“Holds her age tumble well, don’t she?” mumbled Deacon Burgess, surveying the profile above the fluffy collar of her jacket. But Uncle Paul gazed at her grudgingly. “It ain’t the real Christians that go to Heaven on flow’ry beds of ease,” he grunted. “She’s had a pretty soft time of it all her life now, I tell ye.” At that moment the hush was broken by one of those solemn explosions that the irreverent call a “vestry cough,” and “Wolf” Doughty, so nicknamed on account of a swelling on his cheek, swung in his seat and suggested: “I reckon we might as well proceed to elect a moderator to preside this ev’nin’, whilst we are waitin’ for the defendant ’foresaid. Any one that has a mind on the subject will please say something.” At this hint Deacon Burgess was preparing to nominate Doughty, when there was a bustle in the entry-way and Squire Prin Look came in, blinking the outside gloom from his kindly eyes. The little teacher followed close in the lee of his generous bulk, her eyes downcast. The lawyer had carefully timed his late arrival, both on his own account and for the sake of the schoolma’am. “We’ll let ’em get settled on the roost,” he had told her, “and their first spell of cawing over and done with.” He lifted her chair from the platform and placed it so that she did not have to meet their eye-borings. Then he went up and calmly sat down in the visitor’s chair, the only seat on the platform, with an air of proprietorship. He crossed his knees and swung his dusty foot comfortably, oblivious to the frowns on the faces of Doughty and his adherents. The old dog beside him surveyed the audience with benignly extended jaws and rapped his tail as though it were a chairman’s gavel. The town of Palermo was accustomed to seeing the Squire at the head of all assemblages. For years he had been the natural selection of the voters at town meetings, after that hot caucus years before when he had defeated Judge Willard, who had been moderator so long that the office had almost become titular with him. It was a bold man who would get up now and suggest that some one else preside. The men stole embarrassed looks at each other, waiting for some one to take the plunge. “We’re wasting time, fellow-townsmen,” said the Squire briskly. “We was jest gittin’ ready to choose a moderator when you came in,” growled Doughty. “Will you kindly make the nomination, Mr. Doughty?” directed the lawyer, keenly eyeing the man. Doughty, nervous under the general regard that was now fixed on him, gruntingly worked his legs from under a desk and stood up. He could not nominate himself, and he wouldn’t name a Dunham district man, for he was angry at the cowardice of the assemblage that had failed to obey his hint. “I think it is the general sense of the meetin’,” he mumbled, “that Squire Phineas Look serve as moderator, he knowin’ how--how----”