The old man did not seem to hear him. "I forbade the renunciation she

wished to make for my sake," he said, gently, "but I accept it now for the

sake of our stricken friend--for Mr. Harkless."

"And for the Carlow 'Herald,'" completed the foreman.

The morning following that upon which this conversation took place, the

two gentlemen stood together on the station platform, awaiting the arrival

of the express from Rouen. It was a wet gray day; the wide country lay

dripping under formless wraps of thin mist, and a warm, drizzling rain

blackened the weather-beaten shingles of the station; made clear-

reflecting puddles of the unevenly worn planks of the platform, and

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dampened the packing-cases that never went anywhere too thoroughly for

occupation by the station-lounger, and ran in a little crystal stream off

Fisbee's brown cotton umbrella and down Mr. Parker's back. The 'bus

driver, Mr. Bennett, the proprietor of two attendant "cut-unders," and

three or four other worthies whom business, or the lack of it, called to

that locality, availed themselves of the shelter of the waiting-room, but

the gentlemen of the "Herald" were too agitated to be confined, save by

the limits of the horizon. They had reached the station half an hour

before train time, and consumed the interval in pacing the platform under

the cotton umbrella, addressing each other only in monosyllables. Those in

the waiting-room gossiped eagerly, and for the thousandth time, about the

late events, and the tremendous news concerning Fisbee. Judd Bennett

looked out through the rainy doorway at the latter with reverence and a

fine pride of townsmanship, declaring it to be his belief that Fisbee and

Parker were waiting for her at the present moment. It was a lady, and a

bird of a lady, too, else why should Cale Parker be wearing a coat, and be

otherwise dooded and fixed up beyond any wedding? Judd and his friends

were somewhat excited over Parker.

Fisbee was clad in his best shabby black, which lent an air of state to

the occasion, but Mr. Parker--Caleb Parker, whose heart, during his five

years of residence in Plattville, had been steel-proof against all the

feminine blandishments of the town, whose long, lank face had shown

beneath as long, and lanker, locks of proverbially uncombed hair, he who

had for weeks conspicuously affected a single, string-patched suspender,

who never, even upon the Sabbath day, wore a collar or blacked his shoes--

what aesthetic leaven had entered his soul that he donned not a coat alone

but also a waistcoat with checks?--and, more than that, a gleaming

celluloid collar?--and, more than that, a brilliant blue tie? What had

this iron youth to do with a rising excitement at train time and brilliant

blue ties?




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