At this juncture comes an interruption; Tracey Tanner returns, hot-foot. Either he has been running, or his breathlessness is due to excitement. Before the two upon the bench he pauses in agitated glee, a bearer of tremendous tidings. "Hello," he pants. "Now, you Tracey Tanner," Hiram cuts in sharply, "you run 'long an' don't be a-botherin' round. Seems like a body never can git a chance to rest, with you children allus a-buttin' in--" "Aw, shet up," says Tracey dispassionately. "I only wanted to tell you the news." Watty quavers: "What news, Tracey?" "Well," says the boy, "I'll tell you, Watty, but I wouldn't 've told him after what he said." "But what's the news, Tracey?" There is suspense in the iteration. "Well, seein's it's you, Watty--" "You Tracey Tanner, you run 'long and stop your jokin'!" interrupts Hiram with authority. "'Tain't no joke; it's news, I'm tellin' you. Sa-ay, what d'ye think, Watty?" "Yes, Tracey, yes? What is it, boy?" "Thet--Noo--York--dood," drawls Tracey, "is a-workin' for Sam Graham!" A dramatic pause ensues. I rise and find my coat. "Tracey Tanner," shrills Hiram, "be you a-tellin' the truth?" "Kiss my hand and cross my heart and vow Honest Injun, I seen him up there just now in the store, Watty, tendin' the sody fountain." "Wal," says Hiram, rising, "I don't believe a word of it, but if it's true we better be goin' round to see, Watty, 'cause it ain't a-goin' to last long. He won't stay after he finds out Sam ain't got no money to pay his wages with." VIII THE MAN OF BUSINESS IN EMBRYO There's no questioning the fact that two weeks of Radville had driven Duncan to desperation; on the morning of the fifteenth day he wakened in his room at Miss Carpenter's and lay for a time abed staring vacantly at the gaudily papered ceiling, not through laziness remaining on his back, but through sheer inertia. The prospect of rising to ramble through another purposeless, empty day appalled his imagination; it had been all very well when the humour of his project intrigued him, when the village was a novelty and its inhabitants "types" to be studied, watched, analysed and classified with secret amusement; but now he felt that he had already exhausted its possibilities; he was a foreigner in thought and instinct, had as little in common with Radvillians as any newly imported Englishman would have had. In plain language, he was bored to the point of extinction. "Why," he reflected aloud, "it doesn't seem reasonable, but I'm actually looking forward to the delirious dissipation of church next Sunday! "Me?... "If Kellogg could only see me now!" He laughed mirthlessly. "I must have done something to deserve this in my misspent life... "Wonder if nothing ever happens here?.... I'd give a whole lot, if I had it, for a good rousing fire on Main Street--the Bigelow House, for choice.... "And it's got me to the point of drooling to myself, like those fellows you read about who get lost in the desert....