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A delegation of personal and political friends was there to greet him, headed by good Doctor Gey, who beamed his delight on the brown-haired, broadshouldered young man whom he had helped into the world and whom he had solicitously watched through all his vicissitudes and triumphs up to the present hour.

He made a characteristic little speech of welcome, in the name of his fellowtownsmen, to which Glen was obliged to briefly reply, and then the hearty, good-natured crowd surrounding the little, rambling railroad station cheered itself hoarse, and with crude but honest acclaim vowed allegiance to "their candidate," pledging him that if the courts did not reinstate him in his seat they would elect him two years hence to a higher office by such an overwhelming majority that no returning board would dare to count him out.

Of course, such spontaneous, sincere outpouring of loyalty and sympathy was pleasing to Glen. Even an older face than his might have been excused the blush of pleasure that mantled his handsome, manly young features and the moisture of gratitude that for a moment dimmed his deep brown eyes.

He went with his friends to the village hostelry, where dinner was prepared, and after a little impromptu speechmaking over coffee and cigars later, he held an informal, old-friend reception in the hotel parlor.

But when it was all over, and the last formal word in heart-felt greeting had been said, Glen firmly declined the offer of friends to see him home, and started out afoot, as in days gone by, by highway and across lots for the farm.

Not that he did not appreciate fully the sincere testaments of good will and honor shown him, for his heart was swollen with appreciation and thanks. But while his whole being responded gratefully to such friendliness, his thoughts were with another, and she an absent one.

How true it is, as someone, somewhere, has so well said, that a sliver

239

than a famine in India.
in one's little finger is of more concern

To Glen, this mild, sunshiny winter's
day, plodding along over the half-
bared fields toward his welcoming
ment that the public prints far out-
home, it mattered little for the mo-
a hero and as
plauding him as
side the State's domains were ap-
His mind was not at all concerned with
martyr in humanity's loftiest cause.
with canvassing the future which was
the prominence he had attained nor
destined to bring him further honors.

a

The applause and turmoil was left behind, forgotten, and with head bent and hand thrust in his coat pockets he plodded on, unfeeling the buoyant conscious of the golden sunlight on pulse of the glorious upland air, unthe dappled landscape, the glint of bird wings, or the perfumed scent of the moist turf, that ordinarily he would have inhaled with deep, luxurisaw only the fair face of the girl he ant breaths. He heard nothing and loved, bent to him from the crowded gallery with its smile.

The following morning early, after the sausages and fried pudding with Glen backed into his great coat, which maple syrup had been disposed of, one of the men held for him, and after giving some directions as to the work He arrived at Major Terrill's office of the day, he drove off toward Ludlow. down into his chair to read the mornjust after the old lawyer had settled ing paper.

"Well, well," exclaimed the Major, shaken as Glen stamped in. "What's sticking out a welcoming hand to be Glen said he had some business in the early bird out for this morning?" town to attend to, and thought he would drop in in passing.

"Glad you did, glad you did," rejoined the Major, carefully poising his that he held up to receive them. glasses on the assertive ridge of nose "Indeed, I wanted to see you specially count matter. Wait till I see what's about that brief I'm to file in the rein the paper and we'll talk it over."

Glen threw his overcoat across the

table and busied himself with a file of Boston papers until the Major laid down the newspaper.

"Oh, by the way, Major, have you a pretty good telephone service here?" Glen asked, nodding toward a telephone on the nearby wall.

"Tolerable, tolerable," said the Major, glaring over the rubber rims of his glasses at the instrument, as though that was the first time he had noticed such an innovation in his office.

"But as to that brief, Glen," he continued, withdrawing his gaze from the telephone after scrutinizing it and finding it uninteresting.

"Copper circuit?" asked Glen.

"Ha?" said the Major, jerkily removing his glasses and looking keenly at his visitor, who still stood contemplating the instrument.

"Have a copper, out-of-town wire?" Glen supplemented, still viewing the telephone critically. "I've heard they're the best."

"I'd know," said the Major, after a pause. "I know they charge like robbery for it. It ought to be something extra fine for the money. But as I was saying '

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"Fairly private service?" Glen interrupted, still interrogatively.

The Major snorted. "You thinking of going into the telephone business?" he asked, sarcastically.

"If you're going down to get your mail, Major, I'll wait for you," said Glen, slowly. "While you're gone I may like to use your telephone, if you've no objection."

The old lawyer watched his visitor as Glen stepped to the telephone and interestedly viewed the instrument in all its details. The expression on the old lawyer's countenance indicated a perplexed doubt whether his young friend was slightly demented or if he himself was wavering mentally.

"I" He was going to explode with a strong exclamation to the effect that he had no intention of going to the post-office for an hour yet. But then he paused and looked keenly at the square-cut shoulders of the young man, who, by now, was deeply ab

sorbed in the uninteresting titles of the calf-bound volumes which were marshaled in even array on the shelves.

