"I wonder what mother meant!" soliloquized the daughter, when her mother had kissed her and said good-night; "she certainly had tears in her eyes!"
In the gray dawn of the next morning, Swan Day rode out of Walton in the same stage-coach and with the same "spike-team" of gray horses which had brought him thither thirty-six hours before. When the coach reached Troy, and the bright sun broke over the picturesque scenery of the erratic Ashuelot, he drew his breath deeply, as if relieved of a burden. Presently the coach stopped, the door opened, and the coachman held out his hand in silence.
"Fare, is it?"
"Fare."
Opening his pocket-book, he saw the note which he had written to Dorcas, appointing an interview, and which he had forgotten to send to her.
As he rode on, he tore the letter into a thousand minute fragments, scattering them for a mile in the coach's path, and watching the wheels grind them down in the dust.
"'T isn't the only thing I haven't done that I meant to!" said he, with a sad smile over his sallow face.
He buttoned his coat closely to his chin, raised the collar to his ears, and shut his eyes.
The coachman peeped back at his only passenger, touched the nigh leader with the most delicate hint of a whipcord, and said confidentially to the off wheel,—
"What a sleepy old porpus that is in there!"