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The clock in the belfry below the pointed spire of the old First Meeting House at Wellmouth Four Corners boomed seven times. It boomed solemnly, heavily, and with the deliberation befitting a timepiece of its age and social position. For forty-three years—ever since its presentation to the society by Captain Amaziah Dean, whose brick tomb was a prominent feature of the graveyard before and beside the church building—it had told the time to the citizens of the Four Corners. The fact that, of recent years, it seldom told it correctly was but a trifle in the minds of those citizens. If it erred, it was always on the slow side and this, too, was as it should be. The new clock on the Second Church, down at Wellmouth South Side, was sometimes as much as ten minutes fast. There you were!

The Four Corners, where the South Side road crossed the main road, was deserted. The post office was closed and would remain closed until seven-thirty, when the late mail was due to arrive. The doors of the Wellmouth Bank had been shut since four. The neat, trim little building with the Greek portico and the small, gilt-lettered sign “Joel Dean, Attorney at Law” was locked and untenanted. Only behind the broad panes of Manasseh Eldredge’s “Grocery, Dry Goods and General Store” were there signs of animation. Manasseh, always alert for the loose penny, did not close his establishment during the supper hour but kept open until after mail sorting.

The year was one late in the seventies and the day the second of July. The afternoon had been overcast, with a strong wind and a thick haze—the sort of weather which sailors call a “smoky sou’wester”—and beneath the elms and silver leaf poplars arching the main road dusk was deepening. Early as it was the windows of the Eldredge store were alight.

As the seventh stroke boomed from the belfry of the First Meeting House another window showed a yellow gleam. About a hundred yards farther up the road, on the same side as Eldredge’s and just beyond the iron fence of the graveyard, was a low clapboarded building which, in other respects vastly unlike the miniature Grecian temple occupied by Judge Dean, was also white. The gilt lettering of the sign above its door, however, was faded and weatherbeaten. This sign read, when one came near enough to be able to read it, “B. Higham. Job Printing of All Descriptions. Office of the Wellmouth Eagle.”

The interior of the little building was a dingy and grimy contrast to its outside. A small public room, divided by a battered counter, with a chair or two for customers before the counter and another chair, a desk and a stove behind it. The desk was heaped high with papers and the walls were thickly plastered with samples of posters, bills announcing auction sales, political “rallies,” “Grand Balls” at the town hall, and the like. There was a brass cuspidor conveniently placed on the floor near the customers’ chair.

Behind the door leading from the public room was the print shop, twenty-five feet long or thereabouts, smelling of oil and ink and with two old-fashioned presses and another stove. Opening from the shop at the rear and to the right was a third room, so tiny as to be little more than a closet. On the ground glass pane of its door was painted in black letters “Editor’s Office.” The knob and a liberal section of the door above, about and below it, were smeared with inky finger marks.

Elisha Dodson had just entered this room, and it was he who had lighted the kerosene bracket lamp affixed to the wall. He took off his ancient felt hat and his worn pepper and salt jacket and tossed them both carelessly into a corner. Then he laid his stout crook-handled cane upon the flat table-top desk by the window, and, sitting down in the armchair before the desk, squared his elbows to the task for the doing of which he had left an unfinished supper and hurried back to that office that evening.

Dodson was a short, thin little man, with a smooth-shaven face and a thick crop of grizzled brown hair which, bristling out in all directions, made his head look not unlike a dry thistle top. He wore spectacles and now, as he prepared to write, he adjusted a green eyeshade above them. He turned back his shirt cuffs and pushed the cane a bit farther out of his way. That cane was no fashionable flourish, but a very real necessity, for Elisha had walked with a limp since he was seventeen years old.

Sheets of copy paper were lying ready for use on the desk before him and he dipped a pen in ink and held it poised above them. This was to be an important editorial, the very first which, during his many years of employment in the Eagle office, he had ever written entirely on his own responsibility and which, when completed, would be published just as it was, without supervision or blue-penciling by a superior.

