his gray surtout buttoned
close, showing but the edge of his white silk muffler, his carefully
rolled umbrella serving as a divining rod the better to detect the
water holes. No one who met him and looked into his fresh, rosy face,
or caught the merry twinkle of his eyes, would ever have supposed he had
been pouring liniment over broken arms and bandaged fingers until
two o'clock in the morning of the night before. It had only been when
Bolton's sister had discovered an empty "cell," as Jack called the
bedroom next to his, that he had abandoned his intention of camping out
on Jack's disheartened lounge, and had retired like a gentleman carrying
with him all his toilet articles, ready to be set out in the morning.

Long before that time he had captured everybody in the place: from Mrs.
Hicks, who never dreamed that such a well of tenderness over suffering
could exist in an old fellow's heart, down to the freckled-faced boy who
came for his muddy shoes and who, after a moment's talk with Peter as to
how they should be polished, retired later in the firm belief that they
belonged to "a gent way up in G," as he expressed it, he never having
waited on "the likes of him before." As to Bolton, he thought he was
the "best ever," and as to his prim, patient sister who had closed her
school to be near her brother--she declared to Mrs. Hicks five minutes
after she had laid her eyes on him, that Mr. Breen's uncle was "just too
dear for anything,"--to which the lady with the movable hair and mob-cap
not only agreed, but added the remark of her own, "that folks like him
was a sight better than the kind she was a-gettin'."

All these happenings of the night and early hours of this bright,
beautiful morning--and it was bright and sunny overhead despite the old
fellow's precautionary umbrella--had helped turn out the spick and span
gentleman who was now making his way carefully over the unpaved road
which stood for Corklesville's principal street.

Miss Felicia saw him first.

"Oh! there you are!" she cried before he could raise his eyes. "Did you
ever see anything so disgraceful as this crossing--not a plank--nothing.
No--get out of my way, Peter; you will just upset me, and I would rather
help myself."

In reply Peter, promptly ignoring her protest, stepped in front of her,
poked into several fraudulent solidities covering unfathomable depths,
found one hard enough to bear the weight of Miss Felicia's dainty
shoe--it was about a