ays slow. It was never known to record an hour until
that hour had long since been due. Sometimes it would save up its
strokes upon the bell until fifty or more were accumulated, and then, in
the midst of an intense jury trial, it would slowly turn them loose. A
mathematician, a man who kept the dates of late and early frosts, had it
in his record that the hammer struck the bell sixty-eight times on the
afternoon when John Maffy was sentenced to be hanged, and that the
judge had to withhold his awful words until this flood of gathered time
was poured out. Once or twice the county court had appropriated money to
have the clock brought back within the bounds of reason, but a more
pressing need had always served to swallow up the sum thus set aside.

A stone planted at one corner of the public square marked the site of a
bit of bloody history. Away back in the fifties a man named Antrem, from
New England, came to Brantly and, standing where the stone now stands,
made an abolition speech. It was so bold an impudence that the citizens
stood agape, scarcely able to believe their ears. At last the passive
astonishment was broken by a slave-owner named Peel. He drew two
pistols, handed one to the speaker, stepped off and told him to defend
himself. The New Englander had nerve. He did defend himself, and with
deadly effect. Both men were buried on the public square.

A railway had skipped Brantly by ten long and sandy miles, and a new
town springing up about a station on the line--an up-start of yesterday,
four-fifths of it being a mere paper town, and the other fifth
consisting of cheap and hastily built stores, saloons, boarding houses,
a livery stable, a blacksmith shop, and a few roughly constructed
dwellings--clamored for the county seat; and until this question was
finally settled old Brantly could not look with confidence toward any
improvement. Indeed, some of her business men stood ready to desert her
in the event that she should be beaten by the new town, and while all
were bravely willing to continue the fight against the up-start, every
one was slow to hazard his money to improve his home or his place of
business. Whenever a young man left Brantly it was predicted that he
would come to no good, and always there came a report that he was
gambling, or drinking himself to death. The mere fact that he desired to
leave the old town was fit proof of his general unworthiness to succeed
in life.

The Major rode into town,