As he approached quietly along the grassy walk he overheard his own name used.

He stepped back into the shadow of a large maple and listened: "Yes, I seen him as he got off the train," said Nels Hathaway, big, fat, lazy, and the most inveterate male gossip in the village.

"And he is looking mighty well--yes, MIGHTY well.

I said to Tom Botkins, here, 'what a wonderful constitution Harry Glen has, to be sure, to stand the hardships of the field so well.'" The sarcasm was so evident that Harry's blood seethed.

The Tim Botkins alluded to had been dubbed by Basil Wurmset, the cynic and wit of the village, "apt appreciation's artful aid." Red-haired, soft eyed, moon-faced, round of belly and lymphatic of temperament, his principal occupation in life was to play fiddle in the Sardis string-band, and in the intervals of professional engagements at dances and picnics, to fill one of the large splint-bottomed chairs in front of the hotel with his pulpy form, and receive the smart or bitter sayings of the loungers there with a laugh that began before any one else's, and lasted after the others had gotten through.