ons of the outstretched arms of the trees as I walked beneath
them. Where had my mind been a-wandering all of these years that I had
not thought of this before? But I was too sensible to mar my present joy
with useless regrets. The future was bright with anticipation and rich
with promise, and my heart grew light.

And Fido--poor Fido--would be glad of the change, too, for I am sure it
must have taxed his love for me to stay in the goods-box which I had
converted into a kennel and placed in the small backyard. Mrs.
Moss,--honest soul,--when giving her reluctant consent to this, consoled
herself by thinking that she was only yielding to another of my
vagaries.

There was no one else to consider, and so I put the thing down in my
mind as settled. I would leave this soul-dwarfing, cramped, smoke-hung
atmosphere, and take up my abode where the air was pure, and where the
sun could shine. Mrs. Moss would lose a good, quiet boarder, it is
true; but my consideration for Mrs. Moss's feelings would not cause me
to sacrifice myself. Some one else would come and take the room which
had been mine for ten years, and I would soon be forgotten.

The revelation which I had experienced put me in such high spirits at
the glorious prospects before me that I could not think of going to bed
when eleven o'clock sounded from the mantel-tree. Instead, I believe I
actually chuckled, as I slipped my hand into the pocket of my
dressing-gown for my tobacco-pouch, and proceeded to fill my pipe again.
Method had always been the rule of my life, but that night I put it by
for a space. The question paramount was--where should I go? Certainly
most any farm housewife would give me a room upstairs for a small money
consideration a month, but I was a little particular, and wanted to
live and move among _folks_, for which I was fitted by birth and
education. I knew that blood as blue and as genteel flowed through
country veins as through city arteries; but how was I to find these
people out? I didn't know a dozen persons in Louisville outside of my
boarding-house. The hands of the clock were getting dangerously near
together at the top of the dial before a solution came.

Suddenly I bethought me of Reuben Walker, that staid, long-headed fellow
who had graduated with me back in forty. The nearest approach I ever had
to a friend. He had gone to practise law in Springfield, down there in
Washington County, and had made something of a name for himself, too.