THE boy on the box was surfeited with travel. Glancing back over the swaying top of the coach, he had seen miles upon miles of hot dusty road, between banked-up masses of forests or cultivated fields, dwindle to a narrow thread of yellow. Day after day there had been the same tiresome repetition of noisy towns and sleepy cross-road villages, each one very like the other and all having a widely different appearance from that which he conceived Benson would present.

The wonderful life of the road, varied and picturesque, no longer claimed his attention. The black dot a mile distant was unnoticed. It was a long line of freight wagons north-bound to some lake port, laden with pork, flour and hides. Presently, these wagons would be passed by a party of mounted traders, travelling south to Baltimore for supplies, with their sacks of Spanish dollars loaded upon pack horses. Next they would journey for a little space with a cattle dealer and his men, who were taking a drove of Marino sheep across the state to Indiana. But the boy's curiosity had been more than satisfied; he had only to close his eyes to see again the vivid panorama of the road in the blaze of that hot June sun.

They had changed drivers so many times he had lost all count of them; and with the changing drivers a wearisome succession of passengers had come and gone; but to-day he and his father rode alone upon the box. That morning, the latter had told him they would reach Benson by noon, yet strangely enough his interest flagged; the miles seemed endless—interminable. He was sore and stiff; his little legs ached from their cramped position, and at last utterly weary he fell into a troubled sleep, his head resting on his father's arm, and his small hands, moist and warm, clasped idly in his lap.

His father, grim, motionless, and predisposed to silence, gave brief replies to such questions as Mr. Bartlett, the driver, saw fit to ask;—for Mr. Bartlett was frankly curious. As he said himself, he always liked to know who his passengers were, where they came from, where they were going, and if possible their business.

Now as they began the long descent of Landray's Hill, south of Benson, Mr. Bartlett pushed forward his brake handle and said, “That's Benson ahead of us, off yonder where you see the church spires; would you 'a knowed it, do you think?”

Instantly the man at his side who had been sitting low in his seat, took a more erect position, while a sudden light kindled in his dull eyes.

“Known it?” after a moment's survey of the scene before him. “Well, I guess not.” There was palpable regret in his tone, just touched by some hidden emotion; a passing shade of feeling not anticipated, that moved him.

“I allowed you wouldn't. Twenty years makes a heap of difference, don't it? Gives you a turn?” interestedly.

“Well, sort of,” with gentle sadness.

“I know how you feel. I been that way myself,” said the driver. Mr. Bartlett was short and stocky, with ruddy cheeks and great red hands. As one who mingled muck with the world, he prided himself on his social adaptability.

The stranger bestowed upon him a glance of frank displeasure. He felt vaguely that the other's sentiment was distasteful to him. It smacked of such fat complacency. At last he said, “I'd about made up my mind that I wa'n'. to see it again.” here a violent fit of coughing interrupted him. When it subsided, Mr. Bartlett remarked sympathetically:

“You ought to take something for that cough of your's. I would if it was mine.”

The stranger, still choking, shook his head.

“Where does it take you?”

“Here,” resting a bony hand on his sunken chest.

“Lungs?”

The stranger's jaws grew rigid. He favoured the driver with a sinister frown.

There was silence between them for a little space, which Mr. Bartlett devoted to a thoughtful study of his companion. Under this close scrutiny the stranger moved restlessly. A sense of the other's physical health oppressed him; it seemed to take from his own slender stock of vitality.

“Hope I ain't crowding you,” said Mr. Bartlett. “Here, I'll make more room for you. Well sir, Benson's about the healthiest place I know of. When a man gets ready to die there, he has to move away to do it.”

“Who the hell's talking about dying?” demanded the stranger savagely. “There are plenty of graveyards where I came from.”

“There are plenty of graveyards everywhere; yes sir, you'd have to do a heap of travelling to get shut of them.” admitted Mr. Bartlett impartially.

“And all the thundering fools ain't buried yet,” said the stranger shortly.

