"The day after the weddin' the infair's to be held at old Mrs. Laddoun's," continued Nixon, hastily gathering up the reins of the conversation again; "the whole village is bid, young and old. I hear Laddoun is having his con-fectionery down from New York. I don't know what truth there is in that."
"I heern, too," said a man who had not yet spoken, "that Van Zeldt is bringin' down fireworks as his weddin' present. I've read of them fireworks; blazin' temples, and armies in the sky. Such as we read of in the book of Revelations. Seems to me that be hardly the work for a church-member. It be mockin' the Scriptures."
"Both them reports," said Graah, severely, "came from Pete Van Zeldt. He's a onreliable boy. I'd take them reports with caution, Mr. Kimball, and not venture on repeatin' them, if I was you."
"Anyways, we're havin' stirrin' times," broke in Nixon, impatiently. "Stirrin' times! Manasquan's wakin' up. I count, too, confident on George Laddoun. He has the materials of a great man, Mr. Kimball, that young man; an' when he's settled down, I make no doubt he'll give this town a h'ist up such as it has never had. He's known in high quarters, George is, and he promises to put his shoulder to the wheel in the Legislature, and get that railroad down from New York. By next winter, gentlemen, we'll have the iron horse in Manasquan."
"I've bin listenin' for that horse's neigh a good many years," said Graah, satirically. But the laugh did not follow which he expected.
"We made no doubt of havin' that railroad in my father's time," said Nixon, gravely. "He had his wires all laid, as you might say, ready for pullin'. He'd hev give the land for a depot himself: half an acre there by the cedars. But he was took away suddently. Of pleurisy."
"Well, good-bye, brethren," said the preacher, who had no mind to enter on this interminable railroad-field of talk, every inch of which he knew by heart. "I'm afraid Sister Noanes' dinner will be cold."
"One minute, Mr. Kimball!" and Nixon put his hand on the wagon-door and began to whisper, glancing back, as if for approval, at the other men, who nodded and put the word from one to to the other. The old man listened with his brows knit, muttering "Umph" to himself, but with a pleased smile.
"A very good thing!" he said emphatically, aloud. "A pleasant little plan, and the lad deserves it, brethren. Well, good morning. Wedding weather, eh?" and the yellow wagon rolled leisurely away.
Back from the road, half hidden by Graah's cedar swamp, was the old Byrne place; nothing but a strip of pasturage and bit of pond, beside the house. Laddoun would come into possession of it tomorrow in right of his wife. Laddoun had added one hundred acres to another since he left college, until he was one of the largest landholders in the county.
"Chemicals, I suppose," said old Mr. Kimball, with a puzzled knot in his forehead. "It's a business I don't understand. But it pays him well." He had fallen into the habit of thinking aloud in his continual, long, solitary journeys. He leaned forward to see if the Byrne house was open, and saw a blue rift of smoke coming from the chimney, and at the same time Dallas Galbraith going into the woods through the stubble-field. "Hollo, Dallas! Here!" he shouted.
Father Kimball had an odd liking for the boy. He was more pleased to meet him than he would have been anybody in Manasquan. He had taken his part strongly years ago, when the men at Nixon's tavern began to hint at queer suspicions about the strange boy that Laddoun had brought among them.
"Don't I know a good tree when I see it?" he said, vehemently. "There's a hundred signs beside the Scripture one of fruit. Clean bark, stout limbs, the leaves with a healthy rustle in them. Jest so with human nature. The boy's a strong, manly fellow, sound to the core." He liked to watch the lad wrestle or swim, as he grew older, finding him different from the drowsy Jerseymen about him—full of vitality, zealous, terri-
