[Illustration:  EAST PATTEN WAS ONE OF THE QUIETEST PLACES IN THE WORLD.]

When, therefore, the tall, straight, broad-shouldered, clear-eyed, much-whiskered major appeared on the street, looking (as he always did) as if he had just been shaved, brushed and polished, the sight was an extremely pleasing one, except to certain young men who feared for the validity of their titles to their respective sweethearts should the major chance to be affectionate.

But the major gave no cause for complaint.  When he first came to the village he bought Rose Cottage, opposite the splendid Wittleday property, and he spent most of his time (his leave-of-absence always occurring in the Summer season) in his garden, trimming his shrubs, nursing his flowering-plants, growing magnificent roses, and in all ways acting utterly unlike a man of blood.  Occasionally he played a game of chess with Parson Fisher, the jolly ex-clergyman, or smoked a pipe with the sadler-postmaster; he attended all the East Patten tea-parties, too, but he made himself so uniformly agreeable to all the ladies that the mothers in Israel agreed with many sighs, that the major was not a marrying man.

It may easily be imagined, then, that when one Summer the major reappeared at East Patten with a brother officer who was young and reasonably good-looking, the major’s popularity did not diminish.

The young man was introduced as Lieutenant Doyson, who had once saved the major’s life by a lucky shot, as that chieftain, with empty pistols, was trying to escape from a well-mounted Indian; and all the young ladies in town declared they knew the lieutenant must have done something wonderful, he was so splendid.

But, with that fickleness which seems in some way communicable from wicked cities to virtuous villages, East Patten suddenly ceased to exhibit unusual interest in the pair of warriors, for a new excitement had convulsed the village mind to its very centre.

It was whispered that Mrs. Wittleday, the sole and widowed owner of the great Wittleday property, had wearied of the mourning she wore for the husband she had buried two years previously, and that she would soon publicly announce the fact by laying aside her weeds and giving a great entertainment, to which every one was to be invited.

There was considerable high-toned deprecation of so early a cessation of Mrs. Wittleday’s sorrowing, she being still young and handsome, and there was some fault found on the economic ground that the widow couldn’t yet have half worn out her mourning-garments; but as to the propriety of her giving an entertainment, the voices of East Patten were as one in the affirmative.

Such of the villagers as had chanced to sit at meat with the late Scott Wittleday, had reported that dishes with unremembered foreign names were as plenty as were the plainer viands on the tables of the old inhabitants; such East Pattenites as had not been entertained at the Wittleday board rejoiced in a prospect of believing by sight as well as by faith.