The kindly old practitioner was far from being dense. "I guess I will go down to the office," he said. "May be something there from the court that I may want to see about."

He pulled on the old fur cap with its floppy ear-laps that had been lying, top down, on the table with a pair of dark-stained buckskin gloves thrown into its frayed, silk interior. In back, the fur of that familiar old cap was all worn off to the shiny hide, from contact with up-turned coat collar, and when the Major put it on he tugged it down so on the back of his head that only a little frings of iron-grey hair showed below it.

Glen listened to the slow, heavy thump of the old man's rubber-shod feet on the stairs, until the outer door banged shut, a quizzical smile on his face, half self-accusing for playing such a shabby trick on his old friend. Then he quickly took the telephone book from its hook and ran a finger down the printed pages until he came to the "W's." Then he rang up central.

"I want seven, eleven, two-the Seminary in Westborough," he said, when "central" answered. "This is number eight forty-seven, Ludlow. I want to talk with Miss Constance Carter. You'll call me? All right!"

He hung up the receiver and went and gazed out the window, an odd, anxious expression on his face. he

When the telephone jingled crossed the wide room in three strides. "Hullo? Hullo?" a gentle inquiring voice was saying in his ear: a voice now rounded and softened to full maturity, but which he recognized instantly, and oh, so well.

"Hullo!" he rejoined into the mouthpiece. "Hullo, Constance! Is it you?" "Why, Glen. Is that you?" asked the voice in pleased surprise, and after the idiomatic manner of repetition and query peculiar to conversation over the phone.

"Yes," Glen answered. "I'm down at Ludlow. I'm in the Major's office."

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"Why, Glen. I'd like so much to see somebody from home, but, you know, it's against the rules for us to receive gentlemen company here. Would you come with the Doctor and Aunt Clara?" "No," exclaimed Glen, and little as the word is it made the instrument rattle. "I'm coming alone."

A musical little laugh rang over the wire. "Oh, my, Glen! That would That would never do."

"Well, rules or no rules, I'm coming, unless-"

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"Well-1-1." Long drawn out. "You know, Sir, I never was good at resisting a dare."

"Dish this phone! I can't say half what I mean standing here to a hole in the wall."

"Do what to it, did you say, Sir?" "Dish it."

"Oh!"

"Say," from Glen. "What?"

"Say, Kit!"

"Yes?"

"Say! When you coming home?" "Easter, Glen."

"Easter? When's Easter?"

"Why, Glen! Easter's the sixteenth."

"Sixteenth? Say!"

"Yes?"

"Say, Kit! If I won't come over and bother you, will you promise me toto Oh, confound this way of talking, anyway! Constance!" "Yes, Glen."

"Are you there?"

"Yes." A little smothered laugh. "Say! If I don't come over, will you promise me all of Easter evening to ourselves? I-I want to see you about something."

A long pause. "Hullo!"

"Yes, Glen-that is," hurriedly, “I mean I'm listening."

"But do you promise?"

"Why, Glen." A pause. "You see, the Robbins girls and I were going-" "Well, don't. Tell 'em you can'tthat you've got another engagement. Tell 'em anything. Only promise." "Why, Glen-I-I-O, Glen!" "Yes?" Anxiously.

"Miss Taft, the matron, is coming. I'll have to say good-by."

Commotion at Glen's end of the line. "Constance!" earnestly. "Please promise," oh, so pleadingly.

"Is it so important, Glen? Will it please you?"

"So very much."

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"Well." A noise of some one trying to get further into the receiver at

Glen's end.

"Well if it really makes any difference-Yes, I promise?"

"Thank you so much, little one," and Glen settled back onto his heels. "I'll explain everyhing when you're home. Good-by, if I must."

"Good-by, Glen. Remember me to all the folks and to the Major." "Until Easter."

"Until Easter." "Good-by."

Glen heard the receiver being hung up slowly, and as he turned away, a bright light in his own brown eyes, he heard, on the outer stairs, the slow skuff of the Major's feet as the old lawyer slowly ascended.

When he came in Glen was deeply absorbed in a bulky, black volume which had been nearest to his hand at the moment of the opening of the door. The Major tugged off his cap and tossed it on the table, and drew off his gloves slowly, eyeing Glen narrowly.

"That government report on interstate commerce you've got there, young man, ain't very recent," he said, slowly, and Glen's eyelids fluttered. "If you want something real interesting, I just got the department's latest treatise on Constitutional Limitation, that ought to make nice reading.

Glen looked up laughing, but the Major was already seated, adjusting his glasses astride his nose and pawing over the papers on his desk, while he hummed a bar or two of an old love song.

Finally, after he had read through several legal-looking forms and signed a letter or two, he pushed back his swiveled chair and put one pudgy knee up against the edge of the desk, removing his glasses and closing and squinting his eyes as he did so.

