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He was a goodly figure of a man as he stood there beside his valise. Portly, erect, handsomely dressed, and with something unusually winning in his brown mustache and blue eyes, something scholarly suggested by the pinch-nose glasses, something strong in the repose of the head. He smiled as he saw how unchanged was the grouping of the old loafers on the salt barrels and nail kegs. He recognized most of them-a little dirtier, a little more bent, and a little grayer.

They sat in the same attitudes, spat tobacco with the same calm delight, and joked each other, breaking into short and sudden fits of laughter, and pounded each other on the back, just as when he was a student at the La Crosse Seminary and going to and fro daily on the train.

They ruminated on him as he passed, speculating in a perfectly audible way upon his business.

"Looks like a drummer. "

"No, he ain’t no drummer. See them Boston glasses?"

"That’s so. Guess he’s a teacher. "

"Looks like a moneyed cuss. "

"Bos’n, I guess. "

He knew the one who spoke last-Freeme Cole, a man who was the fighting wonder of Howard’s boyhood, now degenerated into a stoop-shouldered, faded, garrulous, and quarrelsome old man. Yet there was something epic in the old man’s stories, something enthralling in the dramatic power of recital.

Over by the blacksmith shop the usual game of quaits" was in progress, and the drug clerk on the corner was chasing a crony with the squirt pump, with which he was about to wash the windows. A few teams stood ankle-deep in the mud, tied to the fantastically gnawed pine pillars of the wooden awnings. A man on a load of hay was "jawing" with the attendant of the platform scales, who stood below, pad and pencil in hand.

"Hit ‘im! hit ‘im! Jump off and knock ‘im!" suggested a bystander, jovially.

Howard knew the voice.

"Talk’s cheap. Takes money t’ buy whiskey," he said when the man on the load repeated his threat of getting off and whipping the scalesman.

"You’re William McTurg," Howard said, coming up to him.

"I am, sir," replied the soft-voiced giant turning and looking down on the stranger with an amused twinkle in his deep brown eyes. He stood as erect as an Indian, though his hair and beard were white.

"I’m Howard McLane. "

"Ye begin t’ look it," said McTurg, removing his right hand from his pocket. "How are yeh?"

"I’m first-rate. How’s Mother and Grant?"

"Saw ‘im plowing corn as I came down. Guess he’s all right. Want a boost?"

"Well, yes. Are you down with a team?"

"Yep.’Bout goin’ home. Climb right in. That’s my rig, right there," nodding at a sleek bay colt hitched in a covered buggy. "Heave y’r grip under the seat. "

They climbed into the seat after William had lowered the buggy top and unhitched the horse from the post. The loafers were mildly curious. Guessed Bill had got hooked onto by a lightnin’-rod peddler, or somethin’ o’ that kind.

"Want to go by river, or ’round by the hills?"

"Hills, I guess. "

The whole matter began to seem trivial, as if he had only been away for a month or two.

William McTurg was a man little given to talk. Even the coming back of a nephew did not cause any flow of questions or reminiscences. They rode in silence. He sat a little bent forward, the lines held carelessly in his hands, his great leonine head swaying to and fro with the movement of the buggy.

As they passed familiar spots, the younger man broke the silence with a question.

"That’s old man McElvaine’s place, ain’t it?"

"Old man living?"