Any one interested in following backward the tracks these callers left would have found that they began at the edge of the bare, drifted sand beach and followed the wavering fence of the shore road until the outline of that also disappearing, the footprints crossed the upland fields to the lower end of the village street, where many of the houses, old, sedate, and self-sufficient in their ancestry, were prouder in their garb of mossy shingles than the Bluff cottages in all their bravery of new paint, and porches supported by stone pillars. Entering by the yard of one of the humbler of these houses, through the back garden, the footsteps meandered toward the side porch that served both as well-house and wood-shed; there the owners of the feet left a similar burden of ducks on the well-worn oak door-sill instead of on the door-mat, for that was thriftily housed within. To leave it out all night would be to incur the criticism of the Misses Falcon, dealers in village patronage and censors in chief, next door, a most disastrous thing for the single dweller in the house, whose livelihood depended upon the public, as announced by a quaint glass sign, lettered in black, that filled the right-hand lower corner of the foreroom window. =C. Hallet. Tailoring, Nursing, and Accommodating, done with Neatness and Despatch.= The last of the three accomplishments meaning that in the between seasons of her more serious work, Charity Hallet would accommodate her neighbours in any way, from putting up jellies and jams for the slothful to turning carpets, or setting a house solemnly to rights for a funeral. After leaving the yard, also by the back gate, that no telltale prints might mar the plumpness of the front walk, or jar the white rime that made mammoth cakes of the box bushes on either side the door, the footprints took a short cut to the hill road and paused at our steps, evidently with some scuffing and stamping, and none of the precautions used in approaching the other door. Here the two sets of footprints, those of dog and man, alone told of who had come and gone, and yet we knew as plainly as if the social cardboard had been left. The overlapping, shifty human footprints, suggesting a limp or halting gait, were those of a rubber-booted man. The round pad-marks of a four-foot, with a dragging trail, spoke of a dog either old or weak in his hind quarters. As I, answering father’s call, scanned the tracks, our eyes met and we said, as with one voice, “The Markis and the Major,” whereby hangs a pleasant winter’s tale. A comedy that was turned from tragedy merely by the blowing of the bitter northeast wind among the sedge grass. A simple enough story, like many another gleaned from between the leaves that lie along the village fences or the lanes and byways of the lonelier hill country.