what our favorite dishes was, and you may remember how she spread herse'f the fust three days after we was installed. It was like a camp-meetin'. You couldn't think of a single article that she didn't have ready, in some shape or other. But after 'while hot things quit comin' and cold uns appeared that had a familiar look, and now me and you and all of us set down to the same old seven and six. Well, my jaw teeth ain't as good as they used to be, and I make out by soakin' my bread-crust in my coffee. Hettie says she's goin' to have me an' Jane both fitted out with store sets. Folks that have tried 'em say they beat the old sort all holler—that you kin crack hickory-nuts if you have both upper and lower and git a fair clamp on 'em and use yore muscles."
Henley turned into the big dining-room, where his "stepmother-in-law," a diminutive woman, sat at the foot of the oblong table dressed in faded black, even to the poke sunbonnet which, worn indoors and out, completely hid her wrinkled face. Mrs. Henley, as he seated himself on the side of the board opposite Wrinkle, came from the adjoining kitchen carrying a steaming pot of coffee, which she put by her plate at the head of the table, and sat down stiffly. The smooth floor of the room was bare save for a few rugs made of varicolored rags. The walls had a few cheap pictures on them—brilliant old-fashioned prints in mahogany frames, and some enlarged photographs in tawdry gilt. The wide hearth of a deep chimney was whitewashed, as was also the exposed brickwork up to a crude mantelpiece on which towered a Colonial clock with wooden wheels, ornamental dial, ponderous weights, and a painted glass door.
Mrs. Henley had not always been so unattractive; her dark eyes were good and her face held the glow of fine health. She had added to the severity of her sharp features by the too-elderly manner in which she parted her hair exactly in the centre of her high brow and brushed it sharply backward to a scant knot behind. She wore constantly an expression of one who was well aware of the fact that vast and vague duties to the dead as well as to the living rested on her and which should be performed at any cost. She was not usually talkative, and she had few observations to make this morning. As she nibbled the hot biscuit, upon which she had daintily spread a bit of butter, she allowed her glance to rove perfunctorily over the three plates beyond her own. She asked Wrinkle if his coffee was strong enough, and the gap in the black bonnet if the mush was too lumpy. From the bonnet came a mumbling content with the yellow mass into which cream was being slowly stirred with a quivering hand. Wrinkle seemed more ready in the use of his tongue.
"I hain't got no complaint to make," he said. "Especially sence Alf said t'other day at the store that coffee was on the rise. I was curious to see how this batch would sample out. I reckon when the market takes a jump storekeepers has to take a lower grade to keep customers satisfied with the price. But it won't work ef they are as good a judge of the stuff as I am. I parched this lot myself and picked out heaps o' rotten grains."
"They wasn't rotten," Henley explained, authoritatively. "They was water-stained by a wet crop-year, that's all. You was throwing away good coffee."
"Good or not, the chickens wouldn't eat it," argued the tangled head. "I know, fer I watched 'em. They was hangin' round the kitchen-door and would run every time I throwed out a handful, but they didn't swallow 'em any more'n they would so many buckshot. But prices nor nothin' else will ever git right, if I am any judge, till we git free silver. I tell you, Alf, that man Bryant is the biggest gun, by all odds, that ever belched fire in the defence of a helpless nation, and when them dratted Yankees tricked 'im out of the Presidency they put the ball an' chain o' slavery on every citizen of this fair land. Bryant told 'em that sixteen to one would do the work, and what did they say? Huh, they said he was a fool and didn't know how to figure. I tell you if he was a fool, Solomon was a idiot. Who was the'r brag man up in Yankeedom?—why, Abe Lincoln—an' what did he ever do but set back in the White House and tell smutty jokes, while the rest o' the country was walkin' on its uppers, eatin' hardtack, sweatin' blood, an' spittin' out minnie-balls. That man"—Wrinkle swallowed as he pointed the prongs of his fork at the crayon portrait of Henley's predecessor, which, with shaggy mustache and partially bald pate, in a new oaken frame, hung near the clock—"that man was a Bryant supporter from the minute the sixteen-to-one proposition electrocuted the world to the day of his death."
