“I haven’t yet.”

“Well, go around and see him.  We must find out exactly what he intends to do with the Summit Hill road.  If he is weak on that we’d better look to Matt Devine.  At least Matt is safe.”

The Scotch Preacher looked at Charles Baxter and said to me with a note of admiration in his voice: 

“Isn’t this man Baxter getting to be intolerable as a political boss!”

* * * * *

Baxter’s shop!  Baxter’s shop stands close to the road and just in the edge of a grassy old apple orchard.  It is a low, unpainted building, with generous double doors in front, standing irresistibly open as you go by.  Even as a stranger coming here first from the city I felt the call of Baxter’s shop.  Shall I ever forget!  It was a still morning—­one of those days of warm sunshine—­and perfect quiet in the country—­and birds in the branches—­and apple trees all in bloom.  Baxter whistling at his work in the sunlit doorway of his shop, in his long, faded apron, much worn at the knees.  He was bending to the rhythmic movement of his plane, and all around him as he worked rose billows of shavings.  And oh, the odours of that shop! the fragrant, resinous odour of new-cut pine, the pungent smell of black walnut, the dull odour of oak wood—­how they stole out in the sunshine, waylaying you as you came far up the road, beguiling you as you passed the shop, and stealing reproachfully after you as you went onward down the road.

Never shall I forget that grateful moment when I first passed Baxter’s shop—­a failure from the city—­and Baxter looking out at me from his deep, quiet, gray eyes—­eyes that were almost a caress!

My wayward feet soon took me, unintroduced, within the doors of that shop, the first of many visits.  And I can say no more in appreciation of my ventures there than that I came out always with more than I had when I went in.

The wonders there!  The long bench with its huge-jawed wooden vises, and the little dusty windows above looking out into the orchard, and the brown planes and the row of shiny saws, and the most wonderful pattern squares and triangles and curves, each hanging on its own peg; and above, in the rafters, every sort and size of curious wood.  And oh! the old bureaus and whatnots and high-boys in the corners waiting their turn to be mended; and the sticky glue-pot waiting, too, on the end of the sawhorse.  There is family history here in this shop—­no end of it—­the small and yet great (because intensely human) tragedies and humours of the long, quiet years among these sunny hills.  That whatnot there, the one of black walnut with the top knocked off, that belonged in the old days to——­

“Charles Baxter,” calls my friend Patterson from the roadway, “can you fix my cupboard?”

“Bring it in,” says Charles Baxter, hospitably, and Patterson brings it in, and stops to talk—­and stops—­and stops—­There is great talk in Baxter’s shop—­the slow-gathered wisdom of the country, the lore of crops and calves and cabinets.  In Baxter’s shop we choose the next President of these United States!