onger came up to
the mountains; there were new names in the State annals, and the
mountain-farmers, poorer than before, and much bewildered as to the
state of the world, but unchanged in their lack of the questioning
capacity, rode by to and from the mill, and gave no thought to the
little building with its barred shutters standing in the grove. What was
there inside? Nothing save books, things of no practical value, and
worthless. So the library stood desolate, like an unused lighthouse on
the shore; and the books turned blue-green and damp at their leisure.

II.

Stephen Wainwright traveled, on principle. He had been, on principle,
through Europe more than once, and through portions of Asia and Africa;
in the intervals he made pilgrimages through his own country. He was not
a languid traveler; he had no affectations; but his own marked
impersonality traveled with him, and he was always the most indistinct,
unremembered person on every railroad-car or steamboat. He was the man
without a shadow. Of course, this was only when he chose to step out of
the lime-light which his wealth threw around his every gesture. But he
chose to step out of it very often, and always suffered when he did. He
was for ever adding up different opinions to find the same constantly
recurring sum total of "no consequence." After each experience of the
kind he went back into lime-light, and played at kingship for a while.
He had been doing this for twenty years.

One day he came to Ellerby on the top of the stage. Nine Methodist
ministers in the inside, returning from a missionary meeting, had made
the lonely road over the mountains echo with their hearty hymns. One
small brother climbed out at the half-way station on the summit, and,
after drinking copiously from the spring, clasped his hands behind him
and admired the prospect. Wainwright looked at him, not cynically, but
with his usual expressionless gaze. The little minister drank again, and
walked up and down. After a few moments he drank a third time, and
continued to admire the prospect. Wainwright recalled vaguely the
Biblical injunction, "Take a little wine for thy stomach's sake," when,
behold! the small minister drank a fourth time hastily, and then, as the
driver gathered up the reins, a last and hearty fifth time, before
climbing up to the top, where Wainwright sat alone.

"I am somewhat subject to vertigo," he explained, as he took his seat;
"I will ride the rest of the way in