THE CHRONIC LOAFER by NELSON LLOYD [Illustration] New York J. F. Taylor & Company 1900 Copyright, 1900, By J. F. Taylor & Company. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. The Reunion 5 II. The Spelling Bee 17 III. Absalom Bunkel 28 IV. The Missus 37 V. The Awfullest Thing 54 VI. The Wrestling Match 63 VII. The Tramp’s Romance 74 VIII. Ambition--An Argument 80 IX. Bumbletree’s Bass-Horn 97 X. Little Si Berrybush 107 XI. Cupid and a Mule 126 XII. The Haunted Store 136 XIII. Rivals 149 XIV. Buddies 159 XV. Joe Varner’s Belling 169 XVI. The Sentimental Tramp 176 XVII. Hiram Gum, the Fiddler 183 XVIII. The “Good Un” 193 XIX. Breaking the Ice 202 XX. Two Stay-at-Homes 212 XXI. Eben Huckin’s Conversion 219 XXII. A Piece in the Paper 237 THE CHRONIC LOAFER. CHAPTER I. _The Reunion._ In the center of one of the most picturesque valleys in the heart of Pennsylvania lies the village and at one end of its single street stands the store. On the broad porch of this homely and ancient edifice there is a long oak bench, rough, and hacked in countless places by the knives of many generations of loungers. From this bench, looking northward across an expanse of meadows, a view is had of a low, green ridge, dotted here and there with white farm buildings. Behind that rise the mountains, along whose sides on bright days play the fanciful shadows of the clouds. Close by the store is the rumbling mill, and beyond it runs the creek, spanned by a wooden bridge whose planking now and then resounds with the beat of horses’ hoofs, so that it adds its music to the roar of the mill-wheels and ring of the anvil in the blacksmith shop across the stream.