For there was no superior now. Beriah Higham, who founded the Wellmouth Eagle in 1846 and had owned, published and directed it until very recently, was dead and buried. And now his assistant, boss printer, and general factotum, Elisha Dodson, must compose and write and, later on, put into type the memorial which, set in double space, bordered by heavy, turned rules, would appear in the next number of the paper. Elisha had not been ordered to write it. Until the will was read and the wishes of the late B. Higham were made known, the future of the Eagle was a mystery. Meanwhile some one must carry on and that some one was, obviously, ’Lish Dodson.

He dipped the pen once more. How should he begin? It seemed impossible that the “old man” had gone forever. Old Beriah, with his bald head, his gold-rimmed spectacles, his cracked voice, his black stock and starchy, if frayed, linen—it was very hard to realize that he would never again enter that office, that that dry cough of his would never again be heard by the front door, a signal for “Tip” Cahoon to whisper: “Hide your pipe, ’Lish. Here comes old Ramrod Back.”

Dodson wrote a sentence and then drew the pen through it. Rising, he opened the lower half of the window beside him and stood looking out. The window commanded a cheerful view of the First Meeting House cemetery and, in the shadow beneath the ailanthus trees, he could dimly see the newly made grave with the fading floral tributes heaped upon it. Those tributes were many, for the late B. Higham had been a prominent figure throughout all Ostable County. He had made the Eagle a paying property. Amid the pullings and haulings of local politics, at the very center of the whirlpool of bitter rivalry between the conservative Four Corners and the bustling South Side, he had managed to make no real enemies, to keep old subscribers and win new ones. To be neutral—always neutral until it was perfectly safe to take sides, that was the Higham policy, and it paid. Benjamin Harrison Cahoon—“Tip,” short for “Tippecanoe”—who was errand boy, printer’s devil and janitor in the shop—summed it up when he said:

“The old man could walk tight rope with a kittle of hot clam chowder on each shoulder and never spill nary a drop. Ain’t that so, ’Lish?”

Elisha Dodson had worked for Mr. Higham almost twenty years. Left an orphan at fourteen he had, in his early youth, “gone fishin’,” as did almost every other Wellmouth male of his social status, at that period. When he was seventeen, during a February gale on the Georges, a heavy bit of wreckage had crushed his right knee and put that leg out of active commission forever.

Beriah Higham, then a middle-aged man, seated at that very desk in the little room where Elisha sat now, looked up and saw a slim, rather haggard lad regarding him shyly and somewhat fearfully.

“How d’you do, ’Lish?” he inquired. “Well, how’s the leg?”

“So-so, Mr. Higham, thank you.”

“Going to be all right again pretty soon, isn’t it?”

“No, sir.”

“Oh, now come! It may be—you can’t tell.”

“Yes, I can.... Mr. Higham. I—I—you can’t give me a job, can you?”

“A job! Why are you bothering about a job yet awhile? You’re scarcely out of the doctor’s hands.”

Elisha smiled, the slow quizzical smile which was characteristic of him.

“Want to stay out of ’em,” he observed. “Have to eat once in a while to do that.”

Higham smiled; he was in a gracious mood that morning. “I need a printer,” he said. “You aren’t a printer, are you?”

“No, sir, not yet; but I’m goin’ to be.”

“Oh, you are, eh? When?”

“Soon’s I can after you give me the chance to learn.”

Beriah was beginning to be mildly interested.

“Why do you think you want to be a printer?” he asked, curiously.

Elisha shifted from his sound leg to his lame one and back again.

“I always liked printed things,” he confessed. “I like to read. I’ve read most all the books in the Ladies’ Circulatin’ Library. I—I—” he swallowed and then added: “I’d rather be a printer and—and run a paper than anything else in the world, I guess.”

“Hum.... Well, I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I can’t help you. I can use a journeyman printer, but I can’t waste time with a green hand.”

Young Dodson sighed. “Cap’n Amaziah he said he was afraid you couldn’t. Well, I’ll have to try somewheres else, I presume likely.”

Higham had pricked up his ears.

“Wait,” he ordered. “What’s that? Did Cap’n Amaziah Dean send you to me?”

