little span! But happy he, who, knowing nothing, misses nothing. If there were any village Hampdens, or mute, inglorious Miltons among my playmates, they gave no present indications. I found the girls considerably older than I expected, the boys less interesting than I hoped; but they all welcomed me with that grave, unemotional hospitality of the village, and we talked, far into the shadows, of our schooltime, the day that is never dead while memory endures.

[Pg 22]

And so it came about that at the close of day I found myself standing at the garden gate of the Eastmann cottage. Peleg Eastmann had been our village postmaster, a grave, shy man, who had received the federal office because the thrifty neighbors agreed, irrespective of political[Pg 23] feeling, that it was much less expensive to give him the office than to support him and his two daughters, the prettiest girls in our school. For they further agreed that Peleg was a "shif'less sort o' critter" and never could make a living, though he was a model postmaster and an excellent citizen and neighbor. Hence, when it came Peleg's turn to make the journey to the burying-ground in the village hearse, the whole community of Meadowvale was scandalized by the discovery that he had left his girls a comfortable little fortune, enough to keep them in modest wealth. Meadowvale never recovered from this shock. It felt that it had been victimized, and that its tenderest sensibility had been violated, and when his disconsolate daughters put up the granite shaft to their father's memory, relating that he had been faithful and just, the indignant political leader of the village remarked that it was "profanation of Scriptur'."

[Pg 23]

Thirty years ago I had stood at this little gate with one of the Eastmann[Pg 24] girls, escorting her home from Stella Perkins's party. I had attempted to kiss her good-night, and she had boxed my ears, thus contributing a disagreeable finale to an otherwise pleasant evening. Time is a great healer and I cherished no resentment at this late day toward the repudiator of my caresses. In fact I smiled in recollection of the incident as I walked up the gravelled path and knocked at the door. I wondered if the same vivacious, rosy-cheeked girl would come to meet me, and if I should feel in duty bound to make honorable amends. The door was opened by a tall, spare woman, who carried a lamp. The light reflected directly on her features, showed a face that in any other part of the world would be called hard; in New England it is merely resolute. It was the face of a woman fifty years of age, with massive 

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