To keep this resolve I had to hang on till near eight o’clock. The cloudy night made the way dim. At length I came to a road that had been so often graded and dragged it shed water like a turtle’s shell. It crossed the railway at right angles and ploughed north. I followed it a mile, shaking the heaviest mud from my shoes. Led by the light of a lantern, I approached a dim grey farm-house and what would have been in the daytime a red barn. II BY THE LIGHT OF THE LANTERN The lantern was carried, as I finally discovered, by an old man getting a basket of chips near the barn gate. He had his eye on me as I leaned over the fence. He swung the lantern closer. “My name is Nicholas,” I said. “I am a professional tramp.” “W-e-l-l,” he said slowly, in question, and then in exclamation. He flashed the lantern in my face. “Come in,” he said. “Sit down.” We were together on the chip-pile. He did not ask me to split kindling, or saw wood. Few people ever do. In appearance he was the old John G. Whittier type of educated laboring-man, only more eagle-like. He spoke to me in a kingly prophetic manner, developed, I have no doubt, by a lifetime of unquestioned predominance at prayer-meeting and at the communion table. It was the sonorous agricultural holy tone that is the particular aversion of a certain pagan type of city radical who does not understand that the meeting-house is the very rock of the agricultural social system. As far as I am concerned, if this manner be worn by a kindly old man, it inspires me with respect and delight. In a slow and gracious way he separated his syllables. “Young man, you are per-fect-ly wel-come to shel-ter if we are on-ly sure you will not do us an in-ju-ry. My age and ex-per-ience ought to count for a lit-tle, and I assure you that most free travel-ers abuse hos-pi-tal-ity. But wait till my daugh-ter-in-law comes.” I was shivering with weariness, and my wet feet wanted to get to a stove at once. I did not feel so much like talking some one to death as I had a while back. By way of passing the time, the Patriarch showed me his cane. “Pre-sen-ted at the last old set-tel-ers’ picnic because I have been the pres-i-dent of the old-settlers’ association for ten years. Young man, why don’t you carry a cane?” “Why should I?” “Won’t it help you to keep off dogs?” I replied, “A housekeeper, if she is in a nervous condition, is apt to be afraid of a walking-stick. It looks like a club. To carry something to keep off dogs is like carrying a lightning-rod to keep off lightning. I encounter a lot of barking and thunder, but have never been bitten or blasted.” And while I was thus laboring for the respect of the Patriarch, the daughter-in-law stepped into the golden circle of the lantern light. She had just come from the milking. I shall never forget those bashful gleaming eyes, peering out from the sunbonnet. Her sleeves were rolled to the shoulder. Startling indeed were those arms, as white as the foaming milk.