“Soyez tranquilles, mesdames…. Je suis un jeune hommepresse…. Mais modeste.”–LABICHE.

At ten minutes before five in the evening the office doors of the Florida and Key West Railway Company flew open, and a young man emerged in a hurry.
Suit-case in one hand, umbrella in the other, he sped along the corridor to the elevator-shaft, arriving in [...]

I
The servants had gathered in the front hall to inspect the new arrival–cook, kitchen-maid, butler, flanked on the right by parlor-maids, on the left by a footman and a small buttons.
The new arrival was a snow-white bull-terrier, alert, ardent, quivering in expectation of a welcome among these strangers, madly wagging his whiplike tail in passionate [...]

A warm October was followed by a muggy, wet November. The elm leaves turned yellow but did not fall; the ash-trees lighted up the woods like gigantic lanterns set in amber; single branches among the maples slowly crimsoned. As yet the dropping of acorns rarely broke the forest silence in Sagamore County, although the blue-jays [...]

“The bankrupt can always pay one debt, but neitherGod nor man can credit him with the payment.”
I
When Dingman, the fate game-warden, came panting over the mountain from Spencers to confer with young Byram, road-master at Foxville, he found that youthful official reshingling his barn.
The two men observed each other warily for a moment; Byram jingled [...]

The long drought ended with a cloud-burst in the western mountains, which tore a new slide down the flank of Lynx Peak and scarred the Gilded Dome from summit to base. Then storm followed storm, bursting through the mountain-notch and sweeping the river into the meadows, where the haycocks were already afloat, and the gaunt [...]

I
“Do you desire me to marry him?” asked Miss Castle, quietly.
“Let me finish,” said her uncle. “Jane,” he added, turning on his sister, “if you could avoid sneezing for a few moments, I should be indebted to you.”
Miss Jane Garcide, a sallow lady of forty, who suffered with colds all winter and hay-fever all summer, [...]

I
“And of course what I buy is my own,” continued Burleson, patiently. “No man here will question that, I suppose?”
For a moment there was silence in the cross-roads store; then a lank, mud-splashed native arose from behind the stove, shoving his scarred hands deep into the ragged pockets of his trousers.
“Young man,” he said, harshly, [...]

I
Before the members of the Sagamore Fish and Game Association had erected their handsome club-house, and before they had begun to purchase those thousands of acres of forest, mountain, and stream which now belonged to them, a speculative lumberman with no capital, named O’Hara, built the white house across the river on a few acres [...]

The steady flicker of lightning in the southwest continued; the wind freshened, blowing in cooler streaks across acres of rattling rushes and dead marsh-grass. A dull light grew through the scudding clouds, then faded as the mid-day sun went out in the smother, leaving an ominous red smear overhead.
Gun in hand, Haltren stood up among [...]

I
Through the open window the spring sunshine fell on Calvert’s broad back. Tennant faced the window, smoking reflectively.
“I should like to ask a favor,” he said; “may I?”
“Certainly you may,” replied Calvert; “everybody else asks favors three hundred and sixty-five times a year.”
Tennant, smoking peacefully, gazed at an open window across the narrow court-yard, where, [...]