It was a small building, its white paint dingy and storm beaten, and its little fenced-in front yard dotted thickly with clumps of silver-leaf saplings.

A sign, nailed crookedly on a post, informed those seeking such information that within was to be found "Abishai G.W.Pepper, Tax Collector, Assessor, Boots and Shoes Repaired." And beneath this was fastened a shingle with the chalked notice, "Salt Hay for sale." The boot and shoe portion of the first sign was a relic of other days.
Kyan had been a cobbler once, but it is discouraging to wait three or four weeks while the pair of boots one has left to be resoled are forgotten in a corner.

Captain Zeb Mayo's pointed comment, "I want my shoe leather to wear while I'm alive, not to be laid out in after I die of old age," expressed the general feeling of the village and explained why custom had left Mr.Pepper and flown to the more enterprising shoemaker at "The Corners." The tax collectorship might have followed it, but here Lavinia kept her brother up to the mark.

She went with him on his rounds and it gave her opportunity to visit, and afterwards comment upon, every family in town.
The minister walked up the dusty lane, lifted the Pepper gate and swung it back on its one hinge, shooed away the three or four languid and discouraged-looking fowls that were taking a sun bath on the clam-shell walk, and knocked at the front door.

No one coming in answer to the knock, he tried again.