“Yes, sir. He said he’d be kind of glad if you could give me a chance. My father was second mate along of him for four voyages.”

Captain Dean was a big man in Wellmouth, a well-to-do and influential citizen and a leader in Whig politics in the county. The Eagle and its editor owed much to him. Mr. Higham pulled at his chin beard.

“I might take you on as a—well, as a sort of errand boy, I suppose,” he mused. “Like to please Cap’n Amaziah when I can. Three dollars a week; how’s that sound to you, ’Lish?”

“Fine.” Then, wistfully, “Could I have a chance to learn printin’? I’d work at it nights if you’d let me.”

“All right—see how you get along.” He paused and then asked another question. “You say you read a lot. What do you read?”

“ ’Most everything I get a hold of. I’ve been readin’ history lately, about the War of 1812 ’twas. Miss Becky Snow, at the lib’ry, she picked out the book for me.”

“Hmph! Do you remember what you read?”

“Yes, sir. Cal’late to.”

“Well—er—let me see. Who was Isaac Hull?”

Elisha Dodson’s shyness vanished; his blue eyes flashed. “Commander of the United States frigate Constitution,” he announced. Then, rattling on as if repeating a lesson, he added: “Fought a fight with the British ship Guerrière” (He pronounced it “Gur-ree.”) “The Gurree opened fire first, but Cap’n Hull he never let the Constitution fire back until he had the Gurree right in range of his broadside. Then he sung out: ‘Now, boys, jam it into ’em!’ He had on tight-fittin’ britches—pants, I mean—and he stooped over when he sung that out and them pants cracked right open from the top right down to the knee. Yes, sir, split right apart, they did.”

The editor laughed. “Who told you that yarn?” he demanded.

“Nobody,” stoutly. “It’s so, ’twas all in the book. They give Cap’n Hull a big dinner up to Boston afterwards.” The slow, quizzical smile again and Elisha added: “Maybe they give him a new pair of pants too—the book didn’t say.”

Dodson came to work in the print shop the next morning and he had missed few working days since. He learned the printer’s trade, and he learned other things, among them the knack of writing fairly correct English. His speech, however, still retained the characteristic expressions and twang which it had acquired in boyhood. Higham, who—perhaps because he had been told that he looked like Daniel Webster—made it a point to dress and speak like that great man, found the twang and the careless use of words irritating.

“Why do you say ‘ain’t’ when you mean ‘isn’t’?” he snapped irritably. “You write pretty well; why don’t you talk the same way?”

Elisha shook his head. “When I write ‘ain’t’ I can see it looks wrong,” he explained, “but I can’t see what I say. I guess likely that’s it.”

“Don’t say you ‘guess likely.’ Say you guess. Did you ever hear me say I guessed likely?”

“No, sir, not as I know of.”

“You don’t know ‘of’—you know, don’t you?”

“Why, yes, sir, I guess maybe I do, that’s a fact.”

“If it’s a fact you don’t have to guess it.... Tut, tut, tut! You’re a South Sider born and you’ll never be anything else till you die. Here,” handing him a penciled manuscript, “here are this week’s East Harniss locals. See if you can turn them into decent English.”

Dodson took the sheets of blue-lined notepaper and departed to edit the notes of Mrs. Sarah Abigail Ginn who was the Eagle’s East Harniss newsgatherer. Sarah Abigail wrote on both sides of the paper and invariably referred to a defunct person as the “late diseased.”

Little by little, year by year, Elisha built himself into the fabric of the printing business and the Wellmouth Eagle until he became almost as important a part of them as B. Higham himself. During the last decade of his life the “old man” left the paper almost entirely in his assistant’s hands. He—Beriah—wrote the political editorials and supervised the general make-up, but the news columns and their contents were all in Elisha’s charge.

When he was but twenty-two, Dodson married. His wife was a Blodgett, one of the Orham Blodgetts, and they rented a small house on the South Side road, half way between the South Side and the Four Corners. A year later he became a father and a widower. Jane Dodson died in childbirth, and Elisha was left with a baby girl, Helen, on his hands. Somehow or other he brought her up and now she was his housekeeper, his guardian and his first interest in life. The second was the Wellmouth Eagle. Helen and the Eagle, these two occupied his thoughts and kept him busy—little else mattered.

