The Tramp sighed and puffed vigorously on his pipe.
“An’ now what air ye doin’?” asked the Storekeeper.
“What else ’ud a man do?” replied the traveller. “I’m hustlin’ jest ez fast ez I kin to git back to that jail. An’ I’m goin’ ter git in it. I’ll never eat another potaty onless it comes from the hand o’ the Sher’ff’s dotter.”
“Does you know what I wisht?” inquired the Chronic Loafer earnestly.
“I wisht Noah Punk hedn’t wrote that letter.”
The last red rays of the evening sun disappeared below the mountains and the gray twilight settled over the valley. The mill ceased its rumbling. The mower that all day long had been clicking merrily in the meadow behind the store stood silent in the swaths, and the horses that had drawn it were playfully dipping their noses in the cool waters of the creek. The birds--the plover, the lark and the snipe that had whistled since daybreak over the fields and the robins and sparrows that had chirped overhead in the trees--had long since made themselves comfortable for the impending night. By and by the woods beyond the flats assumed a formless blackness and from their dark midst came the lonely call of the whippoorwill. The horses splashed out of the creek and clattered through the village to the white barn at the end of the street. The Miller padlocked the heavy door of the mill and bid good night to his helper, who trudged away over the bridge swinging his dinner pail. Then he beat the flour out of his cap on the hitching-post and lounged up to the store. He threw himself along the floor, and after propping his back against a pillar, lighted his pipe.
“‘Hen it comes to fiddlin’,” the Chronic Loafer was saying, “they is few men can beat Sam Washin’ton. Why I’ve knowd him to set down at a party at seven at night an’ fiddle till six next mornin’ an’ play a different tune every time.”
“Did you ever hear o’ Hiram Gum?” asked the Patriarch.
“Hiram Gum!” cried the G. A. R. Man. “My father used often to speak o’ him, but he was afore my time. Drowned in the canal.”
“Wonderful, wonderful, I’ve heard tell,” exclaimed the Miller. “I can jest remember seein’ him oncet ’hen I was a wee bit o’ a boy--a leetle man with long hair an’ big eyes an’ a withered arm.”