dy has got to the bottom of that book yet, have they? And it's
true; it's all true. It's just accordin' as you see it. Do ye know
what I'm going to do? I 'm going to buy one of them double-seated red
swings and put it right out here under this sassafras tree, and Hannah
and I are going to set in, and swing in it, and listen a little to them
bobolinks."

[Illustration: A pilgrim from Dubuque]

VIII

A PILGRIM FROM DUBUQUE

It is a long road from anywhere to Mullein Hill, and only the rural
postman and myself travel it at all frequently. The postman goes by,
if he can, every weekday, somewhere between dawn and dark, the absolute
uncertainty of his passing quite relieving the road of its wooded
loneliness. I go back and forth somewhat regularly; now and then a
neighbor takes this route to the village, and at rarer intervals an
automobile speeds over the "roller coaster road"; but seldom does a
stranger on foot appear so far from the beaten track. One who walks to
Mullein Hill deserves and receives a welcome.

I may be carting gravel when he comes, as I was the day the Pilgrim
from Dubuque arrived. Swinging the horses into the yard with their
staggering load, I noticed him laboring up the Hill by the road in
front. He stopped in the climb for a breathing spell,--a tall, erect
old man in black, with soft, high-crowned hat, and about him something,
even at the distance, that was--I don't
know--unusual--old-fashioned--Presbyterian.

Dropping the lines, I went down to greet the stranger, though I saw he
carried a big blue book under his arm. To my knowledge no book-agent
had ever been seen on the Hill. But had I never seen one anywhere I
should have known this man had not come to sell me a book. "More
likely," I thought, "he has come to give me a book. We shall see."
Yet I could not quite make him out, for while he was surely
professional, he was not exactly clerical, in spite of a certain
Scotch-Covenanter-something in his appearance. He had never preached
at men, I knew, as instinctively as I knew he had never persuaded them
with books or stocks or corner-lots in Lhassa. He had a fine, kindly
face, that was singularly clear and simple, in which blent the shadows
and sorrows of years with the serene and mellow light of good thoughts.

"Is this Mullein Hill?" he began, shifting the big blue copy of the
"Edinburgh Review" from under his arm.

"You're on Mullein Hill," I replied, "and welcome."

"