He turned from the window and sat down once more before the desk. “All Wellmouth and all Ostable County has suffered a heavy loss,” he wrote. “Heavy” was not precisely the word he wanted, it was not the sort of word which B. Higham himself would have used. Too simple—too everyday. B. Higham had never liked and seldom used everyday words. There must be something—ah yes! “Irreparable,” that was better. Two “r’s” or one? He refreshed his memory with the dictionary and went on, his pen moving faster as he gained confidence.

The latch of the outer door rattled and lifted. Elisha did not hear it. Neither did he hear the door open nor the steps in the public room and print shop. Only the dignified “Ahem” which heralded the approach of the visitor caused him to look up from his writing and turn his head.

“Why—why, good evenin’, Judge!” he exclaimed.

Joel Dean—“Judge” Dean by courtesy—was Wellmouth’s leading lawyer. He was counsel for the Wellmouth Bank, as well as one of its directors, and legal adviser to most of the nabobs of the Four Corners, including Captain Gideon Bates, Wellmouth’s richest man. In politics he was, of course, staunchly Republican—to be anything else in that neighborhood at that time was to be lonely indeed—and, although Manasseh Eldredge was the active “boss” of the local political ring, behind Manasseh was Judge Dean. No postmaster, no customs collector, no nominee for the State House of Representatives for that district was ever selected without his approval. Captain Bates might be king of the Four Corners, but Dean was prime minister.

Bearded, silk-hatted, gold-spectacled and carrying a gold-headed cane, he stood there in the doorway and regarded shirt-sleeved Elisha Dodson with condescending benignity. Elisha scrambled to his sound foot and stammered a greeting.

“Why—why, good evenin’, Judge,” he repeated. “I—I—why—er—good evenin’.”

Dean nodded. “Good evening, Elisha,” he said. “Hard at work, eh? Well, that’s right—that’s right. The paper must go on even if its late proprietor has—er—passed beyond. Of course—yes. Ahem! May I come in?”

He had come in already and Dodson hastily pushed forward the chair he had been occupying. Judge Dean sank into it with deliberate dignity.

“Don’t stand, Elisha,” he ordered, graciously. “Be seated—do.”

As the chair he had relinquished to his visitor was the only one in the room, Dodson, after a moment’s hesitation, compromised by leaning against the desk.

“You wanted to see me, did you, Judge?” he asked, rather vaguely.

“Yes. Yes, I did. There is a matter which we—er—felt should, perhaps, be discussed with you before it is—er—brought to public notice. It will, of course, be made public in a short time, but as it is important to the welfare of Wellmouth in general, certain of us who have that welfare at heart feel that you should—er—be made acquainted with it in advance. It may be gratifying to you to know that, with the exception of Captain Bates and myself and Eldredge and—well, one or two more—you are the first to learn of it. Ahem! the very first—yes.”

Elisha was bewildered. He could not imagine what was to follow this impressive prologue.

“I see,” he faltered. “Yes, yes—I see.”

Judge Dean smiled. He stroked his long gray beard. It was a majestic, bushy and carefully tended beard, and he was proud of it. The feminine leaders of Four Corners society often complimented it as the most beautiful beard in the whole town. This was high praise, for to be beardless in the seventies was to be eccentric. Elisha Dodson, as has been mentioned, was smooth shaven.

The Dean hand stroked the beautiful Dean beard.

“I doubt if you do see, Elisha,” observed the Judge.

“Yes.... I mean no.... Well, I guess maybe I don’t,” confessed Dodson.

“There is no reason why you should. I was—of course you know that—Mr. Higham’s friend and lawyer. I had charge of his affairs while he was alive, and under the provisions of his—ahem—last will and testament, which I drew, I am in charge of them now.”

Mr. Dodson, feeling that he should say something, said “I want to know!”

