The pity with big-natured folk is that they plough up a mountain and trip at last over a pea-vine!" From the gloom and brightness of the Applegate road there emerged the large figure of a young man, who led a handsome grey mare by the halter.
As he moved against the coloured screen of the leaves something of the beauty of the desolate landscape showed in his face--the look of almost autumnal sadness that one finds, occasionally, in the eyes of the imaginative rustic.

He wore a pair of sheepskin leggins into which the ends of his corduroy trousers were stuffed slightly below the knees.

His head was bare, and from the open neck of his blue flannel shirt, faded from many washings, the muscles in his throat stood out like cords in the red-brown flesh.

From his uncovered dark hair to his heavy boots, he was powdered with the white dust of his mill, the smell of which floated to the group under the mulberry tree as he passed up the walk to the tavern.
"I lay he seed Molly Merryweather comin' up from the low grounds," remarked Solomon, when the young man had moved out of earshot.
"Thar's truth spoken for once, if only by accident," retorted old Adam.
"Yonder comes Reuben Merryweather's wagon now, laden with fodder.

Is thar anybody settin' on it, young Adam?
My eyes is too po' to make out." "Molly Merryweather, who else ?" responded the younger.
The wagon approached slowly, piled high with fodder and drawn by a pair of old oxen.