“All that finical ceremony he would go through in the face of the enemy,” thought Blecker, jumping down on the track.

“Give it to old Gurney, Mac.  It will insure you a welcome.”

“It is curious, Doctor Blecker.  But you”—­

“I never care to gratify anybody.  Besides, the old gentleman and I inter-despised.  Our instincts cried out, ‘’Ware dog!’ the first day You are a friend of his, eh, Mac?”

The Captain’s face grew red, like a bashful woman’s.  He thought Blecker had divined his secret, would haul it out roughly in another moment.  If this slang-talking Yankee should take little Lizzy’s name into his mouth!  But the Doctor was silent, even looked away until the heat on the poor old bachelor’s face had died out.  He knew McKinstry’s thought of that little girl well enough, but he held the child-hearted man’s secret tenderly and charily in his hand.  Paul Blecker did talk slang and assert himself; but every impulse in him was clean, delicate, liberal.  So, Paul remaining silent, the Captain took heart of grace, going down the street, and ventured back to the Gurney question.

“I thought I would accompany you there, Doctor Blecker.  They might only think it seemly in me to bid farewell.  I”—­

Blecker nodded.  The man had not been able to hide an harassed frown that day under his usual vigor of speech and look.  It became more palpable after this; his voice, when he did speak, was fretful, irritable,—­his lips compressed; he stopped at a village-well to drink, as though his mouth were parched.

“How old is that house,—­the Gurneys?” he asked, affecting carelessness, to baffle the curious inspection of McKinstry.

“The Fort?  We call it the Fort because it was used for one in Indian times,” McKinstry began, chafing his lean whiskers delightedly.

Old houses were his hobby, especially this which they approached,—­a narrow, long building of unhewn stone, facing on the street, the lintels and doors worm-eaten, and green with moss.

“Built by Bradford, the new part,—­Bradford, of the Whiskey Insurrection, you know?  Carvings on the walls brought over the mountains, when to bring them by panels was a two-months’ journey.  There’s queer stories hang about these old Pennsylvania homesteads.”

“Bradford?  The Gurneys are a new family here, then?”

“Came here but a few years back, from a country farther up the mountains.  They’re different from us.”

“How, different?” with a keen, surprised glance. “I see they are a newer people than the others; but I thought the village accepted them with shut eyes.”

The Captain stammered again.

“Old Father Gurney, as we call him, taught school when they first came, but he gave that up.  This section is a good geological field, and he wished to devote himself to that,” he went on, evading the question.  “They live off of those acres at the back of the house since that.  You see?  Corn, potatoes, buckwheat,—­good yield.”