distinguished son had worn during his last winter in
college. I remember well how tenderly she handled them!

"I hope that Silas will get you to help him"--those were the last words
she said to me when I bade her good-by.

The visit had set me up a good deal. The knowledge that I had been so
much in the Senator's thoughts, and that he approved my decision to
leave the learned judge, gave me new heart. I had never cherished the
thought that he would take me to Washington although, now and then, a
faint star of hope had shone above the capitol in my dreams. As I rode
along I imagined myself in that great arena and sitting where I could
see the flash of its swords and hear the thunder of Homeric voices. That
is the way I thought of it. Well, those were no weak, piping times of
peace, my brothers. They were times of battle and as I rode through that
peaceful summer afternoon I mapped my way to the fighting line. I knew
that I should enjoy the practise of the law but I had begun to feel that
eventually my client would be the people whose rights were subject to
constant aggression as open as that of the patroons or as insidious as
that of the canal ring.

The shadows were long when I got to Canterbury. At the head of its main
street I looked down upon a village green and some fine old elms. It was
a singularly quiet place. I stopped in front of a big white meeting
house. An old man was mowing in its graveyard near the highway. Slowly
he swung his scythe.

"It's a fine day," I said.

"No, it ain't, nuther-too much hard work in it," said he.

"Do you know where Kate Fullerton lives?" I asked.

"Well, it's purty likely that I do," he answered as he stood resting on
his snath. "I've lived seventy-two years on this hill come the
fourteenth day o' June, an' if I didn't know where she lived I'd be
'shamed of it."

He looked at me thoughtfully for a moment and added:

"I know everybody that lives here an' everybody that dies here, an' some
that orto be livin' but ain't an' some that orto be dead which ye
couldn't kill `em with an ax--don't seem so--I declare it don't. Do ye
see that big house down there in the trees?"

I could see the place at which he pointed far back from the village
street in the valley below us, the house nearly hidden by tall
evergreens.

"Yes," I answered.

"No ye can't, nuther--leastways if ye can ye've got better eyes'n mos'
people, ye can't see only a patch o' the roof an' one chimney--them pi