“Yes. I know how my friend intended disposing of his property and effects. A part of that property is this business here, the printing business and,” impressively, “the Wellmouth Eagle. It is about them—the Eagle in particular—that I am here to-night to talk with you, Elisha.”

He paused. Dodson was thinking rapidly. The late B. Higham was a bachelor; never once had Elisha heard him speak of living kinsfolk. The question of who was to inherit the print shop and the paper had been much discussed in Wellmouth. The gossips at the post office and in Manasseh Eldredge’s store had talked of little else since the funeral. Down at the South Side, in the office of the fishing magnates, at the shipchandler’s, along the wharves and aboard the schooners unloading fish at those wharves, they were guessing and speculating—or so “Tip” Cahoon reported.

Elisha himself had scarcely mentioned the subject in public, but at home, alone with his daughter, he had mentioned it often. The question of who was to be the new editor and proprietor of the Eagle had filled his thoughts for three days and nights. Sometimes he had even dared to dream foolish dreams. Helen, with her usual common sense, had warned him that, in all probability, they were foolish, and he agreed with her. But—well, no one knew the ins and outs of the Higham shop as he knew them; no living person knew the Eagle as he knew it. And Beriah, through their long association, had been aware of that knowledge. What was he about to hear? A thrill of expectancy, almost of hope, stirred within him. His knees were trembling.

The Dean beard received another stroking. The throat behind the beard was cleared with another “Ahem.”

“Dodson,” went on the Judge, with solemn deliberation, “I doubt if more than two people in Wellmouth were aware that Mr. Higham had any relatives living. He never spoke of them; he was—er—shall we say close-mouthed about his private affairs. For instance, he never mentioned to you that he had a sister living in Cleveland, did he?”

“Eh?... A sister? No, he never.”

“I’m sure he didn’t. I shouldn’t wonder if there had been trouble between them at some time or other. At any rate he had a sister there, a widow, her married name was Cobb; she died five years ago, leaving an only son, Franklin Cobb. Her husband’s mother was a Franklin, I believe. Ahem—yes.”

Elisha made no comment. The thrill of hope was changing to a quiver of dread.

“Well, Elisha,” went on Judge Dean, “I may as well tell you now that this Franklin Cobb is the sole Higham heir. All the property, real and personal, has been left to him.”

Dodson caught his breath. “You mean—” he stammered, “you mean—everything? The Eagle and—and all?”

“That’s exactly what I mean. This Franklin Cobb inherits everything. A little money—not much, for Beriah was far from rich—and a few stocks and securities amounting to, perhaps, two or three thousand dollars. Those and the furniture and personal effects, plus this print shop and the Eagle, now, under the will, belong to this young fellow. Yes,” with emphasis, “all. There were no other bequests of any kind.”

The dream castle was a pathetic ruin now. Elisha’s eyes, behind the spectacles and beneath the green shade, closed and then opened.

“You don’t say!” he gasped. “Well, well!... Does he—this Cobb boy—know about it?”

“Why do you call him a boy?”

“You said he was young.”

“So he is. About twenty-five or twenty-six, I believe. I don’t know whether he knows yet, but he will, of course. I telegraphed him at Cleveland, at the only address I had, which was his mother’s home during her last years. It was, I was given to understand, a rented apartment, so the chances are that young Cobb doesn’t live there now. I telegraphed him and I have written him, but I have as yet had no answer. Meanwhile,” leaning forward, and speaking even more impressively, “there are important matters to be considered and settled. Captain Bates”—he mentioned the name reverently, as all Wellmouth was in the habit of doing—“agrees with me as to their importance and the need of prompt decision.... Ahem!... In our consultations your name, Dodson, has been often mentioned and I was commissioned to have this talk with you. In strict confidence, of course; you understand that?”

“Why—why yes. I shan’t tell anybody.”

“You mustn’t. As you know, Elisha, the Wellmouth Eagle is a—er—power in the town and county.” His voice assumed an oratorical roll, such as it was accustomed to assume when he addressed a district convention. “Its editorials,” he boomed, “and its news columns have always reflected the views of the wisest political thinkers of this section of the State. In the right hands it can, as it has in the past, do a great deal of good. In the wrong hands it might possibly do considerable harm. You realize that?”

