while I went about my uncle's business at the other end of the town.
But when I had gone far on my way, his dark face and arrogant manner were still in my mind. While I was arguing with surly old Dan Mackay about whale-oil and horses and sugar and lumber, I was thinking of those proud, keen eyes and that smiling, scornful mouth; while I was bargaining with Mrs. Mackay for eggs and early peas, I was thinking of the beaver that the man had worn and the big ring on his finger; and while I was walking back over two miles of country road, on which the sun was now pouring down with ever-increasing heat, I was thinking of how my uncle's name had popped out in the conversation beside the smithy—and how it had popped, so to speak, discreetly back again.
I was all eagerness, now, for another and better look at the stranger, and was resolved to stare him out of countenance, if need be, to get it. Imagine, then, my disappointment when, hot and sweaty, I once more came in sight of the tavern and saw the unmistakable figure under the beaver hat walk jauntily down the steps, pause a moment in the road, and, turning in the opposite direction, go rapidly away from me.
The stranger should not escape me like that, I thought with a grim chuckle; and warm though I was, I lengthened my stride and drew slowly up on him.
As he passed the smithy, he looked to neither right nor left, yet I was by no means sure that he did not see the curious faces that filled the door when he went by. A man can see so much without turning his head!
While I toiled on after him, trying to appear indifferent and yet striving to overtake him before he should go beyond the store, where I must turn in, would I or would I not, he passed the church, the parsonage, and the schoolhouse. He wore his hat tilted forward at just such an angle, and to one side over his right eye; swinging his walking-stick nonchalantly, he clipped the blossoms off the buttercups as he passed them; now he paused to light a fresh cigar from the butt of the one that he was smoking; now he lingered a moment in the shade of an old chestnut tree. All the time I was gaining on him; but now the store was hard by.
Should I keep on until I had passed him and, turning back, could meet him face to face? No, Uncle Seth would surely stop me. In my determination to get a good look at the man, I was about to break into a run, when, to my amazement, he turned to the left toward the very place where I was going.
So close to him had I now come that, when he stood on the threshold, I was setting foot on the lower step. I could see Uncle Seth's clerks, Arnold Lamont, a Frenchman, and Simeon Muzzy, busily at work in the back room. I could see, as before, Uncle Seth's bald head shining above the top of his desk. But my eyes were all for the stranger, and I now saw plainly that in the ring on his finger there flashed a great white diamond.
Uncle Seth, hearing our steps, raised his head. "Well?" he said sharply, in the dictatorial way that was so characteristic of him.
"Well!" repeated the stranger in a voice that startled me. It was deep and gruff, and into the monosyllable the man put a solid, heavy emphasis, which made my uncle's sharpness seem as light as a woman's burst of temper.
Uncle Seth, too, was startled, I think, for he raised his head and irritably peered over the steel rims of his spectacles. "Well," he grumpily responded, "what do you want of me?"
"An hour of your time," said the stranger, lowering his voice.
"Time's money," returned my uncle.
"I'm the lad to transmute it into fine gold for you, Seth Upham," said the stranger.
"How do you know my name?"
"That's a foolish question to ask. Everyone in town can tell a stranger the name of the man who keeps the village store."
My uncle grunted irritably, and brushed his chin with the feather of his quill.
"Come," said the stranger, "where's a chair?"
"Them that come to this store to loaf," my uncle cried, "generally sit on cracker-boxes. I'm a busy man."
He was still looking closely at the stranger, but his voice indicated that, after all, it might not be so hard to mollify him.
"Well, I ain't proud," the stranger said with a conciliatory gesture, but without the faintest flicker of a smile. "It won't be the first time I've set on a cracker-box and talked to Seth Upham. I mind a time once when old Parker used to keep the store, and me and you had stole our hats full of crackers, which we ate in the little old camp over by the river."
"Who," cried Uncle Seth, "who in heaven's name are you?"
He was pale to the very summit of his bald head; unconscious of what he was doing, he had thrust his pen down on the open ledger, where it left a great blotch of wet ink.
"Hgh! You've got no great memory for old friends, have you, Seth? You're rich now, I hear. Money-bags full of gold. Well, 'time's money,' you said. You're going to put in a golden hour with me this day."
Uncle Seth got up and laid a trembling hand on the back of his desk. "Neil Gleazen! Cornelius Gleazen!" he gasped.
The stranger pushed his beaver back on his head, and with the finger on which the diamond sparkled flicked the ash from his cigar. "It's me, Seth," he returned; and for the first time since I had seen him he laughed a deep, hearty laugh.
"Well, what'll you have?" Uncle Seth demanded hotly. "I'm an honest man. I'm a deacon in the church. My business is an honest business. There's nothing here for you, Neil! What do you want?"
In spite of his apparent anger,—or because of it,—Uncle Seth's voice trembled.
"Well, what do you mean by all this talk of an honest man? Ain't I an honest man?"
"Why—why—"
"Hgh! You've not got much to say to that, have you?"
"I—why—I don't—know—"
"Of course you don't know. You don't know an honest man when you see one. Don't talk to me like that, Seth Upham. You and me has robbed too many churches together when we was boys to have you talk like that now. You and me—"
"For heaven's sake keep still!" Uncle Seth cried. "Customers are coming."
Neil Gleazen grunted again. Pushing a cracker-box into the corner behind Uncle Seth's desk and placing his beaver on it, he settled back in Uncle Seth's own chair, with a cool impudent wink at me, as if for a long stay, while Uncle Seth, with an eagerness quite unlike his usual abrupt, scornful manner, rushed away from his unwelcome guest and proceeded to make himself surprisingly agreeable to a pair of country woman who wished to barter butter for cotton cloth.
CHAPTER II
MY UNCLE BEHAVES QUEERLY
The village of Topham, to which, after an absence of twenty years, Cornelius Gleazen had returned as a stranger, lay near the sea and yet not beside it, near the post road and yet not upon it. From the lower branches of an old pine that used to stand on the hill behind the tavern we could see a thread of salt water, which gleamed like silver in the sun; and, on the clearest days, if we climbed higher, we could sometimes catch a glimpse of tiny ships working up or down the coast.
In
