Dwight was hail-fellow-well-met with more people within a radius of twenty miles or so, probably, than any other man in the district. He was a good-looking young man, rather stocky in build and deeply sunburned. Through the decent months of the year he was always out of doors, either tramping over the country with a level over his shoulder, or improving the days with a shotgun or fish pole. At these seasons he was generally to be found of an evening at the barber's shop, where he told more new stories than any one else. When winter came his chief work was in his office, drawing maps and plans. He let his beard grow then, and spent his leisure for the most part playing checkers at the Excelsior Hotel. His habitual free-and-easy dress and amiable laxity of manners tended to obscure in the village mind the facts that he came from one of the best families of the section, that he had been through college, and that he had some means of his own. His mother and sisters were very respectable people indeed, and had one of the most expensive pews in the Episcopal Church. It was not observed, however, that Dwight ever accompanied them thither or that he devoted much of his time to their society at home. It began to be remarked, here and there, that it was getting to be about time for Dwight Ransom to steady down, if he was ever going to. Although everybody liked him and was glad to see him about, an impression was gradually shaping itself that he never would amount to much. All at once Dwight staggered the public consciousness by putting on his best clothes one Sunday and going with his folks to church. Those who saw him on the way there could not make it out at all, except on the hypothesis that there had been a death in the family. Those who encountered him upon his return from the sacred edifice, however, found a clue to the mystery ready made. He was walking home with Julia Parmalee. There were others whose passionate desire it was to walk home with Julia. They had been enlivening Octavius with public displays of their rivalry for something like two months when Dwight appeared on the scene as a competitor. Easy-going as he was in ordinary matters, he revealed himself now to be a hustler in the courts of love. It took him but a single day to drive the teller of the bank from the field. The Principal of the Seminary, a rising young lawyer, and the head bookkeeper at the freight-house, severally went by the board within a fortnight.