she belongs to a French lady up
the street here. She often comes down to see me, don't you?" and he
reached over and took the fat little cheek between his thumb and
forefinger.

The little one rubbed her face against his worn baggy trousers' leg and
put her arm about his knee. Quietly he stood there in a simple way until
she loosened her hold upon him, when he went about his labor.

I was sitting one day in the loft of the comfortable sail-maker, who, by
the way, was brother-in-law to Burridge, when I said to him:

"I wish you'd tell me the details about Elihu. How did he come to be
what he is? You ought to know; you've lived here all your life."

"So I do know," he replied genially. "What do you want me to tell you?"

"The whole story of the trouble between him and Palmer; how he comes to
be at outs with all these people."

"Well," he began, and here followed with many interruptions and side
elucidations, which for want of space have been eliminated, the
following details:

Twenty-five years before Elihu had been the leading citizen of Noank.
From operating a small grocery at the close of the Civil War he branched
out until he sold everything from ship-rigging to hardware. Noank was
then in the height of its career as a fishing town and as a port from
which expeditions of all sorts were wont to sail. Whaling was still in
force, and vessels for whaling expeditions were equipped here. Wealthy
sea-captains frequently loaded fine three-masted schooners here for
various trading expeditions to all parts of the world; the fishers for
mackerel, cod and herring were making three hundred and fifty dollars a
day in season, and thousands of dollars' worth of supplies were annually
purchased here.

Burridge was then the only tradesman of any importance and, being of a
liberal, strong-minded and yet religious turn, attracted the majority of
this business to him. He had houses and lands, was a deacon in the local
Baptist Church and a counselor in matters political, social and
religious, whose advice was seldom rejected. Every Fourth of July during
these years it was his custom to collect all the children of the town in
front of his store and treat them to ice-cream. Every Christmas Eve he
traveled about the streets in a wagon, which carried half a dozen
barrels of candy and nuts, which he would ladle out to the merry
shouting throng of pursuing youngsters, until all were satisfied. For
the skating season he prepared a pond,