“I've heard you tell all this before, Pap.” he said, “and about when the first stage come through here from across the mountains.” The old man caught eagerly at his last words. “Yes, and I rid on it too! I rid on the fust stage coach from across the mountings, and I'm a going to live to ride on the fust railroad. They're building the 'butments for the new bridge down by the old kivered bridge now.” His beady eyes were wonderfully brilliant. “I reckon you're a stranger here?” “Well, no, I'm old Tom Rogers's son.” And by nightfall, all Benson knew that Truman Rogers, who had gone to Texas, a raw stripling some twenty years before, had returned home from California. CHAPTER FOUR AS night came on the weather changed abruptly, and a cold drizzle set in. At his red-brick tavern, Levi Tucker, in a splint-bottom chair, dozed in front of his bar. The rain now falling in torrents and driven by a strong wind, splashed loudly against the closely-shuttered windows. The sperm oil in the dingy reeking lamps, burnt noisily, protestingly. There was a steady drip from the eave troughs; and the gutters were roaring rivers of muddy water. The innkeeper sat with his feet thrust far out, and his fat freckled hands peacefully clasped before him. The rain had served to keep people in doors, and there was a strong counter attraction at the church, just around the corner, where the apostle of a new and preposterous propaganda, known as the Temperance Movement, was lecturing. The innkeeper was frankly indignant. What made the whole affair seem especially aggravating and personal, was the fact that his wife was a communicant of that church, Mr. Tucker's religion as well as his distillery, was in his wife's name, and her devotion cost him annually the equivalent of many gallons of his famous “Lone Stager Rye,” a whisky which sophisticated travellers had pronounced to be unrivalled west of the Alleghanies. During the interchange of certain light domestic confidences that had preceded Mrs. Tucker's departure for the lecture, her husband had remarked that he did not believe in mixing liquor and religion; whereupon Mrs. Tucker, who was young and pretty and high-spirited had retorted that he could never be accused of doing that, since he never ventured inside a church door; this had led to more words; and Mr. Tucker with some heat had denounced the lecturer as a meddlesome busybody; he had further informed his wife that he served drinks every hour of the day, and every day of his life, to better men. “Meaning yourself, I suppose.” said Mrs. Tucker, tartly, but with heightened colour. Mr. Tucker had ignored this, and had reminded her that even ministers of the Gospel had been known to seek his bar, and had there slacked their clerical thirst, without fear and without shame, “As man to man,” he added feelingly. “One minister,” corrected Mrs. Tucker, “and he had a very red nose.”