David Whitcomb, walking slowly down the village street under the shade of the spreading maples, was experiencing that vague dissatisfaction which in individuals of his temperament is apt to follow the attainment of some hotly pursued desire. Barbara had long represented to his imagination the distant, unsealed peak, the untrodden wild, the unstaked, unexplored claim. He had come back from the West with no very fixed intention of marrying her; but with something of the languid curiosity the traveller feels regarding scenes long unvisited. He had not felt at all sure that he would find Barbara the lovely vision that he had pictured her, in the infrequent intervals given to a vague remembrance of past days. But he had lost sight of his indifference in the excitement of the auction and his subsequent impulsive endeavors to break down the girl’s scruples. Now he had won her, fairly or unfairly, and he was thinking with some irritation of the future to which he had committed himself. The dull vista of a married life, spent in hard work on a farm, which in the end could not belong to him, appeared more and more intolerable the longer he dwelt upon it. He was in a thoroughly bad humor by the time he had reached the scene of Thomas Bellows’ latest activities. Henry Maclin’s hardware, flour, and feed store was situated on the outskirts of the village. As David approached it he could hear the loud voice of the auctioneer upraised in the raucous monotone of his calling, and the dull thud of his hammer, as he proclaimed the sale of the various articles an assistant was rapidly passing up to him. David sauntered up to the edge of the crowd and stood there, gloomily reviewing the events of the previous month. He glanced up suddenly to find a keen pair of eyes riveted upon him. “Mornin’, Mr. Whitcomb,” called Peg Morrison, as if he feared the young man might attempt to avoid him. “Thinkin’ o’ biddin’ in any o’ the stuff? The best of it’s gone b’ now. I got a good cross-cut saw, though. B’en wantin’ one fer quite a spell. The’s quite a lot o’ dead timber standin’ on th’ farm in diff’rent places ’at ought t’ come down.” David was plainly indifferent, and after cautiously studying his unresponsive face Mr. Morrison went on. “Miss Barb’ry, she leaves mos’ everythin’ t’ me; but the’s times when I feel as ’o I’d like a man t’ go over the place with me. Course she’s got her idees, an’ some o’ ’em’s all right; but I d’clar’ I hate t’ see her botherin’ with outdoor work. Females had ought to keep house an’ sew an’ look after the cookin’, an’ not be tryin’ t’ do men’s work b’sides. That’s what I tell her, an’ I been thinkin’ ’at some day you’d go ’round with me, since you’re such a good friend o’ Miss Barb’ry’s.” David frowned in an irritated fashion. “I don’t understand farming, my good fellow,” he said coldly. “So I’m afraid my advice wouldn’t prove very valuable.”