XXXIX. Where He Was 341 XL. Farewell 352 XLI. Tom, You Did It! 356 XLII. The Second Trial 363 XLIII. After Eighteen Months 375 XLIV. Last Glimpse of Oak City 387 PAUL RALSTON. CHAPTER I. MISS PHEBE HANSFORD. She was standing in the doorway of her cottage, in Oak City, one morning in May, watching the early boat as it came slowly up to the wharf and counting the passengers who landed from it. There were twenty in all,—some with their bags and umbrellas, walking briskly away in different directions, as if they knew where they were going and were in a hurry to get there,—while a few, who evidently did not know where they were going, stopped to parley with two or three hackmen on the stand in front of a hotel. These were undoubtedly strangers seeking information with regard to accommodations, and Miss Hansford decided that the season was likely to be a good one when people began to arrive so early. By a good season she meant her rooms full of lodgers, with plenty of money coming to her weekly, and not as was the case the previous summer,—barely enough to pay her taxes and insurance. As yet most of the cottages were closed and looked gloomy and somber, with their barred doors and boarded windows and no stir of life around them. But there were signs of the coming summer in the warm spring air which blew up from the sea. Crocuses and daffodils were blossoming in the borders and hyacinths in the beds in the parks, where the grass was fresh and green, and in a short time the place would shake off its winter lethargy and be alive and gay once more. Like many other people, Miss Hansford’s bones were her barometer. Whatever they indicated, whether physically or of matters outside her own personality, was pretty sure to come to pass, and as she counted the people crossing the pier she was conscious of a sudden exhilaration of spirits which boded well for the future. From living alone more than half the time she had acquired a habit of talking to herself, and frequently indulged in long conversations of questions and answers, in which she sometimes differed as sharply from her imaginary interlocutor or respondent as she would have done had they been real flesh and blood.