"About the brief," he said, as though he had not from the first been interrupted in the subject, and Glen closed the dry-as-dust government report and took a seat by his friend, who had been the boyhood friend of his father.

For some time they discussed their

affairs, politics, farming, etcetera. Finally Glen got up to go, promising to be in town again the following week, on request of the Major. Lunging into his great coat and pulling on a pair of fur gloves, he said, "good-by." He was just closing the door when the Major said:

"Oh, a-Glen! If there's anything about that old telephone that you don't like, I'll have it remedied."

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Glen paused on the threshold. broad back was all he could see of the Major, but there was a suspicious agitation of the stooped shoulders. He was about to make answer, when the Major interrupted him.

"That's all right, Farmer," he said, his face buried in a law book. "Come in any time. Post-office hours from ten to ten-thirty."

Glen closed the door with a bang, and passing by the window that opened from the office onto the dusky hallway he rapped on the grimy window-pane, then clattered down the stairs and passed out into the winter's sunshine.

CHAPTER XXX.

Candlemas day that year dawned leaden, with banks of clouds curtaining the eastern skies ard all the forenoon a hushed expectancy brooded over the up-country. But at noon the sun broke through and flooded the white world with radiant splendor. Then again the mist-veils were drawn. and the afternoon passed into history a gray, shadowless phantom. Whereby it came to pass that prophets that season were disconcerted.

Whether the ground hog had or had not seen his shadow was a mooted question one of the village tavern debating club spent several sessions over, but which was finally left undecided.

But the antis finally had the weight of evidence on their side, for the spring that year was early.

March, the mad month of strange, erratic tendencies, both came and went the lamb; the lion only roaring once,

for a brief night and day, about the middle of it.

Then came the south wind, kissing back to laughter the long mute mountain rills, and calling, whisperingly, the dead to rise. Soon the keen eyes of country folks began to notice the swelling of the buds, and up the southward slopes Spring came apace, heralded by first the robin, then the bluebird, and then other songsters of her merry train.

Days passed-pensive, yet glad some; quickening, yet languorous with blue skies just dimly veiled along the far horizon by fleecy mists and sunshine unalloyed from sun to sun.

Sheep-bells started forth again their tinkling sounds from slanting fields. where the heavy coverlets of winter were already gone, leaving the wellprotected verdure succulent and green.

Crows, black pirates of the air, came from the sheltering pinewoods and settled on field and fence posts, gossiping shrilly that seed-time was near at hand. Like ancient signal columns from mount to mount, the smoke coiled upward in the still air from heaps of rubbish burned by forehanded farmers clearing the land of useless stubble, or from a smouldering stump; and afar, at intervals, deep detonations rumbled from where new land was being cleared with explosives for the coming of the plow.

Spring comes apace up here amid the northern hills and at her advent the quest of the farmer is a busy one. The little legs of the little souls who prate of the life monotonous would have felt a tired ache had they followed Glen about his duties these golden days, and that, too, alack, without the splendid recompense of conscious glory in such tire.

About the time the jaded woman of the town, after her winter's round of artificial gaieties, puts off her sables, the pussy pillow in the country dons. its little furs and thereby strikes the hour for action.

One day, it was along in April, Mrs. Marsh had been up to the Grey place all the afternoon. Work on the farm

had been imperative and Glen had not found opportunity for his usual visits, but Mrs. Marsh had been to see Aunt Kate quite frequently. She remarked at the tea table that she had a delightful visit, for a dressmaker had come up from the village and was engaged in making a dress, "an elegant creation," for Constance; and the three women had, in consequence, been in their glory.

It was to be a blue silk, Mrs. Marsh said, but the four men about the table, Glen, Mr. Marsh, and the two farm "boys," were enthused to no comment. Glen was cogitating the suggested picture of a brown-haired, bright-eyed girl in a blue gown contemplatively, and thought that the presentiment was good, but the other three men again took up the discussion of the respective merits of centrifugal vs. gravity cream separators, which had been under discussion before Mrs. Marsh spoke.

In the next pause the good housekeeper ventured the surmise, come at after a lengthy comparing of views by herself, the dressmaker, and Aunt Kate during the afternoon, that it was going to be some kind of a wedding gown, and Glen dropped his fork and the girl in blue seemed to fade away into the distance, smiling sadly as she went.

"Why?" Glen asked, somewhat explosively, and was glad the next instant that there was such a thing as cream separators to absorb other men's minds.

Well, Mrs. Marsh had no real foundation for her belief, but when the dressmaker had been over to Westborough to consult Constance it had been. plates of wedding gowns that had been called for, and then, too, the dress now under construction was to have a train, something that no ordinary dress had. Then there were other circumstances, most of them inexplicable to the male mind. The dress was not for the school wear, that was certain, for it was to be done only the second week in June, after commencement, and at the time when Constance herself was expected home after graduating.

Glen not only lost interest in the

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