Mr. Bartlett meditated on this apparently irrelevant remark in silence. He had found the stranger taciturn and sullen, or given to flashes of grim humour.

“Where's Landray's mill?” the latter now demanded, the glint of anger slowly fading from his eyes.

“See that clump of willows down yonder, to the right of the road? It's just back of them.”

“Who's running it?”

“Old General Landray's sons, Bush and Steve,” he spoke of them with easy familiarity.

“I see you know them,” said the stranger.

“It'd be funny if I didn't,—everybody knows 'em.”

“I reckon so,” said the stranger briefly.

“I allow you knowed the general?” remarked Mr. Bartlett.

“I recollect him well enough.”

“He was right smart of a man in his day, and one of the old original first settlers. I knowed him well myself,” observed Mr. Bartlett.

“Powerful easy man to get acquainted with; awful familiar, wa'n'. he?” and the stranger grinned evilly.

“Well, I knowed him when I seen him,” said Mr. Bartlett, with some reserve; and he seemed willing to abandon the subject. “What you laughing at?” he added quickly, for the stranger was chuckling softly to himself.

“Oh, nothing much. Did you know him after he was took with the gout? You're sort of fat; say now, did he ever cuss you for getting in his way? It's likely that's what brought you to his notice,” and he exploded in a burst of harsh laughter. “Oh, yes, I reckon you knowed him well—when you seen him.”

This singular assault on his innocent pretensions had a marked and chilling effect on the driver. He edged away from the stranger, and there was a long pause; but silence was not to be where Mr. Bartlett was concerned. He now asked, pointing to the sleeping child, “Ain't you going to wake him up? He'll feel as if he'd missed something.”

“I guess he'll have a chance to see all there is to see when we get there. He's clean tired out. You say the Landray boys have the mill? The old general used to own a distillery across the race from it; what became of that?”

“It's there yet; Levi Tucker has it now. He's got the tavern, too, and I don't suppose he'd care to part with either. He's his own best customer; Colonel Sharp says he's producer and consumer both; I allow you didn't know the colonel?”

Again the stranger shook his head, and the driver's placid voice just pitched to carry above the rattle of wheels and the beat of hoofs, droned on, a colourless monotone of sound.

“I didn't suppose you did, he's since your time, I guess; he's editor of the Pioneer at Benson, and a powerful public speaker; I reckon near about as good as old Webster himself, only he ain't got the name. I don't remember ever seeing him but what he had his left hand tucked in at the top of his wes'-coat; yes, I reckon you might say he was a natural born speaker; when he gets stumped for a word he just digs it up from one of them dead languages, and everything he says is as full of meat as an egg; it makes you puzzle and study, and think, and even then you don't really get what he's driving at more than half the time. He's a mighty strong tobacco chewer, too, and spits clean as a fox—why clean as a fox I don't know,” he added, but he was evidently much pleased with this picturesque description of the colonel's favourite vice.

The stranger's glance had wandered down into the cool depths of the valley. It was twenty years since his eyes had rested on its peace and calm; its beauty of sun and shade and summer-time; much of his courage and more of his hope had gone in those years; he was coming back, wasted and worn, to the spot he had never ceased to speak of and to think of as home. He had looked forward to this return for health, but he knew now that the magic he had expected in his misery and home-sickness was not there; but he was inarticulate in his suffering, and perhaps mercifully enough did not know its depths, so even his own rude pity for himself was after all but the burlesque of the tragedy he had lived. Yet there still remained that greater purpose which was to make the road smooth for the child at his side where it had been filled with difficulties for him; there should be no more hardships, no more of those vast solitudes that sapped the life that filtered into them, that crazed or brutalized; these he had know; but these the boy should never know, for him there should be ease and riches,—splendid golden riches; his ignorance could scarce conceive their limit, the possibilities were so vast. Now he leaned far forward in his seat, hunger for the sight of some familiar object pinched his face with sudden longing.

“It's mighty pretty!” he said at last with a deep breath.

“Ain't it?” agreed Mr. Bartlett indulgently.