“Why—I guess likely so, Judge.”

“I am sure you do. My friend Beriah often expressed to me his confidence in your—er—discretion.... Just a minute, please; let me go on.... It is not likely that this young fellow, Cobb, will wish to continue his uncle’s business—and the Eagle—under his own direction. The chances are that he is employed elsewhere and that he will probably wish to sell out at once. Captain Bates and I and—er—some of the rest of us have decided that, for the good of the community, the Eagle should continue to be in safe hands—in wise, conservative hands. Therefore we have, among us, pledged a sum of money to buy it. The printing business will, no doubt, have to go with it, so we shall buy that, too. The Wellmouth Eagle will, if, or when, we control it, still be issued from this office.”

Elisha Dodson nodded dazedly. He still could not understand why this was told to him. Why? Unless as a preparation for notifying him that his services would no longer be needed. Visions of having to look for employment elsewhere crossed his mind. At his age they were disturbing visions.

“And,” went on Dean, emphatically, “and under the same direction. The very same—yes.”

The disturbing visions departed as suddenly as they had come. Elisha’s hands moved involuntarily. His cane was knocked from the desk to the floor. He did not notice it.

“I—I don’t know’s I quite understand you, Judge,” he faltered. “You mean—you mean you’ll want me to—to work here same as always?”

The Judge’s voice lost a little of its platform quality. He was very much in earnest now and, momentarily, he was a trifle less statesmanlike in manner and diction.

“I mean,” he declared, crisply, “that we—Captain Bates and I and the rest of us—will want you to run the Eagle. That’s what I mean.”

Dodson pushed the green shade up into his hair. The eyes behind the spectacles were shining.

“You’re goin’ to let me be editor!” he cried. “You—you are?”

“Yes, we are. Wouldn’t you like to be?”

“Like to be!... My gorry, yes! I’d rather be that than President, don’t know as I wouldn’t.”

Dean smiled. “Well,” he observed, dryly, “I doubt if you’ll ever be President, Elisha.”

Elisha smiled in sympathy. “I doubt it full as much as you do, Judge.... I—I must say I’m awfully obliged to you, I am so. And I’ll try my best to do a good job.”

“We are sure you will. Yes, you are to be the editor. We—some of us—may write an occasional editorial and we shall, of course, have general supervision of what goes into the paper.”

“Why, naturally. That’s right, that’s right. I understand.”

“You must understand. The Eagle will continue, as it always did under Mr. Higham, to support the right candidates and the proper policies. Who those candidates may be and what the policies are will be matters which the new owners will determine. Otherwise than that you will—er—have a free hand.”

He rose. Elisha, who seemed to be in a sort of trance, groped on the table for his cane, then, remembering that it was on the floor, stooped and picked it up.

“I don’t know just how to thank you, Judge Dean,” he faltered.

“That’s all right. As for your wages—why, I suppose that is a matter to be settled later. They won’t be smaller than they are now, of course.... Eh? What were you going to say?”

“Why—why, nothin’ much, Judge. I presume likely you’re as good as sure this—this Cobb boy will be willin’ to sell out? Don’t think likely he’ll want to own the Eagle himself?”

“Can’t imagine why he should. He is in the West somewhere, probably, and at work. This print shop and the paper are of no use to him out there and, if he is sensible, he will be glad to turn them into money. However, nothing is settled yet, and until it is you mustn’t mention it to anyone.”

“Oh, I shan’t, Judge. Except—well, I’d like to tell Helen if I might.”

Dean hesitated. “Yes,” he agreed, after a momentary pause, “you may tell her. You would anyhow, of course—”

“No, I wouldn’t,” quickly. “Not unless you said I could.”

“She would get it out of you, or I miss my guess. She is a smart girl—everybody says so. Very well, tell her, but don’t either of you whisper a word of it outside. Captain Bates himself wished me to impress you with the need of keeping this very quiet. He has great confidence in you, Dodson. Don’t disappoint him.”

