Stopping for a moment to look down upon the glorious Hudson
stretching its shimmering length like a bimetallic serpent to the north
and south, he suddenly became conscious of a pair of very sharp eyes
resting upon him, which a closer inspection showed belonged to a laborer
of seemingly diminutive stature, who was engaged in carrying earth in a
wheelbarrow from one dirt-pile to another. As Thaddeus caught his eye
the laborer assumed towering proportions. He rose up quite two feet
higher in the air and bowed.

"How do you do?" said Perkins, returning the salutation courteously,
wondering the while as to what might be the cause of this sudden change
of height.

"Oi'm well--which is nothin' new to me," replied the other. "Ut sheems
to me," he continued, "thot youse resimbles thot smart young felly
Perkins, the Mayor of Dumfries Corners--not!"

Perkins laughed. The sting of defeat had lost its power to annoy, and
his experience had become merely one of a thousand other nightmares of
the past.

"Do I?" he replied, resolving not to confess his identity, for the
moment at least.

"Only thinner," chuckled the laborer, shrinking up again; and Perkins
now saw that the legs of his new acquaintance were of an abnormally
unequal length, which forced him every time he shifted his weight from
one foot to the other to change his apparent height to a startling
degree. "An' a gude dale thinner," he repeated. "There's nothin' loike
polithical exersoize to take off th' flesh, parthicularly when ye miss
ut."

"I fancy you are right," said Perkins. "I never met Mr. Perkins--that
is, face to face--myself. Do you know him?"

The Irishman threw his head back and laughed.

"Well," he said, "oi'm not wan uv his pershonal fri'nds. But oi know um
when oi see um," and he looked Thaddeus straight in the eye as he grew
tall again.

"I'm sure it is Perkins's loss," returned Thaddeus, "that you are not a
personal friend of his."

"It was," said the Irishman. "My name is Finn," he added, with an air
which seemed to assume that Perkins would begin to tremble at the
dreaded word; but Perkins did not tremble. He merely replied,

"A very good name, Mr. Finn."

"Oi t'ink so," assented Mr. Finn. "Ut's better nor Dinnis, me young
fri'nd."

Perkins assented to this proposition as though it was merely general,
and had no particular application to the affairs of the moment. "I
suppose, Mr. Finn," he observed, shortly, "that you were one of the
ea