It is strange how the memory clings to some things.
It is over twenty years since I took that first ride to Rivermouth, and yet, oddly enough, I remember as if it were yesterday, that, as we passed slowly through the village of Hampton, we saw two boys fighting behind a red barn.

There was also a shaggy yellow dog, who looked as if he had commenced to unravel, barking himself all up into a knot with excitement.

We had only a hurried glimpse of the battle--long enough, however, to see that the combatants were equally matched and very much in earnest.

I am ashamed to say how many times since I have speculated as to which boy got licked.

Maybe both the small rascals are dead now (not in consequence of the set-to, let us hope), or maybe they are married, and have pugnacious urchins of their own; yet to this day I sometimes find myself wondering how that fight turned out.
We had been riding perhaps two hours and a half, when we shot by a tall factory with a chimney resembling a church steeple; then the locomotive gave a scream, the engineer rang his bell, and we plunged into the twilight of a long wooden building, open at both ends.