MR. Bartlett drew rein before the tavern and greeted Mr. Tucker with a bluff “Good-morning.”

He looked as a man may look who has accomplished some great thing, for so he had, he had brought the news of the world to Benson's door; and what matter if that news had been stale for a week or better; if it chanced to be politics from Washington, or fashions from New York, these slight delays did not disturb Benson in the least, for the news had not always come so quickly.

Colonel Sharp, the editor of the American Pioneer, with his inevitable volume of the “Odes of Horace,” protruding from his coat pocket; and Captain Gibbs, editor of The True Whig, with his inevitable cigar protruding from his lips, hurried across the square from their respective offices, each intent upon receiving his bundle of Eastern papers.

Mr. Bendy, the postmaster, appeared, accompanied by a half-grown boy carrying a mail sack; and Jim, the stableman, led out the four fresh horses that were to take the place of Mr. Bartlett's jaded teams.

The child gathered up the small bundle which contained his own and his father's few belongings, and climbed quickly down from the box.

Before he left his seat, the stranger turned to Mr. Bartlett and tapping him on the chest with a long forefinger, said: “You're mighty curious, you are, but just you remember what I said about the graveyards and the fools; or maybe you'd better ask some friend's opinion—he'll see the point.”

He seemed to fling the words at him with an insolence that was indifferent of consequences, and before the astonished driver could make any reply, stepped to the wheel and from thence to the ground, and the coach an instant later rolled up Main Street.

The stranger stood like a man in a dream in the centre of the dusty road. He was a tall gaunt man of thirty-eight or forty, and, judging from the cheap decency of his attire, he might have been a mechanic or superior sort of a labourer in his best, for his clothes fit him illy, and he wore them as one accustomed to some other dress. He glanced across the hot square and on beyond it to the vista of shaded streets, where lay the spell of the summer's heat and lethargy. His appearance was that of one seeking out some familiar object, and seeking in vain.

After a moment's hesitation Mr. Tucker stepped to his side and touched him on the arm. The stranger turned on him with a frown of displeasure.

“Well?” he said shortly.

Mr. Tucker regarded him with amiable interest.

“Are you expecting to meet any one?” he inquired, smiling genially.

The stranger shook his head sadly. “No, I guess not,” he said slowly. “You don't happen to know a man by the name of Silas Rogers about here, do you? He used to run a blacksmith shop.”

“Why! Man, he's been dead near about eight years. It was all of eight years ago that we buried Silas, wa'n'. it, boys?” and he turned to the group of idlers before the inn.

“Going on nine,” corrected one of these laconically.

“He was well liked,” said Mr. Tucker.

The stranger made an impatient gesture.

“Maybe you know Tom Rogers?” he said.

“He's been dead about ten years,” answered the innkeeper promptly. “It was all of ten years ago that we buried Tom, wa'n'. it boys?” and again he turned to the idlers before the inn.

The stranger interrupted him quickly and resentfully.

“Seems to me you take a right smart interest in burying people; I reckon you have never thought how us that are left will feel when we come to plant you.”

At this, Mr. Tucker's mouth opened in silent wonder. He was a man of few ideas, and these did not yield themselves readily to words; but it occurred to him afterward that the stranger's chance of being present on the occasion alluded to, was highly problematical.

The latter stood for a moment scowling at the innkeeper, then he drew his tall form erect and taking his son's hand, turned abruptly on his heel and strode firmly off across the Square.

“Touchy, ain't he?” said Mr. Tucker, still amiably smiling.

Conscious that the eyes of the idlers were upon him, the stranger gained the centre of the Square before his pace slackened and his shoulders drooped again.

“It's everywhere!” he muttered to himself.

The boy looked up into his face with a glance of mute inquiry. He could not understand what the trouble was, but to him their homecoming was already a tragic failure. At last he said.

“Ain't this Benson, Pop?”

“Yes, it's Benson, sure enough, son.”

