Thaddeus smiled absently, pursed his lips, and was silent. "Pete," he said at last, "how does green paint feel?" Mr. Paulus's gloom faded away, and his interest, his love of life, came gently back. "Wet," he said, thoughtfully. "Gets stiff after dryin'." "Ah," murmured Thaddeus, "exactly." * * * * * A few days later Helen and Thaddeus took their way down the Wyantenaug Valley to Hamilton, and left Hagar to the wintry hills and Widow Bourn to her own manner of content. Chapter V Introducing Hamilton and Saint Mary's Organ Hamilton took its name from a little English hamlet. The statesman was a coincidence. It lies in a bend of the Wyantenaug River, which hardly ripples on the piers of its docks, ten miles from the sea and at the head-water of the river's navigation. Its colonial memories gather about the Common where the first settlers built their church and cluster of shingled houses, and about the docks where ships from the South Seas used to come in at flood-tide, from the capes and the Indian Ocean, from the West Indies and from England, whalers, too, and many fishing-smacks. The Common is half a mile from the docks. The old church stands in the centre of it. Century elms and oaks are scattered about, not planted in regular rows; but wherever it had seemed to be a good place for a tree, there the tree had grown. On the south side, or Main Street, are the courthouse and city hall; on the east side, or Charles Street, are the Constitution and Wyantenaug clubs and a church with twin steeples; on the north side, or James Street, square brick and stuccoed residences, with lawns, and sometimes a silent fountain or solitary marble statue, such as that dancing faun which appears to dislike its occupation; on the west side, or Academy Street, there are stores and a hotel, but farther up Academy Street are the law-school buildings, farther still the academy itself, founded in the reign of William and Mary, where from of old the Latin declensions were learned with the aid of a ferule and curiously called "humane letters."