"Electrofied," corrected Mrs. Henley. "You oughtn't to use words out of the common. People don't understand them hereabouts."
"Well, they ought to grow up to it," Wrinkle grunted in his cup. "I read more'n they do, I reckon, an' sometimes a word tickles me till I git it out."
Henley ate his breakfast in silence. He was known to be a good talker himself, but he seldom indulged the tendency when Wrinkle was present. The meal over, he took his hat and went out. The road passing the farm-house led straight into the main street of the village, and along it he strode in the soothing, crisp air. His store stood on the square which encompassed the stone court-house. The store was a plain wooden building which had never been painted, but had received from time and the weather a gray, fuzzy coat which answered every purpose. It was about eighty feet long by thirty in width, and had a porch in front, which was reached from the sidewalk by a few steps. Ascending to the door, Henley unlocked it and proceeded from the rather dark interior to unscrew the faded green window-shutters. These thrown back on the outside, the light filled the long room, displaying two rows of counters and shelving. The right-hand side was devoted to dry goods and notions, the left to groceries, hardware, and crockery. Henley went on to the rear, where, by lifting a massive wooden bar from iron sockets, he opened a door in one side of the house. Next he took up a water-pail from an inverted soap-box, and, emptying the contents, he went to the well in the adjoining yard, a fenced enclosure which contained a conglomerate mass of old junk, broken-down wagons, buggies, agricultural implements, and other odds and ends which the merchant had bought very low or taken in some sort of exchange for new wares whereby they had cost him practically nothing. Returning with the water, he had just seated himself at his desk in the rear when his clerk, James Cahews, entered at the front, busied himself putting out some samples of hardware on the porch, and then came back to his employer. He was tall, well built, had very blue eyes, yellow hair, and a sweeping mustache which was well curled at the ends. He was without a coat and wore a blue cravat and a shirt of fancy cotton which matched none too well.
"You beat me to the tank again, Alf," was his jovial greeting. "I would have got here sooner, but I stopped to drive Mrs. Hayward's cow in for her. The blamed huzzy took a notion to prance about over the school-house lot, and the old lady is too near-sighted to see which way to turn and was afraid she'd get hooked."
"No hurry, no hurry," Henley said, as the other took up a battered tin sprinkling-pot and, filling it from the pail, began to dampen and sweep the floor, after which he lazily wiped the counters with a soiled towel.
"Pomp will be here after a while," the clerk said, pausing near where Henley sat, his glance thoughtfully on the sunlit ground in the yard. "I come by his cabin. He said he had to run for some medicine for his wife, and I told him I'd sweep out for him. Them dern niggers had rather take medicine than eat ice-cream at a festival. I don't know that it's anybody else's business," he went on, after he had stood the broom in a corner and was wiping the top of Henley's desk, "but thar is considerable talk going around that you intend to take a trip to Texas."
"I'm thinking seriously of it," Henley admitted. "I've heard of a deal or two in land out there that I want to get a finger in. You know, Jim, that I don't really make my best trades here in this shack; nothing worth while seems to come this way. I reckon it's because this country is old and settled. In a new, undeveloped section like that out there big things is continually happening. The general impression is that a trading-man can make more amongst ignorant folks than amongst keen traffickers, but it is a mistake. Folks that ain't born with the flea of speculation wigglin' in their brain-pans won't never let loose of nothing. It is the feller that is eternally on the lookout for opportunities that will sell the shirt off his back to raise money when he thinks he sees an opening. Then there ain't no fun nor Christianity in making money out of a fool. I want to know that a feller is up to snuff and fairly in the game, and then I'll swat 'im if it is in my power. It's been the ambition of my life to get the best of old Welborne across the street there. He's made his pile off of widows and orphans, and if I ever get him under my thumb I'll crack every bone in his hide."
"Traders that have the knack of it like you have,