He glanced down at the child, and saw that his eyes were filled with tears. A spasm of pain crossed his own face.

“We'll find them presently, son; and they'll be mighty glad to see us when we tell them why we have come back; and we mustn't forget to ask about that pony I've laid off to get you when our ship comes in.”

But the child had ceased to care. He scarcely raised his eyes as they went down the street.

The maples cast cool shadows about them. It was very still, for the town seemed sleeping in the sultry warmth of that June day. Once, twice, the stranger paused, and glanced about him as if to make sure of his surroundings, and then went on unhesitatingly, leading the child by the hand.

“There was a many of us once, son,” he was moved to say in a voice of reminiscent melancholy. “Your grandpap built a cabin down on the crick bank.”

They had already left the centre of the town, and were approaching a region of grass-grown side streets.

“There, yonder, you can see it—that old log house through the trees!”

He had quickened his pace, and presently they came to a yard, neglected and overgrown with jimson-weed and pokeberry, and with here and there a tall hollyhock nodding above the rank vegetation. The ground fell way abruptly from the street level, and at the foot of a steep incline flowed the Little Wolf River. The house was an utter ruin. The windows were gone, and the huge stone chimney, built of flat rocks gathered from the bed of the Little Wolf, leaned dangerously. Like the windows the doors were gone too; the heavy hand-rived shingles were moss-grown; while daylight showed through the wide gaping chinks between the logs from which the clay had long since fallen. Nailed to the trunk of a great elm that stood near the street, was a sign with “For Sale,” painted on it in a palpably unprofessional hand.

The stranger surveyed the desolation with something very like dismay.

“I reckon twenty years is a right smart of a spell after all, son. It seemed like yesterday to me—coming back.”

But they were not unobserved. An old man had been watching them, and now he crossed the street, moving slowly with the aid of a heavy cane. He was close upon them before either became aware of his presence; then they turned, hearing his shuffling step upon the path, and saw that he was regarding them with eager curiosity out of a pair of beady black eyes.

“Maybe you are thinking of buying?” he said shrilly.

“No, I reckon not,” said the stranger; then his face changed with a look of quick recognition. “Why, you're old Pap Randall!” he cried. He seemed about to extend his hand, but the other gave him a blank stare; then he screwed his weazened wrinkled old face into a grin.

“I reckon I been old Pap Randall a heap longer than your memory lasts,” he said, chuckling. “Your father might a called me that, if he'd knowed me. The Rogers lived there onct, a do-less tribe outen the mountings of Virginia. Old Tom Rogers and me was soldiers in Colonel Landray's company in the second war agin the British; afore that, I'd fit under General Washington in the fust war—”

“What's come of the family?” asked the stranger.

“Gone—scattered like a bevy of pa'tridges as soon as they could fly. The oldest boy's dead; the second's gone back to Virginia; two of the girls married and moved west to Illinoy; and the youngest boy's in Texas or somewheres outen that ways. Old Tom was one of the fust settlers in Benson. He might a owned four hundred acres of land right about here if he'd a mind to, but he never held title to more'n this here scrap of an allotment, and a bit of an out lot up the crick, where Appleseed Johnny onct had one of his orchards; I reckon you've heard tell of him? He thought he had a call to kiver this here country with fruit trees; they say there ain't a county in the state but what's got its orchards that Appleseed Johnny planted.”

The stranger laughed shortly.

“I've heard you tell all this before, Pap.” he said, “and about when the first stage come through here from across the mountains.”

The old man caught eagerly at his last words. “Yes, and I rid on it too! I rid on the fust stage coach from across the mountings, and I'm a going to live to ride on the fust railroad. They're building the 'butments for the new bridge down by the old kivered bridge now.” His beady eyes were wonderfully brilliant. “I reckon you're a stranger here?”

“Well, no, I'm old Tom Rogers's son.”

And by nightfall, all Benson knew that Truman Rogers, who had gone to Texas, a raw stripling some twenty years before, had returned home from California.