Hammond's eyes were small, black, and set close together. One contained a suggestion of a squint. Jim's eyes were of normal size and varying hues and shades and set wide. They were gray now. Their look was peculiarly direct. Hammond's were the first to waver and slip aside. The narrow road dipped and rose. The woods sloped down to it on the left, and on the right the wooded bank dipped steeply to the river. The big grays trotted wherever the road was level. For twenty minutes after the battle of eyes, Amos Hammond drove in silence, looking straight ahead, and James Todhunter sat in silence beside him and studied the landscape with interest and appreciation. At last Hammond began to hum a lugubrious tune. From that he passed to a livelier one. He ceased humming suddenly and took to whistling. He dropped that as suddenly and sighed profoundly. "After all's said an' done, a man is only young once," he said. Jim brightened and smiled. "What about second childhood?" he returned. Hammond laughed and smote his knee. His laugh was broken, abrupt, like the yapping of a dog. But it was quite evident to Jim that he was trying to be agreeable. Wild pastures were passed, and miles of forests, and occasional cultivated and inhabited clearings. Hammond had little to say, but he continued to be as agreeable as his mood and nature permitted. The last mile of the fifteen winding between Covered Bridge and Millbrook was taken by the big grays at a thumping trot. CHAPTER III PIPER'S GLEN There were queer people in Piper's Glen on Racket River--queer by the confused and materialistic standards of more populous communities, at least. The first settlers in the glen had been Ducats--a Frenchman and his Maliseet wife and three half-breed children. At that time there wasn't another clearing within forty miles of the place in any direction. Later, McKims and McElroys came to the glen, and other settlers to other sections of the river; a mill was built twenty miles lower down, and roads were made. Generations passed. Children grew up and married in the glen, or went away with the river into the great world, and died eventually in either case. Ducats married McKims and McElroys and folk from neighboring settlements. Once upon a time there were seven dwellings in Piper's Glen--but that was at the height of its prosperity. It was situated too far from the river to attract people from outside or hold all of its own folk, and too much of its acreage stood too nearly on end for easy or profitable farming. Agriculture was neither arduously nor scientifically followed there. Potatoes and buckwheat were grown sufficient for home consumption, and in winter the men went into the woods, some to chop timber in the camps of big and little "operators," and others to trap fur and kill wild meat.