“And if you’ve never heard of all that, then you can’t have been any decenter about writin’ home and lettin’ your own know about you than you have been about other things I could name.” Hiram stood, his arms hanging at his side, his lower jaw drooping, his eye shuttling from face to face evasively. “Kind o’ makes you drop your tail, Hime--that, eh?” jeered Amazeen from his place in the crowd. As Hiram still drooped there, Uncle Buck ran his cane into the fallen hat, lifted it with a deft toss, ran his elbow around its nap, and set it on Hiram’s head, standing on tip-toe to do it. The man never moved or blinked. “There’s your plug hat, Hime,” he said. “It fell off, and pride goeth before a fall.” At the anti-climax the crowd haw-hawed with the jovial unrestraint of rural jokers. The Squire’s face was very grave. He came along, gently took the wallet and the money from his brother’s hands, tucked the packets away, restrapped the wallet and stuffed it back into the hip pocket. Hiram still remained motionless, except for the blinking eye that now looked straight at the ground. Phineas turned to his townsmen: “Folks,” he said, “I don’t think my brother Hime meant all he said. He was excited and wrought up by coming home, and it was a hard place to put any man in, to meet the old townsmen again as he has had to do. But you see he has come back bringing the money to pay, and I know you are going to give him the credit of his good intentions. We will talk it over some time later, friends. Now I want you to come along home with me, Hime.” He pushed his brother along toward the big waggon. “And you done what old Lys says you done?” asked the elder brother suddenly. There was a queer indrawing of the breath after the query. The Squire did not reply. “God, I ain’t fit for phosphate!” blurted the showman despairingly. “Shame and pride and my dirty disposition--and not writin’--nor nothin,’ thinkin’ you had soured on me--and lettin’ you and dad--oh, Phin, you poor little cuss!” Down over the hard face that had cynically fronted the world for twenty years from the barker’s rostrum, into the trailing whiskers filtered the tears. This middle-aged, solid, lawyer brother had not as yet assumed his proper perspective in the mind of his elder brother, who had left him a stripling. Hiram did not try to hide his grief from those who stared at him. “Ain’t I a specimen!” he whimpered. “I think you are beginnin’ to improve _some_,” said Uncle Buck, bluntly. “Your wife won’t want to see me,” moaned Hiram. “I ain’t fit to meet her.” The crowd laughed anew, for this seemed the best joke of all. The lawyer smiled, but it was a wistful smile.