He rose and turned to go. “As soon as the matter is settled you will be notified,” he added. “Until then, if any one asks questions you don’t know anything. Good night.”

“Just a minute, Judge. Shall I keep on gettin’ out the paper until it is settled?”

“Certainly.”

Dodson, taking the lamp from the wall bracket, lighted his visitor through the print shop and public room to the outer door. Then he limped back to the chair by the desk and sat down to think it over.

The Wellmouth Eagle was to go on and he was to be its editor. So much of his dream at least had come true. Helen had never taken much stock in his own faint hope that Beriah Higham might have remembered him in his will. Not very likely, was her opinion. No one had worked harder or more faithfully than Elisha, but, again in her opinion, Mr. Higham was not the sort of man to appreciate that service to such an extent.

“Don’t you believe it, Father,” she said. “If it turns out that there aren’t any Higham relations you’ll find that everything has been left to build a monument in the cemetery, or for a memorial window in the church, or to buy a new organ with his name on a silver tablet—something like that. What he has left you doesn’t interest me. What I really worry about is the chance that you may lose your place in the Eagle office. That worries me because I know it would break your heart. I honestly believe you had rather have your name at the top of the editorial page of the Eagle than be left a million in anybody’s will.”

Her father smiled. “Maybe you’re right, Nellie,” he agreed. “ ’Fraid I wouldn’t know what to do with a million and there’s lots of things I’d like to do with the Eagle, if ’twas mine.”

And now it was going to be his—or, if not his exactly, he was to be its editor, its real editor, with his name in print. No less an authority than Judge Joel Dean had told him so, and the voice of Dean was the voice of Captain Gideon Bates, not to mention that of Manasseh Eldredge and others of Wellmouth Four Corners’ little circle of ruling powers. They had made their plans and he, Elisha Dodson, was a part of those plans; that was something to flatter a fellow’s vanity—if he had any.

Elisha had very little, but he could not help feeling a trifle vain just then. They must have considered him worthy or they would not have laid this trust and responsibility upon him. Captain Bates had great confidence in him—he had sent that message by Dean. By gorry, that was good to hear! Even Helen, who pretended not to share the reverential awe of the majority for the great Captain Gideon—even Helen would find it hard to laugh that off. She would be pleased when he repeated it to her, pleased and happy.

There were lots and lots of ways in which the Eagle could be improved. Some of them he had suggested to Mr. Higham, but Beriah was not inclined to accept suggestions from a hired man. Well, there would be no one to bar improvements now. Of course Dean had said something about supervising and directing the policy and politics of the paper, but he had also said that its new editor was to have a free hand. Editor of the Wellmouth Eagle and given a free hand to do what he liked with it—gorry, that was wonderful!

He dreamed and exulted and schemed for many minutes. Then, awakening to reality and the passage of time, he resumed work upon the editorial tribute to the late B. Higham. It was, when at last he finished it, a glowing eulogium. He was in the mood to be completely satisfied with the world and its inhabitants past and present and the tribute was a reflection of his feelings. It ended thus:

Beriah Higham has gone from our midst, but the paper he founded and which he made a power for good in Ostable County must and shall go on. Its new editor, whoever he may be, will, we know, continue the fight for truth, justice and freedom. In the future, as in the past, the Wellmouth Eagle shall soar onward and upward, “Not a stripe effaced or polluted, not a single star obscured.”

The bracket lamp, which Tip Cahoon had forgotten to refill, was burning low and smoking high when he finished. He folded the sheets of copy paper and put them in his pocket. Helen was always accorded the privilege of reading his editorials before they appeared in print. Usually she revised them here and there. “I have made a few changes, Father,” she frequently said. “You don’t mind, do you?” He did not mind of course. Often some of his choicest flowers of rhetoric were plucked, and he could not understand why, but he seldom protested. Helen had had an education, something he never had. She was what Judge Dean had called her, a smart girl. Doubtless she knew what was right better than he did.

The clock in the belfry of the First Meeting House struck ten as he locked the outer door. The main road was black as Egypt. Above his head the leaves of the elms and silver leaves rustled in the southwest wind. He descended the steps to the sidewalk and, leaning upon his cane, limped briskly toward home.