But the log cabins he had known were gone, and frame houses painted an unvarying white with vivid green blinds closed to the sun had taken their place. To the east and to the west of the town were waving fields of grain; with here and there an island of dense shade where a strip of woodland had been spared by the axe of the pioneer; on some of the more rugged hillsides from which the timber had been but recently cleared the blackened stumps were still standing. A blur of sound rose from the valley, it was like the droning of bees.

“That's the old Bendy furnace I hear, ain't it?”

“That's what it is,” said Mr. Bartlett.

The stranger sank back with a gesture of weariness, “It's a hell of a ways to come,” he said sourly. “It will be a lot easier when they get the railroads through here; that will knock you, pardner,” he added as a pleasant afterthought.

“I don't know about that;” said Mr. Bartlett quickly. “I guess it's going to be a right smart while before we hit on anything to beat hosses; the railroads is all right as far as they go, but the stages is here to stay. I reckon folks will always be in a hurry for the mail.”

“Well, I'd hate to think anything would ever interfere with you,” said the stranger with an ugly grin.

“How far did you say you'd come?” inquired Mr. Bartlett casually.

“I allow I didn't say,” said the other briefly.

“I reckon you ain't come any further than Pittsburg,” urged Mr. Bartlett tentatively.

“You reckon not?” and the stranger smiled.

“Philadelphia?” queried the driver.

“No.”

“New York, maybe?” cautiously.

“I been there, but that ain't a patch on the distance I've come.”

“Sailoring, maybe?”

“Not any. I seen all the salt water I want to.”

“Sick?” inquired Mr. Bartlett deeply interested.

“I like to throw up my toes.”

“You don't say!”

Here the boy awoke with a start. “Are we there yet, Pop?” he asked, rubbing his eyes sleepily.

The man's lips parted in a smile. “That's Benson ahead of us, son; we're almost there. Them's the church spires; and that round, dome-like thing's the court-house that you've heard me tell about.” There was not much of the town to see beyond the roofs of a few buildings which here and there showed among the trees, but the child was deeply impressed.

“Is that the place where you was a little boy, Pop?” he questioned in an awestruck tone. He was quite overcome by the sight of it; he stretched his tired limbs with a sense of freedom and physical relief.

It's a pretty gay looking town, ain't it? remarked Mr. Bartlett, with ponderous playfulness.

The child nestled closer to his father's side. “Is that the crick off yonder?” he asked.

“That's what it is, son, but the banks are pretty well grown up with willows since my time.”

“Where's the sheep-wash, Pop, where you swum the lambs?” He was a grave little boy, and he had come a great way to see all these wonders.

His father turned a trifle shame-facedly to Mr. Bartlett:

“I been trying to hearten him up a bit on the trip,” he explained; then he added, “You can't see the sheep-wash from here, son; it's off to the other side of the town.”

“Oh! Where's the sugar bush, where you and Grandpap made the long sweetening, and where you killed the timber-wolf, have we passed that?”

The man glanced back over his shoulder, “I reckon from the look of things that's been cleaned up,” he said regretfully. “I laid off to show it to you as we come along.”

“I wish she was here, don't you, Pop?” said the boy in a whisper, and he tucked his small hand into that of his father. The latter made no answer to this.

“Do you plan to locate in Benson?” asked Mr. Bartlett.

“Eh?” said the stranger, roused from the revery into which the child's words had thrown him. “No, I guess not; I ain't come back to stop. I reckon I need more elbow room than you got left in this part of the country.”

The boy nudged his father, and then placing a small hand with elaborate caution over his own lips as if to signify the need of reticence, smiled with deep cunning. The stranger lapsed into a moody silence and withdrew his eyes from the reach of valley into which they were descending, while Mr. Bartlett returned his undivided attention to the four horses he was driving. At intervals the child raised his eyes to his father's face as if to ask some question, but respecting his silence turned away again with the question unasked.

Having by his time reached the foot of Landray's Hill, Mr. Bartlett deftly released the brake, shook out his lines, and the stage made its rapid entry into Benson.