"Mr. Kraus is about out of patience with our dallying. Shall we see you again, Dr. Hall? or are you going on with these—are you moving, too?"
"Yes, I'm moving," Hall replied, not very warmly, as if confirming heavy news.
"Going to quit us, now we've got a start?" Elizabeth challenged him sharply, as if she questioned his courage, after all. "Why, it's your town, you saved it, you made it what it is. It never would have amounted to a whoop if they'd got hold of the records that day."
"You give me entirely too much credit, Elizabeth," he replied, flushing under her praise. "I'm moving, but I'm not going on with the train. I have other plans."
"We'll always have a deep interest in you, Dr. Hall, for your great loyalty and help to us in our most trying hours," Mrs. Cottrell said. "I wish you to remember that, wherever you go. If it were possible we'd have you up to dinner this evening, and hear your plans for the future. But"—a gesture of disparagement—"there'll be dust a foot deep all over the house!"
"I couldn't think of straining your hospitality to that point," Hall returned. "You'll have enough to do without being burdened by a voracious guest. I'll be pretty busy myself to-day—just grab a bite on the run."
Kraus had put the luggage in the dusty phaëton. He was climbing to his seat now as if he intended driving off without his passengers, apparently groveling in his soul with the humiliation he felt in serving them at all. There are people such as Kraus to be found everywhere in this land of the free and home of the knave, who have no other means of showing their equality save by insolence.
"But where are you going?" Elizabeth inquired, help-
