Little by little the excitement over Phil’s return abated, being merged in curiosity as to why his father was remaining in the city. Local curiosity was somewhat discouraged, too, by a few sharp retorts to persons who were impertinently inquisitive about the New York developments of Phil’s acquaintance with Lucia. There was no lack of stories, however, regarding the couple: in any part of the civilized world, no matter how stolid the inhabitants, there is imagination enough to replace the absent links in a desired chain of facts. All that Haynton and its vicinity really knew about the supposed Hayn-Tramlay affair was that the Tramlays had been at Hayn Farm, that they had a daughter named Lucia whose age did not differ much from Phil’s, that Phil had been in New York for more than a fortnight, that he had gone direct from Sol Mantring’s sloop to Tramlay’s office, that he had been seen in New York in store-clothes, and that he admitted having seen Lucia once or twice. Out of these few facts, which would have been useless to even a detective were he unable to treat them as mere clues to be followed carefully, the enterprising people of Haynton constructed a number of stories, each of which hung together admirably. That they differed radically from one another was not the fault of the local romancers; they had honestly done their best with the material at hand. Phil did not regard the matter in this light. When day by day his little brothers returned from school with tales they had heard from class-mates and wondered greatly that they had not first heard them at home, Phil’s temper broke loose so suddenly that the boys almost feared to repeat all they had heard. The wrathful young man learned that he had proposed to Lucia and been refused, that he had been accepted, apparently at the same interview, that Tramlay was to build a handsome house on the water front of Hayn Farm for his daughter as a wedding-present, that Phil took his refusal so seriously to heart that he was going to study for the ministry, and that while in New York he had fallen into drinking-habits so deeply that Tramlay had been obliged to write Farmer Hayn to hurry to the city and remove his unfortunate son from the scene of temptation. Phil grumbled and stormed; he even vowed that if gossip about him did not end he would go to sea. He thought seriously of publishing a list of denials in the weekly paper, edited in the county town, which devoted a column or two to Haynton news. Then he wondered whether he might not make a confidant of the minister and beg that a sermon be preached on the sinfulness of gossip; but this plan disappeared abruptly when the statement of his approaching marriage was traced, almost with certainty, to the minister himself.