ville are going to bed to-night better men--that's it,
sir--yes, sir, that's it--yes, sir!--better men--just for having heard
of him!"

Mr. Tarbox smiled with affectionate approval, and began to move away;
but the other put out a hand--

"Say, look here; I'm going away on that two o'clock train to-night. I
want that book of yours. And I don't want to subscribe and wait. I
want the book now. That's my way. I'm just that kind of a man; I'm the
nowest man you ever met up with. That book's just the kind of thing
for a man like me who ain't got no time to go exhaustively delving and
investigating and researching into things, and yet has got to keep as
sharp as a brier."

Mr. Tarbox, on looking into his baggage, found he could oblige this
person. Before night fell again he had done virtually the same thing,
one by one, for all the rest. By that time they were all gone; but Mr.
Tarbox made Vermilionville his base of operations for several days.

Claude also tarried. For reasons presently to appear, the "ladies
parlor," a small room behind the waiting-room, with just one door,
which let into the hall at the hall's inner end, was given up to his
use; and of evenings not only Mr. Tarbox, but Marguerite and her
mother as well, met with him, gathering familiarly about a lamp that
other male lodgers were not invited to hover around.

The group was not idle. Mr. Tarbox held big hanks of blue and yellow
yarn, which Zosephine wound off into balls. A square table quite
filled the centre of the room. There was a confusion of objects on it,
and now on one side and now on another Claude leaned over it and
slowly toiled, from morning until evening alone, and in the evening
with these three about him; Marguerite, with her sewing dropped upon
the floor, watching his work with an interest almost wholly silent,
only making now and then a murmured comment, her eyes passing at
intervals from his pre-occupied eyes to his hands, and her hand now
and then guessing and supplying his want as he looked for one thing or
another that had got out of sight. What was he doing?

As to Marguerite, more than he was aware of, Zosephine Beausoleil saw,
and was already casting about somewhat anxiously in her mind to think
what, if any thing, ought to be done about it. She saw her child's
sewing lie forgotten on the floor, and the eyes that should have been
following the needle, fixed often on the absorbed, unconscious,
boyish-manly face so near by. She saw