The Eldredge store was closed now, so was the post office, and almost all the dwelling houses were dark. In the great white house—the Eagle invariably referred to it as the “mansion”—of Captain Gideon Bates, however, the lights were still burning. The French windows of the Bates mansion were aglow and behind their drawn shades shadows moved and the tinkle of a piano was audible. Victoria—Captain Gideon’s eighteen-year-old daughter—was at home from the Middleboro Academy on her vacation, and Victoria had city ways and city hours for retiring. The young people of the Four Corners—the select young people—had gay times in that house during Victoria’s vacations.

Dodson crossed the road and, leaning upon the white picket fence bordering the Bates front yard, listened for a moment. The piano was playing a lively tune and, as he listened, young voices began singing “There is a Tavern in the Town.”

Elisha went on his way humming the familiar words. He was in a musical mood himself just then.

“‘There is a tavern in the town—in the town,

And there my true love sits him down—sits him down.

And drinks his wine both good and free

And never, never thinks—’”

“I beg your pardon.”

Dodson’s song broke off in the middle of a line. He turned quickly.

“Huh?” he queried, with a startled grunt. “What?... Who’s that?”

A figure had stepped from the deep shadow of the clump of syringas at the far side of the granite post marking the Bates driveway.

“I beg your pardon,” said the voice again. “Can you tell me how to get to the hotel?”

Elisha peered through his spectacles. It was too dark to see clearly, but the person who asked the question was a man, and, judging by his voice, a young man. He was tall and broad-shouldered, wore a straw hat and appeared to be carrying a valise. Dodson leaned forward and peered at him. A stranger, that was certain. Elisha knew every resident of Wellmouth Four Corners and Wellmouth South Side, and this young fellow was none of these.

“Eh?” stammered Mr. Dodson. “Hotel, did you say?”

“Yes. There is a hotel, isn’t there?”

“Why—why, there’s the Vineyard House down to the South Side; that’s a kind of hotel, but it’s a good ways off.”

“How far?”

“About two mile.”

“Whew! Nothing nearer than that?”

“Well, there’s Mrs. Cahoon’s. She takes boarders. I understand she’s full up now, though. This is her busy time. City folks down for the summer and over the Fourth. Maybe you could get in there, but I doubt it.”

“Is her place nearer than the hotel?”

“ ’Tisn’t too near, maybe a mile and a half.”

“Great Scott! This bag weighs a ton. Isn’t there any place where I can be put up for the night? This isn’t a boarding house here, is it?”

He pointed to the Bates mansion. Elisha gasped.

“I should say not!” he exclaimed, with horrified emphasis. “That house belongs to Captain Gideon Bates. You’ve heard of him, I expect.”

“Sorry, but I haven’t.”

“Then you don’t belong in Ostable County, I’ll bet on that.”

“If you do, you win. I landed here about ten minutes ago. I came as far as Bayport in the train, and got off at the station to buy a cigar. When I came out the train was just leaving. I hired a livery rig and driver to bring me here. The driver said he hadn’t lived in Bayport long and didn’t know where the Wellmouth hotel was, but he guessed it wasn’t far off. Looks as if he missed his guess.”

“Sho! He ought to have known better. In a hurry to get back to bed, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“If he was I can sympathize with him. Bed sounds pleasant to me; I was on a sleeper all last night. Sleeper was what they called it, but it was anything but that.”

Elisha Dodson had heard of sleeping cars, but he had never seen one. He was impressed.

“I want to know!” he exclaimed. “So you were in a regular sleepin’ car, eh? Must have come a long ways.”

“I came from Cleveland to start with.”

The name “Cleveland” awakened a memory in the Dodson mind. Where had he heard that city mentioned? He had and recently. Why yes, of course; Joel Dean had spoken of Cleveland.

“What did you say your name was?” queried Elisha.

“My name is Cobb.”

“Cobb!... Eh?... Why—why, you ain’t Franklin Cobb, are you?”

“Yes.”

“Well—well! My gorry!”