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THE PARSON'S MARJORY.
After some years the old people died, both in one winter, very carefully tended by their adopted son, and very quietly mourned when they were gone.

People who had heard of his roving fancies supposed he would hasten to sell the property, and go down the river to push his fortunes.
But there was never any sign of such in intention on the part of Will.

On the contrary, he had the inn set on a better footing, and hired a couple of servants to assist him in carrying it on; and there he settled down, a kind, talkative, inscrutable young man, six feet three in his stockings, with an iron constitution and a friendly voice.

He soon began to take rank in the district as a bit of an oddity: it was not much to be wondered at from the first, for he was always full of notions, and kept calling the plainest common-sense in question; but what most raised the report upon him was the odd circumstance of his courtship with the parson's Marjory.
The parson's Marjory was a lass about nineteen, when Will would be about thirty; well enough looking, and much better educated than any other girl in that part of the country, as became her parentage.