"Stand what?"

"Being wet through at this rate?"

"Don't signify whether a man's killed one way or another," was
the somewhat unhopeful answer. "Come to the same thing in the
long run, I expect."

"Might as well make as long a run as you can of it. Why don't
you wear some sort of an overcoat?"

"I keep it -- same way you do yourn. -- No use to spoil a thing
for nothing. There's no good of an overcoat but to hold so
much heft of water, and a man goes lighter without it. As long
as you've got to be soaked through, what's the odds?"

"I didn't lay my account with this sort of thing when I set
out," said Winthrop.

"O _I_ did. I have it about a third of the time, I guess. This
and March is the plaguiest months in the hull year. They do
use up a man."

Some thread of association brought his little sister's open
book and pointed finger on the sudden before Winthrop, and for
a moment he was silent.

"Yours is rather bad business this time of year," he remarked.

"Like all other business," said the man; "aint much choice.
There's a wet and a dry to most things. What's yourn? if I may
ask."

"Wet," said Winthrop.

"How? --" said the man.

"You need only look at me to see," said Winthrop.

"Well -- I thought --" said his companion, looking at him again
-- "Be you a dominie?"

"No."

"Going to be? -- Hum! -- Get ap! --" said the driver touching up
one of his horses.

"What makes you think so?" said Winthrop.

"Can't tell -- took a notion. I can mostly tell folks, whether
they are one thing or another."

"But you are wrong about me," said Winthrop; "I am neither one
thing nor the other."

"I'll be shot if you aint, then," said his friend after taking
another look at him. "Ben't you? -- You're either a dominie or
a lawyer -- one of the six."

"I should like to know what you judge from. Are clergymen and
lawyers so much alike?"

"I guess I aint fur wro