"My stars! I didn't think--I forgot--I must go." Hartley burst into the room shortly after she left it, in his usual breeze. "Hul-_lo!_ Still at the Latin, hey?" "Yes," said Bert, with ease. "How goes it?" "Oh, I'm whooping 'er up! I'm getting started in great shape. Been up to the court-house and roped in three of the county officials. In these small towns the big man is the politician or the clergyman. I've nailed the politicians through the ear; now you must go for the ministers to head the list--that's your lay-out." "How 'm I t' do it?" asked Bert, in an anxious tone. "I can't sell books if they don't want 'em." "Why, cert! That's the trick. Offer a big discount. Say full calf, two fifty; morocco, two ninety. Regular discount to the clergy, ye know. Oh, they're on to that little racket--no trouble. If you can get a few of these leaders of the flock, the rest will follow like lambs to the slaughter. Tra-la-la--who-o-o-_ish_, whish!" Albert laughed at Hartley as he plunged his face into the ice-cold water, puffing and wheezing. "Jeemimy Crickets! but ain't that water cold! I worked Rock River this way last month, and made a boomin' success. If you take hold here in the--" "Oh, I'm all ready to stand anything short of being kicked out." "No danger of that if you're a real book agent. It's the snide that gets kicked. You've got t' have some savvy in this, just like any other business." He stopped in his dressing to say, "We've struck a great boarding-place, hey?" "Looks like it." "I begin t' cotton to the old lady a'ready. Good 'eal like mother used t' be 'fore she broke down. Didn't the old lady have a time of it raisin' me? Phewee! Patient! Job wasn't a patchin'. But the test is goin' t' come on the biscuit; if her biscuit comes up t' mother's I'm hern till death." He broke off to comb his hair, a very nice bit of work in his case. II There was no discernible reason why the little town should have been called Tyre, and yet its name was as characteristically American as its architecture. It had the usual main street lined with low brick or wooden stores--a street which developed into a road running back up a wide, sandy valley away from the river. Being a county town, it had a court-house in a yard near the centre of the town, and a big summer hotel. Curiously shaped and oddly distributed hills rose abruptly out of the valley sand, forming a sort of amphitheatre in which the village lay. These square-topped hills ended at a common level, showing that they were not the result of an upheaval, but were the remains of the original stratification formations left standing after the scooping action of the post-glacial floods had ceased.