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(“Know him?” I whispered.)

(“Is it Hen Flint, that used to drive the meat wagon with the white top?” said Old Hundred. “Lord, is it so many years ago!”)

“How are you, Mr. Flint?” said I.

“Thot I didn’t mistake ye,” said the old man, putting out a large, thin, but powerful hand. “Whar be ye now, Noo York? Come back to look over the old place, eh? I reckon ye find it some changed. Don’t know it myself, hardly. You look like yer ma; sorter got her peak face.”

“Where’s the swimming hole now?” asked Old Hundred.

“I don’t calc’late thar be any,” said the old man. “The gol durn trolley an’ the automobiles spiled the pool here, an’ the mill-pond’s no good since they tore down the mill, an’ bust the dam. Maybe the little fellers git their toes wet down back o’ Bill Flint’s; I see ’em splashin’ round thar hot days. But the old fellers have to wash in the kitchen, same’s in winter.”

“But the boys must swim somewhere,” said I.

“I presume likely they go to the beaches,” said Henry Flint. “I see ’em ridin’ off in the trolley.”

“Yes,” said I, “it must be easy to get anywhere now, with the trolleys so thick.”

“It’s too durn easy,” he commented. “Thar hain’t a place ye can’t git to, though why ye should want to git thar beats me. Mostly puts high-flown notions in the women-folks’ heads, and vegetable gardens on ’em.”

He shook hands again, lingeringly. “Yer father wus a fine man,” he said to Old Hundred–“a fine man. I sold yer ma meat before you wus born.”

Then he moved rather feebly away, down the cross-road. Presently a return trolley approached.

“Curse the trolleys!” exclaimed Old Hundred. “They go everywhere and carry everybody. They spoil the country roads and ruin the country houses and villages. Where they go, cheap loafing places, called waiting-rooms, spring up, haunted by flies, rotten bananas and village muckers. They trail peanut shells, dust and vulgarity; and they make all the country-side a back yard of the city. Let’s take this one.”

We passed once more the hole where the school had been, and drew near a cross-road. I looked at Old Hundred, he at me. He nodded, and we signalled the conductor. The car stopped. We alighted and turned silently west, pursued by peering eyes. After a few hundred feet the cross-road went up a rise and round a bend, and the new frame houses along the Turnpike were shut from view. Over the brambled wall we saw cows lying down in a pasture.

“It’s going to rain,” said I.

“No,” said Old Hundred, “that’s only a sign when they lie down first thing in the morning.”

Then we were silent once more. Into the west the land, the rocky, rolling, stubborn, beautiful New England country-side, lay familiar–how familiar!–to our eyes. To the left, back among the oaks and hickories, stood a solid, simple house, painted yellow with green blinds. To the right almost opposite was a smaller house of white, with an orchard straggling up to the back door. And in one of them I was born, and in the other Old Hundred. Down the road was another house, a deep red, half hidden in the trees. Smoke was rising from the chimney now, and drifting rosily against the first flush of sunset.

“Betsy’s getting Cap’n Charles’s supper,” said Old Hundred.

“Then Betsy’s about one hundred and six,” said I, “and the Cap’n one hundred and ten. Oh, John, it was a long, long time ago!”

“It doesn’t seem so,” he answered. “It seems only yesterday that we met up there in your grove on Hallow-e’en to light our jack-lanterns, and crept down the road in the cold white moonlight to poke them up at Betsy’s window. Remember when she caught us with the pail of water?”

“I remember,” said I, “the time you put a tack in the seat of Cap’n Charles’s stool, in his little shoemaker’s shop out behind the house, and he gave you five cents, to return good for evil; so the next day you did it again, in the hope of a quarter, but he decided there were times when the Golden Rule is best honored in the breach, and gave you a walloping.”