Produced by Melissa Er-Raqabi, Paul Stephen, Ted Garvin and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net TIVERTON TALES BY ALICE BROWN [Illustration: Publisher icon] BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1899 COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY ALICE BROWN ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TO M. H. R. A MASTER MAGICIAN CONTENTS DOORYARDS A MARCH WIND THE MORTUARY CHEST HORN-O'-THE-MOON A STOLEN FESTIVAL A LAST ASSEMBLING THE WAY OF PEACE THE EXPERIENCE OF HANNAH PRIME HONEY AND MYRRH A SECOND MARRIAGE THE FLAT-IRON LOT THE END OF ALL LIVING TIVERTON TALES DOORYARDS Tiverton has breezy, upland roads, and damp, sweet valleys; but should you tarry there a summer long, you might find it wasteful to take many excursions abroad. For, having once received the freedom of family living, you will own yourself disinclined to get beyond dooryards, those outer courts of domesticity. Homely joys spill over into them, and, when children are afoot, surge and riot there. In them do the common occupations of life find niche and channel. While bright weather holds, we wash out of doors on a Monday morning, the wash-bench in the solid block of shadow thrown by the house. We churn there, also, at the hour when Sweet-Breath, the cow, goes afield, modestly unconscious of her own sovereignty over the time. There are all the varying fortunes of butter-making recorded. Sometimes it comes merrily to the tune of "Come, butter, come! Peter stands a-waiting at the gate, Waiting for his butter-cake. Come, butter, come!"