After the wedding the little boy, on his way to school of a morning, would watch for Cousin Bill J. to wheel out on the sidewalk the high glass case in which Miss Alvira had arranged her pretty display of flowered bonnets. And slowly it came to life in his understanding that between the not irksome task of wheeling out this case in the morning and wheeling it back at night, Cousin Bill J. now enjoyed the liberty that a man of his parts deserved. He was free at last to sit about in the stores of the village, or to enthrone himself publicly before them in clement weather, at which time his opinion upon a horse, or any other matter whatsoever, could be had for the asking. Nor would he be invincibly reticent upon the subject of those early exploits which had once set all of Chautauqua County marvelling at his strength. At first the little boy was stung with jealousy at this. Later he came to rejoice in the very circumstance that had brought him pain. If his hero could not be all his, at least the world would have to blink even as he had blinked, in the dazzling light of his excellences--yes, and smart under the lash of his unequalled sarcasm. It should, perhaps, be said that dissolution by slow poison is not infrequently the fate of an idol. Doubtless there was never a certain day of which the little boy could have said "that was the first time Cousin Bill J. began to seem different." Yet there came a moment when all was changed--a time of question, doubt, conviction; a terrible hour, in short, when, face to face with his hero, he suffered the deep hurt of knowing that mentally, morally, and even esthetically, he himself was the superior of Cousin Bill J. He could remember that first he had heard a caller say to Clytie of Miss Alvira, "Why, they do say the poor thing has to go down those back stairs and actually split her own kindlings--with that healthy loafer setting around in the good clothes she buys him, in the back room of that drug-store from morning till night. And what's worse, he's been seen with that eldest--" Here the caller's eyes had briefly shifted sidewise at the small listener, whereupon Clytie had urged him to run along and play like a good boy. He pondered at length that which he had overheard and then he went to Miss Alvira's wood-pile at the foot of her back stairs, reached by turning up the alley from Main Street. He split a large pile of kindling for her. He would have been glad to do this each day, had not Miss Alvira proved to be lacking in delicacy. Instead of ignoring him, when she saw him from her back window, where she was second-fitting Samantha Rexford's pink waist, she came out with her mouth full of pins and gave him five cents and tried to kiss him. Of course, he never went back again. If _that_ was the kind she was she could go on doing the work herself. He was no Ralph Overton or Ben Holt, to be shamed that way and made to feel that he had been Doing Good, and be spoken of all the time as "our Hero."